AP Psychology AP Classroom Unit 2 Multiple Choice

The phenomenon of declining physiological effects of taking a drug after sustained use is referred to as?

tolerance (Drug tolerance refers to the process by which sustained use of a drug results in weaker effects over time. This is believed to be due in part to conditioning.)

In a study mimicking Roger Sperry's work, Dr. Kornhauser compared the responses of split-brain patients against a control group of neurotypical participants. In his study, participants focused on a dot in the center of a computer screen and objects are presented in either the left or right visual field. After seeing the object, the participants named the object. The results of the experiment are presented below. What is the most appropriate conclusion Dr. Kornhauser can draw from the results?

Because the connection between the right visual cortex and language center has been severed, split-brain patients are not able to retrieve the name of objects seen in the left visual field. (In split-brain patients, information in the left visual field is processed by the right visual cortex, which cannot access the language processing part of the brain located in the left hemisphere (in the majority of people). So, split-brain patients are unable to name objects that are seen only by the right visual cortex.)

Dr. Kovacs is conducting a study of how the brain responds to reading. He records subjects' brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while they read sentences. He is looking for the N400 signal, a negative EEG spike that occurs 400 milliseconds after someone processes something semantically surprising. There are two conditions in the study. The two figures below show average EEG activity for the subjects in the two conditions (Condition A on the left; Condition B on the right). The x-axis indicates time in milliseconds; time 0 indicates when the subjects first read the last word in each sentence. Which of the following pairs of conditions would produce results such as the ones Dr. Kovacs found?

Condition A included sentences such as "Strawberries are sweet," and Condition B included sentences such as "Strawberries are nervous." (The first condition contains a semantically unsurprising sentence, and the second condition contains a semantically surprising sentence (strawberries cannot be nervous).)

Which hormone is released when a person is under stress?

Cortisol (Cortisol is released by the adrenal gland when people are stressed.)

A drug that is used to treat seizures functions by preventing inhibitory neurotransmitters from returning to the presynaptic neuron. This slows the rate of neurons firing by increasing the amount of the inhibitory neurotransmitter in the synapse. The drug is most likely to be classified as a?

GABA reuptake inhibitor (GRI) (GRIs function by blocking the reuptake of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which means more GABA stays in the synapses and inhibits neurons from firing. This state is helpful in reducing seizures because seizures are caused by overactivity of neurons.)

Which of the following best describes a major role of the thalamus?

It relays most sensory signals to the cortex. (All sensory signals, except for olfactory signals, reach the cortex by first passing through the thalamus.)

Madeline has previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. She has an identical twin sister, Josephine, and a nonidentical sister, Abigail. Neither of Madeline's sisters have previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Which of the following statements is true of Madeline's sisters?

Josephine is more likely to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder than Abigail in response to a stressful or traumatic event. (Josephine likely has a higher predisposition for major depressive disorder because she shares all her genes with Madeline, who has previously been diagnosed.)

The idea that there is a part of the mind that is not directly accessible to awareness but still drives a person's thinking and behavior is most directly attributable to?

Sigmund Freud (Sigmund Freud developed theories on how behavior and thought are influenced by events even if we cannot remember them.)

Which of the following describes what happens when a neuron sends a signal?

The neuron goes from being negatively charged to briefly being positively charged, and finally returns to being negatively charged again. The magnitude of the negative charge is fixed regardless of the strength of the input signal it receives. (Neurons have an all-or-nothing response called an action potential, in which the neuron goes from being negatively charged at rest to being positively charged when it fires, then returning to its baseline negative.)

If a body does not have enough potassium, how might that affect neuronal firing?

The neurons will struggle to fire because there will not be enough positively charged ions to trigger the firing of the neuron. (Lack of potassium will lead neurons to fire less frequently because there will not be enough potassium ions to trigger neuronal firing.)

At a synapse, neurotransmitters released by the sending neuron do which of the following?

They bind to receptors at the receiving neuron, which opens ion channels. (The synapse is an interface between only one sending and one receiving neuron.)

