AP Psychology Midterm

What does the sympathetic nervous system do?

"Fight, flight, freeze" status; the person's heart increases, attention becomes more focused, digestion slows, muscle tension increases, and adrenaline flows into the bloodstream

What are the five main ethical guidelines for conducting psychological research on humans?

- Informed consent - Minimizing harm - Confidentiality and anonymity - Deception - Debriefing

What are the perceptual principles proposed by Gestalt psychology?

- Similarity - Proximity - Continuity - Closure - Figure and ground - Symmetry

A group of ten students took a procedural memory test on Monday (Test 1), and then the same group of students took the same test again on Friday (Test 2). The scores on the two tests are given in the table. Which of the following is a correlation coefficient that was most likely obtained using the two sets of scores?

.88

Five-year-old Mary watches while her teacher pours equal amounts of water into two similar glasses. The liquid from one of the glasses is then poured into a tall, thin container, and Mary is asked which contains more—the original glass or the tall, thin container. She says the tall, thin container contains more liquid. According to Jean Piaget, this example illustrates a lack of

Conservation

Students in Dr. Milne's Introduction to Psychology class met three times a week in a large, windowless lecture hall. Students had the option of taking their final comprehensive exam in the same lecture hall, or in smaller classroom on the other side of campus. The results from the final exam are depicted in the table. Which of the following memory processes could help explain the differences between these two groups?

Context-dependent memory

What is the method of loci?

Converts the items to be remembered into mental images and associates them with specific positions or locations

Researchers repeatedly presented a picture of a goat and other animals and asked participants to rank how closely the picture of the goat matched their prototype of a "mammal." Participants used a scale of 1 to 5, with one meaning "not at all like my prototype of a mammal" and five meaning "exactly like my prototype of a mammal." The graph depicts the rankings of each participant based on the number of exposures. What type of research has been conducted?

Correlational Study

What is tolerance?

Creates a need for increasing amounts of the drug to experience the same effects the brain would normally produce on its own

At the end of each class period, Professor Dodgson asks each student to write on a notecard which concepts from the class period they understood, which ones they didn't understand, and a plan for how they will approach learning any confusing concepts. This is not a required activity, but Professor Dodgson collects the cards and records which students complete them. The figure depicts student scores on the most recent test, along with how many notecards (out of 20) each student completed. Which of the following is the most accurate interpretation of the data depicted in the graph?

There is a positive relationship between the use of metacognitive practices and score on the test.

Are there a specific ages at which babies should begin to meet physical development events?

There is no exact age at which all infants should be able to grasp objects or hold up their head without support

What functions does the hippocampus serve?

Transferring some short-term memories into long-term storage and in recalling facts and events

What is prospective memory?

Type of "memory of the future" with which one recalls or remembers to do something the the future

What is the function of the rods in our eyes?

Vision in low light conditions, allowing us to see in dim environments and at night

What is divergent thinking?

When a question or problem can have several or many possible responses

According to the psychosocial theory of development, which of the following represents a question that might be asked by someone who is experiencing the stage of industry versus inferiority?

Will I be able to learn to skate?

Dr. Patel conducts a survey of his local community and finds that people who regularly attend a religious service are happier than those who do not. Dr. Patel concludes that attending religious services regularly causes happiness. Which of the following factors makes his conclusion faulty?

Dr. Patel assumed a causal relationship using data from a nonexperimental method

What is the role of gratitude in subjective well-being?

Elevates happiness and life satisfaction while fostering positive emotions such as optimism, joy, and pleasure.

What is the availability heuristic?

Estimates the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

What is a correlational study?

Examine the relationship between two variables, researchers measure two or more variables and asses how they are related to each other

Magali participated in her school play in the lead role. For six weeks, she rehearsed and helped build sets until late in the evening, and then she would come home and do her homework for an additional one to two hours before going to bed. The day after the show ended, she came down with the flu and was absent from school for three days. Which of the following concepts refers to the final stage of the general adaptation theory where Magali became ill?

Exhaustion

What is state-dependent memory?

Memory retrieval is most efficient when we are in the same state of consciousness as when the memory was formed

What is anterograde amnesia?

Occurs when the hippocampus is damaged, resulting in the inability to "create" long-term memories and forcing a person to always live in the present

In a memory study, participants were given different things to focus on as they tried to remember words presented. For some of the words, they were asked whether the word was in capital letters (case); for others, whether the word rhymed with a target word (rhyme); and for still others, whether the word belonged in a given sentence (sentence). Which of the following statements is supported by the graph?

Participants in the case condition remembered fewer words because of shallow processing.

A list of the presidents of the United States in chronological order up through the year 2000 is presented in the exact same manner to two classes of students, and they are then asked to recall them. A fourth-grade class is tested in the morning and a sixth-grade class is tested in the afternoon. The percent recall for both classes was combined and is presented in the figure above. The results depicted in segment A are consistent with

The primacy effect

What is conservation?

The principle that changing the shape or appearance of an object does not necessarily change the object's mass

What is the consolidation theory of dreams?

