Psych 101 Test 1

Diffuse Optical Imaging (DOI)

A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in light as it is passed through the skull and surface of the brain.

For Lindsey's dissertation, she has e-mails sent out to people 4 times a day for 4 weeks. In these e-mails, she asks about current emotional experiences and activities. What method is she using?

Experience sampling

What is one reason why scientific psychologists follow a specific set of guidelines to help them make decisions when doing research?

To ensure they protect research participants from potential harm.

Researchers that study the online behavior of people focus on their:

Virtual language behavior

In correlational research, the strength of the relation between two variables is indicated by:

a mathematical score ranging from +1.0 to -1.0

Which of the following strategies will produce the most learning? Determining if:

a word is a noun or a verb.

sensory area of the cortex

all cortical areas associated with sensory function

Hippocampus

allows for the formation of memories

Positron Emmission Tomography (PET)

an imaging test that helps reveal how your tissues and organs are functioning, uses a radioactive drug (tracer) to show this activity

Broca's area

back area of frontal lobe, trouble speaking

Medulla

breathing and heartbeat

parasympathetic nervous system

calms you down, rest and digest

Higher mental functions that distinguish humans from other species are localized in the brain's

cerebral cortex

Cerebrum

composed of 2 hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum, has contralateral representation

Maritza is in a study testing if almond milk slows the development of brittle bones. She's in the study for 3 months but doesn't know that her milk allergy is causing her body to block nutrients, so it doesn't help her. Maritza's allergy is an example of a(n):

confound

Insula cortex

consciousness and homeostasis

Midbrain

contains clusters of sensory and motor neurons, regulates arousal, consciousness, etc.

Cerebellum

controls motor movement, balance, some cognitive functions

autonomic nervous system

controls the glands and smooth muscles that form the heart, the blood vessels, and the lining of the stomach and intestines

What is the part of the brain that links together the two hemispheres, and is sometimes severed for people called split-brain patients?

corpus callosum

What type of signal directs the synaptic vesicles to release their neurotransmitters into the synapse?

electrical

Which of the following is NOT a brain scanning technique?

electromyogram (EMG)

The degree to which a study ensures that potential findings apply to settings and samples other than the ones being studied refers to:

external validity

The independent variable in an experiment is defined as the:

factor that the experimenter manipulates.

sympathetic nervous system

helps you survive, fight or flight

Limbic system

subcortical structure, includes Amygdala, Hippocampus, Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Insula cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and prefrontal cortex

The autonomic nervous system is especially important for

successfully resolving emergencies

A major function of the _____ division of the autonomic system is the fight-or-flight response in reaction to a threat.

sympathetic

Wernicke's area

temporal lobe, problems understanding speech

The individual plays an important role in memory acquisition. Which of the following is LEAST likely to have an effect on memory?

the amount of money that you are reimbursed for learning the materials.

In an experiment on the effects of light on reading speed, which of the following is the dependent variable?

the measured reading speed

Electroencephalography (EEG)

the measurement of electrical activity in different parts of the brain and the recording of such activity as a visual trace (on paper or on an oscilloscope screen).

Transfer-appropriate processing is likely to occur if:

the type of encoding matches the type of retrieval task

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

the use of strong magnets to briefly interrupt normal brain activity as a way to study brain regions

When we develop ____ (groups of closely related phenomena or observations) in science, we must do so in a way that can be tested. Otherwise, there is no way to prove (or disprove) them.

theories

The study on master chess players showed that master chess players are better than average players in recalling the location of pieces on a chess board because:

they can chunk the pieces better into familiar groups

Pons

transmists sensory and motor information

somatic nervous system

transmit messages from the eyes, ears, and other sensory receptors and motor neurons that send messages from the brain and the spinal cord to the muscles that control voluntary movements

The main focus of clinical psychology is on which aspect of human behavior?

understanding and treating psychological disorders

temporal lobe

vision, language and auditory processing, memory and integration of auditory and visual information; some scent processing

parietal lobe

visual attention, bodily sensations, spatial location, and integrating the senses

occipital lobe

visual processing

Students who have problems with anxiety so that it affects their learning, can be helped if they

write about their anxiety

Which of the following is NOT helpful in learning new materials?

Anxiety

Dr. Morabian is conducting research that was inspired by studies published 10 years before he received his doctorate. He has read the studies, thinks about how they can be improved, and designs research that will extend their findings. Dr. Morabian's work demonstrates that science is:

Cumulative

In order to study the brain wave activity of different areas of the brain, researchers use which of the following techniques?

EEG (electroencephalogram)

Dr. Magill is conducting research on whether giving monkeys ice cold water in the morning will cause them to be less aggressive during the day. He has several graduate students observing the monkeys and he regularly comments to the students that ice water is "definitely making a difference." As a result, the graduate students are less likely to rate minor aggressive incidents as true aggression. The research in this example has been compromised by ______.

Experimenter expectations

It is important to design research experiments that are associated with real-world situations in order to ______ findings to a larger population.

