General Psychology Midterm Exam

Nancy neurotransmitter and Heather hormone were having an argument over which of them is more powerful. Defending her stance that hormones are more powerful, Heather correctly states that neurotransmitters

"carry their message across the synapse—hormones are carried in the bloodstream and can affect many more cells!"

Which of the following statements about sleep deprivation is false?

A person who goes without sleep for one week risks permanent brain damage.

Which of the following statements about culture, experiences, and perception is false?

As cultures become more Westernized, research on cross-cultural perceptual differences will become easier.

Multiple sclerosis is a disease in which the immune system mistakenly destroys some of the myelin wrapped around nerve cell fibers. Which nerve cell fibers are being attacked by this process?

Axons

A psychologist proposed an experiment in which he would tell participants that their performance on an intelligence test was extremely low (regardless of actual performance) and then measure their self-esteem. What might an Institutional Review Board ethics committee say about such a proposal?

Deception is allowable only if it is revealed afterward and if the emotional distress that it causes is short-lived.

After reading about meditation in psychology, you decide to try it. Which of the following benefits is most likely to result from your regular practice of meditation?

Decreased anxiety

What kind of instrumentation is needed to accurately assess what stage of sleep a person is experiencing?

EEG

Which neurotransmitters, created inside of the body, are responsible for blocking pain signals from being sent to the brain?

Endorphins

"The whole shape of conscious experience is not the same as the sum of its parts" is a belief proposed by which view of psychology?

Gestalt

How do opiates compare with CNS stimulating and CNS depressant drugs?

Opiates depress activity in parts of the cerebral cortex and create excitation in other parts.

REM behavior disorder has been found to be predictive of which condition that emerges later in life?

Parkinson's disease

__________ provides us with information about where we are and what each part of the body is doing.

Proprioception

When people are deprived of __________ sleep, they compensate for the loss directly and show a rebound effect to recover from the loss

REM

Neurons have some similarities with other cells in the human body. Which of the following characteristics is seen in neurons, but not in most other cells?

The ability to transmit signals to other cells

A neurotransmitter is released into a synapse, but it has no effect on a neighboring neuron. Which of the following best accounts for the unresponsiveness of the neighboring neuron?

The neighboring neuron's receptors do not accept this type of neurotransmitter.

Which of the following developmental changes in the brain occurs after birth?

The number of dendrites and synapses increases until adolescence, after which it reduces.

Which of the following structures in your ear would vibrate in response to listening to your favorite music on the radio?

The tympanic membrane

Which of the following statements about attention is not true?

There are no limitations on the capacity to divide attention.

Which of the following is the most accurate statement about the hindbrain?

It is a continuation of the spinal cord

What is the primary difference between a person in REM sleep and one in stage N3 sleep?

N3 sleep includes vivid dreams, while REM sleep is not a dream stage.

Which of the following conditions, if left untreated, would you be most likely to detect in one of your instructors if your only contact with your instructor was in class?

Narcolepsy

Which of the following is the most effective way to eliminate experimenter bias?

Use a double-blind design.

The modern age of psychology was "born" when

Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology research laboratory at the University of Leipzig.

The fact that a neuron fires in an all or nothing manner means that

a neuron either fires a full action potential or fires none at all.

In perceiving depth and distance, we interpret the pattern of light and shadow, and we normally assume that illumination comes from

above.

When your mental processes are sufficiently different from normal waking experience that you or an observer notice significant changes in how you function, you are in a(n) __________ state of consciousness.

altered

The psychological dimensions loudness and pitch are determined by a sound wave's ________ and _______.

amplitude; frequency

The part of the brain that is particularly important in linking smells to memories and emotions is the ________.

amygdala

Vanessa desperately wants to end her addiction to alcohol. Her doctor suggests that she start taking a drug that prevents neurotransmitters associated with alcohol to bind to receptors and have their usual effect. The doctor is suggesting a(n)

antagonist

You are looking at a neuron under a microscope. You find many structures coming off the cell body. Some of these are relatively thick and branch many times. One of the structures, however, is very thin and very long. This latter structure is most likely the neuron's __________, which carries the __________.

axon; action potential

In the fiber tracts of the central nervous system, you are most likely to find ________ of neurons.

axons

The process by which the brain can process visual information while a person is unaware of the experience of seeing a stimulus is called

blindsight

Jules just invented a new drug that acts as an acetylcholine antagonist. This means that Jules's new drug will

block the acetylcholine receptors so acetylcholine will have no effect.

