Psychology 101 Final Exam
Your uncle tells you about an interesting magazine article explaining that humans use 10 percent of their brains. As a student of psychology, your response should be:
"Well, research actually shows that almost all of the brain is continually active."
This correlation has the strongest predictive value
-0.75
The median is better than the mean as a measure of central tendency for this distribution.
3; 4; 12; 86
The neurotransmitter most likely to be found in the synaptic cleft between a motor neuron and a muscle
Acetylcholine
_________ activate receptors in the same way as the normal neurotransmitters do (aka mimics the NT)
Agonists
Which part of the brain relays information between the spinal cord and the cerebellum?
Brainstem
A function most directly controlled by the brainstem.
Breathing
After surgery to control epilepsy, Miguel could understand people but lost his ability to speak. It is most likely that the surgery impacted his
Broca's area
Which of the following describes the easy problem of consciousness?
Connecting conscious experiences to different brain states
The most appropriate research method for exploring whether childhood emotional abuse predicts higher levels of adult depression
Correlational research
Imagine that you are at a party and someone urges you to try ecstasy. Present an argument as to why you should refuse the drug using information learned in class.
Ecstasy over excites serotonin and causes the neurons to die off. The release of serotonin causes changes in dopamine. Holes in the brain can begin to form after repetitive use.
Who is best described as a structuralist?
Edward Titchener
What is a mainstream psychologist most likely to think about Sigmund Freud?
Freudian theory is untestable and not grounded in science.
Refer to the image of a brain. There are four lobes, identify them.
Frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe
This perspective argues that human behavior develops in certain ways because it serves a useful purpose
Functionalism
Depressant drugs typically act on the ________ neurotransmitter system
GABA
Would produce a nearly normal distribution
Heights of all adult men in America
How does the figure illustrate the concept of a sensory threshold? (image is of response amplitude and stimulus strength)
If the stimulus is weak enough, the sensory receptor will not reach threshold and will not produce an action potential
Stage 2 sleep is marked by the appearance of ________, trains of spikes in the EEG, and also larger single spikes called _______.
K complexes , sleep spindles
On which of the following points would Plato and Descartes likely have agreed?
Knowledge does not rely on our fallible senses
In what brain area would a stroke be most likely to impair language comprehension?
Left temporal lobe
If a doctor stimulated your occipital lobe, which would you be most likely to experience?
Lights and colors
___________ taught at Wellesley College for more than 30 years and was the first woman president of the American Psychological Association.
Mary Whiton Calkins
Among the various touch receptors, _______ have a role in sensing touch and _______ have a role in sensing vibration.
Merkel's discs , Pacinian corpuscles
Refer to the map. Which of the following people is likely to experience the most serious case of jet lag?
Michelle, who flew for six hours from New York to Los Angeles
Accurate statement about neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters bind to receptors on the membrane of the postsynaptic neuron
You hear of a student in your form who, while he was asleep , tried to attack his roommate. He is likely suffering form
REM behavior disorder
Which accurately reflects the path of information flow that takes place when child jerks his hang away from a hot pan?
Sensory neurons --> spinal interneurons --> motor neurons
Which of the following statements is true about sound waves?
Sound waves are collected in the outer ear, amplified in the middle ear, and transduced into neural messages in the inner ear
How to best differentiate structuralism from functionalism
Structuralism asked what happens when an organism does something, while functionalism asked how and why
This is true about the strength of a correlation
The closer a correlation is to 0.00, the weaker the relationship
Image of left and right eye and optic nerve. What does this figure demonstrate?
The left visual cortex receives information about what we see in the right half of the visual field.
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
Do phantom perceptions arise from erroneous neural signals from an amputated stump, or from residual activity in brain networks, formerly assigned to the missing part? What evidence is there? What treatments can help patients better control their phantom sensations and pain? Describe one in detail.
They do not arise from erroneous neural signals but rather neural networks in the brain. Mirror treatment tricks the brain by providing an illusion.
Most accurate statement about vesicles
They empty neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft
Why would you feel pain when placing your hand on both a hot and a cold pipe at the same time?
Touch receptors are reporting the sensations of heat and cold, but the brain combines the two and perceives pain
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
Scenario that best illustrates the size cue for monocular depth perception
While walking on the beach, you perceive that your friend is far away because he looks very small
........ is often credited with establishing the first psychological laboratory, thus establishing psychology as an experimental science.
