Midterm

The benefits of brain plasticity are most clearly demonstrated in

Children who suffered brain damage

After an experiment, research participants are told its purpose and about any deception they may have experienced. This is called

debriefing

o prevent participants in an experiment from trying to confirm the researchers' predictions, psychologists sometimes

deceive participants about the true purpose of an experiment.

An hour after going to bed, Mike was so soundly asleep his parents were unable to awaken him for a scheduled dose of medicine. At this point in Mike's sleep, an EEG would have most likely detected

delta waves

In transmitting sensory information to the brain, an electrical signal travels from the ________ of a single neuron

dendrites to the cell body to the axon

An undersupply of serotonin is most closely linked to

depression.

The simplified reality of laboratory experiments helps psychologists to

develop general principles that help explain behavior.

Dr. Santaniello studies how children's moral thinking changes as they grow older. Dr. Santaniello is most likely a(n) ________ psychologist.

developmental

Although we may be unaware of our gender prejudices, they often influence the way we consciously perceive men and women. This best illustrates

dual processing.

To track the development of children's social skills, Professor Ober carefully monitors and records their classroom behaviors. Professor Ober is engaged in

naturalistic observation

Efforts to discover whether the intelligence of children is more heavily influenced by their genes or by their home environments are most directly related to the debate regarding the issue of

nature and nurture.

Biology is to experience as ________ is to ________.

nature; nurture

Suppose psychologists discovered that wealthy people are less satisfied with their marriages than poor people are. This would indicate that wealth and marital satisfaction are

negatively correlated

The strengthening of synaptic connections facilitates the formation of

neural networks

Dendrites are branching extensions of

neurons

Professor Lopez believes that severe depression results primarily from an imbalanced diet and abnormal brain chemistry. Professor Lopez favors a ________ perspective on depression

neuroscience

Compared with adults, children are more likely to experience

nightmares and sleepwalking

Julie consistently fails to get as much sleep as she needs. This is most likely to place her at an increased risk of

obesity

Particularly among men, sleep apnea is linked with

obesity

A theory is an explanation using principles that ______ observations and ______ events.

organize ; predict

REM sleep is called paradoxical sleep because

our motor cortex is highly active, while our voluntary muscles hardly move

The master gland of the endocrine system is the

pituitary gland

The hypothalamus influences the ________ to send messages to the ________.

pituitary; endocrine glands

An inactive substance may be given instead of a drug to see if it produces any of the same effects as the drug. This substance is called a

placebo

The relief of pain following the taking of an inactive substance that is perceived to have medicinal benefits illustrates

placebo effect

A representative sample is one that accurately reflects a larger

population

Humanistic psychologists focused attention on the importance of people's

potential for healthy growth

The explanatory power of a scientific theory is most closely linked to its capacity to generate testable

predictions.

To isolate cause and effect, experimenters should use

random assignment

Which of the following scientific procedures is most useful for helping survey researchers avoid false generalizations?

random sampling

Suppose you want to find out which candidate students on your campus will vote for in the national election. To be sure the sample is representative of the student population, you should

randomly survey a large, representative sample of the student population.

A simple, automatic, inborn response to a sensory stimulus is called a(n)

reflex

The SQ3R study method emphasizes the importance of

retrieving information.

During open-brain surgery, Adam's left ankle twitched whenever the surgeon electrically stimulated a specific area within Adam's

right frontal lobe

Random assignment minimizes ________ between experimental and control groups. Random sampling minimizes ________ between a sample and a population.

similarities; similarities

Neural activity that promotes recall of earlier experiences is most closely associated with

slow wave sleep

Which perspective in psychology is most likely to focus on how behavior and thinking vary across situations and cultures?

social-cultural

The two divisions of the peripheral nervous system are the

somatic and autonomic

An accelerated heartbeat is to a slowed heartbeat as the ________ nervous system is to the ________ nervous system

sympathetic; parasympathetic

Which brain structure receives information from all the senses except smell?

thalamus

The release of hormones by the adrenal glands is most likely to trigger

the "fight-or-flight" response

The central nervous system consists of

the brain and the spinal cord

Which of the following methods is most helpful for revealing cause-effect relationships?

the experiment

Which research method provides the best way of assessing whether cigarette smoking boosts mental alertness?

the experiment

An axon is

the extension of a neuron that carries messages away from the cell body

A negative correlation between degree of wealth and likelihood of suffering from a psychological disorder would indicate that

the poor are more likely to have a psychological disorder than the wealthy.

Cognitive neuroscience studies relationships between

thought processes and brain functions.

The corpus callosum is a wide band of neural fibers that

transmits information between the cerebral hemispheres.

Forty-year-old Lance insists that he never dreams. Research suggests that he probably

would report a vivid dream if he were awakened during REM sleep

Jordanna has decided to go to bed early. Although her eyes are closed and she's very relaxed, she has not yet fallen asleep. An EEG is most likely to show the presence of

alpha waves

The classic case of railroad worker Phineas Gage best illustrated that frontal lobe damage can

alter ones personality

To demonstrate that brain stimulation can make a rat violently aggressive, a neuroscientist should electrically stimulate the rat's

amygdala

The case study is a research method in which

an individual or group is studied in great depth.

