Psychology mid term

The connection between two neurons is strengthened by the repeated activation of the synapses between these neurons, according to

Hebb's rule

Which of the following statements concerning psychodynamic psychology is FALSE?

Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers were two well-known neo-Freudians

Which of the following statements about social norms is FALSE?

Age, disability, and sexual orientation have not been shown to influence social norms.

Which of the following is known as the "truth drug," but which can elicit fantasies that are mistaken for real memories?

Amytal

Regarding anabolic steroid use, which of the following statements is FALSE?

Anabolic steroids are a synthetic version of epinephrine

Teaching primates to communicate in sign language in order to develop better methods for teaching language to aphasic children would be an example of a(n)

Animal Model

Compared to continuous reinforcement, partial reinforcement

is more resistant to extinction

the problem with giving so much weight to eyewitness testimony in court is that

it is frequently wrong

A neuron's threshold is

its trigger point for firing

Words and symbols and the rules for combining them are referred to as

language

In an example from your textbook, subjects were exposed to the following problem: A $5 bill is placed on a table and a stack of objects is balanced precariously on top of the bill. The problem is to remove the $5 bill without touching or moving any of the objects on top of it. The best solution to this problem involves tearing the money. People who fail to solve this problem because they view it as a "taboo" to destroy "things of value" are probably experiencing which barrier to problem solving?

learned

For most people, an injury to which of the following brain areas would result in impairment of speaking, reading, writing, and math calculation abilities?

left cerebral hemisphere

The cerebral cortex is divided into eight smaller areas known as

lobes

Rote learning is very similar to which of the following

maintenance rehearsal

Short-term memories can be prolonged by

maintenance rehearsal

Forming oversized images of objects in one's mind

makes it easier to see the details of the object

A common error made by college students is

marking too much in their textbooks

Severe damage to which of the following parts of the brain would most likely result in death

medulla

Although Mr. S. had to devise ways to forget unimportant information, he did make his living by wowing audiences with his ability to memorize long strings of digits, meaningless consonants, mathematical formulas, and poems in foreign languages. Mr. S was a professional memorizer, or

mnemonist

Learning the latest dance step by watching others on television is an example of which kind of learning

modeling

Which of the following is NOT a primary reinforcer

money

Which of the following is a disease in which the immune system attacks and destroys the myelin in a person's body, causing the person to experience numbness, weakness, or paralysis

multiple sclerosis

The processing of information within our nervous system occurs because of the cooperation of large numbers of neurons connected together in

neural networks

If you have 20/20 visual acuity, then you have

normal vision

Marisol stares at an image of the U.S. flag with the stars black, the field around the stars yellow, and the stripes black and green. She then stares at a white sheet of paper. The afterimage of a red, white, and blue flag is explained by which theory of color vision?

opponent-process

Thinking errors often result from using

oversimplified concepts and all-or-nothing thinking

The part of the nervous system that quiets the body after arousal and helps maintain vital functions (like breathing) at moderate levels is the __________ branch.

parasympathetic

One of the authors of your psychology textbook described what appeared to be an apparent murder, but it turned out to be something quite different. The girl's words that "someone is killing her father" had completely shaped the author's misperceptions. This illustrates that our experiences are filtered through our expectations and beliefs to form

perceptual constructions

An inactive substance, such as a sugar pill or a saline injection, that is given in the place of a drug in psychological research or by physicians who want to treat a complaint by suggestion, is called a(n)

placebo

Which of the following decreases the likelihood that the response will occur again by initiating discomfort?

positive punishment

Which part of the brain generates our sense of self, including our awareness of our current emotional state

prefrontal cortex

Kasey is having trouble learning French because she finds that having learned Spanish earlier makes it more difficult for her to now learn French. This is known as

proactive interference

Limitations of naturalistic observation include the

problems of observer effects and observer bias.