Wilhelm Wundt
________ was an early proponent of functionalism
William James
The best example of a sensation
Your skin receptors detect the touch of a student walking by
A meta-analysis is
a combination of results from many related studies
Neuropathic pain is caused by
a damaged of malfunctioning nervous system
Psychologists and philosophers used the world qualia to refer to
a person's specific, subjective perceptual experiences
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
A hypothesis is
a testable prediction about the relationship between variables
If not for the subcoeruleus, you would
act out your dreams
Same 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
Myelinated axons are useful because they
allow action potentials to travel more quickly
Stage 1 sleep and relaxed wakefulness are both associated with ________ in the EEG
alpha rhythms
Loudness is to _________ as pitch is to __________
amplitude , frequency
Loudness is determined by the:
amplitude or intensity of a sound wave
Cici is trying to overcome her heroin addiction. She takes a daily medication that keeps her from getting high, even if she uses heroin. This medication is most likely
an endorphin antagonist
What are the two endogenous (naturally occurring) neurotransmitters in the brain that act on the cannabinoid receptors? Which is more abundant in the brain? List for of the seven brain regions known to contain cannabinoid receptors.
anandamide and 2-AG anandamide is involved in the brainstem and immune system. 2-AG is found across the entire brain and more abundant. brain regions: brainstem and spinal cord, amygdala, hypothalamus, hippocampus, neocortex, basal ganglia and the cerebellum
Neurons are more likely to fire when they
are depolarized
If you accidentally ingested PCP, you would probably feel
as if you were having an out-of-body experience
Without the ________, you would not cycle through slow-wave sleep
basal forebrain
John Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and B.F. Skinner would have agreed that psychology is the study of
behavior
The main difference between binocular and monocular depth cues is that
binocular cues require information from both eyes, while monocular cues do not
Each of us has a ___________ that naturally keeps track of the passage of time and is often disrupted when we travel to different time zones
biological clock
The Jennifer-John study examining bias against female applicants for a science job suggests that
both men and women are biased against female applicants
Opioid receptors are responsible for the pain-killing effects of morphine. One area of the brain in which opioids are found is the
brainstem
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
Excitatory synapses
bring neurons closer to the firing threshold
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
Neurotransmitters influence the polarization of a neuron by
causing receptor channels to open, allowing charged sodium ions to flow into the neuron
Benedict was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. His injury was most likely located in his ________ system
central nervous (brain and spinal cord)
The voltage difference across a neuron's membrane
changes frequently
The suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus regulates our
circadian rhythm
Vibrations from the oval window are relayed to the
cochlea
In the retina of the human eye, most ________ are concentrated in or near the _______
cones , fovea
The photoreceptors we need to appreciate a blue sky on a sunny day are the _______, whereas the photoreceptors we use to detect the stars outside at night are the _______.
cones , rods
Your friend Tom lacks the ability to feel pain. Tom's condition is called
congenital insensitivity to pain
A binocular cue for depth perception
convergence
The bending of light first by the _______ and then the ________ focuses a sharp image onto the retina
cornea , lens
A circadian rhythm is a
cycle of sleeping and waking that occurs approximately every 24 hours
What units are used to measure the loudness (amplitude) of sound?
decibels
Giving a person a drug very similar in molecular shape to GABA would likely result in
decreased neural activity
The numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to ________ respectively.
dendrites, cell body, axon, and axon terminals.
In an experiment, the variable that is expected to differ across the experimental and control groups in the _______ variable
dependent
If you are awake and concentrating on a task while an EEG machine is recording your brain activity, the EEG should record
desynchronized, relatively high frequency activity (beta waves)
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
If you were an artist drawing cityscape, you would apply the linear perspective depth cue by
drawing the streets converging with the edges of buildings at the horizon
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
Heroin and morphine exert their effects by acting as agonists at receptor sites for
endorphins
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
Parents who agree with John Locke's notion of tabula rasa would most likely
expose their children to a rich variety of sensory experiences
Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark found that doll tests
exposed internalized racism in African-American children, particularly among children attending segregated schools
The motor cortex is located in the ______ lobe of the brain
frontal
The primary function of the outer ear, or pinna, is to
gather sounds and direct them to the middle ear
The specialized receptor cells inside the cochlea are called
hair cells
Nerve deafness is caused by damage to the
hair cells or auditory nerve
Your friend comes home from a party in an altered state and mistakes your housecoat for a lion. Your friend may have taken a
hallucinogen
In the homunculus that corresponds to the mapping of the somatosensory cortex, which body part occupies the largest area?
