Psych 7A Midterm 2
Your roommate wakes up and reports that she was dreaming about a large insect chasing her around your dorm room. She was likely in _______ sleep
rapid eye movement (REM)
Categorization is the process of
recognizing similarities and differences among concepts
Chunking information facilitates encoding because it
reduces the absolute number of items to be encoded.
Behaviorists were particularly skeptical of Edward Tolman's research because it seemed to indicate that learning could take place even in the absence of
reinforcement
The hypothesis of linguistic _______ holds that the properties of a given language _______ the way speakers of that language think
relativism; influence
Section A of the chart best illustrates
second-order conditioning
Suppose you have been conditioned to blink your eyes each time an experimenter sounds a buzzer. Art some point, the experimenter says the word "buzz" before sounding the buzzer. Eventually, you will learn to blink your eyes when the experimenter simply says the word "buzz"—even if the buzzer is not sounded. This is an example of
second-order conditioning
Psychologists use the term "sensory modality" to refer to a
specific stimulation of a sensory receptor
In rare cases of severe epilepsy, people can undergo _______ surgery, which severs the _______, the large band of neural fibers connecting the cerebral hemispheres
split brain; corpus callosum
The _______ at one end of the cochlea is sensitive to the vibrations of the bones of the middle ear
stapes
Your friend insists that cigarette smoking calms his nerves, but you are skeptical because in reality, nicotine is a(n)
stimulant
Psychologists have clinically defined drug addiction as substance use disorder, which is essentially the
strong desire to self-administer a drug of abuse.
The key aspect of the hard problem of consciousness is the _______ of each individual's conscious experience
subjectivity
The retina is the
surface at the back of the eye where the image is focused
Linguists like Noam Chomsky distinguish between the specific words that are put together in a sentence, called the _______, and the meaning underlying those words, called the _______
surface structure; deep structure
Long-term potentiation is the term neuroscientists use to describe long-lasting enhancement of
synaptic transmission
In the popular cartoon Where's Waldo, viewers search for a character in a red-and-white striped shirt and hat. This character, Waldo, is hidden among numerous people and objects, many of which are also colored red and white, making Waldo very difficult to locate. In this cartoon, the red-and-white-stripe theme is the
target
A chemical that encounters a taste receptor cell and excites it is called a(n)
tastant
The collections of 50-150 cells on the surface of the tongue, back of the mouth, and roof of the mouth are called
taste buds
Our two chemosensory systems are the _______ system and the _______ system
taste; olfactory
Imagine you have a sibling, Henry, who is two years old. When he is thirsty, he says "Henry milk." This is an example of
telegraphic speech
Some of the free nerve endings in your skin are specialized to detect information about
temperature
Memory, as a general construct, is best defined as
the ability to store and retrieve learned information
In psychology, the word "noise" is defined as
the firing of a sensory cell without a stimulus or in response to an irrelevant stimulus
Believing that a coin is more likely to land on "tails" because it has landed on "heads" for the last four tosses is an example of
the gambler's fallacy.
The first widely used intelligence tests for adults were developed by American psychologists to determine
which draftees should be officers versus ordinary soldiers in World War I
Your friend is cutting back severely on her coffee intake. She is experiencing headaches, fatigue, and irritability as a result of
withdrawal
The cocktail party effect describes a phenomenon in which
you can selectively attend to a particular conversation out of the many conversations taking place
According to the activation-synthesis hypothesis about dreaming, the content of dreams results from
your brain attempting to make meaning out of random bursts of neural activity
You do not act out your vivid dreams because
your brain inhibits motor neurons, and you cannot move
A kindergartener receives a gold star on a classroom chart for every three books he reads. This is an example of a _______ reinforcement schedule
Fixed ratio
Which statement describes information likely stored in episodic memory?
George recalls the first time he saw his girlfriend.
Which situation involves the concept of priming?
Grace read an article about her favorite actor, and later, when choosing a movie, she unknowingly chose to watch a movie with that actor.
Which statement correctly differentiates between habituation and sensitization?