A newborn baby will probably use __________ more than an adult because it lacks the experience and memories on which to draw when engaging in perception.

bottom-up processing

Neurotransmitters are __________ that travel across the __________ to another cell.

chemicals; synapse

A psychologist with a humanistic approach would state that behavior is driven by

choices

Transduction of auditory information takes place in the

cochlea

Psychologists who focus their research on processes like decision making, problem solving, and imagination would most likely be considered __________ psychologists.

cognitive

Which approach to psychology emphasizes decision making, problem solving, and intelligence?

cognitive

Sensation consists of __________, and perception consists of __________.

collecting raw information through the senses; interpreting environmental information using knowledge, experience, and understanding of the world.

Sensation is to perception as

collection is to interpretation

The two hemispheres of the brain sometimes perform different tasks (lateral dominance). However, information is passed back and forth between hemispheres so that the brain can function as a whole. This interhemispheric communication depends on the

corpus callosum.

A psychologist is looking for a link between aggressive behavior and television violence. She measures the frequency of fighting and television-viewing habits of many twelve-year-old children. The psychologist concludes that children who watch more violent programming also get into fights more often. This is an example of

correlational research

The goals of research in scientific psychology are

description, prediction, control, and explanation.

Duncan is addicted to heroin and has to keep increasing his dosage to get the same effects. This effect of addiction is called

drug tolerance

The process of translating the physical properties of a stimulus into a pattern of neural activity that allows us to identify those properties is known as

encoding

Animals in psychological research typically experience

ethical treatment.

Culture and social class can affect perception through their influence on

expectations

Scientific psychology is empirical because it relies on information from

experience and observation.

Long-term users of barbiturates, such as sleeping pills, may experience all of the following symptoms except

extreme weight gain.

With bottom-up processing, a person is using __________ to recognize an object. With top-down processing, recognition is based on the use of __________.

feature detection; schemas

The largest level of brain tissue in the human being is the ________, which includes such structures as the thalamus and hypothalamus, amygdala, and cerebral cortex.

forebrain

At the trial, the __________ psychologist testified that the defendant fit the profile for the crime committed.

forensic

If a scientist implanted some cells into an adult patient's brain and this caused stimulation and growth of new neurons, thus reversing brain damage, you could assume that the implanted cells produced

glial cells

According to the opponent-process theory of color vision, staring at a red image for a minute will produce a __________ afterimage if one looks at a white surface next.

green

In the nervous system, neurotransmitters are the main means of communication between neurons. The main means of communication between organs in the endocrine system is by

hormones

Which of the following is not one of the three main classes of neurotransmitters used in the nervous system?

hormones

The main question behind the study of depth and motion perception is

how the brain converts two-dimensional sensory input into three-dimensional perceptions.

REM sleep is beneficial because the locus coeruleus is __________ during that sleep stage, and this improves the functioning of neurons that use __________ in the brain.

inactive; norepinephrine

The fact that each of the cerebral hemispheres has certain functions that it can perform more efficiently than (and in some cases independently of) the other hemisphere is called

lateralization.

The right hemisphere gets information from the __________ side of the body and has better __________ abilities than the left hemisphere.

left; spatial

The active ingredient in ________ is THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol.

marijuana

Damage to the locus coeruleus has been linked to all of the following except

memory loss

If a scientist wanted to know more about how neurons are organized, how they communicate in varying combinations, and how they are involved in producing different patterns of behavior, she would most likely focus her research on

neural networks

The structures responsible for the process of transduction are known as ________, which are cells that are specialized to detect certain forms of energy from our surroundings.

neural receptors

The most basic unit of communication in the human nervous system is the ________, which begins with dendrites and ends at axon terminals.

neuron

A neuron evokes the action potential of another neuron by releasing the __________ into the synapse before they fit into the __________ of the other neuron.

neurotransmitters; receptors

The __________ sense is the only one that does not send information to the cortex via the thalamus.

olfactory

Participants may be exposed to risk or discomfort during research

only when minimal risk and discomfort are outweighed by the benefit to the knowledge base and to human welfare.