hand
Frequency of sound is measured in
hertz
Inhibitory synapses
hyperpolarize neurons
In an experiment, the variable manipulated by the researcher is the ________ variable.
independent
The _________ houses the cochlea and other organs that are important for balance
inner ear
According to the duplex theory, we use both _________ differences and __________ differences to localize sounds
intensity , latency
The primary type of neuron in neural networks is a
interneuron
In a psychology experiment, subjects listen to a variety of tones presented at different frequencies and then reflect on the experience, describing what they heard as precisely as possible. These individuals would have been using a process called
introspection
Stage 3 sleep is also called slow-wave sleep because the EEG
is defined by very low-frequency waves
A recent study found that married people are less likely to have personality disorders than unmarried people. The news reporter covering the study advised people to get married to improve their personalities. You know this recommendation is not warranted because
it is possible that personality disorders keep people from marrying
Imagine your professor asks you to conduct an experiment in which you have to increase the intensity of a light several times and determine the smallest change in the intensity of light that your friend can detect. You are measuring your friend's
just noticeable difference (JND)
Weber's fraction expresses the ________ as a proportion of the original stimulus
just noticeable difference (JND)
The adequate stimulate for the visual system is ________, and the adequate stimulus for the auditory system is _________
light , sound
Photoreceptors are the
light-sensitive receptor cells in the retina (rods and cones)
An absolute threshold is the
lowest intensity of a stimulus that a person can detect 100 percent of the time
The brainstem consists of the
midbrain, pons and medulla
Occlusion is a _______ depth cue
monocular
Messages from the central nervous system are carried to muscles by
motor neurons
The three main functional types of neurons are
motor, sensory, and interneurons
A woman with a disease that has damaged her dopamine receptors is most likely to experience
movement abnormalities
The poor functioning of receptors for hypocretin in the hypothalamus plays a central role in the symptom of
narcolepsy
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
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
You would expect your pupil to be largest when you are
navigating through a dark forest at night.
After many years of playing extremely loud rock music, Peter Townshead of the famous rock group The Who has suffered a significant hearing loss, which cannot be corrected with a hearing aid. Township is suffering from
nerve deafness (ototoxic)
Unlike agonists and antagonists, ________ do not interfere with the normal binding of neurotransmitters to receptors
neuromodulators
Otto Loewi electrically stimulated a nerve in a frog heart. He then applied fluid surrounding the heart to a second heart. In this experiment, he found evidence that
neurons communicate chemically
The study of the nervous system is called
neuroscience
A patient has a dangerously low heart rate and is having difficulty breathing. The neurotransmitter that would be most helpful to him is
norepinephrine
The ________ theory of color vision is the idea that color vision is based on a system of paired opposites of color
opponent-process
Separating the middle ear from the inner ear is a structure called the
oval window
The ________ at one end of the cochlea is sensitive to the vibrations of the bones of the middle ear
oval window
Nociceptors are free nerve endings that are specialized to sense
pain
Your brain's _______ lobe is most involved in allowing you to feel an annoying pebble in your shoe
parietal
White matter refers to
parts of the brain filled with myelinated axons
Psychologists describe consciousness as one's
perception of time and place or awareness of the presence of other people ?
In a sense, phantom limb pain is a purely _______ phenomenon
perceptual
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
population
After a skydiving accident, an MRI showed damage to Rose's cerebellum. She is most likely to have difficulty with
practicing yoga
Following a head injury, Maria experienced a dramatic personality change. She now gambles heavily, swears and yells at work, and has difficulty planning ahead. She most likely experienced damage to her
prefrontal cortex
Reliability refers to whether your measurement tool _________ and validity to whether it ________.
produces repeatable results , measures what it is supposed to measure
Sensory adaption is the
progressive loss of responsiveness in sensory cells exposed to a constant stimulus
Fatal familial insomnia is a rare genetic disorder afflicting adults in the middle age. Sufferers
progressively sleep less and less, until they stop sleeping and ultimately die
Ethical principles require researchers to
provide information about potential risks to participants before they begin a study
Drugs like psilocybin, lysergic acid diethyl amide (LSD), and mescaline are classified as hallucinogens because they cause
radically altered perceptions and sensory experiences
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)
What are the three Rs set forth by scientist in the '60s (be sure to explain each one)? What two types of testing are used as examples of the positive effects of implementing the three Rs?
