Psych 7A Midterm 2

Your roommate wakes up and reports that she was dreaming about a large insect chasing her around your dorm room. She was likely in _______ sleep

rapid eye movement (REM)

Categorization is the process of

recognizing similarities and differences among concepts

Chunking information facilitates encoding because it

reduces the absolute number of items to be encoded.

Behaviorists were particularly skeptical of Edward Tolman's research because it seemed to indicate that learning could take place even in the absence of

reinforcement

The hypothesis of linguistic _______ holds that the properties of a given language _______ the way speakers of that language think

relativism; influence

Section A of the chart best illustrates

second-order conditioning

Suppose you have been conditioned to blink your eyes each time an experimenter sounds a buzzer. Art some point, the experimenter says the word "buzz" before sounding the buzzer. Eventually, you will learn to blink your eyes when the experimenter simply says the word "buzz"—even if the buzzer is not sounded. This is an example of

second-order conditioning

Psychologists use the term "sensory modality" to refer to a

specific stimulation of a sensory receptor

In rare cases of severe epilepsy, people can undergo _______ surgery, which severs the _______, the large band of neural fibers connecting the cerebral hemispheres

split brain; corpus callosum

The _______ at one end of the cochlea is sensitive to the vibrations of the bones of the middle ear

stapes

Your friend insists that cigarette smoking calms his nerves, but you are skeptical because in reality, nicotine is a(n)

stimulant

Psychologists have clinically defined drug addiction as substance use disorder, which is essentially the

strong desire to self-administer a drug of abuse.

The key aspect of the hard problem of consciousness is the _______ of each individual's conscious experience

subjectivity

The retina is the

surface at the back of the eye where the image is focused

Linguists like Noam Chomsky distinguish between the specific words that are put together in a sentence, called the _______, and the meaning underlying those words, called the _______

surface structure; deep structure

Long-term potentiation is the term neuroscientists use to describe long-lasting enhancement of

synaptic transmission

In the popular cartoon Where's Waldo, viewers search for a character in a red-and-white striped shirt and hat. This character, Waldo, is hidden among numerous people and objects, many of which are also colored red and white, making Waldo very difficult to locate. In this cartoon, the red-and-white-stripe theme is the

target

A chemical that encounters a taste receptor cell and excites it is called a(n)

tastant

The collections of 50-150 cells on the surface of the tongue, back of the mouth, and roof of the mouth are called

taste buds

Our two chemosensory systems are the _______ system and the _______ system

taste; olfactory

Imagine you have a sibling, Henry, who is two years old. When he is thirsty, he says "Henry milk." This is an example of

telegraphic speech

Some of the free nerve endings in your skin are specialized to detect information about

temperature

Memory, as a general construct, is best defined as

the ability to store and retrieve learned information

In psychology, the word "noise" is defined as

the firing of a sensory cell without a stimulus or in response to an irrelevant stimulus

Believing that a coin is more likely to land on "tails" because it has landed on "heads" for the last four tosses is an example of

the gambler's fallacy.

The first widely used intelligence tests for adults were developed by American psychologists to determine

which draftees should be officers versus ordinary soldiers in World War I

Your friend is cutting back severely on her coffee intake. She is experiencing headaches, fatigue, and irritability as a result of

withdrawal

The cocktail party effect describes a phenomenon in which

you can selectively attend to a particular conversation out of the many conversations taking place

According to the activation-synthesis hypothesis about dreaming, the content of dreams results from

your brain attempting to make meaning out of random bursts of neural activity

You do not act out your vivid dreams because

your brain inhibits motor neurons, and you cannot move

A kindergartener receives a gold star on a classroom chart for every three books he reads. This is an example of a _______ reinforcement schedule

Fixed ratio

Which statement describes information likely stored in episodic memory?

George recalls the first time he saw his girlfriend.

Which situation involves the concept of priming?

Grace read an article about her favorite actor, and later, when choosing a movie, she unknowingly chose to watch a movie with that actor.

Which statement correctly differentiates between habituation and sensitization?