Habituation is a decreased response to a stimulus, whereas sensitization is an increased response to a stimulus.
Which of the following situations represents an effect of hindsight bias?
Jerry rode his bike instead of taking his car to work, then told a co-worker that he had biked in because he knew there would be a car accident holding up traffic along his route
Why does punishment tend to be an ineffective way to change a child's behavior?
Punishment causes the child to become resentful, leading to disobedient behavior
Phonemes are
basic speech sounds that make up languages
As you and a friend throw a softball back and forth, you depend on _______ to help you determine how close the ball is getting to you and when and where to catch it
binocular cues
The observation that animals tend to readily form associations between certain stimuli and responses, such as taste and nausea, due to the survival value of the learning is called
biological constraints on learning
Opioid receptors are responsible for the pain-killing effects of morphine. One area of the brain in which opioids are found is the
brainstem
Hypnosis can be effective in reducing pain, if the hypnotist trains the patient to
disconnect from the unpleasant emotions attached to the pain.
The ability of a language to produce an infinite number of sentences is called _______ capacity
generative
Research on memory consolidation and interference suggests that if you are studying for an exam, you should
get a good night's sleep to facilitate consolidation
The hypothesis that the language we speak influences the way we think is called
linguistic relativism
Scientists who study language are called
linguists
A _______ is a primary reinforcer, whereas a _______ is a secondary reinforcer
lollipop; diploma
An absolute threshold is the
lowest intensity of a stimulus that a person can detect half the time
Dana is very shy and awkward in social situations. Consequently, she tends not to go to parties or attend other social gatherings. Dana is engaging in
passive avoidance
To learn anything through observation, the learner must
pay attention to the model
Which of the following people is likely to experience the most serious case of jet lag?
Brett, who flew for six hours from San Francisco to Boston
Based on the original definition of IQ, a student with an IQ score of 120 is likely to answer IQ test questions like someone who is age _______, even though the student's chronological age is _______
12; 10
Chang is an 8-year-old boy who can do all the tasks a typical 10-year-old can do. His chronological age is
8
Which is an example of positive punishment?
A student is caught texting in class and the professor reprimands him in front of his classmates
Which researcher is most closely associated with the Bobo doll studies?
Albert Bandura
Which of the following scenarios best illustrates size constancy?
As you approach a monument, you perceive that the monument remains the same size
Which of the following is the best summary of behaviorism?
Behaviorism tends to explain learning in terms of observable behavior, generally avoiding reference momental events and entities
Which of the following best demonstrates observational learning?
Ben watched a skateboarder do a trick many times and now Ben can perform the trick, himself
Babies string meaningless sounds—like "da"—together over and over again. Linguists call this
babbling
Which pair of words would be most closely related in a semantic web?
Dog and wolf
Which statement about the capacity of long-term memory is most accurate?
Human memory has a nearly limitless capacity that is difficult to quantify
From the following, identify the best summary of the law of effect.
If a response is followed by a pleasant consequence, it will tend to be repeated; if a response is followed by an unpleasant consequence, it will tend not to be repeated
How does the figure illustrate the concept of a sensory threshold?
If the stimulus is weak enough, the sensory receptor will not reach threshold and will not produce an action potential
Which of the following examples best illustrates an application of the Gestalt rule of continuity?
In the movie theater, you perceive that an actor is moving rather than just appearing first in one place and then inanother place on the screen
One of the best sources of evidence that there is a sensitive period for human language development is that
It can be very difficult for adults who are learning a second language to become proficient in the grammar of that language
Which conclusion about sleep is most consistent with the data shown?
It is normal to experience about five bouts of REM sleep during the night.
Imagine you are caring for a patient who in the past abused alcohol. You find that the patient's memory is heavily impaired. It is very likely that that the patient has
Korsakoff's syndrome.
Which example best represents memorization by hierarchy?
Learning flower names by arranging the flowers by color
Which of the following statements about learning is correct?
Learning leads to a relatively permanent change in behavior.