Generalize

Dr. Hart is interested in the role of relationships in preventing heart disease. As her patients come into her office in Bluebell, Alabama, she asks them two questions: Are you a in a relationship? Have you experienced any heart problems in the last 8 years? Based on her findings, she concludes that relationships cause cardiovascular (heart) problems. One issue with her methodology is that the results are not generalizable. What does this mean?

Her results may not be true for the entire population.

Dr. Miller-Lewis is conducting research aimed at understanding how elderly people can best thrive when residing in an assisted-living facility. She has several logical ideas that can be tested in her research. These ideas, which might be considered educated guesses, are call:

Hypotheses

Katie and Lisa are roommates taking the same psychology class. They have a test in four days during a 10:30 - 11:30 class period. Both intend to study for three hours, but because of different work schedules, Katie will study one hour for each of the next three days, and Lisa will study three hours the day before the exam. What could you predict about their performances?

Katie should perform better because she has spaced her studying over the three days before the exam.

What type of research highlights causality, allowing the cause to be separated from the effect?

Laboratory experiments

The purpose of ethical guidelines in psychological research is to:

Protect the rights of human and animal subjects

Betty took part in a study where she was told the purpose was to further examine perceptual cognitive processes. Once the study was over, however, the researcher explained to her that the study's real purpose was to assess automaticity of stereotypes. This study is an example of research that used _________ in their methods to hide the true nature of the study. And we see that as a result, the researchers fully _________ participants afterwards.

deception; debriefed

A researcher wants to make sure that her assistants did not give any hints regarding which participants are in which treatment groups and to also make sure the participants did not know which group they were in. She should use (a):

double-blind procedure

Dr. Sharma wants to study the extent to which stress is related to suicidal ideation in people who suffer from depression. She gathers information about the level of stress, depressive symptoms, and suicidal thoughts a set of participants experience the day after they attend the funeral of a loved one. Because this study is assessing people under conditions that are not typical of everyday life, it is lacking in __________ validity.

ecological

The hypothesis in a research study is defined as the

idea, or prediction, that can be tested.

This module argues that forgetting may be an important part of learning. Which is a good example of this argument?

in order to learn more information we must be able to forget information that is incorrect our minds would become cluttered with irrelevant information

When researchers take special care to include and control for every possible variable, the study is likely to have high ___________, even though the results may not generalize to a more realistic situation.

internal validity

Brain stem

involved with vital life functions; includes pons, medulla, and midbrain

Dr. Annistad conducts a correlational research study and calculates that the variables in question have a correlational coefficient of -.81. In this statistic, the number itself gives us information about the ______ of the relationship between the two variables.

magnitude

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases

Frontal lobe

motor, planning and output, language, judgement, memory search, decision making

If you were to spend some time watching people in the checkout line of a local discount store to see how many read the tabloid newspapers displayed next to the register, you have chosen the __________ research method to answer your question.

naturalistic observation

Personal experience is associated with _______, whereas, scientific method is associated with ________.

opinion; fact

The term metacognition refers to:

our thoughts and knowledge about how our learning and memory work

Barbara is complaining that she has terrible abdominal pains. Several physicians have found nothing wrong with her. One physician gives Barbara a prescription for tablets with no real medication in them. "I think that this new medication will be very helpful for your abdominal infection," the physician tells Barbara. Within 24 hours of taking the fake medication Barbara reports that her abdominal pains have disappeared. This is called a ______.

placebo effect

prefrontal cortex

planning, attention, and personality

left hemisphere

processing of language and logical/analytical thought

You want to study the effects of gender on math achievement. However, you know that you cannot randomly assign some people to male and others to be female, so you cannot have a true experiment. In this scenario, what type of research design would you use?

quasi-experiment

motor area of the cortex

region of the cerebral cortex involved in the planning, control, and execution of voluntary movements

Amygdala

regulates arousal and emotion

anterior cingulate cortex

regulation of blood pressure and heart rate

Hypothalamus

regulation of hormones important for homeostasis

Thalamus

relay station for senses

When a neuron is not conducting an electrical message, it has a charge of -70mV known as its

resting membrane potential

When your instructor finishes reviewing a new topic in lecture, she often gives a clicker quiz. Clicker quizzes can serve the purpose of:

retrieval practice

Science is described as a cumulative process. This means that:

science builds on prior discoveries.

The development of _________ has provided a new level of advantage for gathering information from research participants at specific times, often randomly selected, throughout a given day

smartphones

Reading this question and selecting the correct answer reflects the operation of the _____ division

somatic

The _______ division of the peripheral nervous system controls voluntary movements and communication between sense organs.

somatic

right hemisphere

spatial relationships and abstract thought

Dr. Fikshunal is interested in how our bodies respond to being excluded from a group. Therefore, she decides to monitor the heart rate and cortisol levels of participants as they engage in their environment and indicate experiences when they felt ostracized. In this scenario, Dr. Fikshunal is:

studying daily physiology