midterm 1
Which statement best captures the concept of a sensitive period?
A parent should be patient with a child who is learning to read.
What conclusion is consistent with the results of twin studies of schizophrenia
Differences in genes account for about 50 percent of the differences between people, in cases of schizophrenia.
What is a mainstream psychologist most likely to think about Sigmund Freud?
Freudian theory is untestable and not grounded in science.
Imagine that a single dysfunctional allele for a given gene could derail our ability to see at birth. How could two people who were blind for that reason have a child with normal vision?
If the child inherited only recessive alleles for that gene, the child would have normal vision
Which is most consistent with the textbook's characterization of how nurture influences behavior?
Learning experiences and social interactions affect how we use the genes that we inherited.
A scientist is interested in understanding how the size of the prefrontal cortex changes between the ages of 9 and 13. Which of the following brain imaging techniques would she be most likely to use?
MRI
You accept a job selling high-end knives door-to-door on commission because you were informed that company employees, on average, earn $60,000 a year. After three months of making less than $1,000 a month, you learn that most other salespeople are making less than $20,000 a year. If the company has 20 sales people, two managers, and one president, how can the company's claim still be correct?
The mean of all salaries is $60,000 because the managers and president earn huge salaries
Which of the following are subunits of proteins?
amino acids
Next to each allele, a stretch of DNA contains instructions for
deletion of the allele
_______ psychologists study how the mind and behavior progress as people age
developmental
The thyroid and the pituitary gland are part of the
endocrine system
Adolescents are in the fifth stage of psychosocial development, and according to Erikson, are most concerned with developing
identitiy
The hippocampus plays the most significant role in
memory
Correlations are most useful for
predicting behavior
A person's emotional makeup is called
temperament
According to the process of natural selection, a mutation
will accumulate in the genomes of future generations if it improves survival and reproduction
Which of the following perspectives argues that human behavior develops in certain ways because it serves a useful purpose?
Functionalism
A researcher claims that the same area of the brain is active when we feel physical pain as when we feel hurt by social rejection. Which of the following would support her claims?
Images from fMRI scans that look similar for subjects experiencing physical pain and subjects experiencing social rejection
Which statement is not consistent with research on cognitive processing and aging?
Memory decline in older people is the result of a shrinking of the hippocampus.
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.
During cell migration, neurons
differentiate to perform different functions.
An allele is _______ when it affects an individual's phenotype, regardless of what other allele the individual carries for that gene
dominant
Many people over age forty develop presbyopia, a condition in which it becomes difficult to
focus on nearby objects
Cognitive psychology
focuses on how people think, remember, store, and use information.
Though our brains are almost fully developed by the time we reach adolescence, enormous changes continue in the brain region called the _______ lobe.
frontal
One of the most pervasive psychological myths is that
humans use only 10 percent of their brains.
Baby chicks born on a farm will often follow the human that they first see when they hatch. This is a result of _______, the innate process of learning to recognizing a parent.
imprinting
In a phobia treatment study, the participants spend three hours facing their fears. Post-treatment scores show significant improvement in overall distress levels when handling the feared objects, so the treatment is judged as effective by the researcher. To improve the study's design, the researcher can
include a control group, which would receive some supportive counseling but not the actual treatment.
Infants progressively show more complex motor behaviors, which is primarily the result of
maturation of the brain
The difference between a zygote and an embryo is that the embryo is
more complex
Jake has recently developed a disease that causes him to release too much testosterone. Compared with his behavior prior to developing the disease, his behavior now is likely to be
more irritable and aggressive
Which of the following demonstrates an epigenetic effect?
