Psych
Cooper and Zubek (1958) showed that gene-environment interactions were at play in a study by illustrating that
"Maze-dull" rats raised in "enriched" environments eventually learned to navigate mazes as well as "maze-bright" rats raised in "enriched" environments.
Your uncle tells you about an interesting magazine article explaining that humans use only 10 percent of their brains. As a student of psychology, your response should be:
"Well, research actually shows that almost all of the brain is continually active.".
Which of these correlations has the least predictive value?
+0.10.
Which of the following correlations has the strongest predictive value?
-0.75
Which of the following numbers represents a statistically significant p-value?
0.002
The median is a better measure of central tendency than the mean for which of the following distributions?
10, 12, 13, 14, 106.
Jessica's parents are devout Christians, but she identifies more with agnostic views. When asked about her views on religion, however, she is tentative and reluctant to discuss the issue. Based on Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, Jessica is about what age?
17
If a study finds that the heritability of aggression is 40 percent, it means that
40 percent of the variability in aggression in the population is due to variations in the genes in that population.
In an analysis testing differences between an experimental and a control group on the dependent variable, a p-value of 0.07 means there is a
7 percent chance that differences between the two samples are due to chance alone..
Which scenario best illustrates infantile amnesia?
A 40-year-old man cannot recall any details of his second birthday party.
Which of the following demonstrates the concept of habituation?
A baby glances at a familiar stuffed animal, then stares at a new one.
A 70-year-old woman who is given a touch-screen tablet becomes hopelessly frustrated when she tries to use it. Which of the following best explains her lack of success?
A decline in fluid intelligence keeps her from reasoning abstractly when confronted with an unfamiliar object.
Which statement best captures the concept of a sensitive period?
A parent should be patient with a child who is learning to read.
What is the primary difference between a hypothesis and a theory?
A theory is a collection of data-based hypotheses..
Which neurotransmitter would you be most likely to find in the synaptic cleft between a motor neuron and a muscle?
Acetylcholine
A scientific paper includes a brain image showing that memory regions are active when research participants tell practiced lies but not when participants tell spontaneous lies. What would you expect this image to be?
An fMRI image showing activity in the limbic system
Evan has developed articulate verbal skills, often rattling off the details of the workings of his various toys. However, Evan finds it very difficult to understand what other people think and feel. As a result, he has trouble forming relationships with other children at school. Evan likely has
Asperger's syndrome
Which of the following would be most likely to argue that an individual regularly drinks to excess because she grew up in an environment where the adults were heavy drinkers?
Behaviorist
After surgery to control epilepsy, Miguel could understand people but lost his ability to speak. It is most likely that the surgery impacted his
Broca's area.
What can be concluded from developmental studies of children in daycare?
Children in high quality daycare tend to perform better academically
Which result provides evidence that genes play a role in schizophrenia?
Children of identical twins, one of whom had schizophrenia, are more likely to develop the disorder, regardless of whether their parent was the twin with schizophrenia or the twin without it.
Which statement regarding brain development is true?
Children's brains are much more plastic than adults' brains.
A doctor needs a brain imaging technique that shows brain structure but not brain function. Which technique should the doctor choose?
Computed tomography (CT)
Which statement is consistent with research on cognitive processing and aging?
Crystallized intelligence continues to grow throughout the aging process.
The molecule present in the chromosomes that "codes" hereditary information is called
DNA.
Which statement provides the most accurate description of Alzheimer's disease?
Dementia caused by the build-up of amyloid inside and outside of acetylcholine neurons
Which of the following choices requires inferential statistics?
Determining whether the exam scores of one fourth-grade classroom reflect how all fourth-graders would score
Which neurotransmitter plays an important role in signaling pleasure?
Dopamine
Schizophrenia most often presents itself at what stage?
Early adulthood, when people begin to face the world on their own.
Which theory outlines a series of stages that occur throughout the lifespan and involve tension between conflicting ways of interacting with others?
Erikson's psychosocial theory
Which approach would be most appropriate for testing the hypothesis that taking practice tests improves learning more than studying alone does?
Experimental research.
Which environmental influence is most closely linked with the development of schizophrenia in children who inherit genes for the disorder?
Exposure to a family member with the disorder
Which of the following conditions affects the appearance of the child's face and causes significant damage to the developing brain?
