AP Psych Midterm
Which of the following is the median score?
6
Bert normally sleeps from 10:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. In which of the following time periods would he experience the LEAST amount of REM sleep?
10 pm and 11 pm
A student who scored at the mode would have how many points?
5
Researchers find that there is a significant, positive correlation between the number of hours students sleep and their grades. The researchers would be justified in concluding that
A positive correlation means these two variables move in the same direction because changes in one variable reflects changes in another.
Research shows that women who are referred by a physician to participate in a study of eating disorders have more severe problems than women who volunteer on their own to participate in the study. If research on eating disorders regularly involves only women referred by physicians, the results of the study might be limited because of the presence of
A third variable
Dr. Lewis decided to study the television viewing habits of her students and therefore demanded that they complete and return a survey regarding their viewing habits. Which of the following ethical principles was clearly violated in this study?
Consent, you cannot force people to participate in psychological studies against their will
Alfred Binet's most important contribution to psychology was in the area of
IQ tests
Noam Chomsky hypothesized that humans learn language through
Language acquisition device - structure in the brain innately programmed with some of the fundamental rules of grammar
Which of the following correlation coefficients most likely represents the relationship between length of sleep deprivation and level of alertness?
Negative correlation
Which of the following is required for a psychological experiment?
Operational definitions - exact procedures used in establishing conditions and measurement of results
When a person is suffering from severe pain, the type of drug that will best help alleviate that pain is
Opiates - morphine - codeine - heroin - methadone
Stanley Schachter's explanation of emotions places emphasis on
Schachter's Two-Factor Theory - emotion results from the cognitive appraisal of both physical arousal and an emotion-provoking stimulus stimulus snake - physiological arousal, trembling, increased heart rate - emotion, fear stimulus too much caffeine - cognitive interpretation "i feel afraid" - emotion, fear
A schema can be described as
Schema - a knowledge cluster or general framework that provides expectations about topics, events, objects, people, and situations in one's life
Which of the following is generally true of participants in Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of intellectually gifted children?
The gifted children in his experiment had good lives
A basic assumption underlying short-term memory is that it is
Working memory (short-term memory) - preserves recently perceived events or experiences for less than a minute without rehearsal, aided by a. chunking which combines info into meaningful and manageable units b. maintenance rehearsal which repeats data to reduce fading
A cancer patient becomes nauseated following chemotherapy treatments. After a few treatments, the patient begins having a sick feeling whenever entering the treatment room. The treatment room has become
a conditioned stimulus
A client whose improvement during therapy is the result of his or her expectation of improvement rather than the result of the therapy itself is showing
a control condition
Amanda experienced discomfort in class. She put on a sweater when she realized her discomfort was caused by the cold. Her behavior was motivated by
a drive or fixed-action patterns
Standard deviation is a measure of how much
a score deviates from the mean
In a normal distribution, which of the following statements is true about the area that falls between one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean?
above is superior intelligence, below is mentally inadequate, 70%
Researchers looking to create a drug to reduce the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease would most likely focus their efforts on which of the following neurotransmitters?
acetylcholine
Kathy is learning to cook. She follows every direction on each recipe step by step to make sure her food tastes good. Which of the following describes the problem-solving approach that Kathy is using?
algorithms
After an electrode implanted in a cat's brain stimulates the cat's amygdala, the cat will most likely do which of the following?
amygdala - the part of the limbic system constantly on alert for fear/aggression responses involved in memory and emotion, particularly fear and aggression
Which of the following situations describes an approach-avoidance conflict?
approach avoidance conflict - a conflict which there are both appealing and negative aspects to the decision to be made
Which of the following refers to the potential of an individual to perform as-yet-unlearned task?
aptitude tests
f Juan tried to learn a long list of words, he would be most likely to forget words that
are in the middle
John B. Watson was a pioneer in which of the following perspectives of psychology?
behaviorism
A reason that one typically does not notice a blind spot in the visual field is that
bottom-up analysis that emphasizes characteristics of the stimulus, rather than internal concepts.
Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system results in which of the following?
calming
Which process transfers information from sensory memory to short-term memory?
central executive
The human brain differs from the brains of most other animals by the relative amount of brain mass devoted to which of the following?
cerebral cortex, movement and thinking
The biological clock that operates in human beings to adjust their functioning to night-and-day periodicity is referred to as
circadian rhythm
Four-year-old Scott fell down the stairs at his grandmother's house. Although he was not badly hurt, he was very frightened. Now, whenever his parents mention visiting his grandmother's house, he feels anxious and fearful. In classical conditioning terms, what are the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) in the scenario, respectively?
conditioned stimulus: the stairs, unconditioned stimulus: fear
A dog retrieves the newspaper every day because in the past it received a food reward for his behavior. The dog's behavior is an example of which of the following?
consequences
Damage to which of the following best explains conduction deafness?
damage to structures of the middle or inner ear
Cocaine blocks the reuptake of which neurotransmitter?
dopamine
In phase one of a study, a researcher classically conditions a dog to salivate to the ringing of a bell. In the second phase, the researcher pairs a flashing light with the ringing of the bell. After several pairings of the light and the bell, the dog will
drool at the sight of the light or to the sound of the buzzer (second order conditioning)
Most glands in the human body are a part of which system?
endocrine system
An example of an episodic memory is the memory of
episodic memory - stores personal experiences and events including when, where, context
Which of the following is the phase of Hans Selye's general adaptation syndrome wherein individuals are most vulnerable to illness, collapse, and even death?
exhaustion
Whenever Sarah's mother answered the phone, Sarah would yell for her mother's attention and her mother would end the phone conversation. Then Sarah's mother began ignoring Sarah's yelling and eventually Sarah stopped behaving that way. The change in Sarah's behavior is an example of
extinction
Although he finds it difficult and not much fun, Ted puts in long hours practicing soccer in the hope of getting an athletic scholarship to college. This best illustrates the idea of
extrinsic motivation
The component of intelligence described by Raymond Cattell as involving the ability to understand logical relationships, reason abstractly, and learn quickly is related to which of the following
fluid intelligence
A researcher shows the same video of an automobile accident to two different groups of participants. Participants in group one are asked: "Did you see a broken headlight?" Participants in group two are asked: "Did you see the broken headlight?" The researcher finds that participants in group two are much more likely to recall having seen a broken headlight, even though there actually was no broken headlight in the video. The researcher is investigating the effects of which of the following on recall?
framing
A young couple was having a picnic outdoor when a sudden rainstorm approached. They became soaked, because they did not think of using their plastic tablecloth for protection from the rain. Their oversight best illustrates
functional fixedness
Tina's mother entertains Tina by bouncing a bunny puppet back and forth along the side of Tina's crib. Initially, Tina pays close attention to the puppet, but after a while she begins to ignore it and continues doing what she was doing before the puppet appeared. Which of the following psychological concepts best explains Tina's change in behavior?
habituation
When confronted with the sequence "__N__" at the end of a word in a crossword puzzle, Tony inserts the letters "I" and "G" in the two blanks because that procedure has often led to the correct answer in previous puzzles. This example illustrates the use of
heuristics
Jamal receives a Full Scale IQ score of 125 on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales. This score indicates that he
high intelligence
Mitchell and Sylvia watched a recent episode of a crime investigation show and Mitchell said at the end of the show that he knew all along that the business partner committed the crime, even though halfway through the show he told Sylvia that the girlfriend was guilty. Mitchell's belief that he had known all along who committed the crime is most likely due to a reasoning error known as
hindsight heuristic
Which of the following concepts explains motivation in terms of a organism seeking to maintain its biological equilibrium?
homeostasis
As a result of being hypnotized, an individual may not feel the hypnotist touching her arm because of
hypnotizability
Which of the following structures of the brain has been linked to the regulation of hunger and thirst?
hypothalamus
A dog bit Sam when he was a small child and now Sam believes all dogs bite. Which of the following is a type of reasoning that Sam is using to come to this conclusion?
