Psychology 100 Final exam Study guide

Most people would prefer to take an action to save 200 lives than one with a one-third chance of saving 600 lives. Which of the following is most likely to change their choice?

Reframe the question to ask about avoiding a loss of lives instead of saving lives

What is meant by "self-actualization"?

creative activities

If someone has just had a traumatic experience, how important is it to talk with a therapist immediately?

Talking with a therapist at once is generally not helpful.

Which of the following appears to be the strongest determinant of people's happiness?

Temperament: Happy people tend to remain happy throughout life

If you want to avoid yielding to a temptation, which of the following is best advice?

Try to avoid the tempting situation.

According to the concept of prototypes, how do we decide whether an item belongs to a particular category?

We compare the item to the most typical members of the category.

According to Abraham Maslow, what do we do when we have several motivations?

We start with the lowest need and work up.

An internally generated tendency toward vigorous activity is known as __________; an external stimulus that pulls us toward a particular activity is known as __________.

a drive...an incentive

Which kind of goal is most effective in increasing your efforts?

a goal that is realistic but challenging

Night terrors are fairly common in _____ and they occur mostly during ____ sleep.

children... non-REM

Although emotion is difficult to define, most psychologists would agree that emotion includes the following four dimensions:

cognition, feelings, actions, physiology

In which condition does the brain show a low, steady rate of activity and no response to any stimulus?

coma

The Type A personality can be described as_____ while Type B can be described as ________.

competitive; easygoing

Someone with an IQ score of 130 is in the 98th percentile. This means he or she

did better than 98% of the people his or her age who took the test.

Activity of the parasympathetic nervous system leads to an increase in

digestion.

Which of the following is most likely to improve your happiness?

doing a kind deed for someone else.

During REM sleep,

dreaming is likely to occur.

Which of the following usually causes people to increase their meal size?

eating with friends

According to the James-Lange theory:

emotion is our perception of autonomic changes.

Memory of a specific experience such as graduating from high school is known as

episodic memory.

Remembering a specific event in your life is _____ memory. Remembering a fact or principle is _____ memory.

episodic... semantic

According to Masters and Johnson, the first stage of sexual arousal is

excitement.

If you solve a problem of a type you never saw before, what type of intelligence do you show?

fluid intelligence

In contrast to an achievement test, an aptitude test is intended to measure what?

fluid intelligence

What is anterograde amnesia?

inability to form new long-term memories

Freud referred to the hidden content of dreams, which he said were represented only symbolically, as the __________ content.

latent

The fat cells release a hormone that in effect tells the brain how much fat the body has, thereby decreasing appetite. That hormone is

leptin

When you remember how to tie your shoes, what type of memory is this?

procedural

The tendency to assume that if an item is similar to members of a particular category, it is probably a member of that category itself, is known as the

representativeness heuristic.

First you memorized the street map of Detroit. If you now memorize the street map of Philadelphia, you might forget the Detroit map because of

retroactive interference.

In decision making, searching until you find something that is good enough is called

satisficing.

If a person practices a difficult new motor task before going to sleep

the brain areas that were active during learning become active during sleep.

Phineas Gage, an accident victim in 1848, showed little emotion after an iron bar damaged his:

prefrontal cortex.

What is meant by the "mere measurement effect"?

After reporting how likely you are to do an act, you become more likely to do it.

Which of these procedures have psychologists often used for measuring how well children can resist temptation?

"Here is one marshmallow, but if you wait you can have two."

The Wechsler and the Stanford-Binet tests were both devised to have a mean score around __________ and a standard deviation around __________.

100...15

How does the concept of allostasis differ from that of homeostasis?

Allostasis recognizes that people's needs change from time to time.

Who developed the first IQ test?

Binet and Simon.

In what way is identifying a suspect from a lineup similar to taking a multiple choice test?

Both are a form of a recognition memory test.

People watched a clock-like device and made a spontaneous decision of when to flex a wrist, remembering the time of decision and reporting it later. What was the key result?

Brain activity preparing the movement began before the decision

You want to remember a shopping list of 9 items. To aid memory, you group them as 3 fruits, 3 vegetables, and 3 dairy items. This strategy makes use of

Chunking.

Which of the following best describes the relationship between light-dark cycles (from the rising and setting sun) and circadian rhythms?

Circadian rhythms are generated by the body, but reset by light-dark cycles.

Many people choose a small immediate reward instead of a larger delayed reward. What is one good way to increase the probability of choosing the delayed reward?

Commit to a decision far in advance.

Suppose you will have a choice between a small, immediate reward and a larger, delayed reward. How could you increase your probability of taking the larger reward?

Commit yourself to a decision long in advance.

According to the conceptual network approach, which of the following questions should most people answer most rapidly?