Fetal alcohol syndrome
_______ intelligence is the ability to reason abstractly and solve novel problems, and _______ intelligence is the accumulation of facts, experience, and historical references.
Fluid; crystallized
What is a mainstream psychologist most likely to think about Sigmund Freud?
Freudian theory is untestable and not grounded in science.
Though our brains are almost fully developed by the time we reach adolescence, enormous changes continue in the brain region called the _______ lobe.
Frontal
Which of the following perspectives argues that human behavior develops in certain ways because it serves a useful purpose?
Functionalism.
A quarter in your hand casts a different image on your retina than a quarter taped to the wall across the room, yet you know that the quarters have exactly the same dimensions. This phenomenon would be best explained by a
Gestalt psychologist..
On an empathy questionnaire, Group 1 had a mean score of 117 with a standard deviation of 14. Group 2 had a mean score of 96 with a standard deviation of 23. Therefore, _______ scored higher on average and their scores were _______ spread out than scores from _______.
Group 1; less; Group 2.
Which of the following samples would produce a nearly normal distribution?
Heights of all adult men in America
Which of the following is a myth of psychology?
Heritable traits, such as IQ, cannot be altered by experience..
According to Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, which question best corresponds with an adolescent's search for identity?
How can I fit in socially with the people around me?
How is natural selection related to psychology?
Humans behave as they do in part because that behavior promotes survival..
Which statement best describes a valid gene-environment interaction?
Identical twins adopted by different families often display behaviors typical of their adoptive families.
Which statement best describes a valid gene—environment interaction on behavior?
Identical twins adopted by different families often display behaviors typical of their adoptive families.
What is the key difference between twin studies and adoption studies?
In adoption studies, twins are separated at birth, adopted, and raised apart.
Xander has taken a medication that is an endorphin antagonist. Which side effect is most likely?
Increased pain sensitivity.
In experimental research, which of the following variables is controlled by the researcher?
Independent.
Which type of neuron is most common in the brain?
Interneuron.
A recent study found that married people are less likely to have personality disorders than unmarried people. The news reporter covering the study advised people to get married to improve their personalities. You know this recommendation is not warranted because
It is possible that personality disorders keep people from marrying
Which scenario describes a child who has mastered the concept of conservation of mass?
Jane knows that she has the same amount of clay in her round ball as Rico has in his flat disk.
When the U.S. Supreme Court was deliberating on whether to require schools to integrate black children and white children, their decision to strike down laws permitting segregated schools was greatly influenced by the "Doll Test," conducted by
Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark..
Which of the following investigation types does not represent the descriptive method of scientific inquiry?
Laboratory experimentation
If a doctor stimulated your occipital lobe, which would you be most likely to experience?
Lights and colors
Refer to the figure below. This mean difference image shows the most active brain areas across participants when they are completing a specific task. If lighter areas mean greater brain activity, what task were participants most likely completing?
Looking at an image
Which conclusion is most consistent with research on the developmental implications of infant temperament?
Low reactive infants transition easily from daycare to school.
A scientist is interested in understanding how the size of the prefrontal cortex changes between the ages of 9 and 13. Which of the following brain imaging techniques would she be most likely to use?
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
What do studies of maternal nurturing behavior in rats suggest about humans?
Maternal neglect early in life may have lasting impacts on a person's ability to cope with life's challenges.
Which is the correct order of measures of central tendency, from lowest to highest, for a positively skewed distribution?
Mode, median, mean.
How do gene mutations contribute to evolution?
Natural selection favors beneficial mutations, so they survive and are passed on to future generations
Which of the following is true regarding normal neuronal cell death?
Neurons normally continue to die until adolescence.
Lila is 18 months old and is no longer surprised when her mother hides her ball, only to reveal it again in a different position in front of her. What cognitive milestone is Lila displaying?
Object permanence.
The effects of PKU are epigenetic because
PKU is harmful only if a child ingests significant amounts of phenylalanine.
What does it mean to say that schizophrenia is heritable?
People with close blood relatives with schizophrenia are more likely to develop symptoms than the general population.
The foundations of psychology are most closely related to which of the following disciplines?
Philosophy
Which strategy has been most effective in reducing the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)?
Placing babies on their backs when sleeping
A meta-analysis of published and unpublished tests of SSRI medications revealed that
SSRIs beat placebos only for severe levels of depression.
