General Psychology Midterm

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

-0.53

The analytical intelligence component of the triarchic theory of intelligence is demonstrated by the ability to ________

.analyze, evaluate, judge, compare, and contrast

Which of the following exemplifies the unconditional positive regard component of client-centered therapy?

Abby tells her therapist that she tripped a small child who got in her way, and her therapist accepts this information without judgment.

What occurs during stage 1 sleep?

Both our respiration and heartbeat slow down.

When you watch the teacher at the front of the room, you are easily able to distinguish her from the white board (or chalk board) behind her. This demonstrates the Gestalt principle of

a figure-ground relationship

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

breathing

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

can sometimes be tested with animal studies

________ assesses the consistency of observations by different observers.

inter-rater reliability

Emily is an adult with a 4th-grade skill level in reading, writing, and math. Her doctor suggests she would be capable of holding a job and living independently. Which subtype of intellectual disability describes Emily?

mild

When Benito was five he cut his leg on some glass and needed stiches. Years later, his mother tells him the scar came from being bit by a dog. Now, when people ask about his scar he distinctly remembers the dog biting him. This is an example of the ________.

misinformation effect paradigm

Tariq depends on cigarettes to relieve his stress, though he smokes so frequently that he experiences no significant, noticeable physical symptoms when he is not smoking. What does this exemplify?

psychological dependence

________ asserts that our genes set the boundaries within which we can operate, and our environment interacts with our genes to determine where within those boundaries we will fall.

range of reaction

What kind of memory involves storage of brief events, such as sights, sounds, and tastes?

sensory

Which of the following senses is not first routed through the thalamus?

smell

Susan wants to study prejudice, attraction, how we explain our own behavior versus how we explain the behavior of others, and how we resolve interpersonal conflicts. Susan should conduct research in the area of ________.

social psychology

Sensory and motor neurons of the ________ nervous system are associated with activities traditionally thought of as conscious or voluntary.

somatic

This organization, one of the largest professional groups of psychologists in the world, was founded in 1892.

The American Psychological Association

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

kicking and punching while asleep

Which of the following research designs will allow cause-and-effect conclusions?

experimental

Which of the following is not part of obtaining informed consent?

explaining the hypothesis to the participants

Which of the following is an example of fixed ratio reinforcement schedule?

knowing you will get to play miniature golf as soon as you collect 10 gold stars for your reward chart

Tyrahn's rods do not transform light into nerve impulses as easily and efficiently as they should, so he has trouble seeing in dim light. This is called ________ blindness

night

You are a big fan of your grandmother's chocolate chip cookies. Just the smell of them causes you to feel hungry. One night she is making chocolate chip oatmeal almond cookies, a variation of her usual recipe. You smell the baking cookies and even though it is different than her usual cookie scent, you still suddenly feel hungry for a treat. This demonstrates the classical conditioning principle of ________.

stimulus generalization

One example of ________ is the differences between hemispheres in the areas underlying language function.

lateralization

In Pavlov's classical conditioning, the term conditioned is approximately synonymous with the word ________.

learned

What stage of sleep are you most likely experiencing if an EEG of your brain activity showed sleep spindles and K-complexes?

2

Ebbinghaus found that about one day after you learn new material, you will only remember ____ percent of it if you have not reviewed it a second time.

30

Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when ________.

An individual's airway becomes blocked during sleep.

Which of the following is an example of vicarious reinforcement?

Babs saw Martin receive a candy bar for completing his reading list. She is careful to complete her reading list because she saw Martin get a reward for doing it.

Although B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson refused to believe that thoughts and expectations play a role in learning, ________ suggested a cognitive aspect to learning.

Edward C. Tolman

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

Gestalt

A series of dots arranged in the shape of a face will be perceived as a face, not a series of dots. A psychologist studying this phenomenon is applying the principals of

Gestalt psychology

Which statement about B. F. Skinner is correct?

He is famous for demonstrating the principles of operant conditioning: The motivation for a behavior happens after the behavior is demonstrated.

What has research shown about processing subliminal messages?

In laboratory settings, people can process and respond to information outside of their awareness.

Which of the following statements about rotating shift work is false?

It carries a much higher risk of leading to substance abuse.

Which of the following is an example of vicarious punishment?

Jeong observes his sister Bronwyn getting spanked for spitting out her carrots. Because he does not like getting spanked, he chews and swallows the carrots even though he hates them.

Which pair of individuals is most likely to have the highest similarity in their IQ scores?

Marcus and Maria are identical twins who were separated at birth and raised in different families.

For which concept is Abraham Maslow best known?

Proposing a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior

Which researcher believed that dreams simply reflect life events that are important to the dreamer?

Rosalind Cartwright

According to William James, what was the true purpose of psychology?

Studying the function of behavior in the world

Which theory of dreams suggested that they do not, in fact, have any meaning at all but rather are simply the brain's attempt to make sense of random neural firing that occurs while we sleep?