Do fashion models wear dresses?

Your history professor gives you a list of the initials of all the U.S. presidents and vice presidents and asks you to fill in the names. What kind of memory test is this?

Cued recall.

Which of the following statements is TRUE regarding the role of emotions in moral decisions?

Emotional reactions often provide quick guides for making moral decisions.

You study something until you are confident that you will remember it. Then what?

Even if you repeat it now, you underestimate how much you will forget.

What does psychological research say about using a cell phone while you are driving?

Even listening to your passenger's half of a conversation is distracting.

People read a list of words including PENDULUM. Later they are shown something like __E__D__L__M and they try to fill in the missing letters. What is unusual about this method of testing memory?

Even people who cannot remember the words on the list show signs of memory by this test.

Which body cells release the hormone leptin? And how does leptin affect appetite?

Fat cells release leptin. Leptin decreases appetite.

If asked to tell your social security number (without looking it up), you are being asked to perform which type of memory test?

Free recall.

Which of the following theories holds that intelligence includes unrelated (or poorly correlated) abilities such as language, music, logic, body movement, and social sensitivity?

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences

What was Alfred Kinsey's contribution to the study of sexual behavior?

He conducted extensive surveys to find out about people's sexual activities.

What was Hermann Ebbinghaus's contribution to the study of memory?

He was the first to do experiments to measure memory.

If differences among people in their IQ scores are based largely on differences in heredity, what should we expect to find?

IQ scores should correlate higher for monozygotic twins than for dizygotic twins.

What is one way in which memory improves during sleep?

Inappropriate synapses are weakened during sleep.

When people go without sleep for three days, what happens to their alertness?

It declines every night, but partially recovers the next morning.

Which of the following is true of bulimia?

It is more common in women than in men.

In what way does anorexia nervosa vary across cultures, if at all?

It is most common in the Caribbean islands

According to the drive theory of motivation, what does a motivation do?

It makes behavior more vigorous until it satisfies some need.

How does the hormone insulin influence eating and hunger?

It regulates the entry of glucose into the cells.

What role, if any, does sunlight play in circadian rhythms?

It resets the rhythm.

Which of these was Hans Selye's major insight about stress?

Many kinds of stress and illness produce the same effects on the body.

Can we identify someone's emotion (such as anger or fear) physiologically? If so, how?

No, we cannot identify someone's emotion by current physiological methods.

On average, how do the circadian rhythms of younger and older adults compare?

Older adults are more likely to have their most alert time early in the day.

You are given a list of grocery items to remember to purchase on your trip to the store. These items are; apples, bread, celery, lettuce, grapes, and onions. According to the recency effect, what item are you most likely to remember?

Onions.

What does it mean if you wake up and find yourself temporarily unable to move?

Part of your brain is awake and another part is asleep.

Why are microexpressions especially useful for researchers studying emotions?

People cannot fake microexpressions or inhibit them.

Comparing several methods of testing memory leads to which of these conclusions?

People might or might not remember something, depending on how we test them.

Which of the following facts conflicts with the drive theory of motivation?

People sometimes seek excitement and new experiences.

The statistics about weight loss may seem more discouraging than they should be. Why?

People who succeed show up in only one study. Those who fail show up in many.

After you witness a robbery, you have trouble describing the thief. The police show you several photographs and ask whether any of them was the thief. They are checking your memory by which method?

Recognition.

Which of the following would be good advice to a company that was setting up three work shifts for its workers?

Provide very bright lights during the night shift.

What does it mean to say that a test has been standardized?

Psychologists have established rules for administering the test and interpreting its scores.

Which of these procedures would probably cause someone to eat less?

Put less food on the plate.

Nightmares occur mostly during __________ sleep; night terrors occur during __________ sleep.

REM...non-REM

Which of the following was an attempt to devise an IQ test that makes minimal use of language and is more fair to people with various cultural and language backgrounds?

Raven's Progressive Matrices

What is meant by the "Flynn effect"?

Raw scores on IQ tests have been increasing from decade to decade.

The researcher associated with developing the triarchic theory is

Robert Sternberg

You cannot remember the geography you learned in junior high school. Someone tests whether you can relearn it faster than you learned it the first time. Which type of memory test is this?

Savings

Your memory of the rules of basketball or golf is a type of

Semantic memory.

Someone asks you what time it is. You check your watch and answer. A few seconds later, after you have been distracted, someone asks what time you said it was. You have forgotten. According to the traditional information-processing view, what type of memory was this?

Short-term.

Certain IQ tests, such as the WISC-IV, include separate tests for specialized abilities. Scores on all those separate tests are positively correlated with one another. These positive correlations are considered evidence in favor of

Spearman's "g" factor.