The procedure by which researchers test whether a child has developed a theory of mind is called the
Sally and Anne test
Children's theory of mind can be assessed with the
Sally and Anne test.
Which situation is most consistent with the results of twin studies of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is more likely to materialize in a twin who experiences extreme stress.
What are the two components of the somatic nervous system?
Sensory and motor
Which is the most likely reason that Hester was the first of the Genain quadruplets to develop schizophrenic symptoms?
She had the lowest birth weight of the quadruplets.
Which is true for a twenty-year-old woman with a gene for Huntington's disease
She is most likely to develop symptoms of Huntington's disease by middle age.
Which confounding variable is teased out when psychologists study the traits of identical twins?
Similar environments shared by relatives.
Which statement reflects a reasonable attitude for a good student of psychology to have toward any claim about human behavior?
Skepticism is advisable until an idea is proven right.
Which of the following approaches to psychology did Edward Titchener advocate in the late 1800s?
Structuralism .
A news organization wanted to predict who would win the next U.S. presidential election. They sent an opinion poll to every fiftieth person on a list of students enrolled at a nearby college. Which of the following is the study population?
Students at this particular college
Kobe, a native English speaker, has moved to Germany and is learning to speak German. Which brain region is likely to show the greatest plasticity?
Temporal lobe
Which statement most accurately describes the brain?
The brain is like a machine with electrical and chemical components.
Why are dominant, yet harmful, alleles like the huntingtin gene so rare in our genomes?
The carrier does not survive long enough to pass on the allele.
A child finds a five-dollar bill beside her teacher's desk. Which scenario describes the application of preconventional moral reasoning?
The child is afraid she'll get in trouble if she takes the money, so she gives it to her teacher.
All of the following statements regarding gene-environment interactions is true except
The environment has the same effect on behavior regardless of genes.
Which single gene effect do men display more often than women?
The inability to distinguish red from green
You take a job selling magazine subscriptions from home because the recruitment video says the average earnings per employee are $90,000 a year. You work 60 hours a week for a year and earn $30,000. An Internet search reveals that hundreds of people have had the same experience with this and other work-at-home schemes. How can companies legitimately claim that the average salary is $90,000 if most employees make less than $30,000?
The mean salary reflects the presence of outliers..
What was Kohlberg most interested in when examining people's responses to the fictional story of Heinz stealing a drug for his ailing wife?
The nature of their reasoning about choice
Which developmental milestone characterizes menarche?
The onset of menstruation
Which of the following is an empirical statement?
The temperature right now is higher than it was 24 hours ago
Why is it difficult for psychologists to define the specific genes involved in disorders like depression and schizophrenia?
There are likely numerous genes that influence the various symptoms of each disorder
When one identical twin has schizophrenia, the other develops it only about half of the time. What is the most likely explanation for this?
There is an environmental component involved in developing schizophrenia.
Which statement about vesicles is accurate?
They empty neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft
______ temporarily disrupts brain activity
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
Which of these behaviors is most likely to be controlled by a neural network?
Understanding a joke
As you and your roommate watch a news report about a big fight that broke out at a local club, he turns to you and says, "I'm not surprised. It's a full moon, after all. People always go crazy around the full moon." As a student of psychology, your response should be:
When you look at police records, the actual data do not really support that idea."
_______ is often credited with establishing the first psychological laboratory, thus establishing psychology as an experimental science.
Wilhelm Wundt
The year 1879 might be thought of as the beginning of psychology as a science because that is the year
Wilhelm Wundt developed and opened the first psychology laboratory..
A research team is investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read an article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read an article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. Then all women in the study take a challenging math test. Researchers time the test and score the number of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following is the independent variable?
Women's scores on the math test
A research team was investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read a magazine article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read a magazine article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. All women in the study then took a challenging math test. Researchers scored the number of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following was the dependent variable?
Women's scores on the math test.
Your psychology professor tells the class, "Experience cannot be analyzed successfully into its elements." Your professor is most likely
a Gestalt psychologist.
a meta analysis is
a combination of results from many related studies.
Professor Durkin predicts that because we attribute positive qualities to attractive people, attractive children get away with misbehaving more often than unattractive children do. This is an example of
a hypothesis
A professor wanted to learn more about the body image concerns of young teenage girls. She randomly selected 200 girls from local middle schools to complete her questionnaire. These girls were
a representative sample..