In which of the following scenarios would you be most likely to succumb to a false alarm in signal detection?
Monitoring for the vibration of your phone in your pocket while you are sitting
The _______ is an example of a decision-making error in which someone fails to properly estimate the probability of a particular outcome after being given additional information
Monty Hall problem
Learned behavior is less prone to extinction if it is conditioned by _______ reinforcement.
Partial
Which of the following is a prototype of "bird"?
Sparrow
Which task is an example of nondeclarative skill learning?
Rhonda improves her speed in assembling toys in the factory after 100 hours of work
Which of the following describes the downside of savant-level memory ability?
Savants are often victims of brain damage or abnormality
Which of the following is most consistently correlated with IQ scores?
School performance
Which of the following is an example of non-associative learning?
Sensitization
Jan's husband calls her while she is at the grocery store to ask her to pick up six varieties of chips for a party. He tells her the varieties he wants and hangs up. While walking to the chip aisle, she repeats the list to herself, then begins to pick up the chips. Which varieties will she most likely remember?
She will remember a few varieties in no particular order.
Who coined the phrase "nature versus nurture" to convey the question of whether genes or upbringing has the most significant effect on developing humans?
Sir Francis Galton
Which statement correctly distinguishes between standardization and normalization of intelligence tests?
Standardization allows for uniform administration of tests; normalization establishes the performance average and variability.
A reinforcer is a consequence that _______ a behavior
Strengthens
What is intelligence?
The ability to acquire, retain, and apply knowledge
Which statement is consistent with the conclusion from Sperling's study of sensory memory?
The duration of sensory memory is brief, lasting less than 300 milliseconds.
The figure shows the response of a touch receptor in response to two stimulus strengths. What can you conclude about the relationship between the strength of the stimulus and the likelihood of the touch receptor to fire?
The harder the push against the skin, the more likely it is that the touch receptor will fire
The fact that people with Williams syndrome have normal verbal abilities but severe deficits in spatial reasoning suggests that
The human brain may be specialized to pick up languages in a way that is distinct from solving other tasks
What makes motherese appealing to babies?
The singsong qualities of motherese communicate positive emotion and reward
Ivy is told that men far outperform women on standardized math tests. Which of the following reflects stereotype threat?
Though Ivy is a gifted mathematician, she performs poorly on the SAT math section
Researchers have studied problem solving by examining the course of people's solutions to the _______ problem, which involves transferring a series of different-sized disks from one spindle to another, following a specific set of rules
Tower of Hanoi
In classical conditioning, the _______ and the _______ are usually the same.
US; CS
Which of the following best demonstrates sensory adaptation?
Unless they think about it, long-time workers at a bakery do not notice the aroma of bread baking in the oven.
Which of the following best illustrates the concept of confirmation bias?
You are a proponent of gun control. You seek out news sources and stories that affirm your beliefs about gun control
Which scenario represents the concept of rehearsal?
You keep repeating a new friend's phone number while looking for your phone.
Which scenario best captures the concept of context-dependent retrieval?
You perform better on a driving test when you are in the car in which you learned to drive.
Suppose you have a phobia of flying. How might classical conditioning be used to help you overcome your phobia?
You should associate flying with something pleasurable in order to reduce your fear
The experience of flow is best exemplified by
a jazz musician absorbed in playing without a conscious effort in the experience of soloing
In the word "rebuilt," re is
a morpheme, but not a phoneme
Psychologists and philosophers use the word qualia to refer to
a person's specific, subjective perceptual experiences
George Sperling was able to differentiate between the amount of information that could be stored in sensory memory and the time until the memory faded by cuing participants to recall
a row of letters in a visual array
The concept of labeled lines refers to the fact that
a separate set of nerves transmits information from each sensory receptor organ to the brain
Retrieval is the process of
accessing information from long-term memory.
