Psych MCQ Unit 3

All of the following are reasons for requiring clearly specified procedures for the administration and scoring of assessment measures, such as standardized tests, EXCEPT to

decrease the amount of time needed to administer the test

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

Which of the following accurately describes a major change in perspective in the field of developmental psychology over the past twenty-five years?

A shift from an emphasis on childhood and adolescence to an interest in development over the life span

Which study is a researcher who wants to draw correct cause-and-effect conclusions about the sense of smell likely to conduct?

A study in which the researcher randomly assigns 50 people to a group that is exposed to a strong smell of roses and 50 people to a group that experiences an odor-free environment to see whether the group exposed to the strong smell of roses reports experiencing more memories.

Which of the following characterizes a behavioral approach to psychology?

A study of how reinforcement affects learning

Which of the following examples best illustrates the defense mechanism of regression?

After failing an exam, a college student has a temper tantrum and tears up his books and notes

Which of the following scenarios best demonstrates the role of context effects in memory?

Amy studied for a vocabulary test in the same classroom and at the same time of day as the normal class, and she performed better on the test than students who studied in different classrooms under different conditions.

Participants were asked to rate the importance of achieving honor-roll status. Researchers found that students from smaller families rated the importance more highly than students from larger families. The research team concluded that a student's attitude toward school achievement is the result of family size. Which of the following is the most important error made by the research team?

Assuming that correlation proves causation

Bobby is seventeen and has been engaging in risky behaviors, such as reckless driving, skipping class, and breaking curfew. Which of the following is an explanation for Bobby's actions that most psychologists support?

Bobby is still developing new neural connections in his brain

Dr. Patel is conducting a study to test a hair-growth shampoo she is developing. She instructs fifty participants to use the hair-growth shampoo once daily for a month and another fifty to use a regular shampoo once a day for a month. Dr. Patel measures the participants' hair length at the beginning and the end of the thirty days. Which of the following is the dependent variable?

Change in hair length

Dr. Marcia assigned students a paper in which they had to support the side of a controversial topic they did not agree with. Before asking the students to write the paper, she gave them a survey to determine how strongly they disagreed with the topic. After the students wrote their papers, Dr. Marcia gave them another survey to rate their disagreement with the topic. She observed that the students' feelings about the topic became more strongly in agreement with the topic. Which of the following is the best conclusion?

Cognitive dissonance was likely a contributing factor to the students' change in feelings.

Ivan Pavlov was most well known for which of the following?

Conditioning dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell

Which of the following is the term associated with psychologists not sharing their clients' personal information with others?

Confidentiality

A researcher studied 30 people ages twenty to forty, 30 people ages forty-one to sixty, and 30 people ages sixty-one to eighty. The researcher set up two rooms—one with a faint rose smell, and one with a faint lemon smell. Each participant was asked to enter each room and identify the smell in the room. What research method did the researcher use, and what outcome would be found?

Cross-sectional. As people age, their sense of smell diminishes, especially in older age.

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

Because studies of learning show that events occurring close together in time are easier to associate than those occurring at widely different times, parents should probably avoid which of the following?

Delay of punishment

According to the graph above, the greatest degree of attitude change is likely to be produced by which of the following forms of advertising?

Easy messages on television and difficult messages in newspaper

A teenager would most probably draw on which of the following to recall her tenth birthday party?

Episodic memory

The operant conditioning concept of negative reinforcement is illustrated in which of the following scenarios?

Ervin always buckles his seat belt to stop the beeping sound his car makes when the seat belt is unbuckled.

Damage to which of the following best explains conduction deafness?

Hammer, anvil, and stirrup

Rik, who is an adolescent, was always studious and quiet throughout childhood. His parents are concerned because he suddenly dyed his hair, pierced his tongue, and started hanging out with a different crowd. A few months later, he tried out for the football team and became so active in sports that he neglected his schoolwork. According to psychologists, which of the following would best explain Rik's changes in behavior?

He is going through the process of exploring his identity that many adolescents experience.

Shamir wants to be a doctor like both of his parents when he gets older. He never thought of doing anything else. Which of the following best explains Shamir's decision?

He is identity foreclosed.

Martha is an undergraduate student who is interested in pursuing a career in psychology. She wants to use her knowledge of psychology to help employees become more productive in the workplace. Which field of psychology should Martha select in graduate school?

Industrial-organizational

Which of the following statements is true of behaviorism?

It holds that development is largely a product of learning.

Which of the following statements best describes the placebo effect?