In general, it is easier for psychologists and biologists to determine the influence of genes on behavior when the underlying cause of that behavior can be attributed to
a single gene rather than multiple genes
. A hypothesis is
a testable prediction about the relationship between variables
Based on the conclusions from the Walker and Lewine (1990) study of home movies, what signs might one look for in an infant who may eventually develop schizophrenia?
abnormal crawling behavior
Genes with slightly different instructions for making the same protein are called
alleles
Gerard's mother has noticed that he becomes very upset when she leaves for work in the morning. When she gets home, he is resistant to her attempts to bond with him. Gerard is displaying
ambivalent attachment.
Which of the following are subunits of proteins?
amino acids
To prove that electrical stimulation can produce intense feelings of anxiety, the mad scientist would stimulate his victim's
amygdala
A neuron with _______ would be expected to have the slowest-moving action potential.
an unmyelinated, thin axon.
Neurons are more likely to fire when they
are depolarized
According to Piaget's theory, the two processes that drive children's mental development are called
assimilation and accommodation.
When a child learns new information about the world that fits with her schema, it is called _______. When a child learns new information that requires her to change her schema, it is called _______.
assimilation; accommodation
A _______ would be most likely to argue that a 13-year-old boy took up smoking because his father, older brothers, and friends were smokers.
behaviorist
Though generally satisfied with life, older people do experience a sense of loss and longing after the death of a friend or loved one. This is called
bereavement.
In cases where only one of two identical twins develops schizophrenia, all of the following factors may be responsible except
birth order.
Which function is most directly controlled by the brainstem?
breathing
Proteins are often described by scientists as the
building blocks of life.
Which of the following research methods would be most appropriate for exploring whether childhood emotional abuse predicts higher levels of adult depression?
case studies
Neurotransmitters influence the polarization of a neuron by
causing receptor channels to open, allowing positively charged sodium ions to flow into the neuron.
Benedict was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident. His injury was most likely located in his _______ system.
central nervous
After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Kaela had her thyroid removed. The effects of this are likely to include
changes in metabolism.
Each of our _______ consists of tightly coiled DNA.
chromosomes
The rod-shaped cellular structures that contain human DNA are called
chromosomes
Twins who share a certain physical or behavioral trait are _______ for that trait.
concordant
Piaget's theory of development has been referred to as _______ because in his view, children adapt to the world by actively building and organizing their experiences.
constructivism
Piaget's theory of development has been referred to as _______ because in his view, children adapt to the world by actively building and organizing their experiences.
constructivism.
An unethical experimenter wants to test the relationship between discomfort and aggression. On a hot day, she turns off the air conditioning in one dorm and leaves it on in another, then has her research assistants count occurrences of verbal aggression in common areas of the buildings. Students in the air-conditioned dorm would be the _______, and students in the overheated dorm would be the _______.
control group; experimental group.
Kohlberg described the type of moral reasoning used by most adults as
conventional
Refer to the figure below. The numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to the _______, respectively. Brain picture
corpus callosum, thalamus, pituitary, and cerebellum
In older people, a decline in cognitive functioning as a result of damage or disease, rather than aging, is called
dementia.
Which term refers to the branchlike extensions of the neuron that receive signals from other neurons?
dendrites
Refer to the figure below The numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 refer to _______, respectively.
dendrites, cell body, axon, and axon terminals
The key purpose of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to
determine whether a proposed study is ethical.
In the case of Deidre, a woman with epilepsy, doctors stimulated different regions of her brain to
determine which brain functions were located in the area causing her seizures.
Before the mechanisms behind PKU were known to science, infants that inherited the genes for the disorder almost always
developed mental impairments.
_______ psychologists study how the mind and behavior progress as people age.
developmental
During neural development, the nervous system generates more cells than it ultimately needs. Over half of the extra cells
die though a natural process before birth.
During _______, neurons grow into the body shape and dendrites appropriate for their specific functions
differentiation
Both parents of twins Mary and Shelly have schizophrenia. However, only Mary developed the disorder. This means that the twins are _______ for schizophrenia
discordant
Twins who do not share 100 percent of their genes are called
dizygotic
An allele is _______ when it affects an individual's phenotype, regardless of what other allele the individual carries for that gene.
dominant
Jessie has taken a medication that interferes with her ability to feel pleasure. This medication is most likely a
dopamine antagonist
In a depression-treatment study, neither the participants nor the researcher know who is taking medication and who is taking a sugar pill. This is an example of a
double-blind trial.
