psychology exam 1

Which of the following is not a characteristic of a good hypothesis?

It is complex.

Which psychological perspective would agree with the statement "The whole is more than the sum of its parts"?

Gestalt

_____ is the scientific study of human information processing.

Cognitive psychology

_________ reasoning starts with a generalization that is tested against real-world observations;

Deductive; inductive

_____ is the neurotransmitter that regulates motor behavior, motivation, pleasure, and emotional arousal.

Dopamine

Which of the following exemplifies the empirical method?

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

A _____ is a device that uses electrodes to record electrical activity in the brain.

EEG (electroencephalograph)

My genes set up the boundaries of how short or tall I could have ended up being as an adult; my experiences then determined where within those boundaries I fell. This is an example of _________.

a. Behavioral genetics b. Phenotype range c. Range of reaction d. Range of expression

Critical thinking is ________.

applying a set of skills to understand and evaluate information

Evolutionary psychologists are similar to _____ in asking how the mind has adapted.

behaviorists

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

cerebellum

The _____ is the outermost layer of the brain, visible to the naked eye, and divided into two hemispheres.

cerebral cortex

A ________ case study is conducted by gathering detailed information about participants who are psychological patients.

clinical

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

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

confounding variable

The enduring traditions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a large group of people refers to

culture

The ________ variable measures effects of the independent variable.

dependent

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

developmental

In a ________ design, neither the participants nor the experimenters know if a participant is in the experimental or control group.

double-blind

Deshawn believes he could have foreseen his car getting stolen. This is an example of ________ bias.

hindsight

The endocrine system consists of a series of glands that produce chemical substances known as ________.

hormones

As a scientist, I have to be able to accept that the ideas I have may be wrong if given persuasive evidence. In other words, I need ________.

humility

Nat and Olivia report different data sets after observing the same event. Their data has low levels of ______.

inter-rater reliability

According to the biopsychosocial model, what determines health?

interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors

Guillermo spends some time each day applying the principles of structuralism to examine his own conscious experience as carefully as possible. Guillermo is engaged in ________.

introspection

________ research studies the same groups of participants over time.

longitudinal

A police officer was fatally wounded. He was shot in the head and immediately stopped breathing. It is MOST likely the bullet pierced his:

medulla

the ____ acts as an insulator to the axon and speeds transmission of neural signals.

myelin sheath

I am observing teenage dating behavior at the skating rink. I am engage in __________.

naturalistic observation

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

For something to be considered a behavior, it has to be:

observable

After a head injury, a person reports that she is unable to see, although her eyes are uninjured. A doctor would suspect an injury in the ________ lobe.

occipital

Edmund wants to identify relatively consistent patterns of thought and behavior, measure these traits, and determine how these traits interact in a particular context to determine how a person will behave in any given situation. Edmund wants to conduct research in the area of ________.

personality

Simply expecting something to happen can make it happen. This describes ________.

placebo effect

Through the case study of Phineas Gage, researchers found that the:

prefrontal cortex is involved in planning, decision making, and emotion regulation.

What is Abraham Maslow best known for?

proposing a hierarchy of human needs in motivating behavior

Takoda's therapist frequently asks her questions about her dreams and early childhood memories. Her therapist is MOST likely a _____ psychologist.

psychoanalytic

Which of the following terms describe selecting a sample in such a way that each member of the target population had an equal chance of being selected

random sampling

The role of sensory neurons is to

receive information from the external world and convey it to the brain.

Initial reports in the media that listening to classical music made students more intelligent were followed by several failed attempts to reproduce the effects in the laboratories of other researchers. This is an example of the failure to ________________.

replicate

The small cluster of neurons called the _____ regulates sleep, wakefulness, and levels of arousal.

reticular formation

When Nick reaches for his fork so that he can take a bite of his pasta, he can consciously do so because he is using his _____ nervous system.

somatic

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

structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, humanism

The ________ nervous system is responsible for responses such as pupil dilation, increased heart rate, and increased respiration in response to a dangerous situation.

sympathetic

The ________ of a neuron contain ________ that house neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers of the nervous system.

terminal buttons; synaptic vesicles

A hypothesis is a/an

testable prediction

A correlation is:

the relationship that results when variations in the value of one variable are synchronized with variations in the value of the other.

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

The health department is testing the effectiveness of a recent campaign promoting a healthy lifestyle. Which description is the BEST operational definition of "healthy lifestyle"?

to eat five servings of fruit/vegetables and be physically active for 30 minutes or more each day

Which of the following is an example of research someone might conduct in the area of health psychology?

whether people working at a desk are more likely to be obese