mother fails to bond with child
A manager at a science museum wants to identify the most popular exhibits, so once every hour for six weeks she has volunteers count the number of people standing in front of each exhibit. This is an example of
naturalistic observation
Both the spinal cord and the brain develop from the fetal structure called the
neural tube
The study of the nervous system is called
neuroscience
When psychologists use the term "nature" to refer to causes of behaviors, they mean
our genes and strictly biological influences
Regardless of what your current _______ displays, your _______ never changes
phenotype; genotype
A person who has PKU should avoid all food containing
phenylalanine
Treatment-outcome researchers attempt to prevent initial differences between treatment and control groups by using
randomization
When a touch to the cheek elicits a turn of an infant's head, the infant is displaying a simple reflex called
rooting
When you scrape your knee, pain is relayed from your knee to your central nervous system by
sensory neurons
If you and your sibling share a trait, then by definition you
share a particular genotype
Which is true for a twenty-year-old woman with a gene for Huntington's disease?
she is most likely to develop symptoms of huntington's disease by middle age
Results from a recent experiment are consistent with a researcher's expectation that exposing people to unfamiliar groups reduces prejudice. This means that the researcher
should retain her hypothesis for now
During which stage of neural development do the neurons begin to branch out to form connections with one another?
synaptogenesis
Any substance that disrupts the flow of nutrients to the brain, or in any way harms the fetus, is called
teratogen
According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato
we cannot necessarily rely on our senses to learn the truth
Cooper and Zubek (1958) showed that gene-environment interactions were at play in a study by illustrating that
"Maze-dull" rats raised in "enriched" environments eventually learned to navigate mazes as well as "maze-bright" rats raised in "enriched" environments
The median is better than the mean as a measure of central tendency for which of the following distributions?
3 4 12 86
If a study finds that the heritability of aggression is 40 percent, it means that
40 percent of the variability in aggression in the population is due to variations in the genes in that population
Which situation might increase the risk of a child succumbing to sudden infant death syndrome?
A six-month-old begins to roll from his back to his belly.
Which statement is most consistent with the concept of heritability of alcoholism?
Alcoholism is not heritable; it is the result of environmental influence early in life
The molecule present in the chromosomes that "codes" hereditary information is called
DNA
Which environmental influence is most closely linked with the development of schizophrenia in children who inherit genes for the disorder?
Extreme pressure to achieve
Which of the following may indicate that someone you know might be considering suicide?
He is often tired, though he sleeps seven or eight hours a night.
How is natural selection related to psychology?
Humans behave and think the way they do in part because it helped them survive.
Which of the following is a myth of psychology?
The correct answer was: c. Heritable traits, such as IQ, cannot be altered by experience..
According to Piaget's theory, the two processes that drive children's mental development are called
assimilation and accomodation
In order to fit a growing number of synapses into the skull, a human brain
becomes increasingly wrinkled
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 rod-shaped cellular structures that contain human DNA are called
chromosomes
Refer to the figure. The figure illustrates a typical experiment in
cognitive psychology..
Walker and Lewine's observations of twin babies who later became discordant for schizophrenia revealed that the twin who developed schizophrenia
commonly showed inferior problem-solving skills, compared to the other twin.
A friend asks you to help him steal a car so he can drive his roommate to a doctor's appointment. You refuse, reasoning that laws and rules are a part of society for a reason and you do not want to disrupt the status quo. According to Kohlberg's theory, you are using _______ reasoning
conventional
Both parents of twins Mary and Shelly have schizophrenia. However, only Mary developed the disorder. This means that the twins are _______ for schizophrenia.
discordant
Preoperational children are often described as _______ because they do not understand that different people can have different points of view
egocentric
The scientific study of factors that affect gene expression is called
epigenetic
Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark found that doll tests
exposed internalized racism in African-American children, particularly among children attending segregated schools.
