General Psychology Exam one

Which field of psychology includes the following concepts: figure-ground relationship, law of continuity, and principle of closure?

Gestalt

Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the case study of Phineas Gage's accident, which led to brain injury?

Injury to the brain causes changes in behavior, and specific brain areas are linked to particular behaviors.

Which theorist described dreams as having manifest and latent content?

Sigmund Freud

Suppose you are watching a movie on a large screen. For a fraction of a second, the words "Drink Cola" flash on the screen. You do not perceive the words "Drink Cola" because it is beyond your absolute threshold. In this example, the message "Drink Cola" is an example of ________.

a subliminal message

________ research uses past records or data sets to investigate research questions or to look for patterns or relationships.

archival

Many studies that cannot ethically be conducted as experiments with typical human participants ________.

are possible to test with animal studies

Shyla experiences a long delay between the time that she goes to bed and the time that she actually falls asleep. In addition, she wakes up several times during the night and has difficulty getting back to sleep. To diagnose Shyla with insomnia, it is necessary that she experiences these symptoms________.

at least three nights a week for one month

The ________ receives messages from muscles, tendons, joints, and structures in our ear to control balance, coordination, movement, and motor skills.

cerebellum

Most people are awake during the day and asleep at night because their ________ cycles are aligned with the outside world.

circadian

A ________ scan involves taking a number of x-rays of a particular section of a person's body or brain.

computerized tomography (CT) scan

Which of the following imaging techniques does not collect information about brain functioning?

computerized tomography (CT) scan

Ali is aware of his feelings, emotions, and thoughts. He is also aware of his surroundings, the warmth of the sun, and the sound of nearby traffic. Ali is in a state of ________.

consciousness

The amplitude of a wave is the height of a wave as measured from the highest point on the wave________ to the lowest point on the wave ________.

crest; trough

How many of the five stages of sleep are considered NREM sleep?

four

Hertz is a measure of ________.

frequency

Researchers are conducting a study where they have concerns that the participant's beliefs and/or the experimenter's beliefs may skew the results. Therefore, they chose to conduct a ________ study.

double-blind

An alternative diagnostic tool is fMRI

endocrine; hormone

Which of the following would be experienced during a euphoric high?

feelings of intense elation and pleasure

While ________ is generally achieved through the interaction of a therapist and the person being treated, an individual can perform ________ alone.

hypnosis; meditation

Mona lives in North Carolina. She takes an overnight flight to California to visit with family for a month; when she arrives she is fatigued, sluggish, and irritable. For the next week or so she has trouble sleeping. Mona is probably suffering from ________.

jet lag

Which of the following describes the difference in stimuli required to detect a difference between the stimuli?

just noticeable

Which of the following is a symptom of REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD)?

kicking and punching while asleep

Marlowe wakes up from a dream about his teeth falling out. He looks in a dream dictionary and finds losing teeth is usually dream symbolism for anxiety. Marlowe is focused on the ________ content.

latent

The ________ is located deep within the brain, and it includes structures such as the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area.

midbrain

Kelsey had a CT scan that showed a tumor in the right frontal cortex. Which of the following behavioral symptoms most likely prompted the scan to take place?

motor skill deficits in the left side of her body

After Omar falls asleep he feels a sense of panic, screams, and attempts to escape from his room. Which parasomnia does Omar have?

night terrors

Felicia smacks her thumb with a hammer while building a doghouse. The sense of ________ provides her brain with information about the pain she feels.

nociception

________ refers to the way that sensory information is interpreted and consciously experienced; ________ refers to what happens when sensory information is detected by a sensory receptor.

perception; sensation

________ is a chemical message sent by another individual.

pheromone

Which of the following is not a part of the fight or flight response?

running away

Which of the following is not a limbic system structure?

substantia nigra

________ is a midbrain structure critical to movement.

the ventral tegmental area

A(n) ________ is a well-developed set of ideas that proposes an explanation for observed phenomena.

theory

Research shows that people who smoke cigarettes are more likely to get lung cancer than those who do not smoke. This research alone demonstrates that ________.

there is a relationship between smoking and lung cancer

Tayla smokes marijuana. At first, just a few inhalations were enough to cloud her mind. Over time, she needs to smoke more and more to achieve the same affect. This is an example of ________.

tolerance

Which correlation coefficient best represents a moderate relationship showing fewer anxiety symptoms in people who report higher life satisfaction?

-0.5

Which of the following is not a disadvantage of PET scanning?

An alternative diagnostic tool is fMRI

Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when ________.

An individual's airway becomes blocked during sleep.

Imagine yourself in a dark classroom reading PowerPoint slides. If an audience member were to check the internet using her cell phone and causing her screen to light up, chances are that many people would notice the change in illumination in the classroom. However, if the same thing happened in a brightly lit classroom during a discussion, very few people would notice. The cell phone brightness does not change, but its ability to be detected as a change in illumination varies dramatically between the two contexts. This is an example of ________.

