Psychology Final

A rat always completes a maze successfully but is only rewarded every third trial. The rat is being rewarded using which of the following reinforcement schedules?

Fixed-ratio

Four-year-old Scott fell down the stairs at his grandmother's house. Although he was not badly hurt, he was very frightened. Now, whenever his parents mention visiting his grandmother's house, he feels anxious and fearful. In classical conditioning terms, what are the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) in the scenario, respectively?

Grandmother's house; falling

Julia is practicing her trumpet and produces a loud sound. Which of the following is the best explanation for the loudness of the sound?

The sound has a high-amplitude sound wave

Neurotransmitters are typically stored in which of the following parts of a neuron?

The terminal buttons

Painkilling substances produced by the brain are known as...

endorphins

Receptors that are especially important for helping a person maintain balance are located in the...

inner ear

Dylan has difficulty solving a physics problem in class. The next day, he suddenly thinks of a solution to the problem as he is watching a friend play the guitar. The thought process that Dylan experiences is an example of...

insight learning

A disadvantage of longitudinal studies is that...

participants who drop out during the course of the study may be different in important ways from ones who do not drop out

The brain's ability to adapt after it is damaged is known as...

plasticity

Which of the following measures can be precisely located on the graph of a skewed distribution without doing any calculations?

Mode

In high school, it did not seem to make a difference how much Clive studied Spanish; he always earned poor grades. Now that Clive is in college, he is required to take Spanish again. According to the concept of learned helplessness, which of the following statements can be most expected from Clive as he starts the new Spanish class?

"Why study? There isn't anythingI can do to improve my Spanish skills."

Of the following, which is essential for operant conditioning to occur?

A behavioral consequence

Which of the following is an example of discrimination learning?

A dog trained to salivate to a particular tone does not salivate to any other tone

Damage to the cerebellum would most likely result in which of the following problems?

A loss of motor coordination

the idea that the explanation for prejudice lies in children modeling of their parents prejudicial beliefs, emotions, and behaviors is most closely aligned with the theories of which of the following?

Albert Bandura

Which of the following correctly describes the firing of neurons?

An all-or-none response

A double-blind control is essential for which of the following?

Assessment of a treatment designed to reduce schizophrenic symptoms

Which of the following approaches to psychology emphasizes observable responses over inner experiences when accounting for behavior?

Behaviorist

Although people can acquire phobia to almost any object or situation, certain phobias (e.g., those to snakes, spiders, heights) are much more common than others. This finding can best be explained by which of the following concepts?

Biological preparedness

Brain damage that leaves a person capable of understanding speech but with an impaired ability to produce speech most likely indicates injury to which of the following?

Broca's area

Maria was never afraid of spiders until a spider bit her when she was eight. Today, even the sight of a plastic spider upsets her. Which of the following learning processes best explains Maria's fear of spiders?

Classical conditioning

Which theoretical perspective in psychology attempts to characterize the way in which humans store and process sensory information?

Cognitive

Even though it was nearly dark outside, Kaci could still tell that the basketball she was playing with was orange. Which of the following concepts is best illustrated by this example?

Color constancy

Which of the following allows the examination of living brain tissue visually without performing surgery?

Computerized axial tomography

Which of the following refers to the photoreceptors responsible for color vision?

Cones

When Rocco views the image below, he sees it as a 13 when it is part of a larger number, but as a B when it is part of a word. Rocco's response shows the importance of what perceptual concept?

Context effects

Responses extinguish fastest when they are learned through which type of reinforcement schedule?

Continuous

In the figure above, what letter corresponds to the light-sensitive surface of the eye that contains photoreceptors?

D

In an experiment, which of the following variables refers to the outcome that is measured by the experimenter?

Dependent

In the figure above, what letter corresponds to the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain?

E

The theorist who conducted pioneering research on latent learning and cognitive maps was...

Edward Tolman

Which of the following systems produces, circulates, and regulates levels of hormones in the body?

Endocrine system

Which of the following is an example of shape constancy?

Even though the angle from which she viewed the table had changed, Elise still perceived the table as rectangular

Which of the following regions of the body has the largest area of the sensory cortex devoted to it?

Face

In order to get more audience participation, a radio show offers a prize to the first person to call the show at the beginning of every hour. The show is using which of the following schedules of reinforcement?

Fixed interval

For every twenty cell phones that Tom sells, he will get a $50 bonus. The bonuses are an example of which of the following types of reinforcement schedule?

Fixed ratio

Which of the following perspectives argues that every person has the potential to become self-actualized?

Humanistics

Which of the following structures is most closely associated with communication between the central nervous system and the endocrine system?

Hypothalamus

Which of the following statements best describes the placebo effect?

It can be brought about by the individual's expectations

In a normal distribution, which of the following statements is true about the area that falls between one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean?

It contains the middle 68% of the distribution

Which of the following is true of the reticular activation system?

It regulates levels of arousal

Which of the following areas of the body has the largest number of sensory neurons?

Lips

Which of the following is a disease in which the immune system attacks the myelin of neurons in the nervous system?