Bogani cut his finger while slicing a tomato. The first pain message he recieved

quickly disappeared

When your little niece asked you to name Santa's reindeer with no hints or clues, your memory was being measured by

recall

The main difference between an expert and a novice chess player is that the expert

recognizes the best patterns of play

intense problem solving and planning require

reflective processing

The blinking of your eye to a puff of air would be a good example of a

reflex

Regarding the sensitivity of the various measures of memory, the correct order from most sensitive memory measure to the least sensitive is

relearning, recognition, recall

Advertisers would be very happy if they heard you humming their jingle around your house because you have fallen prey to an attention-getting device called

repetition

When a teenager loses his phone privileges or is "grounded," the parent is using

response cost

If you cram for a psychology exam and then later the same night cram for a history exam, your memory for psychology will be less accurate because of

retroactive interference

A parent is trying to increase the time his child spends studying by giving the child a baseball card for each hour he studies. The child does not increase or decrease his study time. This story illustrates the difference between

rewards and reinforcers

One day, a classmate with whom you've been trying to go out socially gives you her phone number, which you write on your hand. However, as you try to put the number into your phone later, you cannot make out the last number. If you punch in the area code and the first six numbers plus "0", then punch in the first six digits plus "1", then the first six digits plus "2", etc. until you get the correct number, you are solving your problem by

rote

Tests of memory based upon relearning use which of the following to demonstrate the retention of what was previously learned

savings score

Plans for determining which responses will be reinforced are known as

schedules of reinforcement

An empirical investigation that is structured to answer questions about the world in a systematic and intersubjective fashion is called a(n)

scientific observation

Which of the following determines what information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory

selective attention

Self-management based on keeping records of response frequencies is known as

self-recording

The key to any self-management program is

self-recording because it provides feedback

A father and his young son walk by a store and see a big sign in the store window advertising a "Fire Sale" next Tuesday. Although the father knows this means that the store will be selling their goods at greatly reduced prices, his son wonders why anyone would sell "fire." This difference in their reactions is due to

semantics

Psychologist Nalini Ambady asked people to watch three 10-second video clips of teachers they did not know and then rate these teachers. Compared to the year-end course evaluations made by actual students in the course, these intuitive ratings by these experimental participants

showed a positive correlation

Olfaction is another name for the sense of

smell

Which of the following theorists is associated with Gestalt psychology?

Max Wertheimer

Luria studied Mr. S., who had an amazing memory. Concerning Mr. S.'s abilities, which of the following statements is FALSE?

Mr. S. had no difficulty separating fact from fantasy

If students who complete a study skills course raised their grade point averages, can we conclude that the course caused their improvement?

No, because there was no control group

The researcher stated that in his experiment, aggression will be described as "a negative statement or gesture made by the frustrated individual toward the person who interrupted their work on the puzzle." This description is considered to be a(n)

Operational Definition

In order to permit scientific study, covert behaviors are

Operationally defined in terms of measurable behavior

Concerning eyewitness testimony, which of the following statements is FALSE

Our everyday perceptions are rarely as inaccurate or distorted as those of an emotional eyewitness to a crime.

Students who do well on an intelligence test tend to do well in their school grades. This ability of the IQ tests to forecast future school success illustrates which goal of psychology?

Prediction

The gate control theory was proposed by

Ronald Melzack

Regarding the effects of severe, intense punishment, which of the following statements is TRUE?

Severe punishment can permanently suppress responding, even for actions as basic as eating

How might a child raised in the city learn to fear snakes and respond emotionally to mere pictures of them?

The child observed others reacting emotionally to the word snake or to snake images in the media.

Regarding the professions of spcyhology, which of the following statements is FALSE?

The word "shrink" is a slang term that refers to all types of counselors and mental health professionals.

According to your textbook, which of the following is NOT one of the three broad perspectives that shape modern psychology?

Therapeutic

Which of the following is NOT a reason that people tend to put great confidence in flashbulb memories, even when they are wrong?

These events were so emotionally charged that they were initially repressed into the unconscious.

Which of the following statements would be considered good advice to improve memory for your college studies?

