Final Exam Practice

Which of the following is the correct order of the eye-to-brain pathway of vision?

Retina, optic nerve, thalamus, occipital lobe

Which of the following anatomical structures is involved in the vestibular sense?

Semicircular canals

Which of the following is the process of detecting environmental stimuli and converting them into signals that can be detected by the nervous system?

Sensation

Which of the following concepts refers to the diminished sensitivity to a stimulus that occurs due to constant exposure to that stimulus?

Sensory adaptation

Marlene had an infection that led to deafness in her left ear. Which of the following will be the most likely impact of losing her hearing in her left ear?

She will have trouble locating the source of sounds.

The benefit of using inferential statistics is that it allows a researcher to

make generalizations about a population

7, 5, 10, 4, 4 What is the median of the numbers above?

5

The idea that there is a part of the mind that is not directly accessible to awareness but still drives a person's thinking and behavior is most directly attributable to

Sigmund Freud

2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16 What is the range of the numbers above?

14

The best example of a biological predisposition to learning is which of the following?

After Ted got sick from eating sushi from the deli, he became nauseous whenever he thought of eating sushi

Which of the following scenarios is the best example of synesthesia?

Anastasia sees swirls of color when she hears music because stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to the experience of another sensation

Dr. Ramen recruited 100 adults to participate in her study. The taste buds of each participant were measured, and the participants tasted a number of foods. She found there was a relationship between the size of a participant's taste buds and the number of foods that a participant could taste. What research method did Dr. Ramen use, and what was she most likely studying?

Correlational; the sensitivity of supertasters

Which hormone is released when a person is under stress?

Cortisol

Which of the following examples best illustrates the concept of interposition?

Because the chair partially obscured his view of the sofa, Brendan perceived the chair as being closer than the sofa.

In a study mimicking Roger Sperry's work, Dr. Kornhauser compared the responses of split-brain patients against a control group of neurotypical participants. In his study, participants focused on a dot in the center of a computer screen and objects are presented in either the left or right visual field. After seeing the object, the participants named the object. The results of the experiment are presented below. The figure presents a bar graph with four bars of data. Two categories are listed on the horizontal axis: Split-brain and Control. A key indicates that both categories contain data for the left visual field and right visual field. The vertical axis is labeled, Accuracy, and the numbers 0 through 100, in increments of 10, are indicated. The data represented in the bar graph are as follows. Split Brain, Left Visual Field; Accuracy, 5. Split Brain, Right Visual Field; Accuracy, 90. Control, Left Visual Field; Accuracy, 90. Control, Right Visual Field; Accuracy, 90. What is the most appropriate conclusion Dr. Kornhauser can draw from the results?

Because the connection between the right visual cortex and language center has been severed, split-brain patients are not able to retrieve the name of objects seen in the left visual field.

Dr. Kovacs is conducting a study of how the brain responds to reading. He records subjects' brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while they read sentences. He is looking for the N400 signal, a negative EEG spike that occurs 400 milliseconds after someone processes something semantically surprising. There are two conditions in the study. The two figures below show average EEG activity for the subjects in the two conditions (Condition A on the left; Condition B on the right). The x-axis indicates time in milliseconds; time 0 indicates when the subjects first read the last word in each sentence. Which of the following pairs of conditions would produce results such as the ones Dr. Kovacs found?

Condition A included sentences such as "Strawberries are sweet," and Condition B included sentences such as "Strawberries are nervous."

The medulla oblongata is a part of the

brainstem

Kimmie stood on the sidewalk rather than crossing the street because she saw that the approaching car was quite close to her. Which of the following concepts is best illustrated in this example?

Depth perception

A drug that is used to treat seizures functions by preventing inhibitory neurotransmitters from returning to the presynaptic neuron. This slows the rate of neurons firing by increasing the amount of the inhibitory neurotransmitter in the synapse. The drug is most likely to be classified as a

GABA reuptake inhibitor (GRI

Which of the following best illustrates the most predictable effect of schemas on perception?

Grant has more difficulty recognizing a penguin as a bird than he does a blue jay.

Which of the following statements is true regarding the application of operant conditioning to learning?

Immediately reinforcing correct responses enhances student learning, because immediate reinforcement has shown to be most effective with regard to learning

Which of the following is true of the American Psychological Association?

It addresses a number of ethical guidelines for the practice of psychology.

Which of the following best describes a major role of the thalamus?

It relays most sensory signals to the cortex.

Molly is potty training her daughter, Mia. Every time Mia begins to urinate in her diaper, Molly says the word "bathroom" in the hope that Mia will begin to urinate when she hears this word while sitting on the toilet. Molly's efforts most resemble the studies of

Ivan Pavlov, who studied classical conditioning

Madeline has previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. She has an identical twin sister, Josephine, and a nonidentical sister, Abigail. Neither of Madeline's sisters have previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Which of the following statements is true of Madeline's sisters?

