Psychology Final

The invention of the computer, the work of psychologist Jean Piaget, and developments in the study of language all contributed most directly to the:

"cognitive revolution."

A modern psychologist is most likely to use the term "mind" in reference to

All conscious and unconscious mental states

What can be concluded about the ability of animals to use imagery?

Animals apparently can use imagery to solve problems

In the definition of psychology the term "behavior" refers to

Any activities that can be observed, recorded, and measured

Psychology is defined most accurately as the scientific study of

Behavior and the mind

In the semantic network model of knowledge storage, what happens when a concept in the network is activated?

Closely related concepts are primed

The position that the body is a physical structure and that the mind is a spiritual entity is a basic component of the philosophical approach known as

Dualism

The steady and massive gain in IQ scores that has occurred since 1920 is known as the _____ effect.

Flynn

While on a visit to a large city you observe billboards in which a series of lights seem to move. Which theoretical approach, based on an illusion observed by Max Wertheimer, would strive to explain this phenomenon?

Gestalt psychology

Imagine that you were one of Wilhelm Wundt's research assistants, entrusted with the task of collecting data in his laboratory. It is likely that you would be taught how to use the method of

Introspection

With respect to habituation, research has shown that it

Is found in all organisms

In the information-processing model of memory, which of the following is LEAST important in order for a stimulus to be remembered?

It must be important

If you wanted to help people understand what Stanley Milgram was studying in his famous teacher-learner experiment described in the textbook, what actual phenomenon should you compare it to?

Nazis who were tried as war criminals after World War II saying "I was just following orders"

In the remarkable case of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker whose brain was damaged in a freak accident, the most significant change he experienced involved his

Personality

Suppose you were a subject in one of Wundt's studies. It is most likely that you would

Report your reaction to various stimuli

While attending a three-ring circus, a child is able to focus her attention on the lion-tamer and ignore the clowns and fire-swallower. This is an example of

Selective attention

The research studies carried out by Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov were similar in that both scientists

Studied learning

Suppose you compared the IQ scores of male and female adults today with the IQ scores of male and female adults who were tested in 1920. What would you expect to find?

The average scores today would be much higher

When psychology was born as a discipline, it was defined primarily as the study of consciousness. After this initial interest, however, many researchers turned away from the study of the mind. Why?

The rise of behaviorism made consciousness unpopular

A plant manager wants to increase the motivation and productivity of workers. What is the most important thing she could learn from the findings from the Hawthorne project?

Workers should be given special attention

Those who base their approach to abnormal behavior on the psychological model would hold that psychological disorders are caused and maintained by

a person's past and present life experiences

According to drive theory

a state of tension is unpleasant

With respect to emotion, the _____ appears to be the part of the brain that acts as a center for fear responses

amygdala

Suppose you went to a country where you did not speak the language. If you needed to communicate your emotions through the use of facial expressions, you would have most difficulty successfully communicating

anger and disgust

In a study that is described in the textbook, a person's "subjective-age identity" was calculated by

asking various "how old do you feel" questions

Psychologists have long believed that the key to learning is _____, a tendency to connect events that occur together in space or time

association

The word "consciousness" has many different meanings, but most psychologists define it in terms of

attention

You don't have to think about pumping blood through your body or maintaining proper glucose levels, thanks to the _____ nervous system which regulates internal states such as heartbeat, body temperature, and digestion

autonomic

As people grow older, we are LEAST likely to see major changes in their

basic personalities

The two main goals of psychoanalysis are

catharsis and insight

The entire nervous system is divided into two major parts: What are they?

central and peripheral

Developmental psychology is a field that covers the period of time from

conception through old age

Mental groupings of persons, ideas, events, or objects that share common properties are called

concepts

A researcher is interested in how people grow, mature, and change across the entire life span. This person would most accurately be called a(n) _____ psychologist.

developmental

A mental health professional is doing research on the process of identifying and grouping mental disorders that have similar symptoms. This process is called

diagnosis

A paint manufacturer asks a paid volunteer to adjust the color of a paint chip so that it matches a given shade of blue exactly. This procedure is typical of research involving

difference thresholds

When psychoanalysts speak of the "royal road to the unconscious," they are talking about

dreams

This approach to motivation suggests that physiological needs arouse tension that motivates behavior to reduce the need: What is it?

drive theory

In his challenge to the James-Lange theory, Walter Cannon claimed that

emotion originates in the thalamus

Sexual maturation is brought on by rising hormone levels; specifically, _____ in females, and _____ in males.

estrogen and progesterone; testosterone

Repeated presentations of the CS without the US leads to

extinction

In a case study that is described in the textbook, a patient with a damaged amygdala was unable to identify or express the emotion of

fear

Imagine that you are with Freud in 1892. He tells you about a patient named "Elisabeth" and her revelation of an important insight in her life. He also describes how she told him to stop asking so many irrelevant questions. Freud is describing how he came to use the technique of

free association

In this technique devised by Freud, a patient says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial, embarrassing, or illogical it may seem: What is it?

free association

Nature is to nurture as

genetics is to environment

A psychologist is interviewing a new female client who reports feeling "down in the dumps" most of the time, having many fears and occasional panic attacks, and having lost her job due to her inability to control her drinking. She will probably be

given a preliminary diagnosis of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse

The simplest form of learning is

habituation

Suppose you went to a country where you did not speak the language. If you needed to communicate your emotions through the use of facial expressions, the emotion that would be easiest to communicate successfully would most likely be

happiness

The goal of practicing clinical psychologists is to

help people cope with real-life problems

During a nighttime Independence Day celebration, a child is waving a sparkler in a figure-eight pattern. The ability to see the entire figure, even though the sparkler illuminates only one point at a time, is due to the storage of information in _____ memory

iconic

Suppose that heredity is an important factor in athletic development. A researcher using the twin-study method should find that, with respect to athletic ability,

identical twins are more similar to each other than are same-sex fraternal twins

Technically, adolescence ends with

independence from parents

Cognitive psychologists today compare memory to a(n)

information-processing system

In a study of temperament that is described in the textbook, the time it took children to approach toys, a stranger, and an unfamiliar object were standardized behavioral measures of

inhibition

Early in this century, motivation theorist William McDougall argued that human behavior is based primarily on

instincts

A subliminal message is a stimulus that

is presented below the threshold for awareness

The most important thing shown by asking people to define intelligence is that

it means different things to different people

Due to the fact that people may exhibit their intelligence in many ways, psychologists define intelligence generally as a capacity to

learn from experience and adapt successfully to one's environment

According to Freud, human behavior is motivated by instincts associated with

life and death

In a laboratory experiment, a researcher is stimulating various areas of a cat's brain. At first, the cat withdraws in fear. Then, when an adjacent area is stimulated, the cat snarls and hisses. The area of the brain that is being stimulated is called the

limbic system

Traditional psychoanalysis is probably inappropriate for a person who has

little money or time

The _____ model of abnormality would be most likely to speak of diagnosing mental illness in patients so that treatment will relieve the symptoms and produce a cure

medical

Alfred Binet and Theophile Simon used their test to measure a student's _____, which is the average age of children who achieve a certain level of performance

mental age

Research on mental health and the incidence of psychological disorders tells us that

most people have the capacity to recover from psychological disorders

A psychology student is particularly fascinated with the way some people seem to have an inner source of energy that helps them to fulfill their goals. This student is most likely to be interested in the topic of

motivation

The "Hawthorne project," which is described in the textbook, had its greatest impact on the study of

motivation in the workplace

Modern-day psychologists are most likely to picture the long-term store of knowledge as a

network of semantic concepts

A humanitarian reform spread through many institutions in the _____ century. Inmates were unchained, housed in clean rooms with windows, and permitted to walk outside on hospital grounds.

nineteenth

John Watson believed that psychology should be limited to the study of

observable behavior

Milgram's classic research studies on obedience to authority demonstrate vividly that

other people can have an impact on our behavior

A psychologist who does research on attribution theory is most interested in

our perceptions of why people behave as they do

A psychologist who studies personality would most likely be interested in

patterns of thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors

After physical energy is absorbed by our sensory receptors, converted into neural signals, and sent to the brain, these signals are then selected, organized, and interpreted -- a process known as

perception

Knowledge of the procedure used by Robert Tryon would allow you to conclude that the parents of a "dull" white rat were

poor performers in a maze

Which of the following professionals earns an M.D. degree?

psychiatrist

The findings that hysteria could be treated with hypnosis and that general paresis was caused by syphilis led to two predominant models of treatment: respectively, they are

psychological and medical

Psychology's first subfield, _____ studies the relationship between physical stimulation and subjective sensations

psychophysics

A patient seems to be on the brink of an insight when his mind goes blank. When the therapist attempts to direct attention back to the point, the patient changes the topic. Freud would label this behavior with the term

resistance

A therapist notices that a patient has avoided mentioning her father. Whenever her father comes up in conversation, the patient abruptly changes the subject. When the therapist indicates that it might be helpful to talk about her parents, the patient forgets her next appointment. Freud would say that this indicates

resistance

Which form of memory is believed to hold exact copies of stimuli for a brief moment?

sensory

Underlying psychoanalysis is the assumption that personality is

shaped largely by unconscious forces

This temporary storage system holds seven or so items of information for about twenty seconds: Which memory is it?

short-term

With respect to the testing of the contributions to behavior of nature and nurture, the key component of a typical adoption study is the comparison of

siblings raised together with those raised apartsiblings raised together with those raised apart

The items used on the test developed by Alfred Binet focused on

skills that are necessary in a school setting

Based on the approach of William James, if you want to feel happy you should

smile

The process of coming to know and evaluate other people is known as

social perception

One of two components of the peripheral nervous system, the nerves of the _____ nervous system transmit signals from the sensory organs and skin to the central nervous system. They also relay motor commands from the central nervous system to the skeletal muscles, thus directing the body's voluntary movements

somatic

Which sequence of events is proposed by of the James-Lange theory of emotion?

stimulus --> physiological arousal --> emotion

In a study of subjective age, Joann Montepare and Margie Lachman found that

teenagers tended to feel older than they were

While rummaging through your grandfather's attic, you come across a two-volume book that was written in 1890 by William James and became a classic. although the cover page has been ripped off can be pretty certain that the book is entitled

the Principles of Psychology

If you adopted the philosophical view known as monism, you would argue that

the body and mind are one and the same

The case of the injured railroad worker, Phineas Gage, is most important because it told us that

the brain is an integrated "system" consisting of different specialized parts

What is the absolute threshold?

the minimum level of stimulation that an organism can detect

Technically, the start of adolescence is

the onset of puberty

In discussing the definition of the term "abnormal," the author of the textbook suggests that

the term means "different from the norm" in a statistical sense

With respect to the relationship between sensation and perception, the author of the textbook suggests that

there is no clear line dividing sensation and perception

In Anthony Greenwald's study of subliminal self-help tapes, subjects heard either correctly-labeled or mislabeled self-esteem and memory-improvement tapes, then were tested for self-esteem and memory. The results revealed that

there was no improvement in memory, regardless of tape heard, but participants thought they had improved

In the process of _____, energy is converted into neural signals that are sent to the brain

transduction

In one of Freud's therapy sessions, he reported that a female patient lovingly threw her arms around his neck without provocation. Freud attributed her behavior to

transference

According to Freud, the largest region of our mind is called the

unconscious