Habituation is a decreased response to a stimulus, whereas sensitization is an increased response to a stimulus.

Which of the following situations represents an effect of hindsight bias?

Jerry rode his bike instead of taking his car to work, then told a co-worker that he had biked in because he knew there would be a car accident holding up traffic along his route

Why does punishment tend to be an ineffective way to change a child's behavior?

Punishment causes the child to become resentful, leading to disobedient behavior

Phonemes are

basic speech sounds that make up languages

As you and a friend throw a softball back and forth, you depend on _______ to help you determine how close the ball is getting to you and when and where to catch it

binocular cues

The observation that animals tend to readily form associations between certain stimuli and responses, such as taste and nausea, due to the survival value of the learning is called

biological constraints on learning

Opioid receptors are responsible for the pain-killing effects of morphine. One area of the brain in which opioids are found is the

brainstem

Hypnosis can be effective in reducing pain, if the hypnotist trains the patient to

disconnect from the unpleasant emotions attached to the pain.

The ability of a language to produce an infinite number of sentences is called _______ capacity

generative

Research on memory consolidation and interference suggests that if you are studying for an exam, you should

get a good night's sleep to facilitate consolidation

The hypothesis that the language we speak influences the way we think is called

linguistic relativism

Scientists who study language are called

linguists

A _______ is a primary reinforcer, whereas a _______ is a secondary reinforcer

lollipop; diploma

An absolute threshold is the

lowest intensity of a stimulus that a person can detect half the time

Dana is very shy and awkward in social situations. Consequently, she tends not to go to parties or attend other social gatherings. Dana is engaging in

passive avoidance

To learn anything through observation, the learner must

pay attention to the model

Which of the following people is likely to experience the most serious case of jet lag?

Brett, who flew for six hours from San Francisco to Boston

Based on the original definition of IQ, a student with an IQ score of 120 is likely to answer IQ test questions like someone who is age _______, even though the student's chronological age is _______

12; 10

Chang is an 8-year-old boy who can do all the tasks a typical 10-year-old can do. His chronological age is

8

Which is an example of positive punishment?

A student is caught texting in class and the professor reprimands him in front of his classmates

Which researcher is most closely associated with the Bobo doll studies?

Albert Bandura

Which of the following scenarios best illustrates size constancy?

As you approach a monument, you perceive that the monument remains the same size

Which of the following is the best summary of behaviorism?

Behaviorism tends to explain learning in terms of observable behavior, generally avoiding reference momental events and entities

Which of the following best demonstrates observational learning?

Ben watched a skateboarder do a trick many times and now Ben can perform the trick, himself

Babies string meaningless sounds—like "da"—together over and over again. Linguists call this

babbling

Which pair of words would be most closely related in a semantic web?

Dog and wolf

Which statement about the capacity of long-term memory is most accurate?

Human memory has a nearly limitless capacity that is difficult to quantify

From the following, identify the best summary of the law of effect.

If a response is followed by a pleasant consequence, it will tend to be repeated; if a response is followed by an unpleasant consequence, it will tend not to be repeated

How does the figure illustrate the concept of a sensory threshold?

If the stimulus is weak enough, the sensory receptor will not reach threshold and will not produce an action potential

Which of the following examples best illustrates an application of the Gestalt rule of continuity?

In the movie theater, you perceive that an actor is moving rather than just appearing first in one place and then inanother place on the screen

One of the best sources of evidence that there is a sensitive period for human language development is that

It can be very difficult for adults who are learning a second language to become proficient in the grammar of that language

Which conclusion about sleep is most consistent with the data shown?

It is normal to experience about five bouts of REM sleep during the night.

Imagine you are caring for a patient who in the past abused alcohol. You find that the patient's memory is heavily impaired. It is very likely that that the patient has

Korsakoff's syndrome.

Which example best represents memorization by hierarchy?

Learning flower names by arranging the flowers by color

Which of the following statements about learning is correct?

Learning leads to a relatively permanent change in behavior.

