Psych 1-13 Quizzes

Which of the following statements might help you determine if an individual has narcolepsy?

"I sometimes fall into a deep sleep in the middle of a conversation."

The age of viability, a term that refers to the time at which an infant could survive outside of the womb, occurs at around __________ weeks into a pregnancy.

25

In the 1980s, political scientist James Flynn observed that the IQs of Americans were rising at a rate of about __________ point(s) per decade.

3

Twelve-year-old Arnold received an IQ score of 75. What is his mental age?

9

When a researcher tests his or her hypothesis, he or she is often hoping to gather information that is consistent with a particular theory. What, more specifically, allows a researcher to say that he or she has "proven" a theory?

A researcher is never able to say that he or she has "proven" a theory.

Which of the following statements is true?

All the brain areas become active on brain scans at one time or another as we think, feel, and perceive.

In which of the following situations is the person more likely to be helped?

An old woman with a cane trips and falls while crossing an isolated street with only a couple of people around.

An adult is able to remember that CIA stands for "Central Intelligence Agency," and yet a child is not. Why is this, according to your text?

Because as we age, our conceptual understanding increases

Roseanne claims that she can remember instances of childhood sexual abuse that started at 6 months of age. Why are most psychologists likely to be skeptical of this and other such claims?

Because infantile amnesia makes it unlikely that these are true memories from that age.

What was Caeli's (from her guest lecture) "more correct definition of Operant Conditioning?

Behavior determined primarily by a history consequences, including reinforcement (not rewards), extinction and punishment​.

Which of the following is reflective of Seligman's research on conditioned taste aversion?

Contrary to most classically conditioned reactions, only one pairing of the CS with the UCS is needed to produce a taste aversion.

__________ studies observe different individuals at different ages at a single point in time to track age differences.

Cross-sectional

While attempting to visit a friend in Boston, Enrique is struggling with his friend's directions. Enrique's friend told him: "Turn left at the ball park, right at the movie theater, go around the mall, and make a left turn." The directions are almost meaningless, because Enrique has never been to Boston before. Which of the following provides the best explanation for the breakdown in communication?

Enrique does not have a preexisting schema to which he can attach the new information.

Dr. Cho wants to know if differences in the growth rate of fish are based on genetics or the environment. He buys two fish. Fish 1 is fed every day, while fish 2 is fed every other day. At the end of a month, fish 1 is nearly 15 percent larger than fish 2. Considering the fish have a nearly identical genetic makeup, what can Dr. Cho conclude?

Environmental changes can account for all the differences in growth rate.

Students of psychology are often frustrated because there are very few, if any, clear-cut answers to many of their questions. What is the primary limiting factor in obtaining firsthand knowledge of questions such as the long-term effects of child abuse or the effects of smoking marijuana on a pregnancy?

Ethical guidelines in research prevent psychologists from carrying out many of these studies.

Identical twins have IQ correlations around .7 to .8, whereas fraternal twins have IQ correlations of about .3 to .4. What do these correlations suggest?

Identical twins have very similar IQs while fraternal twins do not.

The most commonly experienced sleep disorder is __________.

Insomnia

You just discovered a nomadic people who have lived in the desert their whole lives. Their language contains more than 20 words to describe the various types and textures of sand in their environment. According to research on linguistic determinism, what is the likely origin for all of these terms?

It is impossible to know whether the language caused them to think differently about their environment or the way they perceive their environment caused them to create their language.

Which psychologist, a cognitivist at heart, argued that the way in which a child thinks about the world differs substantially from the way in which adults do?

Jean Piaget

Which of the following best illustrates the paradox of memory?

Jillian can remember all of her favorite baseball players' statistics for the last 7 years but forgets where she put her cell phone on a daily basis.

__________, a hormone that triggers feelings of sleepiness, is released at higher levels when you are in dark surroundings.

Melatonin

Which of the following is true with regard to the order of development of motor skills?

