Chapter 12 - answers

Further questions for chapter 01 - suggested answers

Q. What are some everyday examples of tasks that require us to use cognitive maps?

A. Navigation examples: Finding a new route when a road is closed, driving to a new restaurant in a familiar part of town.

Q. Explain how the Turing machine helped cognitive scientists think about the mind.

A. Turing machines demonstrate a purely mechanical way of solving problems and processing information. Turing’s model of computation provided a way of modeling information processing in the human mind. 

Q. Consider the following statement: A Turing machine is highly idealized and does not actually exist. Is this true? Answer yes or no and explain your answer.

A. Turing machines are highly idealized and do not in fact exist, because they require an infinitely long string of information. However, computers are, in a certain sense, Turing machines—just finite Turing machines.

Q. Come up with an experiment to test Broadbent's model of selective attention.

A. One possibility: Tell people to ignore audio from one ear in a dichotic listening task. Present highly salient information to that ignored ear to see if it will surpass the filter (e.g., the name of someone famous, or the name of the experimental subject). 

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