In which of the following scenarios would you be most likely to succumb to a false alarm in signal detection?

Monitoring for the vibration of your phone in your pocket while you are sitting

The _______ is an example of a decision-making error in which someone fails to properly estimate the probability of a particular outcome after being given additional information

Monty Hall problem

Learned behavior is less prone to extinction if it is conditioned by _______ reinforcement.

Partial

Which of the following is a prototype of "bird"?

Sparrow

Which task is an example of nondeclarative skill learning?

Rhonda improves her speed in assembling toys in the factory after 100 hours of work

Which of the following describes the downside of savant-level memory ability?

Savants are often victims of brain damage or abnormality

Which of the following is most consistently correlated with IQ scores?

School performance

Which of the following is an example of non-associative learning?

Sensitization

Jan's husband calls her while she is at the grocery store to ask her to pick up six varieties of chips for a party. He tells her the varieties he wants and hangs up. While walking to the chip aisle, she repeats the list to herself, then begins to pick up the chips. Which varieties will she most likely remember?

She will remember a few varieties in no particular order.

Who coined the phrase "nature versus nurture" to convey the question of whether genes or upbringing has the most significant effect on developing humans?

Sir Francis Galton

Which statement correctly distinguishes between standardization and normalization of intelligence tests?

Standardization allows for uniform administration of tests; normalization establishes the performance average and variability.

A reinforcer is a consequence that _______ a behavior

Strengthens

What is intelligence?

The ability to acquire, retain, and apply knowledge

Which statement is consistent with the conclusion from Sperling's study of sensory memory?

The duration of sensory memory is brief, lasting less than 300 milliseconds.

The figure shows the response of a touch receptor in response to two stimulus strengths. What can you conclude about the relationship between the strength of the stimulus and the likelihood of the touch receptor to fire?

The harder the push against the skin, the more likely it is that the touch receptor will fire

The fact that people with Williams syndrome have normal verbal abilities but severe deficits in spatial reasoning suggests that

The human brain may be specialized to pick up languages in a way that is distinct from solving other tasks

What makes motherese appealing to babies?

The singsong qualities of motherese communicate positive emotion and reward

Ivy is told that men far outperform women on standardized math tests. Which of the following reflects stereotype threat?

Though Ivy is a gifted mathematician, she performs poorly on the SAT math section

Researchers have studied problem solving by examining the course of people's solutions to the _______ problem, which involves transferring a series of different-sized disks from one spindle to another, following a specific set of rules

Tower of Hanoi

In classical conditioning, the _______ and the _______ are usually the same.

US; CS

Which of the following best demonstrates sensory adaptation?

Unless they think about it, long-time workers at a bakery do not notice the aroma of bread baking in the oven.

Which of the following best illustrates the concept of confirmation bias?

You are a proponent of gun control. You seek out news sources and stories that affirm your beliefs about gun control

Which scenario represents the concept of rehearsal?

You keep repeating a new friend's phone number while looking for your phone.

Which scenario best captures the concept of context-dependent retrieval?

You perform better on a driving test when you are in the car in which you learned to drive.

Suppose you have a phobia of flying. How might classical conditioning be used to help you overcome your phobia?

You should associate flying with something pleasurable in order to reduce your fear

The experience of flow is best exemplified by

a jazz musician absorbed in playing without a conscious effort in the experience of soloing

In the word "rebuilt," re is

a morpheme, but not a phoneme

Psychologists and philosophers use the word qualia to refer to

a person's specific, subjective perceptual experiences

George Sperling was able to differentiate between the amount of information that could be stored in sensory memory and the time until the memory faded by cuing participants to recall

a row of letters in a visual array

The concept of labeled lines refers to the fact that

a separate set of nerves transmits information from each sensory receptor organ to the brain

Retrieval is the process of

accessing information from long-term memory.

