Psychology Ch. 1, 2, and 6

George Miller's classic research showed that the average capacity of short-term memory is between ________ units of information.

5 and 9

According to decay theory, why do memories fade?

A neurochemical memory trace disintegrates over time.

Which of the following statements related to the scientific method is FALSE?

A theory can generate only one hypothesis.

Who among the following is most likely to have elevated levels of endorphins?

Amy, a 30-year-old teacher, who is in shock after a car wreck.

________ believed that psychology should be about what people do, and should not concern itself with what cannot be seen, such as thoughts, feelings, and goals.

B. F. Skinner

________ refers to the theory that memory is stored throughout the brain in associations among neurons, several of which may work together to process a single memory.

Connectionism

In the context of the connectionist network perspective of memory, the process by which interconnected networks are formed is called

Consolidation.

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the use of explicit memory?

Emma recounting the events in a movie that she saw last Friday

Best friends Kate and Diana are at the park, watching their children play together. Kate reminds Diana about the time that they had a big fight on the same playground as children and didn't talk to each other for almost a week. In the context of long-term memory, Kate's recollection of this event best exemplifies the use of her ________ memory.

Episodic

Based on the famous case study of H.M., a patient who had severe epilepsy, H.M. underwent surgery that involved removing the hippocampus and a portion of the temporal lobes of both hemispheres in his brain. After the surgery, his epilepsy was cured, but his memory was impaired. Which of the following best describes the effect that surgery had on H.M.'s memory?

H.M. developed an inability to form new memories that outlive working memory.

Which of the following statements is true of Sigmund Freud, the founding father of the psychodynamic approach?

He theorized that early relationships with parents shape an individual's personality.

Identify a true statement about intermediate processing.

In intermediate processing, a stimulus is typically identified and labeled.

In the context of memory retrieval, which of the following is true of recognition?

In the task of recognition, an individual is typically confined to identify learned items.

In the context of short-term memory, which of the following is true of rehearsal?

Information can be retained indefinitely if rehearsal is not interrupted.Correct

________ refers to the degree to which changes in the dependent variable are due to the manipulation of the independent variable.

Internal validity

Which of the following statements best defines critical thinking in psychology?

It is the process of reflecting deeply, asking questions, and evaluating evidence

Which of the following is true of long-term memory?

Long-term memory has a storage capacity that is virtually unlimited.

Which of the following is true of the connectionist view of memories?

Memories are like electrical impulses, organized only to the extent that neurons, the connections among them, and their activity are organized.Correct

In the context of ethics guidelines in psychological research, identify a true statement about deception.

Researchers who employ deception in their studies must be able to justify lying to participants.

What are schemas and how are they relevant to memory?

Schemas are mental frameworks that helps organize new information

Compare and contrast the short-term memory system with the working memory system.

Short term memory is super fast and stores information briefly Working memory is related but lasts slightly longer it also helps with problem solving and multitasking, working memory is used for more complex tasks

Which of the following is true of the visuospatial sketchpad?

The capacity of the visuospatial sketchpad is limited

Which of the following is true of research that uses a within-participant design?

The participants in the experimental and control groups are the same people.

Which of the following is true of the different components of Alan Baddeley's model of working memory?

The phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad function independently.

Professor Izadi is interested in determining the association between sleep and cognitive performance. He surveyed his students about the number of hours they slept the night before an exam and then correlated these scores with their test grades. He found a +.81 correlation between these two variables. What does this result mean?

There is a high positive correlation between hours of sleep and exam performance.

Katy was in a car accident and sustained serious brain damage. Since the accident Katy can speak only one word. This is an example of

aphasia

The sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system are components of the _____

autonomic nervous system

Large neuron clusters located above the thalamus and under the cerebral cortex that work with the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex to control and coordinate voluntary movements are called

basal ganglia

The ________ approach emphasizes the scientific study of observable actions and/or responses and their environmental determinants.

behavioral

Neuroscience studies are based on the ________ approaches to psychology.

biological

Which of the following approaches to psychology focuses on how we direct our attention, perceive, remember, think, and solve problems?

cognitive

When the axons of healthy neurons adjacent to damaged cells grow new branches, ________ has occurred

collateral sprouting

In correlations research, third variables are also known as

confounds.