Multiple sclerosis

Which of the following brain regions is the part of the cerebral cortex that is most responsible for the processing of visual stimuli?

Occipital lobe

When his friend said a new movie was the funniest he had ever seen, Willard found himself laughing throughout the viewing, even though the movie was not very funny. What concept is Willard demonstrating?

Perceptual set

Which of the following provides information regarding brain function by monitoring the brain at work through metabolism of glucose?

Positron emission tomography (PET)

The belief that human behavior is the result of unconscious drives and conflicts represents which of the following theoretical perspectives?

Psychoanalytic

Which of the following is used to reduce the effects of confounding variable in experiments?

Random assignment

A person with sight in only one eye lacks which of the following visual cues for seeing depth?

Retinal disparity

Raul wants to teach his daughter Sonia to tie her shoes. First he praises her when she manipulates her shoelace in any way. Then he praises her when she makes a simple knot. Once she does that consistently, he praises her only when she makes the knot and a loop. He continues the pattern until she can do all the steps required to tie her shoes. Raul's actions are an example of which of the following techniques?

Shaping

Psychodynamic therapy has its roots in the theories of...

Sigmund Freud

For most people, which of the following is an activity based in the right hemisphere of the brain?

Simple spatial reasoning

Which part of the brain represented is indicated by A?

Somatosensory cortex

Which of the following most accurately describes a dependent variable?

Some aspect of a participant's response that is measured in an experiment

Which of the following is NOT a product of learning?

Squinting in the bright light

Which part of the nervous system is most immediately activated by sudden fear?

Sympathetic

For extinction to occur, which of the following must be true of the conditioned response (CR), the conditioned stimulus (CS), and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS)?

The CS is repeatedly presented in the absence of the UCS, and the CR loses strength

Domingo has just his play to begin listening to a new song he bought. Based on the structure of the ear, what will the sound waves contact first after moving through Domingo's auditory canal?

The eardrum

Which of the following best describes the response of members of the American Psychological Association to ethical issues in research?

They have developed codes of ethics for research with both human participants and animal subjects

Which of the following best reflects contemporary interpretations of classical conditioning?

They take into account cognitive processes like expectancy

When is it permissible for a psychologist to share a client's test scores with another person?

When the client provides written permission to share results

A cancer patient becomes nauseated following chemotherapy treatments. After a few treatments, the patient begins having a sick feeling whenever entering the treatment room. The treatment room has become...

a conditioned stimulus

A person eats a hamburger at a restaurant and develops a very bad stomachache after finishing eating. As a result of the sudden illness, the person cannot eat hamburgers anymore. Just thinking about them makes the person feel sick to the stomach. In this scenario, the thought of a hamburger is...

a conditioned stimulus

A research design involves two randomly assigned groups of participants. One group receives a one-time treatment, and the other does not. Later, the two groups are compared to see whether the treatment had an effect. Psychologists call this kind of research...

an experiment

Activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system results in...

an increase in respiratory rate

A dog retrieves the newspaper every day because in the past it received a food reward for this behavior. The dog's behavior is an example of which of the following?

an operant response

Ethical principles developed by the American Psychological Association help ensure that human participants in psychological research...

are protected from physical and psychological harm

The place in the retina where the optic nerve exits to the brain is called the...

blind spot

The tendency of most people to identify a three-sided figure as a triangle, even when one of its sides is incomplete, is the result of a perceptual process known as...

closure

The coiled tube in the inner ear that contains the auditory receptors is called the...

cochlea

A mental image of a spatial layout is called...

cognitive map

Robert Rescorla's contingency model of classical conditioning states that...

conditioning occurs only when one event reliably predicts another

In experimental psychology, a significant difference refers to a...

difference not likely due to chance

Samuel became ill after eating pepperoni pizza and refuses to eat it now. However, he still enjoys plain pizza. Samuel's eating behavior illustrates...

discrimination

Treating a patient for Parkinson's disease includes administering a chemical that will lead to increase in the patient's...

dopamine

Drawing a random sample of people from a town for an interview study of social attitudes ensures that...

each person in the town has the same probability of being chosen for the study

B.F. Skinner's claim that the environment determines an individual's behavior was criticized for...

failing to acknowledge cognitive influences in behavior

Visual acuity is best in the...

fovea

The perceived pitch of a tone is largely determined by its...

frequency

If Carmelita stares at a red spot for one minute and then shifts her gaze to a white piece of paper, she is likely to experience an afterimage that is...

green

Stimulation of portions of the left temporal lobe of the brain during surgery will cause the patient to...

hear sounds

The brain scans of people with amnesia are most likely to show damage to the...

hippocampus

In the 1800s, the activist Dorothea Dix led a movement in support of...

improving the treatment of patients with mental disorders who were housed in asylums

The primary effect of the myelin sheath is to...

increase the velocity of conduction of the action potential along the axon

In a classic study, a group of rats learned to run through a maze to obtain food, and another group of rats explored the maze without receiving food. Some time later, the researcher compared the two groups of rats to determine if both groups would find the food at the end of the maze. According to the researcher, the untrained rats found the food at the end of the maze as quickly as the trained rats as a result of...

