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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What are two examples of optical illusions?

2. What are we actually unaware of?

3. What does Eagleman say about people who marry that is related to the idea of implicit egotism?

4. How do photographs of different races reveal something about the mind?

5. What does Eagleman say about the ability to sort?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Eagleman offer an analogy of one's awareness to a newspaper headline?

2. What does Eagleman say the experiment with the photographs of women illustrates?

3. Why is it an advantage to be able to do things without the use of the conscious mind?

4. What is the point of the experiment that Eagleman suggests the reader try?

5. What is seeing and what is the most important aspect of seeing?

6. How is one's conscious mind limited and how does this make the mind more difficult to understand?

7. Explain the example of the chicken sexers that Eagleman discusses.

8. What does Eagleman describe in the opening chapter?

9. What ways can our vision be fooled?

10. What has given greater insight into the workings of the mind since Freud's time?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

This time that it takes for us to process sensory input is not sensed by us, Eagleman claims. We imagine we are living and perceiving the outside world in the present, but because of this delay required to make sense of what we experience we are actually living a few milliseconds in the past. Time, like vision and the other senses, he argues, is a construct of the brain. It is a "rich illusion" (p. 54) that we cannot completely uncover.

1. Do you think time is fluid? In other words, is a minute always the same length of time? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

2. Discuss the idea that if Eagleman is correct about the present moment that in reality a present moment never exists. Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

3. What do you think is meant by the statement that time is a construct of the brain? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

Essay Topic 2

While there are many competing aspects of the brain Eagleman argues, he focuses on two which he labels the "rational" and "emotional." The rational mind is focused on analyzing the outside world while the emotional mind looks inward. He presents the results of an experiment that pits these two rivals against one another. Subjects are presented with a fictional situation where allowing one person to die would save the lives of five others. In one version of the situation, the person would have to pull a lever to move a runaway train onto a track where it would kill one person but miss killing five. In this version, most people agree they would pull the lever, as the loss of one life is preferable to the loss of five. In another version, however, the situation is presented so that the person would actually have to push one person from an overhanging bridge to stop the train that would otherwise kill five people. Subjects found this version more difficult. The experimenters concluded that the emotional aspect of actually touching a person and pushing them to their deaths overrode the rational computation that it was better to lose one life than five lives.

1. Which mind do you think is more reliable, the rational or the emotional? Why? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

2. Discuss a situation where you made a decision with your emotions rather than your logic. Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

3. Do you think you would have the same problem with pushing a person off a bridge as the people in this experiment? Why or why not? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

Essay Topic 3

This kind of social hard-wiring affects our thinking in some interesting ways, Eagleman claims. He gives an example of a difficult logic puzzle involving colors and numbers and asks the reader to solve it. He then presents a different puzzle that has the same underlying logical solution but has been rephrased to make it about people and their ages. He claims that most people find the second puzzle easier to solve than the first, even though they are essentially the same puzzle. The reason, he argues, is that we can more easily process information if we can frame it in a social context.

1. Give an example of a problem that can be put into a social context and easily solved. Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

2. What you think the fact that social context is more real to most humans means to us as animals? Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

3. Discuss the idea that humans are hard wired to be social and that is why married people tend to live longer than single people. Use examples from your own life and Incognito to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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