inductive reasoning
A patient reports constant sleepiness. A series of tests reveal that the patient's sleep is frequently disrupted by periods of interrupted breathing and brief awakenings. Which of the following diagnoses would account for such symptoms?
insomnia
The ratio of mental age to chronological age for a child of average intelligence is
intelligence quotient - a numerical score of an intelligence test, originally computed by dividing a person's mental age by chronological age and multiplying by 100
Which of the following is an example of an individual who demonstrates an internal locus of control?
internal locus of control - your own efforts determine whether you succeed or fail
Rudolph spends hours painting in his studio, even though he sells few pictures. Which of the following explains Rudolph's creative productivity?
intrinsic motivation
In the first part of an experiment, one group of rats received reinforcement after correctly navigating a maze. A second group received no reinforcement after wandering around the maze. In the next part, both groups received reinforcement after navigating the maze. Despite not receiving reinforcement at the beginning of the experiment, the second group performed as well as the first. The learning that occurred in the second group in the absence of reinforcement is called
latent learning
Edward L. Thorndike argued that responses that lead to satisfying outcomes are more likely to be repeated, and that responses followed by unpleasant outcomes are less likely to be repeated. This became known as the law of
law of effect
Researchers have found a negative correlation between income and dental problems. What conclusion can be correctly drawn from this statement?
negative correlation
A person closes a window to shut out traffic noise. The reduction in noise leads the person to close the window every day. This is an example of
negative reinforcement
Which of the following scatterplots depicts the most predictive negative correlation between two variables?
negative scatterplot going down
A student who obtained a percentile rank of 75% on an achievement test is best characterized as having
normal range
After seeing her parents give her brother a dollar for cleaning his room, Sarah begins cleaning her own room. According to social-learning theory, Sarah's behavior is an example of which of the following?
observational learning
Which of the following sets of concepts is central to social learning theory?
observational learning (vicarious learning or social learning) - Form of cognitive learning in which new responses are acquired after watching others' behavior and the consequences of their behavior
A researcher gave identical puzzles to five-year-old children in two groups, group A and group B. The children in group A were promised candy if they completed the puzzles quickly and well. The children in group B were not promised a reward but were encouraged to do the best that they could. If the researcher argues that overjustification occurred, which of the following most likely happened during the experiment?
overjustification - external rewards can displace internal rewards and be less effective
Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk used a visual cliff with a glass covered drop-off to examine behavior in crawling infants. Even when coaxed by their mothers to crawl out onto the glass covering, most infants refused to do so, indicating that they had developed which of the following?
perceptual constancy
Which of the following correctly pairs subdivisions within the major divisions of the human nervous system?
peripheral nervous system
Which of the following is the correct path a neural impulse will follow through the different layers of the retina?
photoreceptors, rods, cones, fovea
Children who are consistently praised for receiving high grades in school will likely continue to work for high grades. Using an operant conditioning explanation of this phenomenon, which of the following is true?
positive reinforcement
A sudden inability to remember how to tie a certain kind of knot indicates a deficit in which kind of memory?
procedural memory
When a projective technique is used, a person could be asked to
projection - process by which people attribute their own unconscious motives to other people or objects
A moviegoer who cannot identify the name of a film star remembers the name when a friend reviews a list of stars. This incident illustrates which two concepts in human memory?
recognition and recall
A researcher is training laboratory rats to run a complex maze. Each time the rats learn a new part of the maze, they are rewarded with a pellet of food. Within a few hours, the rats have learned the entire maze. Which of the following did the researcher use to teach the rats the maze?
reinforcing successive approximations (shaping)
Henry took an intelligence test and scored lower than he thought he should. He kept retaking the test, but he kept getting about the same score. This series of events indicates that the test was
reliable
Which of the following is an example of retrograde amnesia?