It is found only among individuals in psychoanalysis.

Emiko's cat often meows for food. Emiko decides to eliminate the behavior by feeding the cat only when it does not meow. Over the next few weeks, she sometimes ignores the cat when it meows. Other times, she feeds the cat when it meows. Which of the following is the most reasonable prediction to make about the cat's meowing for food?

It will increase due to a variable schedule of reinforcement.

Jasmine is worried about an upcoming exam. Which scenario best illustrates emotion-focused coping

Jasmine reaches out to her friends for comfort to reduce her stress.

Which of the following psychologists would have been likely to say, "I do not care about the unconscious or hidden motives—I want to study behavior directly"?

John Watson

Leo and Caitlin are both experiencing feelings about their date tonight. Leo has had bad dates lately, and so he feels fear and dejection. Caitlin, meanwhile, has had very good dates, and so she feels excited and happy. According to Richard Lazarus' appraisal theory,

Leo and Caitlin have an immediate unconscious interpretation of the scenario, which leads them to simultaneously both label their feelings as either positive or negative and have the appropriate physiological response

Makayla and Noah are listening to a song that ends with all the instruments playing the same note. Makayla can distinguish the various instruments playing the note, while Noah cannot. Which of the following best explains their perceptual differences?

Makayla is better at discriminating timbre than Noah

Professor González is interested in evaluating the ability of a new method of note-taking to improve student grades. Group A is trained in the new method and group B uses the traditional outline method of taking notes. What is Professor González' independent variable?

Method of note-taking

Which of the following behaviors best demonstrates an emotional response associated with the short route from the thalamus to the amygdala, as described by Joseph LeDoux?

Miguel jumps up on a chair because he thinks he sees something moving along the wall. When he realizes it was just a dust ball, he gets off the chair.

Research in the field of positive psychology is most supportive of which of the following conclusions?

Perception of control is related to a sense of well-being

It is well established that certain autonomic responses such as heart rate, perspiration, and respiration change under stress. In view of the fact that people generally have stronger autonomic responses when lying than when telling the truth, it follows that the polygraph would be a foolproof approach to lie detection. Which statement best explains why the polygraph is not more widely used in courtrooms and in testing of job applicants?

Physiological arousal is much the same for several emotions, so the polygraph cannot always reliably distinguish guilt from other reactions.

A sudden inability to remember how to tie a certain kind of knot indicates a deficit in which kind of memory?

Procedural

The notion that human behavior is greatly influenced by unconscious thoughts and desires is most consistent with which of the following psychological approaches?

Psychodynamic

Which of the following procedures is intended to control for preexisting differences between the groups of participants in an experiment?

Random assignment

Which of the following is NOT a method for reducing the dissonance a person might experience after refusing to contribute money for a gift to a coworker?

Saying a phrase such as "I am so rude" over and over

Melinda went skydiving. As soon as she landed, a handsome man helped her gather her parachute. Melinda's heart was beating quickly and her hands were perspiring. Melinda inferred that she must be attracted to him. Which of the following is a theory of emotion that would best explain the relationship between Melinda's physiological state and her apparent attraction to the man that helped her?

Schachter two-factor

Which of the following is the most appropriate criterion for evaluating the predictive validity of an intelligence test?

School grades

The chart above illustrates which of the following psychological concepts?

Serial position effect

In an experiment, either a sad video or a happy video was shown to participants to influence their moods. The participants were then asked to memorize a list of words. Later, the participants were again shown either the same video they had seen before memorizing the words or they were shown the other video, and they were then asked to recall the words they had memorized previously. The results of the experiment, summarized in the chart above, best illustrate which psychological concept?

State-dependent memory

Which of the following scenarios involves using cued recall?

Steven studies a list of word pairs and is later given the first word of each pair and asked to recall the second word in the pair.

A researcher has a hypothesis that men are more likely to be influenced by the central route to persuasion when buying a car than women are. The researcher randomly selects thirty men and thirty women to observe while they buy a car, and the researcher finds that women pay attention to information about the reliability of the car, whereas men pay attention to available colors that the car comes in. Which conclusion can the researcher draw?

The hypothesis is not supported, because the results indicate that women are influenced more by the central route to persuasion than men are.

In legal cases, Elizabeth Loftus' research on the misinformation effect is most often used to cast doubt on which of the following?

The memory of eyewitnesses

Children who are consistently praised for receiving high grades in school will likely continue to work for high grades. Using an operant conditioning explanation of this phenomenon, which of the following is true?

