AP Psychology Midterm Review

The following item refers to a snake frightening Ted.Ted is hiking along a mountain trail when he sees a large snake slithering across the path ahead of him. Which of the following brain structures is most closely associated with Ted's fear response?

Amygdala

Which of the following scenarios most clearly describes the effects of a strong kinesthetic sense

Being able to tell the exact bodily position without looking at the body

Below is a transcript of a case study about an individual named Arjun. Arjun was diagnosed with epilepsy and struggled with seizures regularly. After trying multiple unsuccessful treatments, his neurologist recommended surgery that severed the connections between the two hemispheres of the brain. Arjun agreed to the surgery. After surgery, Arjun experienced changes that were noticed during special testing in a laboratory setting by a researcher. In the laboratory, psychologists flashed different images or words to his left and right visual fields. Arjun could easily speak the names of items that were flashed to his right visual field. He could not easily speak the names of items that were flashed to this left visual field. Arjun was studied by a researcher for many years, and his experiences went unchanged. The researcher published the research with Arjun where he shared Arjun's experience and his first and last nam

Broca's area

Dr. Meerdink wants to know if creativity varies throughout the day. In a morning class, she asks her college students to list as many uses as possible for a stick. On the same day 12 hours later, she asks students in an evening class to list as many uses as possible for a stick. Which of the following factors is the dependent variable?

Creativity

During English class, Caleb is worried about an unfinished history project he needs to turn in later in the day. While the English teacher and other students discuss a short story the class just read, Caleb's attention is focused on how to finish the history project. The next day he is unable to recall the short story details presented in English class. The recall problem is most likely due to

Encoding failure

When Amy was seven years of age, she had a babysitter from France. During this time Amy learned to speak a little French. Years later, when Amy got to college, she signed up for a beginning French class. Amy learned the material in her French class much more quickly than her classmates did. Amy's rapid learning was most likely due to

Implicit memory

Which of the following is a parasympathetic nervous system response?

Increased digestion

The argument over the relative contributions of heredity and environment in the development of various behaviors and personality traits is known as which of the following controversies?

Nature versus nurture

Ben was enjoying a walk in the woods on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. As he went around a curve, he noticed a bear walking toward him. Immediately his pupils dilated, he began to perspire, and his heart accelerated. These changes are most closely related to the function of which of the following?

Sympathetic nervous system

Johanna, a high school senior, starts experiencing disruptions in her movement when she cannot contract certain muscles. Which of the following neurotransmitters is most likely involved in this disruption of the muscle contraction

acetylcholine

An individual who drinks alcohol daily finds it necessary to drink increasing amounts to achieve the state of well-being attained in the past showing

alcohol tolerance

A test that is labeled an achievement test is most likely to be given to

allow a student to be exempted from a college course

Which of the following is classified as an antagonist

an antidepressant, because they block serotonin and norepinephrine receptors

Curare blocks action at acetylcholine synapses and causes paralysis. This drug is an example of an

antagonist

A test that measures a student's potential ability is

aptitude test

A brain tumor that results in obesity would most likely be located in the

area of the hypothalamus

Which of the following psychological perspectives would best support a researcher's belief that the dreams that occur in REM sleep are a result of random neural firing in the brain stem?

biological

At six months of age, Byrne underwent the surgical removal of the entire left hemisphere of her brain. Which of the following concepts explains the recovery of her primary functions following such surgery

brain plasticity

Which of the following identifies the part of the nervous system the arrows are pointing toward (pointing at brain) [AN ACTUAL PICTURE GIVEN]

central

Difficulty in typing smoothly on a keyboard would most likely result from damage to which of the following?

cerebrum

People who are color blind most likely have deficiencies in their

cones

Kaori is traveling on an airplane for the first time. As the plane takes off, she watches the automobiles driving on the freeway below. Even though the automobiles seem to get smaller as the airplane gains altitude, Kaori does not perceive the cars as shrinking but still perceives them to be their normal size. Which perceptual principle best describes this phenomenon?

constancy

Bob is concerned because his children have been eating too much of an expensive breakfast cereal, so he brings home a less expensive version that looks and tastes exactly the same. His children notice that the cereal is less sweet. Which best explains the conflicting perceptions

difference threshold

A person with damage to Broca's area would most likely demonstrate which of the following symptoms

difficulty with speech production

The autonomic nervous system is most directly involved in

digesting food

Alicia has a condition in which tiny crystals break loose and randomly touch and bend the hair cells in her semicircular canals. Which of the following is the most likely effect of this condition?

dizziness and loss of balance

The role of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system is to

establish homeostasis after a fight-or-flight response.