You accidentally break off the pull tab when attempting to open a can of soup. You are about to reach for another can when it occurs to you that you can use a regular can opener. You have just demonstrated

acquisition

Some psychoactive drugs work as _______, meaning that they artificially stimulate receptors in a neurotransmitter system. Others work as _______, meaning that they block activity at particular receptors

agonists; antagonists

You want to earn a decent salary at a potential job. You know that there is room for negotiation, so you ask for a slightly higher hourly rate than you think the employer will accept. If the employer ends up giving you an hourly rate close to your initial asking rate, he or she has likely been influenced by the

anchoring effect

A stimulus is

any sensory event that an individual can detect

An elderly man has had a stroke, and his language is now impaired as a result. By definition, he has

aphasia

Monozygotic (MZ) twins

are genetically identical

If Tuan wanted to use the method of loci to help him remember a list of items to get at the grocery story, he should

associate each item on the grocery list with a physical location in his house.

When a subject has learned something that is not immediately demonstrated, _______ learning has occurred

associative

About half of the individuals with savant syndrome also display

autism

Though some people use the term short-term memory to refer to memory for recent events, like weekend plans, psychologists use the term to refer to memory that is limited in

capacity, and to a duration of a few seconds.

The theory of learned helplessness has been used to explain

clinical depression

A child with fetal alcohol syndrome often has

close-set eyes and an absence of the typical folds between the nose and upper lip

According to the work of Fitts and Posner (1967), the associative phase of an individual's progress in learning to drive is best represented when she is

comfortable with driving but makes errors if she plays the radio or talks to a passenger.

Attention is best defined as the

concentration of the mind on a particular object or process

When a split-brain patient tries to describe in words why her left hand selected a stimulus card corresponding to an image presented in her left visual field, she engages in _______ to have her unconscious recognition make sense

confabulation

Your friend Tom lacks the ability to feel pain. Tom's condition is called

congenital insensitivity to pain

Psychologists call the process by which encoded information is transferred from short-term to long-term memory

consolidation

Whenever a rat pushes a red button, it is rewarded with a piece of food. This is an example of a(n) _______ reinforcement schedule

continuous

The bending of light by the _______ and _______ focuses a sharp image onto the retina.

cornea; lens

While you are changing a light bulb in the kitchen, it breaks, leaving the broken end stuck in the socket. First you turn off the power. Then, to avoid getting cut, you use half a potato to remove the broken bulb. According to Sternberg's views, you have displayed _______ intelligence

creative

Contestants who do well on the game show Jeopardy, which involves using the store of facts that they have learned, are displaying _______ intelligence

crystallized

The symptoms of a stroke can be recalled with the acronym FAST, which means you should examine the person's face, arms, speech, and attend to the element of time. This is an example of a(n) _______ task

cued-recall

A circadian rhythm is a

cycle of sleeping and waking that occurs approximately every 24 hours

The surgery that H.M. underwent impaired his _______ memory but left his _______ memory largely intact, meaning he could still learn to perform procedural tasks like mirror drawing

declarative; nondeclarative

The easy problem of consciousness can be solved by

defining different conscious experiences in terms of different brain states

Damage to Broca's area leads to an aphasia characterized by

difficulty in speech production, but not in speech comprehension

In the process of forming memories, when perception ends, _______ begins

encoding

Another name for the physical memory trace in the brain is the

engram

Infants who are breast-fed grow up to have higher IQs than those who are bottle-fed; this suggests a(n) _______ influence on IQ

environmental

Section B of the chart best illustrates

extinction

During an experiment in which participants press a button whenever they have the urge to do so, when would you expect their motor cortices to become active?

few hundred milliseconds before they press the button

The _______ houses the cochlea and other organs that are important for balance

inner ear

Many people report vivid recollections of high-impact events such as the Kennedy assassination, the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the 2012 Newtown school shooting. These memories are referred to as

flashbulb memories

Damage to Wernicke's area in the brain leads to an aphasia characterized by

fluent speech, which may be garbled

Most of the Flynn effect appears to be due to increases in _______ intelligence

fluid

Information stored in the sensory buffer is retained

for a few seconds.

