SDC Psychology Fall Exam

The class is playing a game of Jeopardy! and it is your turn. "I'll take Specialties in Psychology for $300." The revealed answer is, "These psychological professionals work with situations in which environmental conditions may have an impact on their health." What will you say?

"What is a psychiatric social worker?"

Jamie walks from a bright room into a dark room. It will take about ________ minutes for her rods to fully adjust to the dark.

30

Which research stated in his book Finding Meaning in Dreams, that the nature of a person's dreams may be influenced by the personality of their culture.

Domhoff

A test can fail in reliability while still being valid.

False

Which of these is an element of the formal definition of intellectual disability?

IQ approximately 2 standard deviations below the mean on a normal curve

Which of the following would be an example of a sterotype threat?

Joaquim, who believes IQ tests are unfair to Hispanics, something that his IQ score seems to reflect

According to famed linguist Noam Chomsky, humans have an innate ability to understand and produce language through a device he called

Language Acquisition Device

You are invited to take part in a study by a researcher trying to replicate the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus. What might this researcher ask you to do?

Listen to me: BEC, DAX, FER, KOJ; now repeat what I said.

Which of the following statements about punishment is NOT true?

Rewards should always immediately follow punishments.

Which book, published by Herrnstein and Murray in 1994, sparked tremendous debate with its assertions about the heritability of intelligence?

The Bell Curve

____________ believe that language helps develop concepts, whereas ____________ believed that concepts must be developed first if language is to follow.

Vygotsky; Piaget

What is the biggest reason we use animals in research?

We can do things to animals that we can't do to people

Which early psychologist was the first to try to bring objectivity and measurement to the concept of psychology?

Wilhelm Wundt

According to the semantic network model, it would take less time to answer "true" to which sentence?

a salmon is a fish

The work of Freud was built around _________________.

a theory of personality that emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts

Dr. Delmar wants to determine how loud a certain noise must be in order for it to be heard from a distance of 50 feet. Her question involves the concept of:

absolute threshold

According to this theory, sleep is a product of evolution.

adaptive theory

On a fixed-ratio schedule, reinforcement is given _________________.

after a specific number of responces are given

What three types of intelligence constitute Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence?

analytical, creative, and practical

The part of the neuron that carries outgoing messages either to another neuron or to a muscle or gland is the _______________.

axon

An individual's semantic memory contains:

background knowledge about words, symbols, concepts and rules arranged as hierarchies of information in categories and subordinate categories

Rods and cones are connected to____________.

bipolar neurons

Curare, a poison, works by ________.

blocking receptor sites and acting as an antagonist for acetylcholine

The shortest wavelengths that we can see are experienced as_________ colors.

blue

Ira has been smoking cigarettes for years, and particularly enjoys smoking when he goes to a casino to play blackjack. He recently quit smoking and has been cigarette-free for eight months. In that time, he has also had no opportunity to go back to a casino to play cards. Tonight, he and some friends went to play blackjack, and once he sat down at the table he got a sudden and irresistible urge to smoke a cigarette, and ended up smoking a pack in one night. Ira's unexpected desire to smoke was a result of ________.

classical conditioning

Which of the following is NOT an altered state of consciousness?

concentration

Our awareness of various external stimuli and internal mental processes, such as making decisions, daydreaming, reflecting, and concentration, is called _______________.

consciousness

Color, shape, size, and brightness are all types of perceptual_____________________.

constancy

CPAP stands for ____________

continuous positive airway pressure

What part of the brain can sometimes be referred to as the "rind" or outer covering?

cortex

According to Robert Sternberg ___________ intelligence is the ability to deal with new and different concepts and to come up with new ways of solving problems (divergent thinking, in other words)

creative

The branchlike structures that receive messages from other neurons are called___________.

dendrites

The goals of psychology are to

describe, explain, predict, and control behavior

The question "What is happening?" refers to which of the following goals in psychology?

description

John will likely experience REM rebound tonight if he:

did not sleep much last night

Dr. Roll is conducting a research study. She wants to measure the physical connectivity in the research participants' brains by imaging their white matter. Which of the following methods will she use?

diffusion tensor imaging

Which theory of hypnosis includes the idea of a "hidden observer"?

dissociative

Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis focused on

early childhood experiences

Amber meets a cute guy named Carson at a party. She wants to make sure she remembers his name, so she reminds herself that he has the same name as the capital of Nevada (Carson City). This transferring of information from short-term memory to long-term memory is an example of what type of rehearsal?

elaborative

Which of following is an example of episodic memory?

events

Neuroplasticity is the concept that when the brain is injured, it is unable to change the structure and function of the cells to adjust to the damage

false

Memories that concern events that are highly significant and are vividly remembered are called ______.

flashbulb memories

On a variable-interval schedule, reinforcement is given

for the first correct response after varying amounts of the time have passed

a block to problem solving that comes from thinking about objects in terms of their most common typical use is called___________.

functional fixedness

After being in class for a while ____________ is a likely explanation for not hearing the sound of the lights buzzing above you until someone says something about it.

habituation

The medulla, pons, and cerebellum are all apart of the:

hindbrain

How does Ernest Hilgard explain pain reduction through hypnosis?

hypnotized individuals dissociate the experience, so part of the mind is unaware of the pain

In nearsightedness, the image is focused:

in front of the retina

REM behavior disorder most commonly occurs_____________.

in men over 60

What score indicates how one individual compares to others on an intelligence test?

intelligence quotient

What two categories of dream content did Sigmund Freud describe?

latent and manifest

The process by which experience or practice results in a relatively permanent change in behavior or potential behavior is known as____________.

learning

Which of the following is NOT a perceptual constancy?