Denny does not have wrapping paper to use to wrap a birthday present, and so he decides to use colorful newspaper comics instead. Denny's solution demonstrates that he has overcome

functional fixedness

A teacher asks Yvonne to go to another classroom to get a student whom Yvonne has never met. As she walks, she repeats the student's name to herself over and over to help her remember. Yvonne is boosting her memory by using which of the following memory concepts

maintenance rehearsal

The area of the brain stem that is important in controlling breathing is the

medulla

A few people witness an assault. Before the police arrive, one witness confidently tells the others that the assailant was wearing a green shirt, though in fact the shirt was blue. Later when the police interview each witness individually, almost all of them state that they remember a green shirt. The memory error is referred to as

misinformatinon effect

Many participants in a study of memory were led to falsely believe that they were lost in a shopping mall as a young child. What memory construction error was demonstrated by the researchers' ability to create these artificial memories?

misinformation effect

Annette begins staring at the red, white, and blue colors of the flag hanging at the front of her classroom. When she shifts her gaze to the white wall, she perceives a green, black, and yellow afterimage of this flag. Which of the following theories best explains Annette's experience?

opponent-process

The earliest efforts to measure intelligence were directed at which of the following

predicting children's success in school

Throughout January and the beginning of February, the first two months of a calendar year. Allison writes the previous year as the date on all her assignments instead of the current year. Allison's tendency to write the wrong year on her assignments is most likely due to

proactive intererence

Matthew learned to play the violin at a very early age. He is able to play several songs from memory, but he does not remember learning to play them. Matthew's ability to play the violin depends on which of the following types of memory

procedural

Memories of well-learned skills, such as riding a bicycle, are classified as

procedural

A man sustains a head injury. After the injury, he is able to tie his shoes, but he does not recall where he lives. Which aspect of the man's memory is intact and which aspect is dysfunctional, respectively

procedural and semantic

Jalil goes to a party where he meets several new people. When he tells his brother about it the next day, he can only remember the names of the last 3 people that he met. Which of the following memory concepts best describes Jalil's memory for the names of the people at the party?

recency effect

Significant damage to which of the following parts of the brain will most likely cause a person to fall into a deep coma from which the person will be unable to awaken

reticular formation

Ana is instructed by her doctor to wear a patch over one eye while an infection heals. While wearing the patch, Ana will lose her ability to use which of the following depth perception cues

retinal disparity

A student who obtained a percentile rank of 75 on an achievement test is best characterized as having

scored higher than 75% of the test takers

An individual's ability to focus on a particular conversation in a noisy and crowded room is called

selective attention

balance is influenced by the

semicircular canals

Mary is introduced to three new people at a party. Later, however, she cannot remember the names of any of her new acquaintances, even though she remembers what she ate, her old friends who were there, and the address of the host. What may account for Mary's inability to remember these individuals' names

she never encoded the names into long-term memory

The division of the nervous system that most directly allows voluntary muscle movement is the

somatic

An individual who drinks alcohol daily finds it necessary to drink increasing amounts to achieve the state of well-being attained in the past. This individual is showing

state-dependent learning

In which lobes of the brain should Dr. Cruickshank expect to see activity when subjects process the sounds of the vocabulary words

temporal lobes

A prototype is best defined as

the hypothetical "most typical" instance of a category

Achariya is lost. She quickly scans the crowd and decides to ask an elderly woman for directions because she believes the woman will be kind. Which method of problem solving did Achariya most likely use

the representative heuristic

metacognition refers to

thinking about thinking

Dr. Schmidt was interested in the relationship between sensation of a stimulus and the sensation of change in a stimulus. She tested this using the sensation of weight. Participants were blindfolded and given two equal weights to hold one in each hand. With each trial, she added a slightly heavier weight to one hand than the other. The participant was asked to notify her if or when one felt heavier. She found that it was more difficult for the participants to determine the difference in the weights when the equal weights from the first trial were heavy. Dr. Schmidt's findings best support which of the following psychological concepts? What type of research?

weber's law experiment

A person will most likely develop aphasia as a result of damage to which of the following parts of the brain

wernicke's area

Initially, intelligence quotients were calculated on the basis of a person's mental and chronological ages. Using that approach, a person with a mental age of 12 and an intelligence score of 120 would have a chronological age of

10

A psychologist administered the most recent edition of the Stanford-Binet IQ test to 50 students and their scores are shown in the chart above. How many students earned scores higher than two standard deviations above the mean?

2

Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system results in which of the following?

A decrease in heart rate

Raj, a four-year-old child, learned to open the door to a classroom by pulling on the handle. Now whenever he approaches any door he pulls on the handle and is confused when that does not work. This is best explained by Raj's having developed which of the following for door opening?

A mental set

Research finds that, in general, the higher an incoming college student scores on an aptitude test, the higher the student's college grade point average (GPA). Which of the following best describes this relationship?

A positive correlation

Which of the following best describes the primacy effect

When people have better recall of things that occur at the beginning of a sequence

Which of the following is true of a neuron in the resting state?

The inside of the cell membrane is negative compared to the outside.

The graphs depict the distribution of intelligence test scores for two groups of students at a middle school. Which of the following statements is true of the graphs?

The mean is identical for both distributions; the standard deviation is larger for distribution A.

Which of the following pathways most directly contributes to his ability to calm down after this startle response?

The parasympathetic nervous system

Dizziness is most closely associated with which of the following senses?

Vestibular

It can be assumed that an individual described as a supertaster

is very sensitive to hot peppers

In a normal distribution of scores on assessments like those for intelligence, which of the following statements is true about the area that falls between one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean

it contains the middle 68% of the distribution

In a memory study, the experimenter reads the same list of words to two groups. She asks group A to count the letters in each word, and she asks group B to focus on the meaning of each word for a later memory quiz. During a recall test, participants in group B recall significantly more words than group A. Memory researchers attribute this effect to differences in

levels of processing

Ana injured her eye in an accident and has to wear a patch over the eye while it heals. Which of the following cues would she best be able to use to make judgement about the distance objects are from her

linear perspective