retrograde amnesia - inability to remember information previously stored in memory
Damage to the occipital lobe would most likely affect a person's
visual cortex
Individuals who exhibit a strong moral sense, accept themselves as they are, are deeply democratic in nature, and are willing to act independently of social and cultural pressures would be described by Abraham Maslow as
self-actualized
In the dark, an object is more clearly seen when viewed in peripheral vision than when viewed directly. This phenomenon occurs because the rods located in the retina are
sensitive to dim light but not colors
On his first day at work at the bakery, Brad was nearly overwhelmed by the sweet odor of baked goods. However, by lunchtime, he did not even notice the smell. This is an example of
sensory adaptation
Jane accidentally touched a hot iron. She immediately drew back her hand. Which of the following is true about the withdrawal of her hand?
sensory neurons
Research has shown that a major reason for poor performance while multitasking is that while multitasking, people
show inattentional blindness because our consciousness limits what we notice and think about, so we don't see what we are paying attention too
Mary is introduced to three new people at a party. Later she cannot remember the names of any of her new acquaintances, even though she remembers what she ate, her old friends who were there, and the address of the host. What may account for Mary's inability to remember these individuals' names?
sketchpad
A monkey's choosing a circle from an array of geometric shapes in order to be rewarded with a banana is an example of
stimulus discrimination
A two-year-old child is frightened by a small dog. A few weeks later the same child sees a cat and becomes frightened. The child's reaction is most likely an example of which of the following?
stimulus generalization
The experience of an emotion, as described by the James-Lange theory, would follow which order?
stimulus snake - physiological arousal, trembling, increased heart rate - emotion, fear
The ability to see a cube in the diagram above is best explained by which of the following?
subjective contours
Which of the following is true of individuals who experience severe withdrawal symptoms when they abruptly stop using a drug that they have been taking for a long time?
symptoms: pain, cramps, cravings, irritability, obsessions
John Garcia showed that when rats ingested a novel substance before becoming nauseated from radiation or drugs, they acquired a
taste-aversion
Two-year-old Jan tells her grandmother that she "sweeped" the floor yesterday. The scenario illustrates that children
telegraphic speech
The area labeled 5 in the drawing above denotes which of the following structures?
terminal buttons
Martin fell off his skateboard and badly bruised his elbow. He immediately began rubbing the area around the bruise until the pain subsided. This method of reducing pain can be explained by which of the following?
the gate control theory
A researcher is trying to determine whether a new painkilling medicine is effective in reducing headaches. Twenty adult participants sit in a noisy environment for 30 minutes and then rate the severity of their headaches on a scale from 0 (none) to 5 (intense). Group M (the medicine group) receives a normal dose of the medicine. Group C (the control group) rests quietly. After 20 minutes, all the participants again complete the headache rating scale. The statistically significant differences in headache severity on the posttest appear in the graph on the next page. Which of the following is the independent variable in this experiment?
the group who took the medicine
A researcher is trying to determine whether a new painkilling medicine is effective in reducing headaches. Twenty adult participants sit in a noisy environment for 30 minutes and then rate the severity of their headaches on a scale from 0 (none) to 5 (intense). Group M (the medicine group) receives a normal dose of the medicine. Group C (the control group) rests quietly. After 20 minutes, all the participants again complete the headache rating scale. The statistically significant differences in headache severity on the posttest appear in the graph on the next page. Which of the following statements is supported by the results of this experiment?
the medicine helped the adults headaches
Reuptake of a neurotransmitter refers to
the process by which neurotransmitter molecules that have been released at a synapse are reabsorbed by the presynaptic neuron that released them
Liz, a math major, sees the drawing above as a Venn diagram. Her brother, an art major, sees it as two circles. The difference in perception is an example of
top-down processing
After staring at a green, black, and orange "American flag" for about a minute, an individual will see a red, white and blue flag afterimage. Which of the following explains this phenomenon?
trichromatic theory
A test that fails to predict what it is designed to predict lacks
validity
Research studies indicate that people who are intrinsically motivated as compared to people who are extrinsically motivated tend to
want to engage in an activity
A female student was rejected by a college because her score on a test used by the college to predict performance there was below the college's cutoff score. An influential alumnus of the college intervened on the student's behalf and the student was admitted. Four years later the student graduated with honors. The most likely explanation of this outcome is that the test
wasn't valid