Motor skills tend to develop in the same sequence from child to child, although the ages of each milestone vary.

__________ involves the detection of energy by sense organs, whereas __________ involves interpreting sensory inputs.

Sensation; perception

A small chamber used in operant conditioning of animals that limits the available responses and, thus, increases the likelihood that the desired response will occur, is called a(n) __________ box.

Skinner

__________ is a disorder caused by a blockage of the airway during sleep.

Sleep Apnea

Dr. Potter, an English professor, is curious about his students' attitudes toward one of his favorite books. What research method is he most likely to use to gather this information?

Survey

What is the purpose of an institutional review board?

To protect participants from abuse by researchers

__________ occurs when people require larger amounts of a drug to experience the same effects experienced during their initial usage.

Tolerance

You wake up at 3:00 a.m., craving a glass of water. You get out of bed and walk to the kitchen but you do not turn on the light. Your ability to successfully navigate her house in the dark is due to the presence of __________.

a cognitive map

__________ play(s) a critical role as a neurotransmitter that stimulates muscle contraction as well as cortical arousal.

acetylcholine

Which of the following drugs is categorized as a depressant?

alcohol

Dan recently watched a television program about rabies and those animals that are typically carriers of the disease. Last night, when he stepped outside to call his cat, he saw a raccoon waddling across his yard. The animal acted strangely and came straight toward him. Dan immediately decided it must have rabies. He made his decision based on __________.

an availability heuristic

The character of Dory from the movie Finding Nemo keeps complaining that she has short-term memory loss because she can't remember the name of the friend she just met. What is a more likely explanation for her memory failure?

anterograde amnesia

As symbolic systems of communication, most languages __________.

are arbitrary in the relationship between words and meaning

When we attempt to explain the cause of someone's behavior, we are utilizing __________.

attributions

The peripheral nervous system consists of the __________ and the __________ nervous systems.

autonomic; somatic

A(n) __________ is a conclusion regarding factual evidence, while a(n) __________ is a belief that includes an emotional component.

belief; attitude

Aylla is very athletic and thus she tends to participate in a lot of sports. Her regular practice of swimming, basketball, and hockey increases her athletic skills, which makes her want to spend more time participating in these activities. This example demonstrates the __________ nature of development.

bidirectional

Nico is meeting with his academic adviser. He wishes to pursue a career where he'll work to diagnose and treat mental disorders. Nico aspires to be a(n) __________ psychologist.

clinical

Jean Piaget is best known for his pioneering work in the area of __________ development.

cognitive

When she is not at the bar, Jayla preaches to everyone about the dangers of smoking. However, she does smoke an occasional cigarette when she is at the bar with her friends, although at those times she feels somewhat frustrated by her own smoking behavior. Jayla is likely experiencing __________ when she smokes.

cognitive dissonance

Cross-sectional research studies gather data from many people who are of the same age, and compare them to others who are at a different age, and thus a different level of development. The name for a group of people who are the same age and thus were raised during the same time period is a(n) __________.

cohort

Which type of receptor cell is associated with seeing colors?

cones

Psychoactive drugs are drugs that __________.

contain chemicals similar to those found naturally in our brains

Your teacher asks you to describe the sequence of parts of a neuron that the impulse travels during neural conduction. Which of the following sequences will you offer?

dendrites, soma, axon, axon terminal

Which of the following is one of the two types of statistics that researchers use to analyze the data that they collect?

descriptive statistics

Aleta is looking at a stack of applications for the open position she has at her bakery. She called all of the applicants acting as if she were asking an important question about their application. Really, however, she wanted to know who had an accent so she could put those applications in the "no" pile. Aleta just engaged in __________.

discrimination

For students to show the best performance on their exams, they are advised to engage in __________.

distributed practice

Your friend asks to borrow $50 from you. You tell him no. Then he asks for a mere $10, which you gladly give him. While you feel glad to have helped him out, you may have just experienced the __________ technique.

