Psych 1010 Questions

Which word describes the process of using senses to learn about an event or object?

observation

Which lobe of the cortex is primarily involved in processing visual information?

occipital

When walking home, a neighbor's large, aggressive dog gets loose and begins chasing you. You begin running to flee from the dog, scanning for the best possible escape route as you do so. What division of the nervous system is LEAST active during this flight?

parasympathetic

Juliana's vision is 20/20, but she cannot recognize the faces of her friends, family members, and acquaintances. Juliana's impairment reflects a deficit in the information-processing activity of: Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button. priming.

perception.

When Thad arrived at the gym Tuesday morning, he noticed the musty odor of the showers in the locker room. As he finished changing, he did not notice the smell. This is probably the result of:

sensory adaptation

People with higher levels of stress have a greater probability of suffering a heart attack. Therefore the correlation between stress and probability of a heart attack is ______.

positive

Dr. Smith is studying social interactions in children by sitting in the back of a classroom. After the class ended, the teacher told Dr. Smith "I never seen them so well-behaved". This illustrates the problem of:

reactivity

Which statement is an example of a theory that would have given rise to the hypothesis that deaf bats navigate more poorly than normal bats?

Bats navigate using sound.

Having an open mind is an important attitude that scientists must possess. What statement below represents that?

Be willing to admit when you are wrong.

Neurons are information processors. What is the nature of the information within a neuron?

Electrical

Benjamin Rush followed the theory of bloodletting as medical treatment. When a person got better after treatment, he concluded his treatment worked. When the person died, he believed they were already beyond help. What mistake did Rush make?

He didn't allow that his theory could be wrong.

_____ are derived from _____.

Hypotheses; theories

You put a 5V battery in a flashlight, then turn the light on. This causes electric current to move through the bulb, heating a filament and creating light. How does the current flow effect the voltage of the battery?

It decreases the voltage of the battery

Which statement below describes an ion channel?

Like a gate, they can be open or closed. They are selective to only allow one ion species to pass. When charge moves through them, we call that current.

A scientist theorizes that several billion years ago, a large asteroid collided with the Earth, knocking tons of rock into space and creating the moon. Which statement constitutes a research hypothesis that follows from this theory?

Moon rock is made of the same elements as Earth rock.

Dr. Gomez is investigating a new drug designed to reduce anxiety. If a double-blind procedure is used:

Neither Dr. Gomez nor the patients will know who is receiving the drug.

What problem do action potentials solve for a neuron?

Sending an electrical signal across long distances without decay

At rest, what describes the status of the basic forces acting on sodium (Na+)?

The electrical force is pushing it into the cell; the concentration force is pushing it into the cell

From the definition of Psychology, which of the following would be considered as behavior?

The movements made by an individual in response to a stimulus or event.

What did I say that I won't ask you on the exam?

The reason why voltage decreases so quickly after the peak of the action potential

Bob purchased a supplement from the internet that was marketed as a memory enhancer. After using it for a while, Bob claims that he indeed has better memory. What should you conclude from this?

The supplement may or may not work.

People who drink more alcohol tend to make less money. From this statement, what can we conclude?

There may or may not be a direct relationship between alcohol consumption and one's income.

Why can it be difficult to answer why did the chicken cross the road?

There might be many reasons and there may be more the one reason at a time.

Why do the wrinkles and folds of the cortex represent a triumph of evolution?

Wrinkles and folds increase brain surface area while still allowing it to fit inside the skull.

Curare is a drug used in medicine to prevent muscle contractions during surgery. It works by preventing the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from binding to its receptors on muscle. What kind of drug is curare?

antagonist

Informal observation is NOT appropriate for conducting science because informal observations: Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.

are notoriously unstable.

After Alice had a stroke, she lost the ability to include vowels in words; for example she would spell "book" as "b k" (note: this deficit actually exists in humans!). Scientists were able to relate damage in a particular part of the brain to this specific behavioral deficit. This is an example of which research method(s)?

case studies and correlations

When sodium (Na+) enters the cell, which term below describes the change in voltage of the neuron?

depolarization

When a neurotransmitter binds to a receptor, it opens and an ion passes through it. This movement of charge is called:

current

When participants behave in a way they think an experimenter wants them to behave, the problem of _____ is present.

demand charachteristics

Neurons have many ______ that receive information from other neurons, but only one _____ to pass an electrical message to the terminal.

dendrites; axon

Humans adapt after prolonged exposure to a constant stimulus to: Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.

detect potentially important changes in what is going on in the environment.

The belief that the world can be understood through observation is known as _____.

empiricism

Karine has heard that people are more likely to yawn after seeing others yawn. She decides to observe people to determine if this is true. Karine can be called a(n):

empiricist.

In a task involving learning a maze, psychology students with "bright" rats may have treated the rats differently, for example, petting the rat more when it succeeded. This finding illustrates how:

expectations can influence behavioral outcomes.

What is the only way to determine a causal relationship between two variables?

experimentation

The patient H.M., which we will examine later in the course, had surgery to remove a part of his brain. As a result, he could not learn new things from that point on - what he had for breakfast, the people he met, etc. based on this description, you can conclude that the brain structure removed was the ______.

hippocampus

Dr. Garner studies the relationship between the objective brightness of visual stimuli and observers' subjective impression of their brightness. Dr. Garner's area of study is:

psycho physics

In a lock-and-key analogy of synaptic transmission, which is the lock?

receptor

The most common way that neurons terminate the process of synaptic transmission is:

reuptake

The left cerebral hemisphere receives sensory input from the _____ side of the body and sends motor commands to the _____ side of the body.

right; right

Jackson was just touched on his cheek. The pressure is registered in his brain as a(n) _____.

sensation

Anna is reading her psychology text. The activation of receptors in her retina is called _____; her interpretation of the stimuli as particular words is termed _____. Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.

sensation; perception

Human sensory systems are designed to detect changes in stimulation, rather than to detect constancies. This is demonstrated by the process of:

sensory adaptation.

People can see the same thing in different ways because we tend to see the world ________.

subjectively

Learning how to ride a bike is an exercise in motor coordination and practice. Which brain structure is involved in the motor learning required to ride a bike?

the cerebellum

To whom would a placebo be administered?

the control group

Researchers wanted to see if adults were actually afraid of the dark by exposing them to different levels of light in a room while measuring their heart rates. In this experiment, what are the different levels of light?

the independent variable

A belief is worth accepting if:

there is evidence for it and the assumptions are reasonable.

Research has shown that there is a correlation between the amount of violence a child sees on television and the aggressiveness of the child's behavior. One explanation of this correlation is that children who are aggressive and watch a great deal of violence on television lack adult supervision. This explanation describes what type(s) of correlation(s)?

third-variable

The myelin wrapped around an axon serves:

to increase the speed of transmission of the neuron.

The local fire department sounds an alarm. The conversion of the siren's sound waves into neural impulses exemplifies the process of: Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.

transduction.

A psychologist observes that some people exposed to a traumatic childhood experience develop anxiety disorders later in life, while others do not. This example illustrates: Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.

variability.