In the experiment with dull and bright rats, Cooper and Zubek demonstrated a gene—environment interaction by showing that when navigating the maze
dull rats raised in enriched environments eventually performed as well as bright rats.
Preoperational children are often described as _______ because they do not understand that different people can have different points of view.
egocentric
The technique that detects voltage changes in the brain is
electroencephalography (EEG).
The limbic system is most involved in
emotion.
The thyroid and the pituitary gland are part of the
endocrine system.
The scientific study of factors that affect gene expression is called
epigenetics
The main purpose of inferential statistics is to
estimate a characteristic of a population based on a sample.
Research that involves intentional manipulation of variables is called _______ research.
experimental
Research has shown that social exclusion activates the same brain regions as physical pain. A researcher wants to test the hypothesis that over-the-counter pain relievers will also reduce the pain of social exclusion. She gives half of her participants ibuprofen and half a placebo, then has them play a game in which other players ignore them. Participants who take the ibuprofen are the _______ and participants who take the placebo are the _______.
experimental group; control group
A research team wants to know if sugar consumption is related to hyperactivity. Researchers give fifty children cupcakes made with real sugar and another fifty children cupcakes made with zero-calorie sugar substitutes. They then observe each child individually to assess his or her level of activity after eating the cupcakes. This is an example of
experimental research
The goal of psychology is to
explain human thought and behavior
In taste tests, people prefer Coke to Pepsi when they drink labeled samples but prefer Pepsi to Coke when they drink unlabeled samples. This is an example of
explicit bias
Parents who agree with John Locke's notion of tabula rasa would most likely
expose their children to a rich variety of sensory experiences.
Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark found that doll tests
exposed internalized racism in African-American children, particularly among children attending segregated schools.
Behaviorism examines _______, whereas cognitive psychology examines _______.
external behavior; internal mental processes
The fusion of your father's sperm and your mother's egg is referred to as
fertilization.
Your first cell began making proteins when your father's sperm fused with your mother's egg in the process of
fertilization.
Many people over age forty develop presbyopia, a condition in which it becomes difficult to
focus on nearby objects.
You feel sick after eating leftovers you found in the back of the refrigerator. Occam's razor would favor the hypothesis that you have
food poisoning..
A researcher plans to study changes in patients' brain activity as Alzheimer's disease progresses by detecting changes in blood flow and oxygen content. The appropriate brain imaging technique to use is
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
A researcher would most likely use _______ to investigate which brain areas are active during speech?
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
A research psychologist is most interested in discovering the answers to questions like, "Why is empathy helpful to people?" and "How does education contribute to social stability?" This approach is most consistent with the _______ perspective
functionalist
The process by which a cell directs a gene to make a certain protein is called
gene expression.
Compared to computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans
generally provide more detailed structural information???
The belief that genes determine everything about us, including our behavior, is referred to as
genetic determinism
Even though your body changes and you develop new physical and behavioral characteristics, your _______ never changes.
genotype
In a test of a new medication for schizophrenia, doctors allow patients to decide if they want to take the new medication or stick with their current medication. This is problematic because it creates an issue with
group equivalence.
In the final stages of synaptogenesis, neurons
grow dendrites and axons
Dizygotic twins
grow from separate zygotes
Your baby cousin gazes at a new ball for several seconds, then turns her attention to other objects in the room. She is demonstrating
habituation.
Dogs that release less corticosterone in response to stress may have had mothers that
had underdeveloped amygdalae.
In the homunculus that corresponds to the mapping of the somatosensory cortex, which body part occupies the largest area?
hand
Psychologists now believe that subliminal advertising
has a weak effect on consumers, if any at all.
According to René Descartes, the very fact that he is thinking proves that
he exists.
The endocrine system controls
hormone production and release.
The development of secondary sex characteristics, such as breast development in girls, is driven by
hormones.
Variations in eye color are the result of alleles that differ in terms of
how much pigment they make.
Inhibitory synapses
hyperpolarize neurons
The principle of Occam's razor compares _______ in terms of the _______.
hypotheses; assumptions they make
The key difference between twin studies and adoption studies is that in adoption studies
identical twins are separated at birth and raised apart.