Anterograde amnesia involves a loss of the ability to

form new memories

The primary function of the outer ear, or pinna, is to

gather sounds and direct them to the middle ear

Your friend comes home from a party in an altered state and mistakes your housecat for a lion. Your friend may have taken a(n)

hallucinogen

The Stanford-Binet test and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) report similar IQ scores for children, indicating that the two tests

have cross-test reliability

The "Flynn effect" refers to the finding that the average scores on IQ tests

have substantially increased since the first IQ tests were developed

The _______ appears to be especially important in the formation of cognitive maps

hippocampus

The social theory of hypnosis states that

hypnosis is likely a function of a person accommodating the hypnotist.

The tendency of baby birds to recognize, bond with, and follow the first moving object they see is called

imprinting

Researchers have suggested that insight occurs

in both humans and animals

People who in the past would have been referred to as "mentally retarded" are now generally said to have

intellectual disabilities

According to the duplex theory, we use both _______ differences and _______ differences to localize sounds

intensity; latency

The main distinction between sensation and perception is that only perception involves

interpreting what the stimulus is

A team of psychologists has devised a new intelligence test. Some versions of the test have 20 questions, and some have 50 questions. Some allow the test-takers one hour to complete the test; others give the test-takers as much time as they need. From this information you know that this new intelligence test

is not standardized

Saying that language is lateralized in the brain means that

language function is primarily associated with one hemisphere of the brain.

The acquisition of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or understanding brought about by experience is called

learning

Dyslexia is defined as difficulty in

learning to read

The flexible, transparent structure in the eye that helps focus an image on the back of the eye's interior is called the

lens

All of the following have been shown to correlate with high IQ scores except

life satisfaction

Photoreceptors are the

light-sensitive receptor cells in the retina

Last night Enrico dreamt that he was walking through a strange city and was surrounded by tall buildings. According to Freud, the buildings themselves are the _______ content of Enrico's dream

manifest

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a brain imaging technique that

measures rapid changes in voltage (electrical potential) throughout the brain

The Binet-Simon scale was meant to reveal whether a child's _______ age matched his or her _______ age

mental; chronological

The overwhelming majority of people who are classified as having an intellectual disability have a _______ disability

mild

You associate each line of a poem that you need to memorize with a particular object in your dorm room. This is an example of aiding your memory via

mnemonic devices

One major consequence of psychologist James Flynn's findings is that

more and more tests have been developed to measure analytical intelligence

The basic units of meaning in a language are called

morphemes

The singsong, high-pitched speech with slow, exaggerated pronunciation that parents use with babies is called

motherese

Your friend sometimes falls asleep during short car rides, meals, and even conversations. He also seems to have sudden bouts of muscle weakness and severe fatigue whenever he gets excited or stressed. He is likely suffering from

narcolepsy

You would expect your pupil to be largest when you are

navigating through a dark forest at night

In a _______ test, a subject is presented with a sample stimulus. After a short delay, the sample stimulus is shown again along with a novel alternative. The subject is rewarded for selecting the novel stimulus

non-matching-to-sample

Our memory for carrying out motor and perceptual procedures is referred to as _______ memory

nondeclarative

One of the main reasons psychologists sometimes use nonsense syllables, rather than real words in studies of memory, is that

nonsense syllables are unlikely to be associated with someone's existing knowledge.

A friend tells you that she typically sleeps for about eight hours but often wakes up in the morning right out of anxiety-provoking dreams. Based on the figure, you tell her that this is

normal, because our final episode of REM sleep occurs right before waking

When psychologists say that intelligence test scores are _______ distributed, they mean that the distribution of scores ________

normally; follows a bell-shaped curve

A prominent part of the reward pathway of the brain is the _______, located at the base of the frontal lobe

nucleus accumbens

A group of parents are discussing whether music videos featuring scantily clad women are encouraging teenagers to become sexually active. Which of the following processes is being considered by the parents as the reason that music videos influence sexual activity in teens?

