PSY 101 Quiz and Exam Questions

Endorphins have the most significant impact on

pain

Random assignment to experimental and control conditions involves being assigned

to your condition by pure chance

PET scans

track radioactive markers in the blood.

Which statement best describes a valid gene-environment interaction on behavior?

Identical twins adopted by different families often display behaviors typical of their adoptive families.

Which statement reflects a reasonable attitude for a good student of psychology to have toward any claim about human behavior?

Skepticism is advisable until an idea is proven right.

The median is better than the mean as a measure of central tendency for which of the following distributions?

Skewed Distribution

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 cross-country runner wants to know how consistent her race times have been this season. The most useful measure of her race times would be the

Standard Deviation

Which of the following approaches to psychology did Edward Titchener advocate in the late 1800s?

Structuralism

Which technology can be used most effectively to temporarily disrupt the function of specific brain regions?

TMS

The year 81879 might be thought of as the beginning of psychology as a science because that is the year

Wilhelm Wundt developed and opened the first psychology laboratory

The extent to which changes in one factor are accompanied by changes in another is called

correlation coefficient

Which term refers to the branchlike extensions of the neuron that receive signals from other neurons?

dendrites

Contemporary standards of informed consent require a psychologist using human subjects in an experiment to disclose the _______ before the experiment commences.

details of any risk the subjects will face

Twins who do not share 100 percent of their genes are called

dizygotic.

The technique that detects voltage changes in the brain is

electroencephalography (EEG).

In a typical controlled experiment designed to test the effects of a new drug, _______ will be administered to the _______ group.

only the placebo; control

To learn more about the gaming habits of teenage boys, a professor randomly selected fifty boys from various high schools for a video game study. In this study, "all teenage boys" make up the

population

A psychological test designed to measure creativity is considered a reliable tool based on whether

the same subjects would score consistently over time

The process of reuptake removes neurotransmitter molecules from

the synaptic gap by absorbing them back into the axon terminal so that they can be released when the next neural impulse arrives.

The estimated heritability of 48 percent for neuroticism in the population supports the claim that

the variability in neuroticism is due partly to genetic variability in the population.

A _______ is a set of consistent _______ that have undergone successful testing.

theory; hypothesis

The corpus callosum is directly responsible for

transferring information between the left and right hemispheres

Plato's allegory of the cave indicates that

truths about reality are not always obvious.

All of the following statements are true of large data sets with negatively skewed distributions except:

the mode is less than th emedian

Which of the following perspectives argues that human behavior develops in certain ways because it serves a useful purpose?

Functionalism

Which of the following correlation coefficients represents the strongest correlation between two variables?

-0.85

How is natural selection related to psychology?

Humans behave as they do in part because that behavior promotes survival.

Which of the following samples would produce a nearly normal distribution?

Heights of all adult men in America

Which value represents a realistic measurement of a neuron's resting potential?

-60mV

A research psychologist is most interested in discovering the answers to questions like, "Why is empathy helpful to people?" and "How does education contribute to social stability?" This approach is most consistent with the _______ perspective.

Functionalist

What is a mainstream psychologist most likely to think about Sigmund Freud?

Freudian theory is untestable and not grounded in science

To which pair of siblings would the term "dizygotic" apply?

A brother and sister born at the same time

A hypothesis is

A testable prediction, often implied by a theory

Which of the following shows the correct sequence of information flow after a neuron receives input?

Dendrites → axon → axon terminals → synapse

Schizophrenia most often presents itself at what stage?

Early adulthood, when people begin to face the world on their own

_______ is best suited to monitoring the activation of synapses.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

A researcher presents his participant with a series of flashing lights at varying intervals. After each presentation of a light, he asks the participant to fully describe her internal experiences, a method known as

Introspection

Which of the following investigation types does not represent the descriptive method of scientific inquiry?

Laboratory Experimentation

What do studies of maternal nurturing behavior in rats suggest about humans?

Maternal neglect early in life may have lasting impacts on a person's ability to cope with life's challenges.

Which is true of twins who are discordant for a certain trait?

One of them has the trait and the other does not.

The early history of psychology is most closely related to which of the following disciplines?

Philosophy

Which situation is most consistent with the results of twin studies of schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is more likely to materialize in a twin who experiences extreme stress.

Which confounding variable is teased out when psychologists study the traits of identical twins?

Similar environments shared by relatives

Which factor was identical for all of the Genain quadruplets?

The genetic makeup that contributed to the onset of schizophrenia

A researcher is designing an experiment intended to study the effects of the physical environment on reading comprehension. Which of the following factors would be best characterized as an independent variable in such an experiment?