Baby chicks born on a farm will often follow the human that they first see when they hatch. This is a result of _______, the innate process of learning to recognizing a parent.
imprinting
Students _______ would be the most representative sample for a study of competitiveness in high school.
in a required health class.
The loss of sensory capacity in hearing as we age is most evident for sounds that are
in the high-pitch range (over 12,000 Hz)???
In a phobia treatment study, the participants spend three hours facing their fears. Post-treatment scores show significant improvement in overall distress levels when handling the feared objects, so the treatment is judged as effective by the researcher. To improve the study's design, the researcher can
include a control group, which would receive some supportive counseling but not the actual treatment.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is characterized by problems directing attention, which are also accompanied by
increased physical activity and fidgeting.
In an experiment, the variable manipulated by the researcher is the _______ variable.
independent
Research participants in early psychology studies might have been given a stimulus such as a ticking metronome and would reflect on the experience, reporting what the stimulus made them think and feel. These individuals would have been using a process called
introspection.
A researcher presents his participant with a series of flashing lights at varying intervals. After each presentation of a light, he asks the participant to fully describe her internal experiences, a method known as
introspection..
Brain plasticity
involves changes in the brain connected with storing memories???
The expression of genes
is constantly changing in response to the environment.
A heritable trait is one that
is influenced by genes inherited from one's parents.
Deception in psychological research
is occasionally allowed but must be followed by a thorough debriefing.
A recessive allele, such as the allele for white flower color in pea plants, affects an individual's phenotype only when
it is present on both chromosomes.
Refer to the set of numbers below. 2, 8, 3, 4, 8, 10, 0 In the set of numbers, the median is _______ than the mean and _______than the mode.
less, less
The action potential of a neuron is best compared to
liquid starting to spill over the rim of a cup when just enough force is applied.
A psychologist administered a test that was designed to measure intelligence. Individuals taking the test on multiple occasions were found to achieve similar scores over time. Another psychologist used the same test to evaluate subjects' memory capacity, and these results were strongly correlated with those of other memory tests. As an instrument designed to measure intelligence, the test has _______ validity and _______ reliability.
low; high
A scientist has inserted an electrode into the frontal lobe of a monkey. Electrical stimulation would most likely cause the monkey to
make a kicking motion.
A college professor testing two different study-skill interventions tosses a coin to decide which type of training each student will get. The professor does this to
make it less likely that there will be pre-existing differences between the groups.
Colorblindness is more common in males than in females because
males receive only one allele (on the X chromosome) for that gene for color vision.
A correlation of −0.80 between meditation and anxiety symptoms would indicate
meditation predicts lower levels of anxiety..
The hippocampus plays the most significant role in
memory
Before scientists fully understood the cause of PKU, infants with the disorder often developed
mental impairment
Refer to the graph below. Scores for Group 1 differ most dramatically from scores for Group 2 in their
mode
Identical twins are called _______, while non-identical twins are called _______.
monozygotic; dizygotic
The difference between a zygote and an embryo is that the embryo is
more complex
The primary type of neuron in neural networks is a
motor neuron
Messages from the central nervous system are carried to muscles by
motor neurons.
The three main functional types of neurons are
motor, sensory, and interneurons
A researcher hoping to identify autism's early warning signs collects home videos of autistic teens. She uses these videos of their formative years to identify atypical movements as they learned to crawl and walk. This is an example of
naturalistic observation.
Complex behavior is controlled by
neural networks
Both the spinal cord and the brain develop from the fetal structure called the
neural tube
Neural development begins with rapid division of nerve cells in a process called
neurogenesis.
Otto Loewi electrically stimulated a nerve in a frog heart. He then applied fluid surrounding that heart to a second heart. In this experiment, he found evidence that
neurons communicate chemically
An infant's vision improves from about 20/120 to about 20/30 by approximately eight months of age because the
neurons connecting the retinas and the brain mature
The study of the nervous system is called
neuroscience..
A patient has a dangerously low heart rate and is having difficulty breathing. The neurotransmitter that would be most helpful to him is
norepinephrine.
Scientific investigation has revealed that the "Mozart Effect" (the notion that children become smarter from listening to the music of Mozart) is
not substantiated through research.
After her stroke, Mei was able to hear, smell, and taste normally. However, she had difficulty with her vision. She most likely experienced damage to her
occipital lobe.
When psychologists use the term "nature" to refer to causes of behaviors, they mean
our genes and strictly biological influences
One reason dysfunctional alleles can have such specific effects on the workings of our sensory systems is that
our sensory systems rely on the functioning of more than one protein.