door-in-the-face

Which movement was Hitler's rise to power and his quest to produce the master race analogous to?

eugenics

After Pavlov's dogs became conditioned to salivate at the sound of the metronome, he experimented with sounding the metronome but not presenting the meat powder to the dogs. Soon they stopped salivating to the sound of the metronome. This represents the process called __________.

extinction

Omar and Patrick sell magazine subscriptions by telephone. Omar is paid $1.00 for every 5 calls he makes, while Patrick is paid $1.00 for every subscription he sells. Omar is paid on a __________ schedule while Patrick is paid on a __________ schedule.

fixed ratio; variable ratio

You are telling your friend about a trip you took to Sea World when you were a child. During the middle of the show, the trainer slipped, fell into the water, and was nearly killed. You can remember the scene as if it happened yesterday. This is an example of which type of memory?

flashbulb

The type of intelligence that allows you to learn to play your first few notes on a saxophone is called __________ intelligence.

fluid

Fred is on a popular TV game show where you can win $1,000,000. He is currently at $16,000 and is not certain that he knows the answer to the $32,000 question. His decision could be influenced if the host says "You can take the $16,000 and go home, and that's a lot of money," or "$32,000 is way more money than $16,000." There is a tendency for the contestants to do whatever the host suggests, and Fred will probably be no different. This is the effect of ____

framing

The correct order of the stages of prenatal development is __________.

germinal stage, embryonic stage, fetal stage

As the number of people talking in a room increases, the stimulus intensity needed to detect a change in the number of people talking becomes __________.

greater

In a televised "social experiment" by the local television network, 12 people—6 white and 6 African American—were asked to live together for one week. They varied in their level of prejudice; however, those with low levels of prejudice became less prejudiced, while those with high levels became more prejudiced. A psychologist from the university coined this behavior __________.

group polarization

What problem-solving strategies are essentially mental shortcuts?

heuristics

It is believed the __________ memory system may handle automatic remembering, while the __________ memory system requires conscious effort.

implicit; explicit

The __________ variable is what the researcher "manipulates," or varies, in an experimental study.

independent

The tendency for animals to return to innate behaviors following repeated reinforcement is called __________.

instinctive drift

Corrie is well liked by all her classmates. She has lots of friends and is always one of the first people chosen whenever there are group projects. According to Gardner, at which type of intelligence does Corrie likely excel?

interpersonal

Stephanie's friends describe her as someone who has the uncanny ability to say the right thing at the right time whenever someone is in need. According to Howard Gardner, Stephanie's skills may reflect a type of __________ intelligence.

intrapersonal

If you examine the research that has been conducted in psychology, you will find that much of the knowledge from popular, less-scientific psychology sources __________.

is contradicted by what psychological research has demonstrated

The part of the brain dedicated to emotion is the __________.

limbic system

Eduardo is from Brazil. He is fluent in both Portuguese and English. When he uses English to speak to you of his home in Brazil, he seems to have trouble remembering details. Yet when he is speaking Portuguese to another Brazilian, he has no trouble remembering. This phenomenon can best be explained by __________.

linguistic relativity

Brightness refers to the intensity of light. The corresponding term when discussing the intensity (or amplitude) of sound is __________.

loudness

If I am given 10 math problems, and I can and do solve the first nine in the same way, I may struggle with the tenth problem if it requires a different method to solve it. This best illustrates the concept of

mental sets

Marta was in an automobile accident and suffered an injury to her brain, resulting in paralysis of her left arm. What part of Marta's brain was injured?

motor cortex

Children with certain genetic predispositions often seek out and create their own environments, a phenomenon termed by some developmentalists as __________.

nature via nurture

Pete has played lead guitar in a rock band for years. He often would turn the volume on his guitar way up and spend a great deal of time in front of the speakers during the shows. His resulting hearing impairment over the past few years is most likely the result of __________.