The level of lighting in settings where test subjects are asked to read

A good scientific hypothesis is

Tied to observable phenomena

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

Neurotransmitters are packaged inside _______, in microscopic spheres called _______.

axon terminals; vesicles

A neuron's _______ meets another neuron's dendrite at a(n)_______.

axon; synapse

Axons differ from dendrites in that

axons transmit information and dendrites receive information

In cases where only one of two identical twins develops schizophrenia, all of the following factors may be responsible except

birth order

Which part of the brain relays information between the spinal cord and the cerebellum?

brainstem

Which function is most directly controlled by the brainstem?

breathing

A neuron's refractory phase is defined as the

brief period during and immediately after an action potential when a neuron cannot produce another action potential

The hallmarks of psychology as a science are

careful experimentation and the application of critical thinking.

Which part of the brain plays the greatest role in controlling higher mental functions?

cerebrum

Twins who share a certain physical or behavioral trait are _______ for that trait.

concordant

Cases of spurious correlations are typically explained in terms of _______ variables that are _______ two correlated variables.

confounding; affecting

A research team wants to know if sugar consumption is related to hyperactivity. Researchers give fifty children cupcakes made with real sugar and another fifty children cupcakes made with zero-calorie sugar substitutes. They then observe each child individually to assess his or her level of activity after eating the cupcakes. This is an example of

experimental research.

The goal of psychology is to

explain human thought and behavior.

Parents who agree with John Locke's notion of tabula rasa would most likely

expose their children to a rich variety of sensory experiences.

Cognitive psychology

focuses on how people think, remember, store, and use information.

Which factor is most closely associated with the eventual onset of schizophrenia?

growing up in a big city

In the homunculus that corresponds to the mapping of the somatosensory cortex, which body part occupies the largest area?

hand

Your sister is very shy. An empiricist philosopher would say that her shyness is due to

her early experiences.

Scientific investigation of Clever Hans revealed that

horses respond to unintended cues from their owners

The principle of Occam's razor compares _______ in terms of the _______.

hypothesis; assumptions they make

Hyperpolarizing a neuron _______ its polarity, making it _______ likely to fire.

increases; less

In a psychology experiment, subjects listen to a variety of tones presented at different frequencies and then reflect on the experience, describing what they heard as precisely as possible. These individuals would have been using a process called

introspection

When administered to subjects in an experiment, a placebo is a treatment that

is being subjected to rigorous testing.

Which of the following factors would most severely reduce the usefulness of a placebo in a controlled experiment?

it is relatively easy for subjects to distinguish the placebo from a potentially effective treatment

Which of the following is a measure of central tendency?

median

The hippocampus plays the most significant role in

memory

Psychology is best defined as the study of

mind and behavior

The three main functional types of neurons are

motor, sensory, interneurons

Because neurons are full of proteins that tend to be _______ charged, they tend to attract _______ charged ions.

negatively; positively

The study if the nervous system is called

neuroscience

To demonstrate that brain stimulation can create visual illusions, a doctor would stimulate his patient's

occipital lobe.

Reliability refers to whether your measurement tool _______ and validity to whether it _______.

produces repeatable results; measures what it is supposed to measure

Positron emission tomography (PET) uses _______ to show how the brain works.

radioactive markers

Key functions of the hypothalamus are

regulation of hunger and thirst

Sensory information from the left side of the body is processed in the _______ and mapped onto the cortex.

right hemisphere

A psychologist working at a university is interested in designing an experiment to explore the impact of stress on women's sleep cycles. She will use university students as subjects. In this situation, the students at her university represent a _______, which is part of the _______.

study population; theoretical population

The _______ is part of the _______.

sympathetic nervous system; autonomic nervous system

An important principle to remember when studying psychology is that

the act of learning changes the physical structure of the brain

Heritability estimates tell us

the degree to which variations in a population can be attributed to genetics

Twin studies of the heritability of schizophrenia generally show that

the heritability of schizophrenia is about 50 percent.

During an action potential

the inside of the neuron becomes positively charged relative to the outside.

Researchers are testing the hypothesis that high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood trigger panic attacks. Half of the participants breathe carbon dioxide-enriched air, and the other half breathe normal air, then measured panic attack symptoms. In this study _______ is the independent variable and _______ is the dependent variable.

type of air; panic attack symptoms

According to the social brain hypothesis, each of us can deal effectively with social interactions with roughly 150 people. This implies that...

we are capable of maintaining social networks of up to 150 people throughout our lives