The __________ theory best explains the phenomenon of afterimages that remain in your visual field after you look away from a visual stimulus.

opponent-process

According to research on perception in infants, the first thing that infants should be able to do after birth is to

pay attention to a human face.

The two major divisions of the nervous system are the

peripheral and central nervous systems.

Biological psychology is the study of the __________ changes that cause, or occur in response to, behavior and mental processes.

physical and chemical

The visible part of the ear that can be seen on the side of your head is your ________.

pinna

A psychologist following the __________ approach is most likely to believe that people are driven to actions by unseen behaviors that are locked deep in their unconscious, hidden from their own awareness.

psychodynamic

When Rapunzel was locked in a tower, she used cocaine every day. Now, although she has escaped from the tower and can function without the drug, she still feels that she needs cocaine for her sense of well-being. Rapunzel is experiencing

psychological dependence.

Although psychology contains diverse subfields and approaches, two factors provide unity. One of these factors is that

psychologists in every subfield draw on and contribute to knowledge from other subfields.

Dr. Kosmo van Nostrand studies how psychoactive drugs affect the brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier. This is known as the study of

psychopharmacology

Neurons communicate across the synapse by means of neurotransmitters, which bind to special proteins on the postsynaptic membrane, like a key fitting into a lock. In this analogy, the neurotransmitter is the key and the __________ is the lock.

receptor

An action potential has just sped down one of your motor neurons to jerk your hand off the hot stove. Before an action potential will speed through this neuron again, the membrane of the neuron must become repolarized. The time between the action potentials is called the __________ period.

refractory

Adaptation to darkness is possible because of the presence of __________ in the periphery of your retina.

rods

Psychology is best defined as the

science that studies behavior and mental processes and applies that study to improve human welfare.

The nervous system is directly responsible for all of the following activities except

secreting hormones into the bloodstream.

A __________ is a system that translates data from outside the nervous system into activity within the nervous system.

sense

Another name for neural receptors is ________.

sensory receptors

Functional analysis of behavior was developed by B.F. Skinner to understand how punishment and reward

shape and maintain behavior

The largest single organ in your body is your

skin

Alcohol and heroin are similar in that both

slow down mental and physical activity.

The main divisions of the peripheral nervous system are the __________ and the __________.

somatic; autonomic

If the myelin sheathing on neurons is absent or removed in a given individual, he or she will exhibit difficulties in speaking, vision, and balance because without myelin the

speed of neural conduction along critical paths will be too slow.

Cognitive psychologists are primarily interested in

studying memory, thinking, learning, and other mental processes.

A condition that causes a person to experience an unusual mixture of sensory and perceptual functions is called

synesthesia.

In REM sleep, the EEG resembles that of a person who is awake and mentally active, but

the person's muscle tone decreases to the point of virtual paralysis.

On which auditory accessory structure would you be most likely to wear the beautiful diamond earring that you were given as a birthday gift?

the pinna

A major limitation of naturalistic observation in the study of human behavior is that

there is no sure way to know what is causing the behavior being studied.

Identifying certain types of brain functions (language skills, for instance) as lateralized means that

they are performed most efficiently by one or the other of the two cerebral hemispheres.

All of the following statements about reflexes are true except that

they do not send signals to the brain.

A system is only considered to be a "sense" if it

translates information from the environment so that the nervous system can be affected by it.

A cognitive psychologist would be most likely to design a study of

what processes are involved in problem solving.

The absolute threshold for a stimulus is the minimum amount of stimulus energy needed for a person to detect it ______ percent of the time.

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