Use recitation as you study to practice retrieving information

When we form oversimplified concepts based on gender or ethnicity, we are relying on

social stereotypes

The autonomic nervous system contains two branches called the

sympathetic and parasympathetic systems

Santos is learning the rules for ordering words in the formation of sentences. Santos is studying

syntax

A therapy widely used to extinguish fears and phobias is called

systematic desensitization

When computer-generated images are used to safely simulate the experience of boarding an airplane for a person with a phobia of air travel, the person is undergoing a form of

systematic desensitization

As Wundt studied vision, hearing, taste, touch, memory, and time perception in the first psychological lab, he helped make psychology a true science because he insisted on the use of measurement and

systematic observation

Injury to even small areas of which brain part can cause deafness, blindness, or loss of any other sense, except smel

thalamus

Critical thinking includes which of the following?

the ability to admit that one can be wrong about one's ideas

The two cerebral hemispheres are connected by a band of fibers called

the corpus callosum

Food tends to lose its "taste" when one has a cold because

the olfactory sense is disrupted

MSG's reputation as a "flavor enhancer" occurs because

the savory odors of the food are combined with the taste of glutamate

The cognitive interview technique includes all of the following EXCEPT

the use of hypnosis

A person usually becomes car sick or sea sick because

there are conflicting signals from the visual, kinesthetic, and vestibular systems.

According to the trichromatic theory of color vision

there are three types of cones, each sensitive to red, green, or blue

placebos have such a strong effect on people because

they alter conscious and unconscious expectations

By altering metabolism, which gland can have a sizable effect on personality with overactivity of this gland causing excitability and nervousness and underactivity of this gland causing lethargy and sleepiness?

thyroid

Research has shown that depth perception begins to develop as early as what age

two weeks

the most effective means of reducing a child's pain during dental work is likely to be

using distraction or counterirritation.

Advertisers often gain attention when selling a product by

using motives, such as anxiety and sex

Which of the following functions is not controlled by the autonomic nervous system?

utilization of the sense organs

On which schedule of reinforcement would a person make an inconsistent number of correct responses before receiving a reinforcer? (For example, a reinforcer would be given after three to seven correct responses with the actual number changing randomly.)

variable ratio

After appearing to produce vivid memories in his patients through brain activation, which researcher proposed that the brain records the past like a "strip of movie film, complete with sound track"?

Wilder Penfield

APA professional codes stress all of the following EXCEPT

a ban on advertising

Saltatory conduction refers to

a nerve impulse jumping from gap to gap in the myelin layer

Which type of long-term memory can be fully expressed only as actions (or "know-how") and represents the most basic "automatic" elements of conditioning, learning, and memory?

a procedural memory

Which of the following is another example of trial and error thinking that may work if the number of alternatives is small and involves trying possible solutions in a more or less arbitrary or unsystematic order

a random search strategy

As a coffee lover, you have become very efficient at carrying out the steps necessary to make a cup of espresso. Your learning is an example of

a response chain

An artery carrying blood to Derrick's brain has become blocked and caused some brain tissue to die. Derrick has suffered

a stroke

Watching the night sky and seeing "a shooting star" is reinforced on which schedule of reinforcement

a variable interval

Ricardo was given curare and suffered paralysis. By attaching to receptor sites on his muscles, curare competes with

acetylcholine

Which neurotransmitter normally activates muscles

acetylcholine

The condition in which too much growth hormone is secreted toward the end of the growth period is called

acromegaly

Which of the following is a major dimension of connotative meaning as measured by the semantic differential?

active-passive

If a person is on a FR-6 schedule, he or she will receive a reinforcer

after making exactly six correct responses

Herrera typically classifies events or issues as absolutely right or wrong, fair or unfair, or good or bad. Herrera is exhibiting

all-or-nothing thinking

Which part of the limbic system explains why people who suffer from phobias and disabling anxiety often feel afraid without knowing why?

amygdala

The use of learning principles to change problems, such as overeating, unrealistic fears, or temper tantrums, is called

behavior therapy

The "fight or flight" branch of the autonomic nervous system would be of most interest to a

biopsychologist

The afterimages you have seen after the "flash" of a flashbulb are a result of the visual pigments in the retina

bleaching

The part of the retina where there are no rods or cones is called the

blind spot

More American college students than Chinese students were able to solve the cave problem by recalling the "Hansel and Gretel story," while more Chinese students than American students solved the statue's weight problem by recalling the "weighing of the elephant" fable. These differing percentages illustrate all of the following EXCEPT that

both groups of students exhibited functional fixedness regarding the stories they had heard in childhood