linear perspective

What do we call the hypothesis that language influences what we think?

linguistic relativity hypothesis

Researchers have found that it takes ______________ to view a mental image that is larger or covers more distance than a smaller or more compact one.

longer

What is thinking?

mental activity that involves processing, organizing, understanding, and communicating information

Cognitive psychologists are a subgroup of experimental psychologists who are concerned primarily with

mental events which intervene between stimuli and responses

The divergent thinking technique of starting with a central idea an drawing a "map" with lines from the center to the other related ideas and then forming a mental image of the concepts and their connections is known as_____________.

mind or subject mapping

A.R. Luria studied an individual with phenomenal memory. This person was a ____________.

mnemonist

When you look out the window of a car that is traveling 60 mph, objects at different locations appear to move in different directions an different speeds. The apparent motion is known as:

motion parallax

Your friend has experienced excessive daytime sleepiness. He is laughing with you and suddenly falls to the ground. Your friend is probably suffering from ________.

narcolepsy

Larry has been told by his doctor that he is experiencing ________ due to hair cells that were destroyed as a result of loud sounds.

nerve hearing impairement

The branch of life sciences which involves the structure and function of the brain and nervous system is called

neuroscience

What must be paired together for classical conditioning to occur?

neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus

Retroactive interference, as used in the study of memory, refers to when_____________.

newer infomation interferes with the retrieval of older informantion

The part of the brain which interprets visual information is the__________.

occipital lobe

B.F. Skinner is known for his theory of:

operant conditioning

Conduction hearing impairment refers to hearing problems that originate in the_________________.

outer ear

One major danger of barbiturates is ________.

overdose

Which of the following is a common ethical guideline suggested by the American Psychological Association?

participants must be allowed to make an informed decision

People's tendency to perceive a thing a certain way because their previous experiences or expectations influence them is called _________________.

perceptual expectancy

The autnomic and somatic nervous system are divisions of the _______________ system.

peripheral

A psychologist wanted to see if people are more prone to seek the company of others when anxious than when calm. He randomly assigned half of his subjects to an anxiety group and then told them that, as part of the study, they would receive electric shocks. He did not frighten the other group of subjects. Finally, he recorded how many subjects in each group to be "tested" in a group setting and how many chose to be "tested" alone. What was the dependent variable in the study?

preference for being alone or in a group

A reinforcer that is reinforcing in and of itself is called a ______________ reinforcer.

primary

Selma notices that as her supply of marijuana decreases, she starts thinking more and more about where she can get another supply as well as feeling nervous and anxious. This is an example of ________.

psychological dependence

Under what circumstances will a reinforcer make the target response more likely to occur again?

regardless of whether it is a positive or negative reinforcer, a reinforcer makes a response more likely to occur

Anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will increase is called a(n)

reinforcer

Freud said phobias were ________ whereas Watson said phobias were ________.

repressed conflicts; learned

Maria often sleeps soundly and rarely awakens to any outside noise. However, the cries of Maria's baby can awaken her immediately. What part of the brain is responsible for this reaction?

reticular formation

A soldier was injured when a mortar exploded next to him. Although he recovered from his wounds, he is not able to recall information from years ago. What term is used to describe this soldier's condition?

retrograde amnesia

The type of memory that is most likely an encyclopedia or a dictionary is

semantic memory

A display of 12 letters is flahsed on a screen in front of you followed by a tone. You attempt to recall a portion of the display based on the specific tone you heard. What aspect of your memory is this experiment designed to assess?

sensory memory

An echo usually stays in the sensory registers for __________.

several seconds

The hypothalamus controls the ______________.

sleep-wake cycle

Nicotine is a ________________.

stimulant

Which of the following terms do NOT belong together?

structuralism; observable behavior

Corey was in an automobile accident that resulted in an injury to her brain. She now has difficulty with her hearing and her memory. The part of her brain most likely injured was her __________.

temporal lobe

You decide that you are going to condition your dog to salivate to the sound of a metronome. You give the dog a biscuit, and then a second later you sound the metronome. You do this several times, but no conditioning seems to occur. This is probably because ________.

the biscuit was given too long after the sound of the metronome

The placebo effect means

the expectations of the participants influence their behavior

The magazine Desperate Wives publishes a survey of its female readers called "The Sex Life of the American Wife." It reports that 87 recept of all wives like to make love in rubber boots. The critical flaw in this research would be ______________.

the fact that the same is not representative of American wives

Mark and Kathy take their 2-year-old son to the supermarket every Saturday. Each week, the same sequence of events unfolds: Their son screams, demanding that they buy him treats. Although they refuse to give in to his demands, he continues to scream. Finally, either Mark or Kathy gets in their son's face and yells at the top of their lungs "Shut up!" He stops screaming instantly. What operant conditioning concepts are illustrated in this story?

the parents are using punishment to suppress the screaming; their use of punishment is negatively reinforced by the cessation of screaming.

The activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming states that ____________.

the purpose of dreaming is to resolve current concerns and problems

In the experiment with Little Albert, the conditioned stimulus was_________________.

the rat

Which hemisphere of the cerebral cortex is usually dominated in spatial tasks?

the right hemisphere

___________ is a system used for reducing bias and error in the measurement of data.

the scientific method

The process by which outside stimuli, in their various forms of energy, are converted into neural signals is called________________.

transduction

Conditioned emotional responses are some of the easiest forms of classical conditioning to accomplish, as demonstrated by the fact that our lives are so full of them

true

The thyroid gland secretes a hormone called thyroxin.

true

In the curve of forgetting developed by Ebbinghaus, the greatest amount of forgetting occurs _______________

within the first hour after learning new material