The activation-synthesis model

What is the Flynn effect?

The observation that each generation has a significantly higher IQ than the previous generation.

Which of the following is a criticism of structuralism?

The process was highly subjective.

Within the semantic network model of memory, what would happen to concepts that are related to (or attached) to one that is currently being activated by thinking about it?

They would also be activated, though at a lower level.

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 ________.

Weber's law

What is an engram?

a group of neurons that serves as physical representation of a memory

Which of the following is not a risk factor for SIDS?

above average birth weight

Which word is the most appropriate synonym for the term validity?

accuracy

What term describes the continuation of a visual sensation after removal of the stimulus?

afterimage

Which is the main type of chemical messengers secreted by the male gonads?

androgens

The famous case of H.M. demonstrated ________ amnesia, a condition in which a person can remember previously encoded memories but cannot encode new ones.

anterograde

Simplicity of conducting the study is to ________ as ability to test large numbers of participants is to ________.

archival research; surveys

________ disparity refers to the slightly different view of the world that each eye receives, and is a distance cue that allows us to perceive the depth of a given visual stimulus.

binocular

Regular feelings of hunger are an example of a(n) ________ rhythm.

biological

When a child works on a "connect the dots" puzzle, she can often see the completed work before she has finished all of the dots. Once there is enough visual information present, she's able to perceive the completed picture even though it is still incomplete. Which Gestalt principle does this demonstrate?

closure

Carmela believes her assistant, Lian, is incompetent. She notices only what Lian does wrong while ignoring the above average quality of most of her work. This exemplifies ________ bias.

confirmation

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

confounding

The formulation of new memories is sometimes called ________, and the process of bringing up old memories is called ________.

construction; reconstruction

Lucy wants to study changes in physical attributes, cognitive skills, moral reasoning, and social behavior across the lifespan. Lucy should specialize in ________ psychology.

developmental

________theory suggests that when people are hypnotized they have voluntarily divided their conscious: one half aware of reality and the other half tuned in to the hypnotist.

dissociative

Amarah has an exam in a week, so she schedules 30 to 60 minutes each night to review her course material. She does this rather than waiting until the night before the exam so that she can avoid a "cram session." Amarah's approach to studying is called ________ practice.

distributed

In a ________ study, both the researchers and the participants are unaware of the group assignments.

double-blind

Rudy is amazing in all of his school classes, except math. He struggles to understand basic arithmetic concepts, confuses mathematical symbols like "+" and "=", and gets very frustrated and upset at the thought of doing math homework. Rudy has a normal level of cognitive functioning in other areas, and reads and writes with ease. Rudy's parents may want to have him evaluated to see if he suffers from ________.

dyscalculia

Barney used to live in Pittsburgh, and his telephone number started with the area code 412. Now he has moved to Baltimore, and his new telephone number has an area code of 410. Barney remembers his new area code by connecting it to the old one and just "subtracting two." This is an example of ________ rehearsal.

elaborative

What did John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner demonstrate with their studies of Little Albert?

emotion can be a conditioned response

The myelin sheath is made from ________.

glial cells

Dr. Guttierez is examining a research question and has posted a hypothesis, but his student points out, "Dr. G., the assumption that you have made cannot be disproven no matter what data we gather!" This research study suffers from an absence of ________.

falsifiability

What is the confirmation bias?

focusing on information that confirms your existing beliefs

A public opinion poll was administered to 50 people before the election of President Barack Obama. Polls taken before election night showed 50% of the people polled believed Barack Obama would be elected president. After the election results, the same people were asked if they believed Barack Obama would be elected president, and this time 75% of the people said yes. This may be an example of ________ bias.

hindsight

Niaz's car breaks down, and he is convinced that it was a predictable event even though there was no way of knowing it would happen. This exemplifies ________.

hindsight bias

Which part of my brain is probably damaged if I am unable to recognize basic objects around my house?

hippocampus

Your memory of how to ride a bicycle is probably something that you don't actively think about while you're riding. You just sort of "do it" without thinking of how you do it. This is an example of a(n) ________ memory.

implicit

Participants were instructed to focus on either white or black objects, disregarding the other color. When a red cross passed across the screen, about one third of the subjects did not notice it. This research protocol demonstrates which concept?

inattentional blindness

Knowing what a dinosaur is because you looked through a book with pictures of dinosaurs and watched the film Jurassic Park is an example of a natural concept that was developed through ________ experience.

indirect

What is episodic memory?

information about events we have personally experienced

In Freud's model of dreams, the hidden meaning of a dream is called the ________ content.

latent

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

Which term refers to the vocabulary of a language, or the words contained within that language?

lexicon

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 emotional memories.

limbic system

Gabrielle watches her father put batteries into her toy phone, and she is then able to put the batteries into the toy phone herself without further instruction from her father. In this example, Gabrielle's father is a ________.

model

A ________ is the smallest unit of language that conveys some type of meaning.

