Question :
61. Making several minor household repairs, Alyssa uses a shoe as : 1252507
61. Making several minor household repairs, Alyssa uses a shoe as a hammer and a butter knife as a screwdriver. Which of the following statements best characterizes Alyssa’s problem solving?
A. She is constrained by a powerful mental set.
B. She has been released from functional fixedness.
C. She is taking advantage of the representative heuristic.
D. She is forming subgoals.
62. A jeweler is unable to fix a particular mounting in a ring because she can imagine only the conventional uses for her tools. This best demonstrates which of the following?
A. Syllogistic reasoning
B. Functional fixedness
C. Algorithmic thinking
D. Means-end analysis
63. Henry’s dog, Sparky, has been rolling in the mud. Henry must bathe Sparky before the dog gets mud all over the carpet. However, Henry is unable to find the plug for the tub. Sitting on the counter right beside the tub is a fifty-cent piece. In his frustration, Henry fails to see that the coin could be used as an emergency plug for the tub. What happened to Henry?
A. He took a heuristic approach.
B. He fell prey to the confirmation bias.
C. He suffered from mental set.
D. He employed representational thought.
64. _____ is the tendency to seek out and weight more heavily information that supports one’s initial hypothesis and to ignore contradictory information that supports alternative hypotheses or solutions.
A. Functional fixedness
B. A mental set
C. Confirmation bias
D. Representativeness heuristic
65. Which of the following impediments to effective problem solving is CORRECTLY matched with its definition?
A. Functional fixedness—the tendency for old patterns of problem solving to persist
B. Mental set—the tendency to think of an object only in terms of its customary use
C. Confirmation bias—the tendency to favor existing hypotheses and to ignore evidence favoring alternatives
D. Representative heuristic—involves judging the probability of an event on the basis of how easily the event can be recalled from memory.
66. Nigel often cites newspaper editorials favoring the presidential candidate he supports; he appears to ignore editorials critical of the candidate. Nigel appears prone to:
A. functional fixedness.
B. mental set.
C. the confirmation bias.
D. the representativeness heuristic.
67. Sandy, a true believer in astrology, reads in her horoscope that today is her lucky day. She gets so excited that she spills coffee all over herself, necessitating a change of clothes. As a result, she is late for work and for a very important meeting, which in turn gets her into serious trouble with her boss. That evening, her brother is taken to the emergency room. On her way to visit him, Sandy finds a dime in the hospital parking lot. What does research on the confirmation bias suggest that Sandy will do?
A. Sandy will renounce astrology as completely wrong because of all the horrible things that happened on her “lucky day.”
B. Sandy will begin to question her belief in astrology because of all the horrible things that happened on her “lucky day.”
C. Sandy will seize on the dime she found as evidence of astrology’s accuracy.
D. Confirmation bias has little or no relevance to how Sandy will think about astrology in the future.
68. The ability to generate original ideas or develop novel solutions to problems is known as:
A. convergent thinking.
B. insight.
C. creativity.
D. syllogistic reasoning.
69. Which of the following statements accurately expresses one failing of cognitive psychologists’ study of problem solving?
A. Cognitive psychologists have failed to identify the strategies people use in solving problems.
B. Cognitive psychologists have failed to explain why some people generate better solutions than others do.
C. Cognitive psychologists have failed to specify how people represent problems in their minds.
D. Cognitive psychologists have failed to identify the barriers to effective problem solving that people face.
70. Someone relying on convergent thinking would answer _____ to the query “What can you do with a toothbrush?”
A. “You brush your teeth with it”
B. “You use it for painting”
C. “You use it for cleaning tools”
D. “You use it to make toys”