An experiment was designed to study the potential impact of alcohol consumption on emotional stability. A specification of the procedures used to measure emotional stability illustrates

an operational definition.

Dreams often involve sudden emotional reactions and surprising changes in scene. This best serves to support the theory that dreams

are triggered by random bursts of neural activity.

The brain structure that provides a major link between the nervous system and the endocrine system is the

hypothalamus

Which limbic system structure regulates thirst and body temperature?

hypothalamus

Most college students are "owls," with performance ________ across the day. Most older adults are "larks," with performance ________ as the day progresses

improving; declining

Research indicates that total time spent in REM sleep is especially high in

infants

The vast majority of neurons in the body's nervous system are

interneurons

Even if excitatory signals are increased above the threshold for an action potential to occur, this will not affect the intensity of the action potential. This indicates that a neuron's reaction

is an all-or-none response

A synapse is a(n)

junction between a sending neuron and a receiving neuron.

The control of speech production by the left rather than the right hemisphere of the brain best illustrates

lateralization

Different views of the same behavior that together can give us a complete description represent different

levels of analysis.

Wilhelm Wundt performed experiments to study

mental processes.

Research participants are randomly assigned to different groups in an experiment in order to

minimize any differences between groups of participants.

A correlation between physical attractiveness and dating frequency of +0.60 would indicate that

more frequent dating is associated with higher levels of physical attractiveness.

In one study, introductory psychology students were fitted with hip-worn tape recorders for up to four days so that researchers could sample their daily activities. The researcher employed a scientific method known as

naturalistic observation

For younger adults, the human sleep cycle repeats itself about every

90 minutes

Which major force in psychology emphasized unconscious sexual conflicts?

Freudian psychology

According to Freud, the latent content of a dream refers to

Its underlying but censored meaning

The brain waves associated with REM sleep are most similar to those of

NREM-1 Sleep

To identify which of Lucy's brain areas was most active when she talked, neuroscientists gave her a temporarily radioactive form of glucose and a(n)

PET scan

Fast and jerky movements of the eyes are especially likely to be associated with

REM sleep

REM sleep is

Reduced by alcohol and sleeping pills

The view that psychology should be an objective science that studies observable human activity without reference to mental processes is known as

behaviorism

The hindsight bias refers to people's tendency to

believe that they would have foreseen the outcome of past events.

Suppose the correlation between the physical weight and reading ability of elementary schoolchildren is +0.85. This means that

better reading ability is associated with greater physical weight among elementary schoolchildren.

During REM sleep, your skeletal muscles are relaxed because messages from the motor cortex are blocked by the

brainstem

The tendency to perceive meaningful patterns in random sequences of outcomes often leads us to underestimate the extent to which outcomes result from

chance

Which perspective is most concerned with how individuals interpret their experiences?

cognitive

Martin Seligman advocates a positive psychology that focuses on such topics as

compassion

To discover the extent to which economic status can be used to predict political preferences, researchers are most likely to use

correlational measures

Discerning the unstated assumptions and values that underlie conclusions best illustrates ________, which is an important learning tool.

critical thinking

Three key elements of the scientific attitude are

curiosity, skepticism, and humility.

Jason suffered painful withdrawal symptoms after he stopped using heroin. This was most likely due to his brain's reduced production of

endorphins

José has just played a long, bruising football game but feels little fatigue or discomfort. His lack of pain is most likely caused by the release of

endorphins

The first major issue that emerges in debates over experimenting on animals centers around the

ethics of placing the well-being of humans above that of animals.

To find out whether feeding breast milk contributes to the intellectual development of children, psychologists used

expiriments

Which of the following body parts is associated with the greatest amount of brain tissue in the motor cortex?

face

In a recent car accident, Tamiko sustained damage to his right cerebral hemisphere. This injury is most likely to reduce Tamiko's ability to

facially express emotions.

Severing a cat's reticular formation from higher brain regions causes the cat to

fall into a coma

The nature-nurture issue refers to the debate over the relative contributions that ________ make to the development of psychological traits.

genes and experience

Neurons are surrounded by ________, which guide neural connections and clean up after neurons send messages to one another.

glial cells

Giving half the members of a group a true psychological finding and the other half an opposite result is an easy way to show the impact of

hindsight bias

Professor Mysore told one class that drinking alcohol increases sexual desire. He told another class that drinking alcohol reduces sexual desire. Neither class was surprised by the information they received because of the power of

hindsight bias

Several weeks after a political election, voters often think they could have predicted the election outcome. This best illustrates

hindsight bias

Many people believe that psychology merely proves our commonsense understanding. In large part this is because of

hindsight bias.

Which part of the limbic system plays an essential role in the processing of new memories

hippocampus