Josephine is more likely to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder than Abigail in response to a stressful or traumatic event

Julie is interested in developing a test to measure achievement levels of middle school students. Which of the following domains of psychology is most applicable to Julie's interest?

Psychometric

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the opponent-process theory of color vision?

Kayla sees afterimages of opposing colors when she stares at a poster for a long time.

In which scenario does sunblock serve as a conditioned stimulus?

Lowell feels relaxed when he smells sunblock because it reminds him of his vacations at the beach.

Lynda stayed out past her curfew. As a result, her parents revoked her driving privileges. Which of the following statements is true of Lynda's parents?

Lynda's parents are using negative punishment to decrease her behavior of staying out past curfew.

Which of the following scenarios demonstrates stimulus generalization?

Markus was stung by a wasp, and now he is scared of not only wasps but also bees.

Mr. Gregg wants to help his second-grade students improve their reading skills. He tests the students with 20 reading comprehension questions at the beginning of the year. Every week throughout the year he gives the students 30 minutes of reading comprehension tips. He tests the students at the end of the year with 20 reading comprehension questions that are similar in difficulty to those on the original test. He finds that the students' reading comprehension has increased and concludes that his tips worked. Which of the following describes the most significant problem with Mr. Gregg's study?

Mr. Gregg failed to account for changes in the students' maturity.

Which of the following scenarios best demonstrates the acquisition of a fear of snakes?

Randolph's brother frequently startled Randolph whenever he approached a snake, which caused Randolph to develop an intense fear of them.

Helena did not recognize her English teacher when she unexpectedly saw him while traveling in Paris, even though she knew him well back in the classroom. The fact that Helena can recognize her teacher back home more easily than in Paris best demonstrates what concept?

Perceptual set

In a study on taste, what would researchers need to do to test participants' ability to distinguish umami from similar sensations?

Place disks soaked in MSG on the participants' tongues. Then replace those disks with disks that have been soaked in water. Compare the participants' reactions.

Human tactile sense is actually a mix of which of the following distinct skin senses?

Pressure, warmth, cold, pain

Denise has damaged her auditory nerve and now has difficulty understanding what people are saying. Which of the following descriptions explains how that damage impairs her hearing?

Sound messages fail to be transmitted directly to the brain.

Which of the following scenarios most accurately describes biofeedback?

Stacy participated in an experiment in which she wore a heart-rate monitor, watched the readout of her heart rate, and received points based on how many beats per minute she reduced her heart rate.

Dr. Wilson, who teaches engineering classes, is interested in learning about how lack of sleep affects performance. What would be the best way to ensure that her findings are generalizable to all the students at her university?

Surveying every tenth student listed in the university directory about their sleep habits

What is the primary advantage of conducting a survey rather than using other types of research methods?

Surveys can gather information from a diverse representation of and a large number of people

Which of the following is the best example of social learning?

Sydney starts using the same word choices and vocal inflections as members of the popular group at her school.

Rogelio has a number of health problems and would like to avoid medication as much as possible. He is considering biofeedback as an alternative form of treatment. Biofeedback would most benefit which of Rogelio's health problems?

Tension headaches, because Rogelio can use the cues from biofeedback to learn to relax

Orville is talking with his friends at a cafeteria table when suddenly he is distracted by hearing his name at a neighboring table. Orville's shift of attention most clearly illustrates which psychological concept?

The cocktail party phenomenon

A researcher was interested in studying the effects of a new medication on depression. One group received the new medication and another group received a standard medication for depression. The researcher asked participants to answer a series of questions rating their mood levels before and after six weeks of taking the medications. Which of the following is the control condition in this study?

The group receiving the standard medication

Which of the following is the best definition for absolute threshold?

The lowest strength of a stimulus that a person can detect 50% of the time

Which of the following describes what happens when a neuron sends a signal?

The neuron goes from being negatively charged to briefly being positively charged, and finally B returns to being negatively charged again. The magnitude of the negative charge is fixed regardless of the strength of the input signal it receives

A researcher wants to study the human sense of taste over a life span. The researcher has a group of participants taste foods that are salty, bitter, sweet, sour, and umami. Which study would best allow the researcher to test the sensation of taste as people age, and what is the likely outcome?

The researcher follows the same group of people over the course of 40 years. The researcher also A measures the number of the people's taste buds throughout the 40 years. The researcher finds that as people grow older, their sense of taste diminishes and their number of taste buds decreases.

According to the gate control theory of pain, which of the following contains a neurological gate that controls the transmission of pain messages to the brain?

The spinal cord

At a synapse, neurotransmitters released by the sending neuron do which of the following?

They bind to receptors at the receiving neuron, which opens ion channels.

What effect do agonists have?

They increase the likelihood that a postsynaptic neuron will fire.

