General Psychology - Exam 1

According to the textbook, what three things make people especially difficult to study?

Variability, reactivity, and complexity

Objects that cast a greater retinal disparity are perceived as being ___.

closer

Humans have a natural tendency to ____.

see what they expect or wish to see

Through research on visual illusions, Gestalt psychologists demonstrated that ___.

the mind imposes organization on what it perceives

The "where" touch pathway involves areas in the _____ portion of the _____ lobe.

upper; parietal

In which year did the first woman become president of the American Psychological Association?

1905

In which year did the first non-White person become president of the American Psychological Association?

1970

Stimuli that are presented at the absolute threshold will be detected _____ percent of the time.

50

What is the difference between a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist?

A psychiatrist is a medical doctor; whereas a clinical psychologist is a PhD

Which statement regarding variables is true?

All variables that are causally related are correlated, but not all variables that are correlated are causally related

Which description is the BEST example of naturalistic observation research methodology?

An inconspicuous economist observing the buying habits of shoppers at a grocery store

Which statement about the use of animals in psychological research is true?

Animals in psychological research may be exposed to painful stimuli if there is no other way to conduct the research and there is a strong justification for the research.

Who invented a conditioning chamber in which rats pressed levers to earn food rewards?

B.F. Skinner

Which method does NOT use random assignment to assign participants to groups?

Basing group assignment based on the order that participants arrive to be studied

In terms of its subject matter for analysis, which school of psychology most differs from the others?

Behaviorism

According to Chomsky, which observation of language in children challenges a behavioral account?

Children can generate new grammatically correct sentences

Which technique is NOT used to reduce demand characteristics?

Clearly identify the purpose of the study to participants

Which of these is considered a structural imaging technique?

Computerized axial tomography

Which mental health professionals assist people in dealing with work/career issues, life changes, and common crises?

Counseling psychologists

Who was the first African American to receive a PhD in psychology?

Francis Cecil Sumner

The modern view that the subjective experience of having a mind is the result of brain activity can be traced to which philosopher?

Hobbes

The _____, or "little man," is a representation of the amount of somatosensory cortex that resides in the _____ lobe.

Homunculus; parietal

Mariah is a teacher and believes that all her students have an inherent need to develop, grow, and reach their full potential. Mariah's beliefs are best characterized by which approach?

Humanistic

Jeff thinks it would be beneficial for his employees to attend a seminar on how to become more productive at work. Which type of psychologist would conduct this seminar?

Industrial/organizational psychologist

Roger wants to study whether the level of personal income predicts happiness. He operationally defines "income" as "the gross amount of money a person earns in a calendar year." He operationally defines "happiness" as "the ability of that person to stand on one leg for longer than 3 minutes." What is glaringly wrong with Roger's study?

It lacks validity; the operational definition of "happiness" is unrelated to the underlying property of happiness

Who was the first woman to receive a PhD degree in psychology?

Margaret Floy Washburn

An absentminded professor accidentally locked his filing cabinet and does not have a key. Desperate to get it open, he used a paperclip to pick the lock. The paperclip is functioning in a manner similar to the _____ functions of a drug _____.

Mimicking; agonist

_____ carry signals from the spinal cord to the muscles.

Motor neurons

Which is the correct sequence of transmission for the sense of smell?

Olfactory receptor neurons, olfactory bulb, olfactory nerve

According to the American Psychological Association (APA) code of ethics, which statement about risk-benefit analysis is true?

Participants may not be asked to accept large risks

The _____ is referred to as the "master gland."

Pituitary gland

As a feature of ethical research, the term just refers to which statement?

Risks and benefits should be distributed fairly to participants

____ occurs when participants decide if they wish to be studied in the experimental or control group.

Self-selection

If researchers measure how some American children behave after playing Blood Sport for 2 hours, then replicate the experiment with Asian, European, and African children and then with teenagers, the researchers would be using which justification of nonrandom sampling?

Sometimes generality can be determined

What do the following have in common: a microphone concealed in the ceiling of a laboratory, filler items on a psychological survey meant to distract from a study's true purpose, and a misleading explanation told to participants about the purpose of a study?

They all are ways of avoiding demand characteristics

_____ states that "the just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity."

Weber's law

Adults who suffer damage to their hippocampus will be MOST likely to have problems remembering ___.

a conversation that they had an hour ago

The statement "Eating less spinach is associated with a shorter life span" is an example of ____.

a correlation

An operational definition is ____.

a description of a property in measurable terms

William James viewed consciousness as similar to _____.

a flowing steam

Increases in illegal drug use are associated with a higher risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. This is MOST clearly an example of ____.

a positive correlation

The less children watch violent television programming, the less aggressive children will tend to be. This is an example of ____.

a positive correlation

The Rubin vase illusion illustrates ____.

a reversible figure-ground relationship

An _____ is a drug that increases the action of a neurotransmitter.

agonist

Sensation occurs ____.

