Intro to Psychology Chapters 1-5
The molecule present in the chromosomes that "codes" hereditary information is called
DNA.
Which correctly names the lobes labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively?
Frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe
In the homunculus that corresponds to the mapping of the somatosensory cortex, which body part occupies the largest area?
Hand
Which of the following samples would produce a nearly normal distribution?
Heights of all adult men in America
Which statement about information transmission between neurons is correct?
Information between two neurons passes in only one direction at the synapse.
Which type of neuron is most common in the brain?
Interneuron
Which is most consistent with the textbook's characterization of how nurture influences behavior?
Learning experiences and social interactions affect how we use the genes that we inherited
If a doctor stimulated your occipital lobe, which would you be most likely to experience?
Lights and colors
A scientist is interested in understanding how the size of the prefrontal cortex changes between the ages of 9 and 13. Which of the following brain imaging techniques would she be most likely to use?
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
How do gene mutations contribute to evolution?
Natural selection favors beneficial mutations, so they survive and are passed on to future generations
Scientific investigation of Clever Hans revealed that
Occam's razor is far from infallible.
The foundations of psychology are most closely related to which of the following disciplines?
Philosophy
. The study of how physical events, such as lights and sounds, affect our senses is called
Psychophysics
A meta-analysis of published and unpublished tests of SSRI medications revealed that
SSRIs beat placebos only for severe levels of depression
Which of the following is true about the strength of a correlation?
The closer a correlation is to 0.00, the weaker the relationship.
A scientist is testing the hypothesis that inhibiting neural activity in the prefrontal cortex could help relieve depression. Which technique would be most useful for testing this hypothesis?
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
_______ temporarily disrupts brain activity
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Why did women make few contributions to psychology in the first part of the 20th century?
Widespread sexism limited women's participation in science.
A research team is investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read an article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read an article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. Then all women in the study take a challenging math test. Researchers time the test and score the number of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following is the independent variable?
Women's scores on the math test
Which of the following would be evidence against the social brain hypothesis?
Your sister is clearly able to engage in meaningful social interactions with all of her 500 friends on Tumblr
A hypothesis is
a testable prediction about the relationship between variables
Myelinated axons are useful because they
allow action potentials to travel more quickly
On a hike, you find branches arranged to form a three-foot-tall pyramid, surrounded by a circle of pebbles. Occam's razor would support the hypothesis that _______ created this pyramid.
another hiker
Gestalt psychologists such as Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler
argue that the overall experience of human perception is greater than the sum of its parts.
Axons differ from dendrites in that
axons transmit information and dendrites receive information.
The hallmarks of psychology as a science are
careful experimentation and the application of critical thinking.
To better understand aggressive behavior toward strangers, a psychologist gathers all available information about a man who threatened random people in a mall with an automatic weapon. This is an example of
case study research
The term "plasticity" is used to describe the human brain as
changeable.
Each of our _______ consists of tightly coiled DNA.
chromosomes
The rod-shaped cellular structures that contain human DNA are called
chromosomes.
The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is responsible for all of the following except
collecting blood and tissue samples from research animals.
A recent study found that married people are less likely to have personality disorders than unmarried people. The news reporter covering the study advised people to get married to improve their personalities. You know this recommendation is not warranted because
correlational research is invalid
Your text describes a study in which professors receive e-mails, supposedly from students, asking for mentoring. All details about the e-mails are identical except whether they appear to come from males or females and from whites or nonwhites. This is _______ research, and found _______.
correlational; bias against women and minorities
Psychological research has proven that many long-held, popular beliefs about psychology are untrue. Psychology as a science has been able to accomplish this by emphasizing
critical thinking
The numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to _______, respectively
dendrites, cell body, axon, and axon terminals
In an experiment, the variable that is expected to differ across the experimental and control groups is the _______ variable.
dependent
You are trying to overcome your fear of snakes. Inspired by the work of Mary Cover Jones, your therapist first shows you some pictures of snakes. Then she tells you that there is a small snake in a cage in the next room. She asks you to observe the live snake from a distance, and continues this process until your fear is conquered. Your therapist is using the technique called
desensitization.
For a behaviorist, the goal of psychology is to
determine how various experiences result in different behaviors
In a depression-treatment study, neither the participants nor the researcher know who is taking medication and who is taking a sugar pill. This is an example of a
double-blind trial.
The technique that detects voltage changes in the brain is
electroencephalography (EEG).
The limbic system is most involved in
emotion.
The thyroid and the pituitary gland are part of the
endocrine system.
Debi just ran a marathon in less than four hours and felt no pain during the run. Her lack of pain was most likely due to
endorphins.
A behaviorist would be least concerned with
events that occurred in the past.
Research that involves intentional manipulation of variables is called _______ research.
experimental
Parents who agree with John Locke's notion of tabula rasa would most likely
expose their children to a rich variety of sensory experiences
Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark found that doll tests
exposed internalized racism in African-American children, particularly among children attending segregated schools
Your first cell began making proteins when your father's sperm fused with your mother's egg in the process of
fertilization.
Cognitive psychology
focuses on how people think, remember, store, and use information
Compared to computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans
generally provide more detailed structural information.