Posits that one of the primary functions of dreaming is to aid in the consolidation and processing of memories

What is positive psychology?

The scientific study of human flourishing

Which of the following concepts is depicted in the graph?

The serial position effect

What is the difference threshold?

The smallest amount two stimuli had to differ for us to be able to tell them apart

Which of the following concepts is depicted in the graph?

The testing effect

What is a dependent variable?

The variable that is observed, measured, or recorded to assess the effect of the independent variable

What is an independent variable?

The variable that the researcher deliberately manipulates or controls in order to observe its effects on another variable

How can a person's perceptions influence their experience of stress?

The way they interpret an event determines how threatening or challenging they perceive it to be, directly impacting their stress response

What is crystallized intelligence?

Represents an individual's accumulated intelligence over time and the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience

The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for helping

Riaesha get ready to fight or flee when seeing a bear

Dr. Rolph believes that watching too much television leads to lower academic achievement. He surveyed his students and asked them how many hours of television they watched and what their grade point average was. The results are depicted in the table. What type of graph would Dr. Rolph use to represent these data?

Scatterplot

Dr. Walsh gathers data on the number of teratogens pregnant women were exposed to in a large city and the number of weeks at which their babies were delivered. The correlation between the two measures obtained in this study would be graphically represented as which of the following?

Scatterplot

Hearing the word "ocean" makes Alice think of waves, surfboards, bathing suits, sharks, swimmers, boats, and the beach. The associations she has to the word "ocean" represent which of the following concepts?

Schema

After visiting her professor's office, Rachel writes down everything she remembers seeing there. She correctly remembers many details, but she falsely remembers seeing books even though there were no books in the office. Additionally, she did not remember seeing a skull that was in the office. Which memory concept best explains why Rachel falsely encoded the books and failed to encode the skull?

Schemas

Which of the following concepts is depicted in the graph?

Serial position effect

What are phonemes?

Smallest distinctive sound unit in a language

What functions does Wernicke's area serve?

Spoken and written language (language comprehension)

What is kinesthesis?

The body's ability to sense the position and movement if its own parts without relying on visual feedback

What is the zone of proximal development?

The difference between what a learner can do without help and what a learner can do with help; to suggest the steps to making children more independent

Volunteers were asked to rate the taste of foods during allergy season on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning low intensity of flavor and 10 meaning high intensity of flavor. The researchers also asked participants to rate their level of nasal congestion on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning no nasal congestion and 10 meaning complete blockage of airways with congestion. Which of the following is an appropriate conclusion to draw from the data presented in the scatterplot?

The experience of flavor is negatively correlated with levels of nasal congestion

What is Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve?

The exponential loss of information shortly after learning it

Which of the following concepts is depicted in the graph?

The forgetting curve

A prototype is best defined as

The hypothetical "most typical" instance of a category

Split-brain research has illustrated which of the following?

The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for language in most people

What is reuptake?

The neurotransmitters are reabsorbed by the presynaptic neuron, in other words, an enzyme breaks down the neurotransmitter in the synapse

Many common antidepressants ease symptoms of depression by

Inhibiting serotonin reuptake, which makes serotonin more available

According to the psychosocial theory of development, in late adulthood the individual reaches the eighth and final stage of the life span in which one reviews and evaluates one's life and the choices one has made. The theory labeled this stage as which of the following?

Integrity versus despair

According to the psychosocial theory of development, individuals in early adulthood often seek a life partner with whom they will share their most closely held secrets and hopes. This psychosocial stage of development is called

Intimacy versus isolation

What is transduction?

Involves converting various forms of stimuli into electrochemical messages that can be understood by the brain

What is functional fixedness?

Is a cognitive bias that limits a person's ability to see alternative uses for familiar objects or to think about problems in novel ways because they are fixated on the common use or function of those objects, as if they could have no other functions

What is gambler's fallacy?

Is a cognitive bias that occurs when people believe that the outcomes of random events are influenced by previous outcomes, even when they are actually independent

What is linear perspective?

Is a depth cue that makes parallel lines appear to come together in the distance

What is the opponent process theory of vision?

It postulates three "systems" channels (red-or-green, blue-or yellow, black-white); light waves will excite one color in a pair which will then prevent the excitation on its opposing color

What does it mean if a test is reliable?

It yields consistent results

In which part of the brain does the language center lie for most people?

Left hemisphere

A group of psychologists wanted to develop an intelligence test quicker to administer than the one they used. It was a standardized test that required answering as many questions correctly as possible in a given time. The existing test was considered valid and reliable. In the psychologists' new test, participants had to find an image hidden in a visual display as quickly as possible. The psychologists collected data to determine the relation between the number of items the participants answered correctly on the original standardized test and the time it took them to spot the hidden image on the new test. The graph below displays the results. Which of the following values best represents the value of the statistic associated with the graph?

0.00

What are the stages of the GAS?

1. Alarm 2. Resistance 3. Exhaustion

What is an opiate?