reduction, replacement and refinement LD50 and LD80
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 sensory code is a
relationship between stimuli and the action potentials they produce in sensory cells
Psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn is best known for he work on the
relationships between humans and animal behaviors
The alpha rhythm is a pattern of brain waves that occurs during
relaxed wakefulness
A measure of conscientiousness produces very similar scores each time a person repeats the exercise, but it doesn't predict whether a person is reliable in everyday life. This measure appears to be
reliable but not valid
Compared to experimental research, survey research is limited because it
relies more on the honesty and accurate memories of participants
The Tuskegee syphilis study is famous because
researchers failed to inform participants that they had a treatable disease
Electrical stimulation of the ________ will rouse a sleeping animal from its slumber
reticular formation
Sensory information from the left side of the body is processed in the _______ and mapped onto the cortex
right hemisphere
If heavy snowfall in Alaska has a correlation of -0.78 with the consumption of ice cream and a correlation of +0.78 with the sale of boots, you can predict that for a snowy January in Alaska, the store will
sell more boots and ice cream sales will be lower
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
When you scrape your knee, pain is relayed from your knee to your central nervous system by
sensory neurons
A specialized sensory cell that detects stimuli is called a
sensory receptor
Eyes and ears are
sensory receptor organs
MDMA, or ecstasy, increases the risk of depression because the drug produces significant changes in the activity of
serotonin
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.
Dopamine is most directly involved in
signaling pleasure
Some have speculated that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is actually the results of
sleep apnea
Your roommate walks in 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
Drugs classified as depressants typically
slow down neural transmission and behavior
The peripheral nervous system is divided into the _______ nervous system and the _______ nervous system
somatic , autonomic
Our perception of sound is directly related to the physical properties of:
sound waves
What causes the eardrum to vibrate?
sound waves that are funneled down the ear canal
Stimulant drugs generally
speed up mental activity and neural transmission
Your friend insists that cigarette smoking calms his nerves, but you are skeptical because in reality, nicotine is a
stimulant
A ________ is a physical event that a sensory receptor cell might detect, whereas a ________ is the final interpretation of that physical event
stimulus , percept
The key aspect of the hard problem of consciousness is the ________ of each individual's conscious experience
subjectivity
You are home alone when you hear strange noises in your house. This causes your _______ system to trigger your heart to race
sympathetic nervous
The idea that children are born with no knowledge or "content" whatsoever and are "filled" by life experience is called
tabula rase
Scientists use laboratory experiments primarily to
test cause-and-effect relationships
The auditory nerve transmits neural signals to the
thalamus
Action potentials travel at speeds
that differ from one neuron to another
The inner ear includes which of the following structures?
the cochlea, basilar membrane, and hair cells
What separates the outer ear from the middle ear?
the eardrum
During an action potential
the inside of a neuron's axon becomes more positively charged than the outside
Psychology is best defined as the study of
the mind and behavior
In an experiment treating spider phobia, half of the participants get eight hours of cognitive-behavioral treatment. The other half get eight hours of attention from a therapist but no active treatment. Both groups report a statistically significant reduction in their fear of spiders. This is evidence that
the placebo effect can be significant
Key functions of the hypothalamus are
the regulation of hunger and thirst
The reason that we have blind spots in our visual fields is that
there are no photoreceptors on the optic disc
The hammer, anvil, and stirrup are
three tiny bones in the middle ear
Meissner's corpuscles respond to
touch
The corpus callous is directly responsible for
transferring information between the left and right hemispheres
The primary function of the three ossicles of the middle ear is to
transmit vibrations to the inner ear
The fact that we have short-, medium-, and long-wavelength cones that each respond to lights of different colors is most supportive of the ________ theory of color vision
trichromatic
What event occurs first during an action potential?
voltage gated sodium channels open
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
According to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato
we cannot necessarily rely on our senses to learn the truth
The visual field is
what we can see without moving our eyes
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 _______ would reflect light of all colors
white shirt
Best illustration photoreceptor adaptation
you find it difficult to avoid walking into objects when you first enter a dark room, until your eyes adjust
If your hammer, anvil and stirrup (ossicles) become brittle or damaged:
you may develop conduction deafness
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
Size constancy refers to
your perception that an object remains the same size, even as you get closer or farther away