The belief that genes determine everything about us, including our behavior, is referred to as
genetic determinism.
Psychologists now believe that subliminal advertising
has a weak effect on consumers, if any at all.
According to René Descartes, the very fact that he is thinking proves that
he exists.
The endocrine system controls
hormone production and release.
Students _______ would be the most representative sample for a study of competitiveness in high school.
in a required health class
Strong inference
involves designing research with the potential to disprove a hypothesis
The expression of genes
is constantly changing in response to the environment.
Deception in psychological research
is occasionally allowed but must be followed by a thorough debriefing.
Refer to the set of numbers below. 2, 8, 3, 4, 8, 10, 0 In the set of numbers, the median is _______ than the mean and _______than the mode.
less;less
A correlation of -0.80 between meditation and anxiety symptoms would indicate
meditation predicts lower levels of anxiety
The hippocampus plays the most significant role in
memory.
Mutations arise from
mistakes in copying DNA from a parent when eggs or sperm are made.
The three main functional types of neurons are
motor, sensory, and interneurons.
A researcher hoping to identify autism's early warning signs collects home videos of autistic teens. She uses these videos of their formative years to identify atypical movements as they learned to crawl and walk. This is an example of
naturalistic observation.
Complex behavior is controlled by
neural networks
Otto Loewi electrically stimulated a nerve in a frog heart. He then applied fluid surrounding that heart to a second heart. In this experiment, he found evidence that
neurons communicate chemically.
A _______ is most likely to study the brain activities that underlie human behavior
neuroscientist
Scientific investigation has revealed that the "Mozart Effect" (the notion that children become smarter from listening to the music of Mozart) is
not substantiated through research
The part of the cell that contains chromosomes is called the
nucleus.
When psychologists use the term "nature" to refer to causes of behaviors, they mean
our genes and strictly biological influences
White matter refers to
parts of the brain filled with myelinated axons.
Regardless of what your current _______ displays, your _______ never changes.
phenotype; genotype
"The death penalty is immoral" is a _______ hypothesis because it _______.
poor; is not testable
Following a head injury, Maria experienced a dramatic personality change. She now gambles heavily, swears and yells at work, and has difficulty planning ahead. She most likely experienced damage to her
prefrontal cortex
The key purpose of myelin is to
provide electrical insulation.
Ethical principles require researchers to
provide information about potential risks to participants before they begin a study
Modern brain research has refuted Descartes's concept of the human mind by
providing evidence that damage to specific parts of the brain causes very specific losses of behaviors.
Treatment-outcome researchers attempt to prevent initial differences between treatment and control groups by using
randomization
In Plato's cave allegory, a prisoner was temporarily unchained and allowed to see the fire at the mouth of the cave. When he returned to the chains, the other prisoners
refused to believe him
A measure of conscientiousness produces very similar scores each time a person repeats the exercise, but it doesn't predict whether a person is reliable in everyday life. This measure appears to be
reliable and valid.
In a behaviorist approach to treatment for a patient with a fear of rats, the patient is
repeatedly exposed to stimuli that are gradually more and more like rats
The Tuskegee syphilis study is famous because
researchers failed to inform participants that they had a treatable disease
To allow communication, neurons
send chemical messages across small gaps between neurons.
When you scrape your knee, pain is relayed from your knee to your central nervous system by
sensory neurons
If you and your sibling share a trait, then by definition you
share a particular genotype.
Dopamine is most directly involved in
signaling pleasure.
Damage to the left cerebral hemisphere would most likely affect a man's ability to
speak and understand language.
As the number of pirates in the world has decreased, the mean global temperature has increased. This is an example of a
spurious correlation
A manager at a science museum wants to identify the most popular exhibits, so once every hour for six weeks she has volunteers count the number of people standing in front of each exhibit. This is an example of
survey research
Which of the following research methods would be most appropriate for investigating the relationship between political orientation and belief in climate change?
survey research
To identify the most popular exhibits at a science museum, every day for six weeks all visitors were asked to rate how much they enjoyed each exhibit. The data were analyzed to look for age and sex differences in exhibit preferences. This was an example of
survey research.
The discipline of psychology can most accurately be defined as the study of
the mind and behavior
PET scans
track radioactive markers in the blood.
The corpus callosum is directly responsible for
transferring information between the left and right hemispheres.
Although very few people would admit to a belief that men make better hires than women, several experiments show that men are more likely to be hired than women with identical résumés. This is an example of
unconscious bias.
Your uncle tells you about an interesting magazine article explaining that humans use only 10 percent of their brains. As a student of psychology, your response should be:
"Well, research actually shows that almost all of the brain is continually active."
As you and your roommate watch a news report about a big fight that broke out at a local club, he turns to you and says, "I'm not surprised. It's a full moon, after all. People always go crazy around the full moon." As a student of psychology, your response should be:
"When you look at police records, the actual data do not really support that idea."
Which of the following best represents the case study method?
A book that documents the development of a person who was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness at a young age
Which of the following constitutes a gene?
A length of DNA
Which function is most directly controlled by the brainstem?
Breathing