You accidentally break off the pull tab when attempting to open a can of soup. You are about to reach for another can when it occurs to you that you can use a regular can opener. You have just demonstrated
acquisition
Some psychoactive drugs work as _______, meaning that they artificially stimulate receptors in a neurotransmitter system. Others work as _______, meaning that they block activity at particular receptors
agonists; antagonists
You want to earn a decent salary at a potential job. You know that there is room for negotiation, so you ask for a slightly higher hourly rate than you think the employer will accept. If the employer ends up giving you an hourly rate close to your initial asking rate, he or she has likely been influenced by the
anchoring effect
A stimulus is
any sensory event that an individual can detect
An elderly man has had a stroke, and his language is now impaired as a result. By definition, he has
aphasia
Monozygotic (MZ) twins
are genetically identical
If Tuan wanted to use the method of loci to help him remember a list of items to get at the grocery story, he should
associate each item on the grocery list with a physical location in his house.
When a subject has learned something that is not immediately demonstrated, _______ learning has occurred
associative
About half of the individuals with savant syndrome also display
autism
Though some people use the term short-term memory to refer to memory for recent events, like weekend plans, psychologists use the term to refer to memory that is limited in
capacity, and to a duration of a few seconds.
The theory of learned helplessness has been used to explain
clinical depression
A child with fetal alcohol syndrome often has
close-set eyes and an absence of the typical folds between the nose and upper lip
According to the work of Fitts and Posner (1967), the associative phase of an individual's progress in learning to drive is best represented when she is
comfortable with driving but makes errors if she plays the radio or talks to a passenger.
Attention is best defined as the
concentration of the mind on a particular object or process
When a split-brain patient tries to describe in words why her left hand selected a stimulus card corresponding to an image presented in her left visual field, she engages in _______ to have her unconscious recognition make sense
confabulation
Your friend Tom lacks the ability to feel pain. Tom's condition is called
congenital insensitivity to pain
Psychologists call the process by which encoded information is transferred from short-term to long-term memory
consolidation
Whenever a rat pushes a red button, it is rewarded with a piece of food. This is an example of a(n) _______ reinforcement schedule
continuous
The bending of light by the _______ and _______ focuses a sharp image onto the retina.
cornea; lens
While you are changing a light bulb in the kitchen, it breaks, leaving the broken end stuck in the socket. First you turn off the power. Then, to avoid getting cut, you use half a potato to remove the broken bulb. According to Sternberg's views, you have displayed _______ intelligence
creative
Contestants who do well on the game show Jeopardy, which involves using the store of facts that they have learned, are displaying _______ intelligence
crystallized
The symptoms of a stroke can be recalled with the acronym FAST, which means you should examine the person's face, arms, speech, and attend to the element of time. This is an example of a(n) _______ task
cued-recall
A circadian rhythm is a
cycle of sleeping and waking that occurs approximately every 24 hours
The surgery that H.M. underwent impaired his _______ memory but left his _______ memory largely intact, meaning he could still learn to perform procedural tasks like mirror drawing
declarative; nondeclarative
The easy problem of consciousness can be solved by
defining different conscious experiences in terms of different brain states
Damage to Broca's area leads to an aphasia characterized by
difficulty in speech production, but not in speech comprehension
In the process of forming memories, when perception ends, _______ begins
encoding
Another name for the physical memory trace in the brain is the
engram
Infants who are breast-fed grow up to have higher IQs than those who are bottle-fed; this suggests a(n) _______ influence on IQ
environmental
Section B of the chart best illustrates
extinction
During an experiment in which participants press a button whenever they have the urge to do so, when would you expect their motor cortices to become active?
few hundred milliseconds before they press the button
The _______ houses the cochlea and other organs that are important for balance
inner ear
Many people report vivid recollections of high-impact events such as the Kennedy assassination, the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the 2012 Newtown school shooting. These memories are referred to as
flashbulb memories
Damage to Wernicke's area in the brain leads to an aphasia characterized by
fluent speech, which may be garbled
Most of the Flynn effect appears to be due to increases in _______ intelligence
fluid
Information stored in the sensory buffer is retained
for a few seconds.