Bryan perceived a duck instead of other animals when viewing an ambiguous image because he watched a documentary about ducks the previous night. Which of the following best explains why Bryan perceived a duck?

Top-down processing, because his perception of the duck was influenced by past experience

Samantha experienced a traumatic brain injury and afterward began to exhibit bizarre symptoms that no one had ever documented before. The best research method to study Samantha would be

a case study

Dr. Rodriguez is interested in finding out if stress levels throughout the year have a relationship with students' grades. The research method she most likely used

a correlational study

An adult with a healthy sleep cycle is most likely to enter REM sleep

after cycling through the NREM sleep stages

When seeking approval to conduct an experiment using participants from her college psychology course, a student researcher should

apply to the institutional review board at the university

A neuron sends a signal along its

axon

Antagonists function by

blocking receptors to prevent other neurotransmitters from binding to the neural receptors

Audra is working on a puzzle book and comes across the following figure. The Gestalt law that would affect Audra's perception of the picture above is influenced by the law of

closure

The psychodynamic theory of dreaming would postulate that

dreams fulfill unconscious wishes

The hormone most associated with the fight or flight response is

epinephrine

A person whose body is not producing enough testosterone is most likely to exhibit

fatigue

Kara works as a dog trainer. She reads a new book that describes some unusual training methods, and she wants to test them out on the dogs she works with. She assigns each dog to one of two groups by picking a number out of a hat. Half the dogs are assigned to one group, and half the dogs are assigned to the other group. For a month, she trains one group using her old methods and the other group using the unusual methods. At the end of the month, Kara records that the dogs that were trained with her old methods obey her 80 percent of the time and those that were trained with the unique methods obey her 90 percent of the time. Kara concludes that the unique methods work better. Kara can best improve her experimental design by

having someone else test the dogs

Johnny often hits his brother even though his brother does not do anything to antagonize him. Johnny's aggression is most likely due to a combination of

his genetic makeup, the environment he grew up in, and the fact that aggression can be evolutionarily adaptive

The advantage of an experiment is that it allows a researcher to

infer cause and affect

Deception can be used in research when

it is appropriate for what is being studied

Carl Wernicke discovered the region of the brain that is responsible for

language comprehension

Ruth and Debbie are identical twins who were raised by the same family. Vince and Frankie are identical twins who were separated at birth and raised by different families. According to research on the heritability of personality traits, Ruth's and Debbie's personalities are statistically

likely to be as similar and dissimilar to one another as are Vince's and Frankie's personalities

Sebastian wants to earn an "A" in his biology course but finds it difficult to stay motivated to study every night. His teacher recommends that he surround himself with peers who study regularly to increase his studying behavior. Sebastian's teacher made her recommendation based on the learning concept of

modeling

The fatty casing that helps speed up the neural transmissions of a neuron is called the

myelin sheath

Researchers trained monkeys to perform two tasks: an object-matching task and a location task. In the object-matching task, the monkeys are given an object and must choose a matching object from two objects placed in front of them. In the location task, an object is placed near one of two locations, and the monkeys must reach toward the location the object is closest to. Separating the monkeys into two groups, researchers created a lesion in one area of the brains of the monkeys in one group and a lesion in a different area of the brains of the monkeys in the second group. The researchers then tested the monkeys' performance on the two tasks. The figures below show the monkeys' accuracy on the two tasks. The lession were most likely performed in the

parietal lobe for Group 1 and the temporal lobe for Group 2

Dr. Sampson follows the structuralist school of thought. Her techniques would most likely include

presenting a participant with an object, such as a can of soda, and having the subject report his or her perceptions or experience of the can

The parietal lobe is most involved in

processing sensory information

Gayle's teacher wants to increase effective study habits in her students by using negative reinforcement. Gayle's teacher would most likely enforce this by

removing an unpleasant stimulus

Waking up frequently, loud snoring, silent pauses in breathing, and sleepiness during the day are symptoms of

sleep apnea

Michael Gazzaniga is best known for

studying split-brain patients

Li, a principal, is interested in the differences in student behavior between two of the third- grade classrooms at her school. She asks the teachers, Mr. Williams, whose class meets at 9:00, and Ms. Walsh, whose class meets at 1:00, to record over a week the number of times students in their classrooms act out. Mr. Williams' class has 31 students, and Ms. Walsh's class has 32 students. "Acting out" is defined as students speaking without raising their hand or getting out of their seats without being given permission. At the end of the week, Mr. Williams reports that on average, his students acted out 73 times a day, and Ms. Walsh reports that, on average, her students acted out 27 times a day. Ms. Li decides that the students in Ms. Walsh's classroom act out more often than those in Mr. William's class. The results of this study are inconclusive because

the time of day was a confounding variable

The phenomenon of declining physiological effects of taking a drug after sustained use is referred to as

tolerance