What effect do agonists have?

They increase the likelihood that a postsynaptic neuron will fire. (Agonists increase the effectiveness of a neurotransmitter at the receiving neuron.)

An adult with a healthy sleep cycle is most likely to enter REM sleep?

after cycling through the NREM sleep stages (REM sleep occurs after other NREM sleep stages have been cycled through.)

A neuron sends a signal along its?

axon (Each signal is received by a neuron's dendrites and sent along its axon.)

Antagonists function by?

blocking receptors to prevent other neurotransmitters from binding to the neural receptors (This is the definition of an agonist.)

The medulla oblongata is a part of the?

brainstem (The medulla oblongata is part of the brain stem, which regulates basic body functions such as respiration and blood circulation.)

The psychodynamic theory of dreaming would postulate that?

dreams fulfill unconscious wishes (Psychodynamic theory is largely focused on the unconscious.)

The hormone most associated with the fight or flight response is

epinephrine (Epinephrine has a number of effects on the body that prepare it for fight or flight.)

A person whose body is not producing enough testosterone is most likely to exhibit

fatigue (Not enough testosterone often leads to fatigue.)

Johnny often hits his brother even though his brother does not do anything to antagonize him. Johnny's aggression is most likely due to a combination of?

his genetic makeup, the environment he grew up in, and the fact that aggression can be evolutionarily adaptive (Johnny's genetic makeup may have played a part in his aggressive behavior; however, developmental delays and a lack of neuroplasticity probably did not.)

Carl Wernicke discovered the region of the brain that is responsible for?

language comprehension (Carl Wernicke identified an area of the brain for which damage produced a deficit in the comprehension of language but not in the production of language.)

Ruth and Debbie are identical twins who were raised by the same family. Vince and Frankie are identical twins who were separated at birth and raised by different families. According to research on the heritability of personality traits, Ruth's and Debbie's personalities are statistically?

likely to be as similar and dissimilar to one another as are Vince's and Frankie's personalities (This was the main conclusion of the large-scale Minnesota twin study and has been further supported by more recent research studies about twins. Identical twins raised apart have the capacity to be just as similar and dissimilar as twins raised together.)

The fatty casing that helps speed up the neural transmissions of a neuron is called the?

myelin sheath (The myelin sheath surrounds the axon and helps to speed the neural transmission along the axon.)

Researchers trained monkeys to perform two tasks: an object-matching task and a location task. In the object-matching task, the monkeys are given an object and must choose a matching object from two objects placed in front of them. In the location task, an object is placed near one of two locations, and the monkeys must reach toward the location the object is closest to. Separating the monkeys into two groups, researchers created a lesion in one area of the brains of the monkeys in one group and a lesion in a different area of the brains of the monkeys in the second group. The researchers then tested the monkeys' performance on the two tasks. The figures below show the monkeys' accuracy on the two tasks. The lesions were most likely performed in the?

parietal lobe for Group 1 and the temporal lobe for Group 2 (The temporal lobe plays a role in object recognition, and the parietal lobe plays a role in spatial processing. When Group 1 has a lesion in the parietal lobe, the monkeys can no longer perform the location task because it relies on spatial processing, but they can still do the object-matching task. When Group 2 has a lesion in the temporal lobe, the monkeys can no longer perform the object-matching task because it relies on object recognition, but they can still do the location task.)

The parietal lobe is most involved in?

processing sensory information (The parietal lobe processes and integrates sensory information, including taste, hearing, sight, touch, and smell.)

Waking up frequently, loud snoring, silent pauses in breathing, and sleepiness during the day are symptoms of?

sleep apnea (Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that occurs when a person's airway collapses at night causing a halt in breathing, which leads to frequent waking, chronic fatigue, and loud snoring.)

Michael Gazzaniga is best known for?

studying split-brain patients (Michael Gazzaniga's research with split-brain patients helped to provide evidence of the lateralization of functions in the brain.)