Behaviorism examines _______, whereas cognitive psychology examines _______.
external behavior; internal mental processes
A scientific paper includes a brain image showing that memory regions are active when research participants tell practiced lies but not when participants tell spontaneous lies. What would you expect this image to be?
fMRI limbic system
A punch is painful, while a hug is not, because a punch produces _______ action potentials from each sensory neuron.
faster moving
Your first cell began making proteins when your father's sperm fused with your mother's egg in the process of
fertilization
_______ intelligence is the ability to reason abstractly and solve novel problems, and _______ intelligence is the accumulation of facts, experience, and historical references
fluid;crystalized
When you are walking across campus, the movement of the breeze may change the way your skin cells generate proteins. This is an example of
gene expression
The belief that genes determine everything about us, including our behavior, is referred to as
genetic determinism
Which factor was identical for all of the Genain quadruplets?
genetic makeup that contributed to the onset of schizophrenia
A quarter in your hand casts a different image on your retina than a quarter taped to the wall across the room, yet you know that the quarters have exactly the same dimensions. This phenomenon would be best explained by a
gestalt psychology
Scientific investigation of Clever Hans revealed that
hans owner was a con artist
The development of secondary sex characteristics, such as breast development in girls, is driven by
hormones
Variations in eye color are the result of alleles that differ in terms of
how much pigment they make
A heritable trait is one that
is influenced by genes inherited from one's parents
When the U.S. Supreme Court was deliberating on whether to require schools to integrate black children and white children, their decision to strike down laws permitting segregated schools was greatly influenced by the "Doll Test," conducted by
kenneth clark mami philips
Otto Loewi electrically stimulated a nerve in a frog heart. He then applied fluid surrounding that heart to a second heart. In this experiment, he found evidence that
neurons communicate chemically
An infant's vision improves from about 20/120 to about 20/30 by approximately eight months of age because the
neurons connecting the retinas and the brain mature.
Cognitive psychologists became interested in how processing was done inside the brain, which led directly to the development of
neuroscience
One issue with studies of heritability that compare monozygotic and dizygotic twins is that such comparisons
overestimate the influence of genes on behavior
The foundations of psychology are most closely related to which of the following disciplines
philosophy
The _______, formed when the cells in the outer layer of the embryo divide, provides oxygen and nutrients to the embryo.
placenta
After a skydiving accident, an MRI showed damage to Rose's cerebellum. She is most likely to have difficulty with
practicing yoga
Rats whose mothers were attentive and licked them more frequently as pups tend to
produce less stress hormones as adults
The study of how physical events, such as lights and sounds, affect our senses is called
psychophysics
The landmark in development when an individual becomes capable of reproduction is called
puberty
A warm and nurturing home environment could affect the future of a baby with a family history of schizophrenia by
reducing or eliminating controllable sources of stress
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
representative sample
Developing a sense of morality is one of the toughest challenges for adolescents because it
requires higher-order thought processes and conflicting information.
Children's theory of mind can be assessed with the
sally and anne test
The visual cliff is a method used by researchers to measure an infant's ability to
see a steep drop under the clear surface on which they are crawling
Which of the following research methods would be most appropriate for investigating the relationship between political orientation and belief in climate change?
survey research
An important principle to remember when studying psychology is that
the act of learning changes the physical structure of the brain
Imagine that humans could be born with either pinkish or brownish fingernails, and that there is a different allele for each fingernail color. If your father had brownish fingernails, your mother had pinkish fingernails, and you were born with brownish fingernails, that means tha
the allele for brownish fingernails is dominant
PET scans
track radioactive markers in the blood
The corpus callosum is directly responsible for
transferring information between the left and right hemispheres
In taste tests, people prefer Coke to Pepsi when they drink labeled samples but prefer Pepsi to Coke when they drink unlabeled samples. This is an example of
unconscious bias
Which of these behaviors is most likely to be controlled by a neural network?
understanding a joke
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
What can be concluded from developmental studies of children in daycare?
Children in high-quality daycare tend to perform better academically.
Which statement provides the most accurate description of Alzheimer's disease?
Dementia caused by the build-up of amyloid inside and outside of acetylcholine neurons
You are trying to overcome your fear of snakes. Inspired by the work of Mary Cover Jones, your therapist first shows you some pictures of snakes. Then she tells you that there is a small snake in a cage in the next room. She asks you to observe the live snake from a distance, and continues this process until your fear is conquered. Your therapist is using the technique called
Desensitization
Which statement about information transmission between neurons is correct?