The function of sensory nerves of the somatic nervous system is to ____

convey information from the skin and muscles to the CNS about conditions such as pain and temperature

Information from the brain and spinal cord to the muscles is sent through ________, thus enabling the body to move

efferent nerves

________ carry information out of the brain and spinal cord to other areas of the body.

efferent nerves

Jillian was in a car accident and sustained a serious head trauma. Since the surgery, she has forgotten her name, career, and other vital information about herself. Yet, she is still able to talk, know what words mean, and have general knowledge about the world, such as what day it is or who currently is the president of the United States. This behavior suggests that Jillian's ________ is impaired, but her ________ is still functioning.

episodic memory; semantic memory

The final step in the scientific method of psychology is

evaluating conclusions

In the context of psychological research methods, which of the following refers to a carefully regulated procedure in which the researcher manipulates one or more variables that are believed to influence some other variable?

experiments

Which of the following is subdivided into episodic and semantic memory?

explicit memory

Which of the following is defined as organs or tissues in the body that create chemicals that control many bodily functions?

glands

Allie has developed a theory concerning test grades of high school students. She believes that there is a strong causal relationship between students' frequency of study and their grades in school. In the context of psychology's scientific method, to test her theory, Allie would first have to state a

hypothesis

In an experiment, the ________ is conceptualized as the "potential cause" and the ________ is conceptualized as the "resulting effect."

independent variable; dependent variable

In experimental research, the ________ is a manipulated experimental factor, and the ________ is the outcome.

independent variable; dependent variable

Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in ______

learning and memory

Which of the following parts of the brain are correctly matched?

limbic system (forebrain)

The ________ relays information between the brain and the eyes and ears

midbrain

The _____ system is the body's electrochemical communication circuitry.

nervous

Which of the following is the first step in the scientific method?

observing some phenomenon in the world

In the context of the autonomic nervous system, the ________ calms the body

parasympathetic nervous system

The placebo effect is an example of a(n)

participant bias

According to Baddeley, the ________ is specialized to briefly store speech-based information about the sounds of language.

phonological loop

The reticular formation of the midbrain is involved in ____ stereotyped patterns of behavior such as walking, sleeping, or turning to attend to a sudden noise

regulating

Chunking involves

reorganizing information that exceeds the 7 plus or minus 2 rule into smaller more meaningful units.

Professor Stenson is examining the effects of color on patients' anxiety levels. She randomly assigns patients to either a room painted white or a room painted black, and then she records their blood pressure. In this case, the independent variable is the

room color

In the context of long-term memory, which of the following refers to schemas for an event, often containing information about physical features, people, and typical occurrences?

scripts

A person's knowledge about the world is known as ________ memory.

semantic

Your knowledge of the alphabet and multiplication tables is most likely to be stored in your ________ memory.

semantic

Although ________ is rich and detailed, we lose the information in it quickly unless we use certain strategies that transfer it into other memory systems.

sensory memory

The ________, located at the front of the parietal lobes, is defined as a region in the cerebral cortex that processes information about body sensations.

somatosensory cortex

In which of the following psychological approaches did researchers ask participants to think about what was going on mentally as various events took place?

structuralism

Wilhelm Wundt's approach to discovering the basic elements of mental processes is called

structuralism

If you were a psychologist who adopted the structuralism approach, you would be interested in the ________ of the mind, using ________ as your primary research method.

structures; introspection

Just before you went on a job interview your heart was pounding like crazy. You experienced a shortness of breath and felt sick to your stomach. These symptoms were most likely produced by your ________ nervous system.

sympathetic

A population is

the entire group about which investigators want to draw conclusions.

Gary, a psychologist, conducts a study to determine the association between beer sales and the number of road accidents. He finds that an increase in beer sales results in an increase in the number of road accidents. However, he realizes that the time of year could also significantly affect the obtained results because there could be an increase in the number of road trips. Which of the following is most likely exemplified in this scenario?

the third variable problem

The type of effortful retrieval associated with a person's feeling that they know something (say, a word or a name) but cannot quite pull it out of memory is known as

tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

Dendrites are _____

treelike fibers which receive information and orient it toward the neuron's cell body