Psychology Exam 1

Dr. Simpson found a +.50 correlation between ice cream cone sales and violent crimes in a community. Which of the following represents the best interpretation of this result?

A third variable, such as heat, may account for the association between ice cream sales and violent crime

Michael, a famous musician, is designing a new apartment that will serve as both his residence and his recording studio. Since the music studio shares a wall with his bedroom, Michael wants to be sure that the recording studio is soundproof. This means that Michael wants to be sure that any sound from the studio is well under his _________ while he is in his bedroom.

Absolute threshold

The brief wave of positive electrical charge that sweeps down the axon is

Action potential

According to the science of psychology, a behavior is a(n)

Action that can be directly observed

An ________ is a drug that mimics or increases a neurotransmitter´s effects, whereas an __________ is a drug that blocks a neurotransmitter´s effects

Agonist Antagonist

Drugs used to treat schizophrenia interfere with the activity of dopamine. Such a drug is an example of a(n)

Antagonist

Psychologists who adopt a(n) _____________ approach examine behavior and mental processes by focusing on the body, especially the brain and nervous system

Biological

The ________ is the area on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye on its way to the brain, and it contains neither rods nor cones

Blind spot

_________ plays an important role in the production of speech, whereas __________ plays an important role in the comprehension of language

Broca´s area Wernicke´s area

In the context of descriptive research methods in psychology, _________ are performed mainly by clinical psychologists when, for either practical or ethical reasons, the unique aspects of an individual´s life cannot be duplicated and tested in other individuals

Case studies

The brain and spinal cord make up the

Central nervous system

Andrea, a psychologist, conducts a study determine the effect of students´ages on their college grades. She divides a class into two groups: Below Age and Above Age. Members of the Below Age group are less than 18 tears of age, Whereas members of the Above Age group are 18 years of age or above. In this scenario, which of the following illustrates the dependent variable?

College grades

The _________ is the large bundle of axons that connects the brain´s two hemispheres and is responsible for relaying information between the two sides

Corpus callosum

In a ___________, neither the experimenter administering the treatment nor the participants are aware of which participants are in the experimental group and which are in the control group until the results are calculated

Double-blind experiment

Dr. Grant conducts research on stress management. Group A receives progressive relaxation training prior to taking the test, while Group B receives no training. Group A is the ___________, while Group B is the __________

Experimental group Control group

Zeus was injured in a mining accident and suffered severe brain damage. In time, his brain healed, and he was back to working in the mines. The only change was in his personality. From being a highly aggressive and temperamental individual, he became mild-mannered and calm, almost to the extent of being placid. In this scenario, the region of the cerebral cortex that was most likely damaged in the accident was the _________ lobe

Frontal

Which of the following essential body functions are under the control of the autonomic nervous system?

Functions of heart rate, breathing, and digestion

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

Which of the following is true of the sense of touch?

In touch we detect mechanical energy, or pressure against the skin

Emma enters her college auditorium that is almost packed to capacity and tries to find an empty seat. She fails to notice her friend waving to her in the crowd. This scenario most likely illustrates

Inattentional blindness

In the auditory system, which of the following statements is true of the middle ear?

It channels and amplifies sound through the eardrum, hammer, anvil, and stirrup to the inner ear.

Which of the following is a significance of the brain-lesioning process?

It gives a sense of the functions of the damaged brain regions

Independent variables are

Manipulated by researchers

In the context of the visual system, which of the following scenarios best illustrates the functionality of rods in the retina?

Marcus is trying to find his seat in the dark in a movie theater

In the context of depth perception, familiar size and relative size, height in field of view, and shading are examples of

Monocular cues

__________ are chemical substances that are stored in very tiny sacs within the neuron´s terminal buttons and involved in transmitting information across a synaptic gap to the next neuron

Neurotransmitters

___________ provide an objective description of how variables are going to be measured and observed in a particular study

Operational definitions

The __________ theory states that cells in the visual system respond to complementary pairs of red-green and blue-yellow colors; a given cell might be excited by red and inhibited by green, whereas another cell might be excited by yellow and inhibited by blue

Opponent process

The recognition that objects are constant and unchanging even though sensory input about them is changing is known as

Perceptual constancy

Depression is associated with low levels of which neurotransmitter?

Serotonin

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

A correlation coefficient is a statistic that tells the

Strength and direction of association between two variables

The _________ is the part of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body to mobilize it for action and thus is involved in the experience of stress

Sympathetic nervous system

Which of the following situations occurs when participants´expectations, rather than the experimental treatment, produce an experimental outcome?

The placebo effect

A(n) ____________ is a broad idea or set of closely related ideas that attempts to explain observations and to make predictions about future observations

Theory

__________ is most often regarded that "founding father" of modern psychology

Wilhelm Wundt

The somatic nervous system and autonomic nervous system are components of the

peripheral nervous system