morpheme

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

A negative correlation means ________.

one variable decreases as the other increases

A(n) ________ is a description of how the researchers will measure the variables of interest.

operational definition

Which nerve carries visual information from the retina to the brain?

optic

The ________ nervous system is responsible for stimulating digestion and causing the bladder to contract.

parasympathetic

Dr. Singh has just completed her PhD program and is now applying for a year-long program at a nationally-recognized hospital. If accepted, she will greatly advance her knowledge of behavioral neuroscience. Dr. Singh is applying for a(n) ________ training program.

postdoctoral

________ reinforcers have innate reinforcing qualities.

primary

If you watch a flock of birds flying overhead, each very close to the next one, you may perceive them as all being part of the same group. If they were all spaced very much apart, however, you may see them as individual birds not flying together. This distinction takes advantage of which Gestalt principle?

proximity

Samara meets a nurse. She immediately assumes he is able to help care for sick people, works long hours, and dispenses advice about illness because her ________ schema suggests that nurses behave this way.

role

Which of the following choices refers to a broad explanation or group of explanations for some aspect of the natural world that is consistently supported by evidence over time?

scientific theory

Which statistic is a measure of how data are dispersed in a population and can be used to give context to larger data sets?

standard deviation

Select the correctly ordered list of psychological perspectives, with the earliest perspective listed first.

structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, humanism

The cognitive revolution created an impetus for psychologists to focus their attention on better understanding ________.

the mind and mental processes that underlie behavior

Functionalist psychologists focus on the function of behavior and ________.

the operation of the whole mind rather than the individual parts

Elaborative rehearsal involves ________.

thinking about the meaning of the new information and its relation to knowledge already stored in your memory

Cognitive psychology focuses on studying ________.

thoughts and their relationship to our experiences and our actions

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 effect. This is an example of

tolerance

Which type of processing involves the interpretation of sensations and is influenced by available knowledge and expectancies?

top-down

Tabetha has a mental picture of the layout of her house, also called a ________, so when she comes home late at night she can navigate through the rooms without turning on a light.

cognitive map

Which one of the following processes does not occur to excess neurotransmitters in the synapse?

collection by scavenger vesicles left over from the neurotransmitter release

Dmitris is in a car accident and his parietal lobe is injured. Which of the following is the most likely behavioral effect of his accident?

no sensation in his legs and feet

Kenethia enjoys knitting. When she begins college, she has less time for knitting and finally stops altogether. After graduation, she wants to knit again, so she practices with her needles until she is good at it again. This is an example of ________, a means of retrieving information out of your long-term memory storage system.

relearning

The ability of a research study or psychological instrument to consistently produce a given result is called ________.

reliability

What is the main idea of operant conditioning?

Behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior: reinforcements and punishments.

Which of the following exemplifies the empirical method?

Dr. Sarkeesian observes and records how watching cartoons influences heart rates.

Lesley, a sociology major, believes that money is the key to happiness. Her friend Stephen, a psychology major, believes that good health is the key to happiness. How might the two friends resolve their disagreement?

They could research peer-reviewed articles to see if either perspective is supported.

________ are categories or groupings of linguistic information, images, ideas, or memories, such as life experiences.

concepts

Molly attempts to condition her puppy to greet her when she enters the house. She repeatedly pairs her entry to the house with a treat for the puppy. The puppy eventually acquires this ability, and Molly realizes how irritating it is for the puppy to run up to her every time she enters the house. She attempts to make the puppy stop, and eventually the puppy no longer feels motivated to greet her when she enters the house. The puppy no longer greeting her when she enters the house is an example of ________.

extinction

Gyri and sulci are the ________ and ________, respectively, which characterize the surface of the human brain.

folds; grooves

Birds migrating, cats chasing prey, sea turtles moving toward the ocean immediately after birth, and a joey (baby kangaroo) moving to its mother's pouch immediately after birth are all examples of ________.

instincts

In Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, ________ intelligence and ________ intelligence are often combined into a single type: emotional intelligence.

interpersonal; intrapersonal

A state of ________, as shown by EEG recordings of new practitioners, is not an altered state of consciousness; however, patterns of brain waves exhibited by expert practitioners may represent a unique state of consciousness.

meditation

The ________ is the difference in charge between the intracellular and extracellular space of a neuron

membrane potential

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

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

Nikki was walking around a department store shopping one day, and did not realize that the shirt she was wearing looked just like the shirts worn by employees. When a stranger asked, "do you work here," she thought it was funny. The other customers' assumption that Nikki was a store employee demonstrates the Gestalt principle of _______.

similarity

A(n) ________ , also known as an operant chamber, is an instrument that isolates an animal from the external environment and allows a researcher to control that animal's rewards and punishments

skinner box

The somatosensory cortex is responsible for processing ________.

temperature, touch, and pain

Which of the following is an example of a reflex?

the pupil of your eye contracting in the presence of bright light