psych midterm 1 lofgren

Which of the following demonstrates an epigenetic effect?

A mother who smokes during her pregnancy gives birth to a child with a low birth weight.

Which statement best captures the concept of a sensitive period?

A parent should be patient with a child who is learning to read.

Which situation might increase the risk of a child succumbing to sudden infant death syndrome?

A six-month-old begins to roll from his back to his belly.

Which statement is most consistent with the concept of heritability of alcoholism?

Alcoholism is heritable, but this does not mean that a person with alcoholism in his or her family is destined to also have the condition.

Which statement supports the relationship between behavior and gene expression?

By repeating an activity many times, a person can affect how certain genes are expressed in the brain.

What can be concluded from developmental studies of children in daycare?

Children in high-quality daycare tend to perform better academically.

Which statement provides the most accurate description of Alzheimer's disease?

Dementia caused by the build-up of amyloid inside and outside of acetylcholine neurons

_______ intelligence is the ability to reason abstractly and solve novel problems, and _______ intelligence is the accumulation of facts, experience, and historical references.

Fluid; crystallized

Your psychology professor tells the class, "Experience cannot be analyzed successfully into its elements." Your professor is most likely

Gestalt psychologists

Which of the following may indicate that someone you know might be considering suicide?

He mentions that he has been searching online for a handgun.????????

Imagine that a single dysfunctional allele for a given gene could derail our ability to see at birth. How could two people who were blind for that reason have a child with normal vision?

If the child inherited only dominant alleles for that gene, the child would have normal vision would.

Which scenario describes a child who has mastered the concept of conservation of mass?

Jane knows that she has the same amount of clay in her round ball as Rico has in his flat disk.

What have twin studies revealed about the traits of monozygotic twins compared with the traits of dizygotic twins?

Monozygotic twins tend to be more concordant than dizygotic twins.

How do gene mutations contribute to evolution?

Natural selection favors beneficial mutations, so they survive and are passed on to future generations.

Which of the following is most consistent with psychologists' understanding of infantile amnesia?

Older children and adults more effectively establish concrete and lasting memories because verbal skills facilitate encoding.

Which is true of twins who are discordant for a certain trait?

One of them has the trait and the other does not.

What does it mean to say that schizophrenia is heritable?

People with close blood relatives with schizophrenia are more likely to develop symptoms than the general population.

Which of the following statements best differentiates structuralism from functionalism?

Structuralism was interested in observable behavior only, while functionalism was interested in the mental process.

During which stage of neural development do the neurons begin to branch out to form connections with one another?

Synaptogenesis

The discipline of Psychology can most accurately be defined as the study of...

The Mind and Behavior

All of the following statements regarding gene-environment interactions is true except

The environment has the same effect on behavior regardless of genes.

What was Kohlberg most interested in when examining people's responses to the fictional story of Heinz stealing a drug for his ailing wife?

The nature of their reasoning about their choice

Which biological factor typically spares us from harm when we inherit a nonfunctional allele?

The other allele in a pair

Twin studies (studies of identical twins) are especially effective for examining the effect of what confounding variable in heritability research?

The shared environments of relatives

Which of the following is an empirical statement?

The temperature right now is higher than it was 24 hours ago.

Based on other epigenetic studies, which of the following findings would you expect from a study of dogs that were raised by adoptive mothers?

Their behavior would be similar to that of their biological littermates that were raised by their biological mothers.

A Darwinist is likely to believe that

all human behavior has its roots in animal behavior.

Which of the following are subunits of proteins?

amino acids

According to Piaget's theory, the two processes that drive children's mental development are called

assimilation and accomodation

A classmate tells you that she has over 700 Facebook friends. As a proponent of the social brain hypothesis, you will most likely

be skeptical of her ability to interact meaningfully with so many people.

Though generally satisfied with life, older people do experience a sense of loss and longing after the death of a friend or loved one. This is called

bereavement

The hallmarks of psychology as a science are

careful experimentation and the application of critical thinking.

The rod-shaped cellular structures that contain human DNA are called

chromosomes

Brad and George are twins whose parents both have blue eyes. Brad and George also have blue eyes, meaning that the twins are _______ for that trait.

concordant

Jessica has mastered addition and subtraction with two-and three-digit numbers. She still struggles to understand more general mathematical rules, such as the fact that multiplying a number by -1 will always yield a negative number. She is likely in the _______ stage of cognitive development.

concrete operational

The cognitive theory that states that children adapt to the world by actively building and organizing their experiences is called

constructivism

John Locke's idea of tabula rasa

contradicted Descartes's statement: "I think, therefore I am."

The modern treatment for PKU is an example of a gene-environment interaction because it involves

control of the amount of phenylalanine in the child's diet.

You are trying to overcome your fear of snakes. Inspired by the work of Mary Cover Jones, your therapist first shows you some pictures of snakes. Then she tells you that there is a small snake in a cage in the next room. She asks you to observe the live snake from a distance, and continues this process until your fear is conquered. Your therapist is using the technique called

desensitization

_______ psychologists study how the mind and behavior progress as people age.

developmental

Gene expression is the process by which a cell

directs a gene to make its protein.

Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark found that doll tests

exposed internalized racism in African-American children, particularly among children attending segregated schools.

Your first cell began making proteins when your father's sperm fused with your mother's egg in the process of

fertilization

Which of the following conditions affects the appearance of the child's face and causes significant damage to the developing brain?

fetal alcohol syndrome

You give your grandfather a Rubik's Cube. Though he has never seen the puzzle before, he looks it over and then begins to try to solve it. In this situation, your grandfather is using his _______ intelligence.

fluid

Many people over age forty develop presbyopia, a condition in which it becomes difficult to

focus on nearby objects.