All of the following are female secondary sex characteristics except
ovaries.
White matter refers to
parts of the brain filled with myelinated axons
An overwhelming amount of scientific evidence indicates that
people are born with specific sexual orientation
The social brain hypothesis states that
people can keep close tabs on only about 150 different personal relationships.
Regardless of what your current _______ displays, your _______ never changes
phenotype; genotype
A person who has PKU should avoid all food containing
phenylalanine
A depressed teenager treated with medication begins feeling better immediately, even though the medication typically takes weeks to work. This is an example of a _______ effect.
placebo
The _______, formed when the cells in the outer layer of the embryo divide, provides oxygen and nutrients to the embryo.
placenta
"Green is the prettiest color" is a _______ hypothesis because it is _______.
poor; not testable
To learn more about the gaming habits of teenage boys, a professor randomly selected fifty boys from various high schools for a video game study. In this study, "all teenage boys" make up the
population
A technique that tracks blood flow to measure brain activity is
positron emission tomography (PET)
After a skydiving accident, an MRI showed damage to Rose's cerebellum. She is most likely to have difficulty with
practicing yoga.
At what stage in Erikson's theory of psychosocial development do relationships with peers first begin to become important?
preadolescent
When asked if she would steal food for a homeless person, Samantha balked, stating that she did not want to go to jail. According to Kohlberg's theory, Samantha's moral reasoning is consistent with the stage known as
preconventional.
Following a head injury, Maria experienced a dramatic personality change. She now gambles heavily, swears and yells at work, and has difficulty planning ahead. She most likely experienced damage to her
prefrontal cortex
Reliability refers to whether your measurement tool _______ and validity to whether it _______.
produces repeatable results; measures what it is supposed to measure
Individuals with Huntington's disease possess an allele that causes severe symptoms by
producing certain abnormal proteins
The key purpose of myelin is to
provide electrical insulation
Ethical principles require researchers to
provide information about potential risks to participants before they begin a study.
The landmark in development when an individual becomes capable of reproduction is called
puberty
Treatment-outcome researchers attempt to prevent initial differences between treatment and control groups by using
randomization
Kohlberg constructed his theory of moral reasoning by asking people to decide how a fictional character, Heinz, should respond to a moral dilemma. Kohlberg was most interested in the
reasoning by which people reached their decisions
A researcher testing a new medication for attention deficit disorder randomly assigns half of the participants to get the actual medication and half to get a sugar pill. Neither the researcher nor the participants know who is getting what. This study design will
reduce unconscious bias.
Effect size
refers to the magnitude of the difference between groups.
In Plato's cave allegory, a prisoner was temporarily unchained and allowed to see the fire at the mouth of the cave. When he returned to the chains, the other prisoners
refused to believe him
A self-report measure of the personality trait of agreeableness produces very similar scores each time the same person completes it. It is also strongly correlated with whether family members describe a person as friendly and cooperative. This measure appears to be
reliable and valid..
In a behaviorist approach to treatment for a patient with a fear of rats, the patient is
repeatedly exposed to stimuli that are gradually more and more like rats
The presence of adoring groupies at a small local club make a rock band confident they will become world famous. They should probably pay more attention to the importance of
representative samples.
All of the following are secondary sex characteristics except
reproductive organs in females.
The Tuskegee syphilis study is famous because
researchers failed to inform participants that they had a treatable disease
All of the following activities have been shown to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease except A) resting the brain by avoiding complex cognitive tasks.
resting the brain by avoiding complex cognitive tasks.
At six months old a child is likely to be
rolling over
Two reflexes that help an infant receive nourishment are the _______ reflex, or the turning of the head in response to a brush of the cheek, and the _______ reflex, primarily for intake of breast milk
rooting; sucking.
A friend is concerned because her brother has started to tell the family that he believes he talks directly to God. He is also becoming emotionally withdrawn. You recommend sending him to a psychiatrist because he might be showing signs of
schizophrenia.
Gina is very attached to her father, who is her primary caregiver. She is usually upset when he leaves her with her grandmother to go to work, but Gina is always happy when he returns in the evening. Gina is displaying
secure attachment.