latent learning

The network of structures involved in emotion, motivation, and memory is the...

limbic system

To study the effects of smoking on sense of smell, a researcher would most likely conduct a...

longitudinal study on 100 smokers and a matched sample of 100 nonsmokers to determine whether the smokers' sense of smell declined more over time than the nonsmokers' did

The fovea has the greatest visual acuity in bright light primarily because the fovea is...

made up of only cones

People who have experienced severe damage to the frontal lobe of the brain seldom regain their ability to...

make and carry out plans

In their discussions of the process of development, the advocates of nature in the nature-nuture controversy emphasize which of the following?

maturation

The area of the brain stem that is important in controlling breathing is the...

medulla

The results of the evolutionary process that preserves traits that enhance the adaption of an organism and suppresses traits that do not is called...

natural selection

A four-year-old child frequently pulls on the dog's tail to gain attention. To reduce this undesirable behavior, the parent took away one hour of television viewing every time the child pulled the dog's tail. Within one-week, the undesirable behavior was significantly reduced. The above scenario illustrates...

negative punishment

Because he is afraid of public speaking, Scott withdraws from a class that requires an oral presentation and enrolls in another class without a presentation requirement. He continues the pattern, switching classes each semester to avoid giving presentations. Scott's behavior has been...

negatively reinforced

Dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine are all...

neurotransmitters that excite or inhibit a neural signal across a synapse

Suzie screamed at her little brother, and her mother yelled, "We do not yell in this house!" Suzie continues to yell at her brother despite her mother reprimanding her. Suzie's behavior is best explained by...

observational learning

After Sharon stares at a patch of saturated green color for a brief period of time, she looks at a white surface and sees a red patch of color. This perceptual phenomenon is best explained by...

opponent-process theory

The hypothesis that intelligence is in part inherited is best supported by the fact that the IQ correlation for...

pairs of identical twins is greater than for pairs of fraternal twins

Barney is a somewhat distractible second-grade student who finds schoolwork a bit boring. After a couple of minutes of working silently, Barney often starts to misbehave until his teacher, Ms. Skinner, calls his name and scolds him. However, he enjoys this attention from her and continues to misbehave. With respect to Barney's misbehavior, Ms. Skinner's attention serves as

positive reinforcement

Punishment is most effective in eliminating undesired behavior when the

punishment is delivered soon after the behavior

The most common form of color blindness is related to deficiencies in the...

red-green system

All of the following are American Psychological Association ethical guidelines for research EXCEPT:

research may not involve deception

In phase one of a study, a researcher classically conditions a doc to salivate to the ringing of the bell. In the second phase, the researcher pairs a flashing light with the ringing of the bell. After several pairings of the light and the bell, the dog will...

salivate when the light is flashed

A researcher surveyed social adjustment in the same group of 20 people from early childhood through adulthood. In this example, the group of 20 people surveyed was the study's...

sample

The correlation between two measures obtained a group of individuals is graphically represented as a...

scatterplot

Standard deviation is a measure of how much...

scores in a group differ from the mean of that group

Money most often modifies people's behavior because it is a powerful

secondary reinforcer

The most distinctive characteristic of the experimental method is that it...

seeks to establish cause-effect relationships

Introspection, a research tool used by early psychologists, is a technique which involves...

self-examination of mental processes

As you watch a friend walk away from you, your retinal image of your friend gets smaller. Despite this, you do not perceive him to be shrinking. This is an example of...

size constancy

Climbing an irregular set of stairs is more difficult for an individual who wears a patch over one eye primarily because...

some depth perception is lost

Gustatory receptors are sensitive to all of the following taste qualities EXCEPT:

spicy

A research psychologist generalizes from a particular sample to an entire population. This is an example of...

statistical inference

A monkey's choosing a circle from an array of geometric shapes in order to be rewarded with a banana is an example of...

stimulus discrimination

A child who learns that spoons are tableware and then correctly calls forks and knives tableware is demonstrating...

stimulus generalization

Nervousness can result in faster and more shallow breathing as well as a racing heart. This is due to activation of the...

sympathetic nervous system

Cognitive psychologists are most likely to study...

the acquisition of knowledge, planning, and problem solving

The sequence of shifts in the electrical charge of a neuron is called...

the action potential

A teacher finds the distribution of scores on a final exam to be positively skewed with low variability. On the basis of this information, the teacher would be most justified in concluding that...

the exam was too difficult

When a pair of lights flashing in quick succession seems to an observer to be one light moving from place to place, the effect is referred to as...

the phi phenomenon

The occipital lobes contain...

the primary visual vortex

After several trials during which a dog is given a certain kind of food at the same time that a specific tone is sounded, there is evidence of conditioning is the dog salivates when...

the tone only is presented

People listening to rock music played backward often perceive an evil message if specifically told what to listen for. That phenomenon best illustrates...

top-down processing

Damage to Wernicke's are is most likely to be associated with difficulty in...

understanding language