Information between two neurons passes in only one direction at the synapse.
What can be concluded from the psychological study of attachment?
It is an indicator of how children and their peers are able to form social groups
Which scenario describes a child who has mastered the concept of conservation of mass?
Jane knows that she has the same amount of clay in her round ball as Rico has in his flat disk.
A technique that tracks blood flow to measure brain activity is
MRI
Which of the following is most consistent with psychologists' understanding of infantile amnesia?
Older children and adults more effectively establish concrete and lasting memories because verbal skills facilitate encoding
_______ temporarily disrupts brain activity
TMS
Which of the following is true about the strength of a correlation?
The closer a correlation is to 0.00, the weaker the relationship.
Why did women make few contributions to psychology in the first part of the 20th century?
Widespread sexism limited women's participation in science.
Which of the following would be evidence against the social brain hypothesis?
Your sister is clearly able to engage in meaningful social interactions with all of her 500 friends on Tumblr
Based on the conclusions from the Walker and Lewine (1990) study of home movies, what signs might one look for in an infant who may eventually develop schizophrenia?
abnormal crawling behavior
A child has facial deformities, a smaller-than-normal head, aggressive behavior, and mental impairment. These defects can be linked to a teratogen used by the mother when she was pregnant. Which of the following did the mother most likely use?
alcohol
Your text describes a study in which professors receive e-mails, supposedly from students, asking for mentoring. All details about the e-mails are identical except whether they appear to come from males or females and from whites or nonwhites. This is _______ research, and found _______.
correlational; bias against women and minorities
The numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to _______, respectively.
dendrites, cell body, axon, axon terminal
Debi just ran a marathon in less than four hours and felt no pain during the run. Her lack of pain was most likely due to
endorphins
The main purpose of inferential statistics is to
estimate a characteristic of a population based on a sample
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
In the final stages of synaptogenesis, neurons
grow dendrites and axons
Which factor is most closely associated with the eventual onset of schizophrenia?
growing up in a big city
Your baby cousin gazes at a new ball for several seconds, then turns her attention to other objects in the room. She is demonstrating
habituation
Many research findings indicate that disease, malnutrition, and neglect _______ the probability that a person will develop schizophrenia
increase
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by problems directing attention, which are also accompanied by
increased physical activity and fidgeting
Deception in psychological research
is occasionally allowed but must be followed by a thorough debriefing
Colorblindness is more common in males than in females because
males receive only one allele (on the x chromosome) for that gene for color vision
Before scientists fully understood the cause of PKU, infants with the disorder often developed
mental impairment
Psychology is best defined as the study of
mind and behavior
Mutations arise from
mistakes in copying DNA from a parent when eggs or sperm are made
Identical twins are called _______, while non-identical twins are called _______
monozygotic:dizygotic
The three main functional types of neurons are
motor, sensory, interneurons
The brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease are typically littered with clumps of dead and dying neurons, called
neuritic plaques
During _______, neurons grow into the body shape and dendrites appropriate for their specific functions.
neurogenesis
Juan is thirteen months old and is no longer surprised when his mother hides his toy train, only to reveal it again in a different position in front of him. What cognitive milestone is Juan displaying?
object permanence
White matter refers to
parts of the brain filled with myelinated axons
An overwhelming amount of scientific evidence indicates that
people are born with specific sexual orientations
The social brain hypothesis states that
people can keep close tabs on only about 150 different personal relationships.
In Plato's cave allegory, a prisoner was temporarily unchained and allowed to see the fire at the mouth of the cave. When he returned to the chains, the other prisoners
refused to believe him
A self-report measure of the personality trait of agreeableness produces very similar scores each time the same person completes it. It is also strongly correlated with whether family members describe a person as friendly and cooperative. This measure appears to be
reliable and valid
In a behaviorist approach to treatment for a patient with a fear of rats, the patient is
repeatedly exposed to stimuli that are gradually more and more like rats
All of the following activities have been shown to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease except
resting the brain by avoiding complex cognitive tasks.