When he is in a casino, Albert is unable to control himself. He does not stop gambling until all of his money is gone. The _______ lobe of Albert's brain is most likely to be affecting this behavior.

frontal

Though our brains are almost fully developed by the time we reach adolescence, enormous changes continue in the brain region called the _______ lobe.

frontal?????

The belief that genes determine everything about us, including our behavior, is referred to as

genetic determinism

All of the following are nucleotides that make up DNA except

glutamine.

Your baby cousin gazes at a new ball for several seconds, then turns her attention to other objects in the room. She is demonstrating

habituation

Psychologists now believe that subliminal advertising

has a weak effect on consumers, if any at all.

According to René Descartes, the very fact that he is thinking proves that

he cannot be deceived by his senses.

Your uncle has been stricken by delusions and is displaying strange, sweeping, involuntary movements of his arms and legs. He is most likely suffering from

huningtons disease

The key difference between twin studies and adoption studies is that in adoption studies

identical twins are separated at birth and raised apart.

Adolescents are in the fifth stage of psychosocial development, and according to Erikson, are most concerned with developing

identity

Baby chicks born on a farm will often follow the human that they first see when they hatch. This is a result of _______, the innate process of learning to recognizing a parent.

imprinting

Many research findings indicate that disease, malnutrition, and neglect _______ the probability that a person will develop schizophrenia.

increase

In a psychology experiment, subjects listen to a variety of tones presented at different frequencies and then reflect on the experience, describing what they heard as precisely as possible. These individuals would have been using a process called

introspection

The expression of genes

is constantly changing in response to the environment.

A heritable trait is one that

is influenced by genes inherited from one's parents.

A recessive allele, such as the allele for white flower color inpea plants, affects an individual's phenotype only when

it is present on both chromosomes.

Developmental researchers distinguish puberty from adolescence by characterizing adolescence as a developmental

landmark

Colorblindness is more common in males than in females because

males receive only one allele(on the X chromosome) for that gene for color vision

Students of introductory psychology may be surprised to learn that

many of their beliefs about the causes of thoughts and behaviors are incorrect.

Infants progressively show more complex motor behaviors, which is primarily the result of

maturation of the brain.

Before scientists fully understood the cause of PKU, infants with the disorder often developed

mental impairement

Mutations arise from

mistakes in copying DNA from a parent when eggs or sperm are made.

dentical twins are called _______, while non-identical twins are called _______.

monozygotic; dizygotic

The difference between a zygote and an embryo is that the embryo is

more complex

Both the spinal cord and the brain develop from the fetal structure called the

neural tube

The first stage of neural development is _______, the continuous division of cells at a rate of up to 250,000 a minute.

neurogenesis

Scientific investigation has revealed that the "Mozart Effect"(the notion that children become smarter from listening to the music of Mozart) is

not substantiated through research

Juanis thirteen months old and is no longer surprised when his mother hides his toy train, only to reveal it again in a different position in front of him. What cognitive milestone is Juan displaying?

object permanence

Plato's cave analogy illustrates that

objective reality can be perceived only through logic.

When psychologists use the term "nature" to refer to causes of behaviors, they mean

our genes and strictly biological influences.

The social brain hypothesis states that

people can keep close tabs on only about 150 different personal relationships

Regardless of what your current _______ displays, your _______ never changes.

phenotype; genotype

The _______, formed when the cells in the outer layer of the embryo divide, provides oxygen and nutrients to the embryo.

placenta

In a behaviorist approach to treatment for a patient with a fear of rats, the patient is

repeatedly exposed to stimuli that are gradually more and more like rats.

All of the following are secondary sex characteristics except

reproductive organs in females.

Developing a sense of morality is one of the toughest challenges for adolescents because it

requires higher-order thought processes and conflicting information.

All of the following activities have been shown to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease except

resting the brain by avoiding complex cognitive tasks.

When a touch to the cheek elicits a turn of an infant's head, the infant is displaying a simple reflex called

rooting

Children's theory of mind can be assessed with the

sally and anne test

Gina is very attached to her father, who is her primary caregiver. She is usually upset when he leaves her with her grandmother to go to work, but Gina is always happy when he returns in the evening. Gina is displaying

secure attachment

If you and your sibling share a trait, then by definition you

share a physical or behavioral characteristic feature.

Mary Ainsworth found that infants vary in their attachment styles by using an experimental procedure called the

strange situation task

Which area of the brain does Huntington's disease damage the most?

stratium

Any substance that disrupts the flow of nutrients to the brain, or in any way harms the fetus, is called

teratogen

An important principle to remember when studying psychology is that

the act of learning changes the physical structure of the brain.

The estimated heritability of 48 percent for neuroticism in the population supports the claim that

the population in general has a recessive gene for neuroticism.

Synapses are

tiny gaps between cells that are important for neural communication.

Researchers can tell if an infant prefers a visual stimulus, such as a face, to another stimulus by

tracking how long an infant looks at each stimulus.

A behaviorist is helping a special-needs child complete a number of target behaviors. These behaviors may include all of the following except

understanding the value of coins

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato,

we cannot necessarily rely on our senses to learn the truth.

A fertilized human egg cell is called a

zygote

Cooper and Zubek (1958) showed that gene-environment interactions were at play in a study by illustrating that

"Maze-dull" rats raised in "enriched" environments eventually learned to navigate mazes as well as "maze-bright" rats raised in "enriched" environments.

Which of the following quotes best represents the position of a cognitive psychologist?

"People not only gain understanding through reflection, they evaluate and alter their own thinking."

As you and your roommate watch a news report about a big fight that broke out at a local club, he turns to you and says, "I'm not surprised. It's a full moon, after all. People always go crazy around the full moon." As a student of psychology, your response should be:

"When you look at police records, the actual data do not really support that idea."