Merkel's theory

What should be changed to make the following sentence true? "States of consciousness do not vary over the course of the day."

Remove the phrase "do not."

In order to assess whether viewpoints on decriminalization of marijuana for medical purposes change with age, four groups of participants, ages 20, 30, 40, and 50, are asked whether they support this issue. What is one flaw of this design?

Social or cultural factors may influence the results, not age.

Which of the following statements about the vestibular sense is false?

The vestibular sense is divided into olfaction, gustation, and audition.

What should be changed to make the following sentence true? "Pain that signals some type of tissue damage is known as neuropathic pain."

The word "neuropathic" should be changed to the word "inflammatory."

Which of the following statements about olfactory receptors is false?

They are bulb-like structures at the tip of the frontal lobe where the olfactory nerves begin.

Why can amphetamines be used to treat ADHD in children?

They increase neurotransmitter activity within certain areas of the brain associated with impulse control.

________ is a reduction in the number of research participants as some drop out of the study over time.

attrition

________ is a neurotransmitter with roles in pleasure and pain modulation.

beta-endorphin

________ disparity refers to the slightly different view of the world that each eye receives.

binocular

Psychological researchers study genetics in order to better understand the ________ that contributes to certain behaviors.

biology

Which of the following higher level processes is not a function of the cerebral cortex?

breathing

Krista and Tatiana Hogan are participants in a(n) ________ of conjoined twins who are joined at the head.

case study

Sandra strongly believes that attending daycare is detrimental to children's development so she decides to write her psychology term paper on this topic. She does a literature search and finds several sources supporting her opinion, but she finds that the majority of research indicates that children attending daycare experience healthy development. She writes a paper using the sources that find negative associations with daycare attendance. This is an example of ________.

confirmation bias

________ is the tendency to ignore evidence that disproves ideas or beliefs.

confirmation bias

A(n) ________ is a variable that affects both variables of interest and may falsely give the impression of a cause-and-effect relationship.

confounding variable

Ravon was born deaf, so he is diagnosed with ________ deafness.

congenital

The ________ variable measures effects of the independent variable.

dependent

Ethics need to be considered when ________ scientific research.

designing, conducting, and reviewing

________ is a neurotransmitter involved in mood, reward, addiction, and motor behavior.

dopamine

A difference in ________ can explain why one person dies from a disease and another person survives.

genetics

________ is another term for the malleus.

hammer

________ is a state of equilibrium, in which biological conditions (such as body temperature) are maintained at optimal levels.

homeostasis

What was the original focus of Swets' (1964) signal detection theory?

improving the sensitivity of air traffic controllers to plane blips

Spurling et al. investigated the effects of two vocabulary learning strategies on word retention two weeks later. In this example, learning strategy is the ________ variable and word retention is the ________ variable.

independent; dependent

Feeling pain, hunger, thirst, sleepiness, and being aware of our thoughts and emotions are all examples of ________ stimuli.

internal

At the point of the optic chiasm, information from the right visual field (which comes from both eyes) is sent to the ________ side of the brain, and information from the left visual field is sent to the ________ side of the brain.

left; right

Randolf is walking down the street of his hometown, after being away for several years, when he smells the scent of freshly baked pie coming from a local baker. He suddenly has vivid memories of walking down this street as a child, holding both of his parents' hands, and swinging between them, feeling relaxed and happy. This is because the sense of smell projects directly to the ________, which is responsible for ________ memories.

limbic system; emotional

A group of preschool-age children are enrolled in a study that plans to follow them over time in order to assess behaviors and other characteristics that may predict later development of schizophrenia. This is an example of a(n) ________ design.

longitudinal

Longer wavelengths will have ________ frequencies, and shorter wavelengths will have ________ frequencies.

lower; higher

In a ________ dream, people become aware that they are dreaming and can control the dream's content.

lucid

What hormone does the pineal gland release?

melatonin

Which of the following is an example of a synthetic opioid?

methadone

Agonists bind to ________ and antagonists bind to ________.

receptors; receptors

________ refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result.

reliability

Catherine is at a crowded baseball game when she loses track of her son, Nick. Despite the loud cheering and noise of the crowd, she can pinpoint his location when he calls for her because she can distinguish the sound of his voice from the all the other voices. This illustrates ________ theory.

signal detection

The central nervous system consists of the brain and the ________.

spinal cord

Victoria has accumulated a large sleep debt. This means that she ________.

suffers from chronic sleep deprivation

Which of the following exemplifies gustation?

tasting freshly caught salmon

Which of the following would be the best example of a valid naturalistic observation study in driving behavior?

watching footage obtained from cameras set up unobtrusively on various streets

Which of the following would be difficult to assess using empirical research?

whether the id, ego, or superego is most responsible for emotional reactions

The D.A.R.E. program is an example of ________.

why empirical research is needed