Bifocal lenses are used to correct

both near vision and distance vision

Olfaction and gustation are considered

chemical senses

Organizing information into larger units as a way of improving the efficiency of short-term memory is called

chunking

The study of similarities and differences in the behavior of different species is called

comparative psychology

The semantic differential measures a concept's __________ meaning

connotative

Information and events occurring just before a head injury are remembered very poorly or not at all because

consolidation is interrupted

To be effective, punishment must be given

contingently

A teacher wants to find out if a new problem-based history program will increase history achievement scores. The students who will NOT be exposed to this problem-based history program but will be taught the specific material in the traditional manner are part of which group?

control

If retrieval stimuli are missing when you are trying to remember an event, you will most likely experience

cue-dependent forgetting

The dictionary definition of a word is its __________ meaning.

denotative

Serotonin deficiency can lead to

depression

Compared with learning by rote, which of the following produces learning that is more lasting and flexible

discovery learning

Your English assignment is to write a short poem about fire and ice. To complete this assignment, you will need to use __________ thinking

divergent

The ears of bats can transduce and hear sound waves that humans cannot. This allows them to fly in complete darkness by using

echolocation

When Sarah relates her own life experiences to what she is learning in her psychology class, it will be easier for her to recall the information on an exam. Sarah is engaging in

elaborative processing

The activation of mirror neurons may play a role in a person's ability to identify with another person's experiences and feelings, a skill known as human

empathy

In a study that focused on taxi drivers in London, England, who must learn the names and locations of tens of thousands of streets in order to earn their licenses, the experienced cabbies exhibited superior memory for street information with the parts of their brains responsible for processing this learning being

enlarged

Deception, invasion of privacy, and lasting harm are considerations in the

ethics of psychological researchers.

Jeremy is a psychologist working with a team of archeologists. By working with this team, he hopes to piece together the changes that have occurred in human parenting since the dawn of time. Jeremy is most likely a(n) __________ psychologist.

evolutionary

The vestibular sense helps keep us from

falling over

selective combination, selective comparison, and selective encoding are all related to

finding solutions by insight

The first correct response made after a set time period has passed is reinforced with responses made during the time period not being reinforced. This statement describes which schedule of reinforcement?

fixed interval

People tend to review emotionally charged events over and over in their minds, telling others of the events, and also seeing many of these events over and over again in the news. For these reasons, many people place great confidence in their _________ memories.

flashbulb

The recollections we have of emotionally charged events seem to be unusually vivid and permanent and often revolve around how we were reacting to the event. We also tend to place great confidence in these recollections, even when they are wrong. These vivid, but sometimes inaccurate, recollections are called __________ memories

flashbulb

The mnemonist Mr.S has such an exceptional memory that he had to devise ways to

forget

An expert bird watcher would be better than a beginner at all of the following skills EXCEPT

generating eidetic images of birds in his or her mind

Damage to which part of the limbic system would most likely impair memory

hippocampus

The basic color categories of red, orange, yellow, green, etc. refer to

hue

When using the three tools to control behavior, it is usually best to begin by

ignoring a problem behavior, or shifting attention to a desirable activity and then reinforcing the resulting desirable behavior with praise

Thought that is intuitive, haphazard, associative, or personal is termed _____ thought

illogical

As you focus on your cell phone conversation while driving, you miss the road sign where you needed to make a turn and drive 20 miles out of the way. This is an example of

inattentional blindness

William has been working diligently on an engineering project, but he has gotten to the point that he sees no way to a viable solution. So, he sets aside the problem and works on another project. By setting aside the problem, William is allowing problem-solving to proceed on a subconscious level. This stage of creative thinking is known as

incubation

Regarding the practice of "thin-slicing", which of the following statements is FALSE?

"Thin-slicing" is a case of hurried irrationality that always leads to faulty reasoning

A common test for color blindness or color weakness is the

Ishihara test

To explain most behavior, John B. Watson adopted the concept of conditioning developed by

Ivan Pavlov

Regarding associative learning, which of the following discovered classical conditioning

Ivan Povlov

When a basketball coach uses videotaped replays to show his team both their good and poor shot selection, the coach is using

Knowledge of results (KR)

When discussing the relationship between short-term and long-term memory, the authors of your textbook use the analogy of a warehouse with filing cabinets and a desk. As information enters the warehouse, it is first placed on the desk. Because the desk is small, it must be quickly cleared off to make room for new information. While unimportant items are simply tossed away, personally or culturally meaningful information is placed in the files, which represent

Long-term memory