The praise functions as a positive reinforcer.

Which of the following findings about emotions is well supported by research?

There are several universal emotions.

Based only on the variable described for each of the following pairs of individuals, which individuals are most likely to show different facial expressions when experiencing the same emotion?

Two individuals who are from different cultures that have different display rules for the emotion

Marjorie's little brother tends to bother her when he is bored. Marjorie wants to figure out which toy will keep her brother occupied the longest so he will not bother her. She conducts a study where each day at 6P.M. for a week she gives her brother a different toy and on one of the days she gives him no toys to play with. She measures the amount of time he spends playing with each toy before he comes to bother her. Which of the following is the independent variable in this example?

Type of toy

When a child behaves well for an entire day, the child earns a star. After acquiring fifteen stars, the child is allowed to pick a prize from a toy chest. The star is best described as

a secondary reinforcer

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

A test that measures a student's potential ability is

an aptitude test

A basic assumption underlying the evolutionary approach to sexual attraction is that men seek potential mates who

appear fertile

The coiled tube in the inner ear that contains the auditory receptors is called the

cochlea

"It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured." This belief is best explained by

cognitive dissonance theory

Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer view emotion as resulting from

cognitive labels of physiological changes

A researcher would test the elaboration likelihood model by

conducting an experiment in which the researcher showed a class two commercials to determine their persuasive power. One commercial explained that a certain brand of seltzer water has no preservatives or sugar, which makes it healthier than other beverages. The other commercial showed a celebrity drinking the seltzer water and saying that she drinks it all the time.

Which of the following is a term for a variable that researchers do not control and that can affect the results of a study?

confounding variable

According to Wilhelm Wundt, the focus of scientific psychology should be the study of

conscious experience

Responses extinguish fastest when they are learned through which type of reinforcement schedule?

continuous

Hans grew up in Germany and later moved to Japan for a job opportunity. Back at home, he never had issues making friends or had interpersonal issues with colleagues at work, but in his new home, Hans is having difficulty interacting with his colleagues. According to psychologists who study how culture influences behavior, his difficulties most likely stem from

cultural differences in emotional expression and body language between Japan and Germany

In an experiment to test the effects of hunger on aggressive behavior, aggressive behavior would be the

dependent variable

Vance is a popular honors student who, unlike his reference group, writes his best papers sitting on his motorcycle in the basement of his college dormitory. His behavior can be considered abnormal only if abnormality is defined as

deviation from cultural norms

Paul Ekman found that when Japanese students watched films of surgery, they masked their expressions of disgust with a smile when an authority figure entered the room but not when alone. American students maintained their expressions of disgust both alone and in the presence of an authority figure. Ekman's findings illustrate what he calls

display rules

Dorothea Dix was known for

documenting the poor conditions of mental asylums, which eventually led to their reform

Thomas is thirty years old and is very shy. He becomes anxious in social situations, so he avoids them. Thomas does not have close friends and rarely leaves his apartment. However, he writes a very successful and popular Internet blog, is usually content and calm while working at home, and has a positive relationship with his family. Psychologists would be hesitant to label Thomas as psychologically disordered because his behavior

does not appear to cause distress or impair his day-to-day functioning

Contemporary definitions of abnormal behavior typically characterize such behavior as all of the following EXCEPT

due to inappropriate child-rearing practices

Ralph is aware that smoking is harmful to his health, but he continues to smoke. According to cognitive dissonance theory, it is most likely that Ralph will

focus on the social advantages to smoking

Chuck is walking down the street and someone asks him to sign a petition to put clean-air legislation on the next ballot. He decides to sign the petition. Then the person asks whether he would like to give a donation to the associated environmental group. This technique is known as

foot in the door

The perceived pitch of a tone is largely determined by its

frequency

Research participants are randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group listens to a list of words, another group reads a list of words printed on paper, and the remaining group hears and reads the words. The researcher then tests the participants' memories to see how many words the members of each group can recall. The modality in which the words are presented (i.e., auditory, visual, or both) is which type of variable?

independent

A survey shows that children who have encyclopedias in their homes earn better grades in school than children whose homes lack encyclopedias. The researcher concludes that having encyclopedias at home improves grades. This conclusion is erroneous primarily because the researcher has incorrectly

inferred causation from correlation

Wolfgang Köhler considered a chimpanzee's sudden solving of a problem evidence of

insight

Survey research has shown that people with high levels of empathy (that is, an ability to imagine and feel what others are experiencing) tend to indicate lower ratings of enjoyment of violent humor than people with lower levels of empathy. Based on these results, one can conclude that

level of empathy correlates negatively with enjoyment of violent humor

When participants in dichotic listening experiments are repeating aloud a message presented in one ear, they are most likely to notice information on the unattended channel if that channel

mentions the participant's name

To stop his uncle's constant requests, Jimmy takes out the garbage. This makes him more likely to take out the garbage in the future. Jimmy's behavior is being controlled by which of the following types of reinforcement?