observational learning

The olfactory epithelium, which lines the inside of the nose, houses the

olfactory receptor neurons

Psychologists describe consciousness as one's

perception of his or her own mental processes

In a sense, phantom limb pain is a purely _______ phenomenon.

perceptual

Heritability estimates for IQ apply to _______ but tell us nothing about _______

populations; individuals

Geno was just an average student in school, but he operates a very successful auto repair shop. According to Sternberg's views, Geno most likely has a reasonable amount of _______ intelligence

practical

When you enter an old password to retrieve your email, rather than entering your new password, you are demonstrating _______ interference. On the other hand, not being able to recall your old phone number is an example of _______ interference

proactive; retroactive

Apes have demonstrated the most compelling evidence of their ability to use language by

producing novel combinations of words

Fatal familial insomnia is a rare genetic disorder afflicting adults in middle age. Sufferers

progressively sleep less and less, until they stop sleeping and ultimately die

Kim Peek was described as a savant mainly because he was able to

remember all of the details of every book he had ever read

Early studies of short-term memory by Brown and Peterson showed that information in short-term memory vanishes in about 20 seconds unless you

repeat the information to yourself.

Imagine that you were in a car accident in which you hit your head on the steering wheel. The next day you could not remember anything that had occurred in the week before the accident. You were suffering from

retrograde amnesia

The term heuristic is a scientific term for a

rule of thumb or an educated guess

Howard Gardner would argue that a successful _______ is most likely to be high in interpersonal intelligence

salesperson

Jamal has multiple intellectual disabilities. Yet, he has an extraordinary ability in mathematics and is able to solve complex mathematical problems within seconds. On this basis, Jamal would most likely be characterized as displaying

savant syndrome

Our knowledge of facts, such as the year that President Kennedy was shot or the fact that Paris is a city in France, is collectively called _______ memory.

semantic

The study of the meanings of words is known as

semantics

Detection of the sound of a bell ringing is referred to as a _______. Once you interpret the stimulus as the sound of your alarm clock, it is referred to as a _______

sensation; perception

The brief impressions formed as a result of neural activity in and around sensory receptors are called _______ memories

sensory

_______ memory gives us a very brief impression of what we feel when we first detect a stimulus

sensory

A specialized sensory cell that detects stimuli is called a

sensory receptor cell

Your roommate walks into the kitchen rather shaken and tells you that, upon waking, she was unable to move or speak for about thirty seconds. This phenomenon is called

sleep paralysis

Research suggests that racial differences in average IQ among Americans is most likely due to

socioeconomic factors

Your cat comes running as soon as she hears you open a can of food. In this example, the _______ is the conditioned stimulus

sound of the can being opened

Most _______ tastes, like that of vinegar, are chemically acidic

sour

A receptive field is

the region of space where stimuli affect the activity of a cell in a sensory system

Ashley was telling her friend about a movie she saw last night when she realized she could not remember the lead actor's name. She could only remember that it began with a B. This is an example of

the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

The main idea behind Gestalt psychology is that

the whole perception is more than just the sum of our separate sensations

The case of the patient Tan is significant to the history of psychology and neurology because the case provides evidence that

there may be a direct correspondence between a specific part of the brain and specific language skills.

Monozygotic twins raised together have a higher correlation in IQ scores than MZ twins raised apart. This offers proof that

there may be an environmental influence on intelligence

The classic theory about hypnosis being a uniquely altered state of consciousness is known as the _______ theory of hypnosis

trance

If your doctor prescribes Xanax to alleviate anxiety, she is prescribing a(n)

tranquilizer

Thorndike believed that most learning occurred by

trial and error

A potential consequence of convergence is that you will be unable to

use convergence and binocular disparity cues simultaneously

The concept of the availability heuristic is illustrated when you

vow to never drive again because of the horrible accident you witnessed in front of your house

Cognitive psychologists focus on studying how

we acquire and process information to gain knowledge

The greatest adaptive, perceptual advantage to having two ears rather than one is that

we are more easily able to localize sounds with two ears

The visual field is

what we can see without moving our eyes