If heavy snowfall in Alaska has a correlation of -0.78 with the consumption of ice cream and a correlation of +0.78 with the sale of boots, you can predict that for a snowy January in Alaska, the store will
sell more boots and ice cream sales will be lower.
To allow communication, neurons
send chemical messages across small gaps between neurons.
Vision researchers have shown that a person will fail to develop visual perception abilities if light does not stimulate the eye early in development. This is evidence of _______ during development.
sensitive periods.
Gene expression is fundamentally linked to experience because
sensory experience from behavior affects gene expression in many neurons.
When you scrape your knee, pain is relayed from your knee to your central nervous system by
sensory neurons.
Results from a recent experiment are consistent with a researcher's expectation that exposing people to unfamiliar groups reduces prejudice. This means that the researcher
should retain her hypothesis for now
Computed tomography (CT) scans
show brain structures but not areas of brain activity.
A child who regularly displays avoidant attachment will show little or no distress when her mother leaves her with a new caregiver. The next time the caregiver comes, the child will most likely
show little or no response to the caregiver
A researcher would be most likely to find a negative correlation between _______ and _______.
shyness; party attendance
Dopamine is most directly involved in
signaling pleasure
The peripheral nervous system is divided into the _______ nervous system and the _______ nervous system.
somatic; autonomic.
Genes regulate protein synthesis by
specifying which amino acids will be joined together, and in what order.
As the number of pirates in the world has decreased, the mean global temperature has increased. This is an example of a
spurious correlation
Whether depression levels are truly lower in a treatment group than in a control group is assessed by determining the _______ of the difference in scores between groups.
statistical significance.
Mary Ainsworth found that infants vary in their attachment styles by using an experimental procedure called the
strange situation task
At about eight months of age, as a part of normal attachment development, infants begin to show
stranger anxiety
One of the best methods of determining the influence of confounding variables on the heritability of human traits is to conduct a
study of identical twins.
To identify the most popular exhibits at a science museum, visitors were asked every day for six weeks to rate how much they enjoyed each exhibit. The data were analyzed to look for age and sex differences in exhibit preferences. This was an example of
survey research
Your roommate has accused you of stealing money from her. Your racing heart and rapid breathing are triggered by your _______ nervous system.
sympathetic
Thinning of the top layer of the cortex in adolescence is a good indicator of the neurodevelopmental process called
synapse rearrangement
During which stage of neural development do the neurons begin to branch out to form connections with one another?
synaptogenesis
The idea that children are born with no knowledge or "content" whatsoever and are "filled" by life experiences is called
tabula rasa..
Erikson describes each of the various stages of psychosocial development as being characterized by
tension
Any substance that can potentially harm the fetus during birth is called a
teratogen
An important principle to remember when studying psychology is that
the act of learning changes the physical structure of the brain.
Alzheimer's disease is dementia that is caused by
the build-up of amyloid in and outside of acetylcholine neurons
Harmful dominant alleles, like those for the huntingtin gene, are not common because in most cases
the carrier does not survive long enough to pass on the allele via reproduction.
Heritability estimates tell us
the degree to which variations in a population can be attributed to genetics
The sensation of a fly landing on your arm is weaker than the sensation of being hit with a dodgeball because
the dodgeball triggers more action potentials per second from each sensory neuron.
Epigenetics is most concerned with
the expression of a particular gene as influenced by external inputs.
Twin studies of the heritability of schizophrenia generally show that
the heritability of schizophrenia is about 50 percent
A psychological test designed to measure creativity is considered a reliable tool based on whether
the same subjects would score consistently over time
Synapses are
tiny gaps between cells that are important for neural communication
Researchers can tell if an infant prefers a visual stimulus, such as a face, to another stimulus by
tracking how long an infant looks at each stimulus
The corpus callosum is directly responsible for
transferring information between the left and right hemispheres
Researchers are testing the hypothesis that high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood trigger panic attacks. Half of the participants breathe carbon dioxide-enriched air, and the other half breathe normal air, then measured panic attack symptoms. In this study _______ is the independent variable and _______ is the dependent variable.
type of air; attack symptoms
Which sense is the least mature at birth?
vision
According to the social brain hypothesis, each of us can deal effectively with social interactions with roughly 150 people. This implies that
we are capable of maintaining social networks of up to 150 people throughout our lives
According to the process of natural selection, a mutation
will accumulate in the genomes of future generations if it improves survival and reproduction.
A fertilized human egg cell is called a
zygote