An 18-month-old boy picks up everything he can get his hands on and puts it in his mouth. Identify his likely stage of cognitive development
sensorimotor
Damage to the left cerebral hemisphere would most likely affect a man's ability to
speak and understand language
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
Harmful dominant alleles, like those for the huntingtin gene, are not common because in most cases
the carrier does not survive long enough to pass on the allele via reproduction.
Synapses are
tiny gaps between cells that are important for neural communication
Sensory information of the _______ modality must first pass directly into the spinal cord before reaching the brain
touch
Research has shown that social exclusion activates the same brain regions as physical pain. A researcher wants to test the hypothesis that over-the-counter pain relievers will also reduce the pain of social exclusion. She gives half of her participants ibuprofen and half a placebo, has them play a game in which other players ignore them, and then measures their level of distress. In this study _______ is the independent variable and _______ is the dependent variable.
whether people take ibuprofen; distress
A research team is investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read an article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read an article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. Then all women in the study take a challenging math test. Researchers time the test and score the number of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following is the independent variable?
which article the women read
A meta-analysis is
a combination of results from many related studies.
a hypotheis is
a testable prediction about the relationship between variables
_______ activate receptors in the same way as the normal neurotransmitters do.
agonist
The year 1879 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
Jessie has taken a medication that interferes with her ability to feel pleasure. This medication is most likely a
dopamine antagonist
In a depression-treatment study, neither the participants nor the researcher know who is taking medication and who is taking a sugar pill. This is an example of a
double blind trial
A patient has difficulty understanding what is said to him, and likewise has difficulty making himself understood. It is likely that he is experiencing a problem in his _______ lobe
parietal
The technique that detects voltage changes in the brain is
EEG
A meta-analysis of published and unpublished tests of SSRI medications revealed that
SSRIs beat placebos only for severe levels of depression
Myelinated axons are useful because they
allow action potentials to travel more quickly
Neurons are more likely to fire when they
are depolarized
Gestalt psychologists such as Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler
argue that the overall experience of human perception is greater than the sum of its parts
In the case of Deidre, a woman with epilepsy, doctors stimulated different regions of her brain to
brain functions were located in the area causing her seizures
The hallmarks of psychology as a science are
careful experimentation and the application of critical thinking
To better understand aggressive behavior toward strangers, a psychologist gathers all available information about a man who threatened random people in a mall with an automatic weapon. This is an example of
case study research
After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Kaela had her thyroid removed. The effects of this are likely to include
changes in metabolism
In the homunculus that corresponds to the mapping of the somatosensory cortex, which body part occupies the largest area?
hand
A psychological test designed to measure creativity is considered a reliable tool based on whether
he same subjects would score consistently over time.
The endocrine system controls
hormone production and release
Research participants in early psychology studies might have been given a stimulus such as a ticking metronome and would reflect on the experience, reporting what the stimulus made them think and feel. These individuals would have been using a process called
introspection
In what brain area would a stroke be most likely to impair language comprehension?
left temporal lobe
Which of the following samples would produce a nearly normal distribution?
mens height in america
To demonstrate that brain stimulation can create visual illusions, a doctor would stimulate his patient's
occipital
Effect size
refers to the magnitude of the difference between groups.
The Tuskegee syphilis study is famous because
researchers failed to inform participants that they had a treatable disease
.Sensory information from the left side of the body is processed in the _______ and mapped onto the cortex
right hemisphere
To allow communication, neurons
send chemical messages across small gaps between neurons.
Which pair represents two distinct functional classes of neurons in the human nervous system?
sensory and interneurons
An empiricist believes that the only source of knowledge about the external world is
sensory experience
A news organization wanted to predict who would win the next U.S. presidential election. They sent an opinion poll to every fiftieth person on a list of students enrolled at a nearby college. Which of the following is the study population?
students at this particular college