Anterograde amnesia involves a loss of the ability to
form new memories
The primary function of the outer ear, or pinna, is to
gather sounds and direct them to the middle ear
Your friend comes home from a party in an altered state and mistakes your housecat for a lion. Your friend may have taken a(n)
hallucinogen
The Stanford-Binet test and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) report similar IQ scores for children, indicating that the two tests
have cross-test reliability
The "Flynn effect" refers to the finding that the average scores on IQ tests
have substantially increased since the first IQ tests were developed
The _______ appears to be especially important in the formation of cognitive maps
hippocampus
The social theory of hypnosis states that
hypnosis is likely a function of a person accommodating the hypnotist.
The tendency of baby birds to recognize, bond with, and follow the first moving object they see is called
imprinting
Researchers have suggested that insight occurs
in both humans and animals
People who in the past would have been referred to as "mentally retarded" are now generally said to have
intellectual disabilities
According to the duplex theory, we use both _______ differences and _______ differences to localize sounds
intensity; latency
The main distinction between sensation and perception is that only perception involves
interpreting what the stimulus is
A team of psychologists has devised a new intelligence test. Some versions of the test have 20 questions, and some have 50 questions. Some allow the test-takers one hour to complete the test; others give the test-takers as much time as they need. From this information you know that this new intelligence test
is not standardized
Saying that language is lateralized in the brain means that
language function is primarily associated with one hemisphere of the brain.
The acquisition of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or understanding brought about by experience is called
learning
Dyslexia is defined as difficulty in
learning to read
The flexible, transparent structure in the eye that helps focus an image on the back of the eye's interior is called the
lens
All of the following have been shown to correlate with high IQ scores except
life satisfaction
Photoreceptors are the
light-sensitive receptor cells in the retina
Last night Enrico dreamt that he was walking through a strange city and was surrounded by tall buildings. According to Freud, the buildings themselves are the _______ content of Enrico's dream
manifest
An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a brain imaging technique that
measures rapid changes in voltage (electrical potential) throughout the brain
The Binet-Simon scale was meant to reveal whether a child's _______ age matched his or her _______ age
mental; chronological
The overwhelming majority of people who are classified as having an intellectual disability have a _______ disability
mild
You associate each line of a poem that you need to memorize with a particular object in your dorm room. This is an example of aiding your memory via
mnemonic devices
One major consequence of psychologist James Flynn's findings is that
more and more tests have been developed to measure analytical intelligence
The basic units of meaning in a language are called
morphemes
The singsong, high-pitched speech with slow, exaggerated pronunciation that parents use with babies is called
motherese
Your friend sometimes falls asleep during short car rides, meals, and even conversations. He also seems to have sudden bouts of muscle weakness and severe fatigue whenever he gets excited or stressed. He is likely suffering from
narcolepsy
You would expect your pupil to be largest when you are
navigating through a dark forest at night
In a _______ test, a subject is presented with a sample stimulus. After a short delay, the sample stimulus is shown again along with a novel alternative. The subject is rewarded for selecting the novel stimulus
non-matching-to-sample
Our memory for carrying out motor and perceptual procedures is referred to as _______ memory
nondeclarative
One of the main reasons psychologists sometimes use nonsense syllables, rather than real words in studies of memory, is that
nonsense syllables are unlikely to be associated with someone's existing knowledge.
A friend tells you that she typically sleeps for about eight hours but often wakes up in the morning right out of anxiety-provoking dreams. Based on the figure, you tell her that this is
normal, because our final episode of REM sleep occurs right before waking
When psychologists say that intelligence test scores are _______ distributed, they mean that the distribution of scores ________
normally; follows a bell-shaped curve
A prominent part of the reward pathway of the brain is the _______, located at the base of the frontal lobe
nucleus accumbens
A group of parents are discussing whether music videos featuring scantily clad women are encouraging teenagers to become sexually active. Which of the following processes is being considered by the parents as the reason that music videos influence sexual activity in teens?