The early IQ tests developed in France and modified for English speakers became the first important IQ test in the English language. This new version was the

Stanford-Binet.

What is paradoxical about paradoxical sleep?

The brain is active, but the muscles are relaxed.

In what way does damage to the prefrontal cortex interfere with decision making?

The damage makes it difficult to imagine feeling good or bad.

When you are asked how something would look from a different angle, you say you "imagined rotating the object in my head." What evidence did Shepard & Metzler present to show that what you did really is like watching an object rotate?

The delay to answering is proportional to the angular distance of rotation.

Why is it impossible for sleepwalking to occur during REM sleep?

The postural muscles are so relaxed that they would not support a person.

Why do psychologists believe that young children are learning rules of grammar?

Their mistakes indicate that they are over-applying certain rules.

The WISC and WAIS are both IQ tests. What is the difference between them?

They are given to people of different ages.

Which of the following generally increases how much food people eat?

They eat more when someone puts more food on their plate.

When people go without sleep for several days in a row, how does their sleepiness change?

They feel sleepy at night, less sleepy in the day, and sleepier again the next night.

Which of these is an objection to common questionnaires to measure stress?

They include many items with ambiguous meanings

What problem do people with sleep apnea experience?

They often stop breathing while they are asleep.

People watched a dot moving around a clock and spontaneously decided when to flex their wrist, remembering and later reporting the location of the dot at the time of the conscious decision. Researchers also measured the time activity increased in the premotor cortex, and the time of the wrist movement. Why were the results theoretically important?

They suggest that conscious thought does not control our actions.

When you are studying something, how could you increase your depth of processing?

Think about how it relates to other things you know and care about.

Brain-damaged patient A speaks fluently but is hard to understand, and she has trouble understanding other people's speech. Patient B understands most speech, but he speaks slowly and inarticulately, and he leaves out nearly all prepositions, conjunctions, and word endings. Patient A has _____ and patient B has _____.

Wernicke's aphasia... Broca's aphasia

What is meant by a "top-down" process in attention?

You decide to shift attention from one item to another.

Ordinarily, you have short eye fixations when reading something easy and long fixations when reading something difficult. If your fixations start to become about the same for easy and difficult material, what is probably happening?

Your attention is wandering.

What is a microexpression?

a brief, involuntary emotional expression

What is meant by the "language acquisition device"?

a built-in mechanism for acquiring language

Our tendency to feel wakeful and sleepy on a 24-hour basis depends mainly on

a cycle generated by a mechanism in the brain.

Goals are most effective at motivating increased efforts if the goals are

challenging (somewhat better than you have done in the past).

According to Hans Selye, stress is

a nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it.

If 100 students are wearing white shirts and one student is wearing a red shirt, what causes you to notice the red shirt?

a pre-attentive process

Workers show the highest level of productivity when they set which type of goal?

a specific, challenging goal

What is a prototype?

a typical example of a category

A saccade is

a voluntary eye movement.

Which of the following best supports an incentive view of motivation?

a woman eats a piece of birthday cake although she is not hungry

Which of the following produces (in rats) behaviors similar to drug addiction?

alternating between food deprivation and a meal high in sweets and fats

Researchers measure an increase in the startle reflex as an operational definition of what?

anxiety

According to the James-Lange theory, what is the order of events in an emotion?

appraisal of the situation...action...feeling

Because you remember all the times it rained right after you washed your car, you think it always rains when you wash your car. What heuristic is responsible for this judgment?

availability heuristic

Eating is limited by both short-term and long-term regulation. Which of these variables is most important for long-term regulation?

body weight

Psychologists attempting to identify basic emotions have generally made each of the following assumptions, EXCEPT

basic emotions should be triggered by the same situations or stimuli for all people.

What are people with anorexia nervosa most afraid of?

becoming fat

People watched a dot moving rapidly around a clock and spontaneously decided when to flex their wrist, remembering and later reporting the location of the dot at the time of the conscious decision. Researchers also measured the time activity increased in the premotor cortex, and the time of the wrist movement. What was the order of events in time?

brain activity, then conscious decision, then action

Investigators distinguish among stages 1, 2, 3, and 4 of sleep by observing

brain waves.

Your sympathetic nervous system has just been activated. What are you most likely to do?

breathe harder and perspire

Which of these is the lowest on Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

breathing

An experienced taxi driver becomes more skilled at finding various addresses within a city, without improving other intellectual skills. We can say that the driver has increased his or her:

crystallized intelligence.

The availability heuristic is based on the assumption that

if we can easily remember examples of something, it must be a common event.

People with amnesia typically have problems with __________ memories while __________ memories remain intact.

declarative; procedural

For most people the experience of jet lag is most severe if they travel across time zones

from west to east.