as the body interacts with the physical world

The scientific study of mental processes, including perception, thought, memory, and reasoning, is called _____.

cognitive psychology

One type of photoreceptors that detect color, operate in daylight, and permit us to focus on fine detail is called ____.

cones

To correctly measure a specific property of an object, the property must be ___ and ____.

defined; detected

Mike wants to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of his all-day sucker. He tells his friends that "one full gyration of the tongue around the outer surface of the lollipop" is what constitutes a "lick." Unfortunately, he has not developed a reliable, mechanized way to measure licks. Mike's problem deals with ____.

detection

The patterns of electrical activity in the brain during sleeping and waking are identified through the use of ____.

electroencephalographs

The belief that accurate knowledge of the world requires observations of it is called ____.

empiricism

Most experiments in psychology lack ___.

external validity

The closer an experiment is to the real world, the more psychologists can claim it has _____.

external validity

Using ____, Krings et al. (2000) demonstrated that the brains of professional piano players were less active than novice players when both groups made finger movements like those involved in piano play.

fMRI

William James is to ____ as John Watson is to ____.

functionalism; behaviorism

William James was a noted ____.

functionalist

Children share a quarter of their genes with their

grandparents

Random assignment to groups helps ensure that ___.

groups do not differ on variables not of interest

Errors of perception, memory, or judgment in which subjective experience differs from objective reality are called ____.

illusions

When your heart flutters at the sight of big blue eyes, you are reacting to the ____.

irises

Rats are more likely to form a smell-sickness association than a light-sickness association, demonstrating that rats have ____.

learned some associations more easily than others because of natural selection

What are the two key features to an experiment?

manipulation and random assignment

The problem of dualism refers to how ____.

mental activity can be reconciled and coordinated with physical behavior

Psychology is the scientific study of ___.

mind and behavior

Informed consent ____.

must be obtained before individuals participate in an experiment

Light waves corresponding to colors in the visual spectrum are typically measured in terms of ____.

nanometers

Someone with damage to his or her hippocampus may ____.

not be able to form new memories

The hammer, anvil, and stirrup are known collectively as the ___.

ossicles

Some early philosophers believed that all knowledge was acquired through experience, an idea now known as _____.

philosophical empiricism

Sounds of different frequencies activate different areas of the basilar membrane, a fact critical for the ____ account of auditory perception.

place code

Vanessa and Jenny take a reaction-time test. Vanessa's reaction time is 0.23 seconds, and Jenny's reaction time is 0.25 seconds. Suppose that the stopwatch the psychologist used only measured to a tenth of a second. The psychologist concludes that Vanessa and Jenny have equal reaction times of 0.2 seconds. As a measure of reaction time, the stopwatch lacks ____.

power

"Objects that are close together tend to be grouped together" expresses the _____ rule.

proximity

Methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer's sensitivity to the stimulus are called ____.

psychophysics

Hermann von Helmholtz is to _____ as Wilhelm Wundt is to _____.

reaction time; structuralism

Cruella would not describe herself as the type of person who cares about animal rights, but she says that she does when filling out a survey for a psychologist. This illustrates that people can be highly ___ when studied.

reactive

The primary colors of light are ____, ___, and ____.

red, green, and blue

Olfaction and gustation ____.

respond to the molecular structure of substances

The chair of the psychology department wants to determine the average GPA of all the psychology majors in the United States. She randomly selects 50 colleges and universities and compiles a list of the GPAs of all the psychology majors at those institutions. This list represents a ___.

sample

When you wake up at night for a drink of water, the light from the bathroom momentarily blinds you. After a minute, however, you no longer squint. This is an example of ____.

sensory adaption

George Miller discovered that we can briefly hold in memory only about _____ (give or take two) pieces of information at any given time.

seven

To perceive motion, the brain must encode information about ____.

space and time

If you are having trouble finding your cat, you may try shaking the can that contains its treats. The sound of the treats as you shake the can would be a _____.

stimulus

The analysis of the basic elements that constitute the mind is ____.

structuralism

Each taste bud contains 50 to 100 ____.

taste receptor cells

A psychologist who studies memory processes by investigating the remarkable ability of Akira Haraguchi to accurately recite pi to 100,000 digits is using ____.

the case method

Gestalt psychologists believed that ____.

the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

If you hear a flute and a tuba play the same note, in comparison to the tuba the flute would register _____ on the primary auditory cortex.

toward the back

An acupuncturist asks you to respond as soon as you feel a pinprick as she stimulates your upper thigh, hamstring, calf, and foot with a needle. Based on Helmholtz's research, you will react most quickly when the ____ is stimulated.

upper thigh

Sue becomes tired when it gets really hot outside and Frank becomes angry. Their different reactions to the heat illustrate the challenge of _____ to the study of human behavior.

variability

The Association for Psychological Science was formed ___.

when academic psychologists wanted an organization that focused on the needs of psychologists carrying out scientific research