observational learning
The olfactory epithelium, which lines the inside of the nose, houses the
olfactory receptor neurons
Psychologists describe consciousness as one's
perception of his or her own mental processes
In a sense, phantom limb pain is a purely _______ phenomenon.
perceptual
Heritability estimates for IQ apply to _______ but tell us nothing about _______
populations; individuals
Geno was just an average student in school, but he operates a very successful auto repair shop. According to Sternberg's views, Geno most likely has a reasonable amount of _______ intelligence
practical
When you enter an old password to retrieve your email, rather than entering your new password, you are demonstrating _______ interference. On the other hand, not being able to recall your old phone number is an example of _______ interference
proactive; retroactive
Apes have demonstrated the most compelling evidence of their ability to use language by
producing novel combinations of words
Fatal familial insomnia is a rare genetic disorder afflicting adults in middle age. Sufferers
progressively sleep less and less, until they stop sleeping and ultimately die
Kim Peek was described as a savant mainly because he was able to
remember all of the details of every book he had ever read
Early studies of short-term memory by Brown and Peterson showed that information in short-term memory vanishes in about 20 seconds unless you
repeat the information to yourself.
Imagine that you were in a car accident in which you hit your head on the steering wheel. The next day you could not remember anything that had occurred in the week before the accident. You were suffering from
retrograde amnesia
The term heuristic is a scientific term for a
rule of thumb or an educated guess
Howard Gardner would argue that a successful _______ is most likely to be high in interpersonal intelligence
salesperson
Jamal has multiple intellectual disabilities. Yet, he has an extraordinary ability in mathematics and is able to solve complex mathematical problems within seconds. On this basis, Jamal would most likely be characterized as displaying
savant syndrome
Our knowledge of facts, such as the year that President Kennedy was shot or the fact that Paris is a city in France, is collectively called _______ memory.
semantic
The study of the meanings of words is known as
semantics
Detection of the sound of a bell ringing is referred to as a _______. Once you interpret the stimulus as the sound of your alarm clock, it is referred to as a _______
sensation; perception
The brief impressions formed as a result of neural activity in and around sensory receptors are called _______ memories
sensory
_______ memory gives us a very brief impression of what we feel when we first detect a stimulus
sensory
A specialized sensory cell that detects stimuli is called a
sensory receptor cell
Your roommate walks into the kitchen rather shaken and tells you that, upon waking, she was unable to move or speak for about thirty seconds. This phenomenon is called
sleep paralysis
Research suggests that racial differences in average IQ among Americans is most likely due to
socioeconomic factors
Your cat comes running as soon as she hears you open a can of food. In this example, the _______ is the conditioned stimulus
sound of the can being opened
Most _______ tastes, like that of vinegar, are chemically acidic
sour
A receptive field is
the region of space where stimuli affect the activity of a cell in a sensory system
Ashley was telling her friend about a movie she saw last night when she realized she could not remember the lead actor's name. She could only remember that it began with a B. This is an example of
the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
The main idea behind Gestalt psychology is that
the whole perception is more than just the sum of our separate sensations
The case of the patient Tan is significant to the history of psychology and neurology because the case provides evidence that
there may be a direct correspondence between a specific part of the brain and specific language skills.
Monozygotic twins raised together have a higher correlation in IQ scores than MZ twins raised apart. This offers proof that
there may be an environmental influence on intelligence
The classic theory about hypnosis being a uniquely altered state of consciousness is known as the _______ theory of hypnosis
trance
If your doctor prescribes Xanax to alleviate anxiety, she is prescribing a(n)
tranquilizer
Thorndike believed that most learning occurred by
trial and error
A potential consequence of convergence is that you will be unable to
use convergence and binocular disparity cues simultaneously
The concept of the availability heuristic is illustrated when you
vow to never drive again because of the horrible accident you witnessed in front of your house
Cognitive psychologists focus on studying how
we acquire and process information to gain knowledge
The greatest adaptive, perceptual advantage to having two ears rather than one is that
we are more easily able to localize sounds with two ears
The visual field is
what we can see without moving our eyes