If you are trying to think of uses for a brick and you can't think of anything other than building a wall, what error have you made?

functional fixedness

When Spearman described the "g" factor in intelligence, what did the "g" stand for?

general

They often stop breathing while they are asleep.

get sleepy in the middle of the day.

The polygraph test measures

heart rate, breathing rate, and electrical resistance of the skin.

The tendency to maintain constancy of temperature, weight, body water, and so forth is called

homeostasis.

What do psychologists mean by "subjective well-being"?

how highly someone evaluates his/her whole life

What is retrograde amnesia?

loss of memories that formed before a certain event

One criticism of Maslow's hierarchy theory is that

lower-level needs don't always take priority.

Freud referred to the surface appearance of a dream as the __________ content.

manifest

In decision making, considering every possibility to find the best decision is called

maximizing.

What are algorithms?

mechanical, repetitive mathematical procedures for solving a problem

After the neurological patient H.M. suffered damage to his hippocampus, he experienced a severe loss in his __________, but continued to be almost normal in his __________.

memory for new facts...ability to learn new skills

You develop the belief (hypothesis) that your significant other wants to break up with you. You have a phone conversation in which your significant other sounds stressed out but says several nice things about you. According to the confirmation bias, you are most likely to

notice and remember the tone of voice while ignoring the nice comments.

REM sleep is synonymous with

paradoxical sleep.

One unusual feature of implicit memory is that

people can display implict memory without realizing that they are using memory.

"Change blindness" refers to the phenomenon that

people looking at a scene often fail to notice something that changes.

Psychologists who believe in the existence of a few "basic emotions" cite as evidence in support of their position the fact that

people throughout the world recognize certain facial expressions of emotion.

The WAIS-III and WISC-IV have one advantage over the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, which is that the WAIS-III and WISC-IV

provide scores on a number of separate abilities.

For thinking and problem solving, we use System 1 for _____ and we use System 2 for _____.

quick automatic processes... slow processes that require attention

The hormone insulin influences appetite by

regulating how much glucose enters the cells.

Two standard ways to evaluate a test are to measure its __________ and its __________.

reliability...validity

Mnemonic devices are most useful in helping people to do what?

remember lists of unrelated words.

Which of the following is an example of episodic memory?

remembering what happened your first day of elementary school

People with damage to the amygdala are most likely to show which of the following?

slower and less accurate processing of emotional information

In an environment in which temperature, light, and other conditions remain constant 24 hours a day, most people

still awaken and go to sleep on a nearly 24-hour schedule.

What are heuristics?

strategies for simplifying a problem or for guiding an investigation

Students in one section of a class were assigned deadlines for their paper assignments, while students in the other section were allowed to set their own deadlines (but then had to meet those deadlines). The results of this study indicated that

students with assigned deadlines received higher grades for their papers than students who chose the last day of class as their own deadline.

To improve your probability of performing a learned skill well, or your probability of remembering something in a variety of circumstances, you should

study or practice under a variety of conditions.

The willingness to do something we wouldn't otherwise choose to do because of money or effort already spent is termed the

sunk cost effect.

Psychological researchers who believe we have a few basic emotions generally list six. Which of these is one of those six?

surprise

Which part of the autonomic nervous system, if any, prepares the body for "fight or flight"?

sympathetic nervous system

What do high amplitude, long, slow waves on an EEG indicate?

synchrony among neurons and overall low brain activity

Transformational grammar is a...

system for converting a deep structure into a surface structure.

Which of the following is the clearest example of a homeostatic motivation?

temperature regulation

Set point refers to

the constant body weight your body maintains.

What is the Stroop effect?

the difficulty of saying the color of the ink instead of reading the word

What is meant by a "Duchenne" smile?

the full smile of a truly happy person

Which of these would you probably find by an "attentive" process?

the key to your dormitory room among a pile of other keys

John needed to remember the last 10 presidents of the United States. He generated an image of each of the presidents located somewhere in his house. John used

the method of loci.

When you memorize a list of words, which words are you are most likely to remember?

those at the beginning and end of the list.

Why have psychologists periodically revised and reworded the IQ tests over the years?

to prevent the mean score from rising above 100

Just estimating your probability of doing something makes you more likely to do it.

true

What evidence do most studies of heritability of human intelligence consider?

twins and adopted children

In which condition does someone show only limited responsiveness, such as increased heart rate in response to pain?

vegetative state

Studies on facial expressions of emotion have shown that

we show emotion more strongly when other people are around.

In the traditional information-processing model, one difference between short-term memory and long-term memory is that

you forget many short-term memories almost as soon as your attention is distracted; long-term memories can be available at any time.

In which situation would a heuristic be most useful?

you have too many hypotheses to test

According to the activation-synthesis theory, dreaming is

your brain's effort to make sense of spontaneous sensory activity.