A class of drugs derived from the opium poppy that are used for pain relief

A group of psychologists wanted to develop an intelligence test quicker to administer than the one they used. It was a standardized test that required answering as many questions correctly as possible in a given time. The existing test was considered valid and reliable. In the psychologists' new test, participants had to find an image hidden in a visual display as quickly as possible. The psychologists collected data to determine the relation between the number of items the participants answered correctly on the original standardized test and the time it took them to spot the hidden image on the new test. The graph below displays the results. Based on the graph, which of the following would most likely be used to assess the relation between the participant's scores on the two tests?

A correlation

Dr. Rolph believes that watching too much television leads to lower academic achievement. He surveyed his students and asked them how many hours of television they watched and what their grade point average was. The results are depicted in the table. Which of the following statistics best approximates the relation between the variables?

A correlation coefficient of -0.90

What is an antagonist?

A molecule that binds to a receptor site and inhibits or blocks a response

What is long-term potentiation?

A pattern of neural firing that strengthens synaptic connections over time

A research group conducted a study investigating the connection between self-reported number of hours slept in a given week and scores on a happiness measure. Based on the scatterplot above, the group can report that there is

A positive correlation

What is a stimulate?

A substance that increases activity in the central nervous system

What is brain plasticity?

Ability to recover from having only "half a brain"

Four-year-old Craig understands that birds build nests in trees. In his front yard, Craig notices an unusually large nest. He is scared to go near it, fearing that some large bird may attack him. Craig's father explains to him that squirrels also build nests and that the nest in the front yard is that of a squirrel. Craig changes his thinking to now include the fact that squirrels build nests. Jean Piaget would say that Craig's new way of thinking about nests is an example of

Accommodation

What does it mean if a test has predictive validity?

Accurately predicts future behavior, performance, or outcomes

What is assimilation?

Allows us to make sense of new situations by relating them to prior experiences and their existing schemas without changing those schema

What does it mean if two variables are positively correlated?

As one variable increases, the other variable also tends to increase, or they are both decreasing

What does it mean if two variables are negatively correlated?

As one variable increases, the other variable tends to decrease

A one-year-old child learns that the furry animals with bushy tails she sees outside her window are squirrels. Later she sees chipmunks outside the window and believes those are also squirrels. Which Piagetian concept is the child demonstrating?

Assimilation

What is a cause of multiple sclerosis?

Autoimmune attack of myelin sheath of neurons

What is REM sleep called paradoxical sleep?

Brain waves move as if we are awake, but our body is paralyzed

What type of research can show cause and effect?

Experimental study

What is iconic memory?

Fleeting visual images in sensory memory

Nayanika is 50 years old and finds her career meaningful and impactful. She enjoys mentoring new employees, which gives her a sense of purpose. Which of the following best represents Nayanika's current stage of psychosocial development?

Generativity

A 40-year-old man and his 7-year-old son move to a country where they have to learn a new language. Compared with his son, the 40-year-old man will

Have more difficulty learning to produce phonemes that do not exist in his native language

Which of the following is the best example of the cognitive process Jean Piaget called assimilation?

Having learned that his family pet is a dog, William sees a neighbor's cat and says, "Dog!"

Why is it necessary to have operational definitions in psychological research?

Helping other researchers understand how dependent variables are being measured in a study

What functions does the cerebellum serve?

Helps keep you vertical, assisting your balance and helping you to coordinate all your movements

What is the relationship between heredity and environment in shaping behavior and mental processes?

Heredity (a person's biological makeup) Environment (including life experiences, family, and education)

How do you find range in a data set?

Highest value - Lowest value

Which of the following findings provides the strongest evidence for the role of heredity in intellectual performance?

Identical twins reared apart have more similar intelligence test scores than do fraternal twins reared together

Which of the following did the psychosocial theory of development say was the primary conflict through which a teenager needs to work?

Identity versus role confusion

What is stereotype threat?

If a member of a group believes their group traditionally scores poorly on an assessment, this knowledge may cause anxiety, which in turn may cause the person to fulfill the poor expectation and score poorly

A nine-year-old girl first learning about her capabilities on the playground and in the classroom would be in which of psychosocial stage of development?

Industry vs. Inferiority

In the consolidation theory of dreams, the brain replays and organizes memories in a manner that promotes memory retention and learning. This theory can help explain why

Infants sleep 16 hours a day, half of it in REM sleep

How do you find the median in a data set?

Put all of the values in order the median is the middle value, and if there are two median then find mean of these two

In which stage of sleep do we dream the most?

REM

What is sensory interaction?

Reflect the way your brain assembles stimuli from different sensory systems to make sense of experience

What is the serial position effect?

Remembering information presented at the beginning and end of a list better than information presented in the middle of a list that exceeds what we hold in short-term memory

Professor Jovan randomly assigns each student in her psychology class to one of three groups. Group X is required to post a journal entry each week in which they discuss some aspect of psychology in daily life. Group Y is required to take an online quiz about the material each week. Group Z was not instructed to do any additional activities. At the end of the class, Professor Jovan compares the final comprehensive exam scores for Groups X, Y, and Z. The results are shown in the figure. Which of the following psychological principles are best supported by the data in the figure?

Repeated testing can improve learning and memory