noise-induced hearing loss

According to __________ theory, learning is controlled by the consequences of an organism's behavior.

operant conditioning

The kind of learning that applies to voluntary behavior is called __________.

operant conditioning

Which of the following sensory difficulties is likely to be the most dangerous?

pain insensitivity

A mechanism by which experts in a field carefully screen the work of their colleagues is known as __________.

peer review

Young Jonah is learning to read, and his father writes MOMMY on a card and asks him to read it. When Jonah struggles, his father says, "Sound it out one letter at a time!" As Jonah does this, he eventually puts the sounds together and triumphantly shouts the correct word. What method has Jonah used to read this word?

phonetic decomposition

Which endocrine gland controls all of the other glands in the body?

pituitary gland

During an action potential, the electrical charge inside the neuron is __________ the electrical charge outside the neuron.

positive compared to

Which subdivision of the cortex is most active on tasks involving planning, impulse control, and short-term memory?

prefrontal cortex

The first day of class, Sheila asked her professor what was the best way to learn and remember the material for the course. The professor responded, "Focus on identifying and understanding the meaning of the important terms and concepts." The instructor is advocating a __________ level of processing.

semantic

The ability to detect physical energy through our sense organs, which then send information off to the brain, is called __________.

sensation

Karla understands her world by grasping, sucking, and physically handling objects in her path. Karla is in Piaget's __________ stage of development.

sensorimotor

Jayda and Brendon get into the hot tub at the health club after coming in from a cold winter day. When they first get in, the water is so hot they can barely stand it, but after a few minutes they find it to be pleasantly hot without being uncomfortable. This reduction in their perception of the heat is probably due to __________.

sensory adaptation

When their friend Vincent was walking down the hall after a pleasant conversation, Neil and Michaela watched as he suddenly tripped and fell to the floor, scattering his schoolbooks all over the hallway. They ran over to him, helped him pick up his books, and commented, "I didn't know that the floor was so slippery in this part of the hall!" Neil and Michaela have made a __________ attribution to explain why Vincent fell over.

situational

Marika was confronted by the jealous girlfriend of a guy that Marika had dated. She backed down from the confrontation and fled the scene. Later, she asked several others what they would have done in that type of a situation, and they agreed that they would have done the same thing. Marika felt better. This is an example of __________.

social comparison theory

When Jacob's girlfriend and her friends stopped by his house during a basketball game with his friends, Jacob's performance increased slightly due to what Zajonc calls __________.

social facilitation

Paulette has been asleep for only a few minutes. Her brain activity is made up primarily of theta waves. Which sleep stage is Paulette currently in?

stage 1

As we sleep during the night, we spend the majority of our time in __________ sleep.

stage 2

Sleepwalking occurs most often during __________ sleep.

stages 3 and 4

The flight-or-fight response is mobilized by the __________ nervous system.

sympathetic

Sarah is a pianist who reports that she sees musical tones as colors. This is one example of __________.

synesthesia

Our co-worker says, "It's awful in here." To understand what she means, we must __________.

take into account extralinguistic information, such as location and facial expressions

The somatosensory system responds to sensory information about __________.

temperature, touch and pain.

Any environmental factor that can cause a birth defect is known as a(n) __________.

teratogen

Hormones are chemicals that are secreted and go directly into __________.

the bloodstream

Culture-fair tests attempt to measure __________.

the intelligence of people coming from outside the culture in which the test was devised

Whenever five-year-old Claire goes to the dentist, she becomes anxious and cries. Since she was not afraid of the dentist on her first visit, her fear was a learned behavior. The UCS in this case was probably __________.

the pain associated with teeth cleaning

Eyewitness testimony has been found to be most accurate when __________.

the witness has ample time to observe the person under good viewing conditions

The brain's tendency to streamline our thinking processes by use of preexisting knowledge is referred to as __________.

top-down processing