You and Your Friends Are Having a Sleepover

question 151

Multiple Choice

You and your friends are having a sleepover.One of the friends falls asleep and is snoring.The rest of you are talking loudly without waking her,but when you begin to make cookies,the smell jolts her from sleep immediately.How can this be?

• A) The brain blocks out most stimuli even though it is processing the information; a good smell was worth attending to.
• B) The brain can block out stimuli for only a limited time. The friend would have awakened even without the cookie smell.
• C) Talking at any volume is soothing, so people can sleep through that but not the strangeness of baking.
• D) The brain cannot block any stimuli from reaching the cortex; the friend waking was unrelated to the smell of cookies.

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Definitions:

Short-run Economic Profits

Profits earned by a firm in the short run, where not all inputs can be varied and some fixed costs are still incurred.

Competitive Industries

Sectors of the economy where businesses actively compete with each other to offer goods or services to consumers, often characterized by low barriers to entry and a high level of innovation.

Allocative Efficiency

A state of resource allocation where goods and services are distributed according to consumer preferences, maximizing overall societal welfare.

Productive Efficiency

A situation where a firm or economy produces output at the lowest possible cost, using all its resources efficiently.