negative

A four-year-old child frequently pulled on the dog's tail to gain attention. To reduce this undesirable behavior, the parent took away one hour of television viewing every time the child pulled the dog's tail. Within one week, the undesirable behavior was significantly reduced. The above scenario illustrates

negative punishment

Because he is afraid of public speaking, Scott withdraws from a class that requires an oral presentation and enrolls in another class without a presentation requirement. He continues the pattern, switching classes each semester to avoid giving presentations. Scott's behavior has been

negatively reinforced

A

ossicles

Which of the following approaches to psychology focuses on adaptive, creative, and fulfilling aspects of human experiences?

positive

Barney is a somewhat distractible second-grade student who finds schoolwork a bit boring. After a couple of minutes of working silently, Barney often starts to misbehave until his teacher, Ms. Skinner, calls his name and scolds him. However, he enjoys this attention from her and continues to misbehave. With respect to Barney's misbehavior, Ms. Skinner's attention serves as

positive reinforcement

In studying the behavior of five year olds in freeplay situations, a cognitive psychologist would be most interested in the children's

problem-solving strategies

Of the following, an evolutionary psychologist will most likely investigate the

reason why many people have an innate fear of the dark

Henry took an intelligence test and scored lower than he thought he should. He kept retaking the test, but he kept getting about the same score each time. This series of events indicates that the test was

reliable

If students get approximately the same score on the second administration of a test as they did on the first, then the test is

reliable

James takes an IQ test when he is in third grade and receives a score of 112. When he is tested again in sixth grade with an alternate version of the same test, his score is 114. The fact that the two scores are very similar most directly indicates that the IQ test is

reliable

When Lois looks at her wedding pictures, she has vivid memories of the early years of her marriage. The pictures serve as

retrieval cues

Research shows that women who are referred by a physician to participate in a study of eating disorders have more severe problems than women who volunteer on their own to participate in the study. If research on eating disorders regularly involves only women referred by physicians, the results of the studies might be limited because of the presence of

sampling bias

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

Money most often modifies people's behavior because it is a powerful

secondary reinforcer

Raul wants to teach his daughter Sonia to tie her shoes. First he praises her when she manipulates her shoelaces in any way. Then he praises her when she makes a simple knot. Once she does that consistently, he praises her only when she makes the knot and a loop. He continues the pattern until she can do all the steps required to tie her shoes. Raul's actions are an example of which of the following techniques?

shaping

Psychodynamic therapy has its roots in the theories of

sigmund freud

Researchers find that there is a significant, positive correlation between the number of hours students sleep and their grades. The researchers would be justified in concluding that

students who earn good grades tend to sleep more than those who do not

Domingo has just hit Play to begin listening to a new song he bought. Based on the structure of the ear, what will the sound waves contact first after moving through Domingo's auditory canal?

the eardrum

Tahani is hiking in the woods and sees some movement in the trees. She immediately tenses up. A few moments later, after she realizes that the trees were just rustling in the wind, she calms down. According to Joseph LeDoux, Tahani's reaction is due to the fact that

there is a fast processing path that sends sensory information directly to the amygdala, causing Tahani's initial fear response, and a slower processing path that processes the content of sensory information first, which overrode Tahani's fear response

Metacognition refers to

thinking about thinking

Emma is telling her friend what she did over summer vacation when she discovers she cannot think of a specific word that she would like to say. She stops telling the story, because she has the distinct feeling that she is about to be able to think of the word if she waits just a moment.

tip-of-the-tongue effect

The general function of the bones in the middle ear is to

transfer sound information from the tympanic membrane to the oval window

A researcher randomly assigned boys and girls to each of two groups. One group watched a violent television program while the other group watched a nonviolent program. The children were then observed during a period of free play, and the incidence of aggressive behavior was recorded for each group. What is the independent variable in this study?

type of television program used

A research group involved with advertising is conducting a study to investigate whether shoppers are more likely to engage in impulse buying at the checkout than at any other place in the store. For the results of the study to be generalizable, the researchers should

use a representative sample