Psychology Exam 2

Sleep deprivation increases levels of the hunger-arousing hormone

ghrelin

The endocrine system consists of

glands

Paulo was robbed at gunpoint by a group of strangers. Police officers later asked him to describe in writing what he had seen and heard during the robbery. Which measure of memory retention was being used?

recall

Mrs. McBride can't consciously recall how frequently she criticizes her children because it would be too anxiety-arousing to do so. Sigmund Freud would have suggested that her poor memory illustrates

repression

The first time that Liza heard the loud sound of her father's bass drum, she responded with fear. Her fear response is most clearly an example of

respondent behavior.

An experienced tennis player's brain and body respond with skilled accuracy to an oncoming serve before the person becomes consciously aware of the ball's trajectory. This best illustrates the value of

a two track mind

A year after surviving a classroom shooting incident, Kim-Li still responds with terror at the sight of toy guns and to the sound of balloons popping. This reaction best illustrates

generalization

The Moon illusion refers to our tendency to perceive the Moon as unusually

large when it is near the horizon.

The right hemisphere of Julie's brain is better than her left hemisphere at recognizing facial expressions of emotion. This best illustrates

lateralization

The brain devotes more tissue within the ________ for body areas requiring the most precise movement control, such as the fingers.

motor cortex

Neurons that enable people to throw a baseball by relaying messages from their central nervous system to their skeletal muscles are called

motor neurons.

Which of the following sleep disorders is most strongly associated with obesity?

narcolepsy

While listening to operatic solos, musicians process the lyrics and the tunes in separate brain areas. This most clearly illustrates the functioning of different

neural networks

The processing of information on many parallel tracks at the same time is a skill most closely associated with

unconscious mental activity.

A recurring sleep stage during which most vivid dreams commonly occur is known as ________ sleep.

REM

Blinking in response to a puff of air directed to your eye is a

UR

Which of the following would be particularly useful for detecting the brain areas that are most active as a person performs mathematical calculations?

a PET scan

The opponent-process theory is most useful for explaining a characteristic of

afterimages

After suffering a brain injury in a motorcycle accident, Arotza cannot form new memories. He can, however, remember events before the accident. Arotza's memory difficulty most clearly illustrates

amnesia

Memories of emotionally stressful events are likely to be strong because of activation of the

amyglada

The regions of the parietal lobes that are involved in mathematical and spatial reasoning are known as

association areas.

Through direct experience with animals, we come to anticipate that dogs will bark and that birds will chirp. This best illustrates

associative learning.

Damage to the basilar membrane is most likely to affect one's

audition

The encoding of information directly into long-term storage without the aid of working memory best illustrates

automatic processing.

An organism's ability to mentally anticipate that a US will follow a CS is most likely to be highlighted by a(n) ________ perspective.

cognitive

Which of the following brain structures is central to remembering how to perform well-learned skills?

basal ganglia

Most of the TV shows that 9-year-old Fred watches involve violence. This is most likely to lead Fred to

become desensitized to violence on TV or in real life.

Answering practice test questions about text material you have studied is most useful for

becoming aware of what you do not yet know.

A subliminal message is one that is presented

below one's absolute threshold for awareness

Compared with the entire range of visible light waves, those that are highest in frequency are most likely to be experienced as

blue

The brain's oldest region is the You Answered

brainstem

A neuron is best described as a

cell

Receptor cells for the vestibular sense send messages to the

cerebellum

After suffering an accidental brain injury, Kira has difficulty walking in a smooth and coordinated manner. She has probably suffered damage to her

cerebellum.

Staying up especially late on weekends is most likely to have an influence on

circadian rhythm

If the onset of a light reliably signals the onset of food, a rat in a Skinner box will work to turn on the light. In this case, the light is a ________ reinforcer.

conditioned

Pavlov noticed that dogs began salivating at the mere sight of the person who regularly brought food to them. For the dogs, the sight of this person was a(n)

conditioned stimulus

Receptor cells in the human eye that are the most sensitive to fine detail are called

cones

Coordinated brain-wide activity is a sign of

conscious awareness

Which hormone enables contractions associated with birthing and milk flow during nursing?

cortisol

Immanuel Kant and John Locke would have been most likely to disagree about the extent to which perception is influenced by

cultural experience

Punishment ________ the rate of operant responding, and negative reinforcement ________ the rate of operant responding.

decreases; increases

Working hard every day of the year for the gratification of a bonus paycheck at the end of the year best illustrates the impact of ________ on behavior.

delayed reinforcers

Weber's law is relevant to an understanding of

difference thresholds

Many students review course material at various times during a semester so they will be prepared for the final exam. These students are especially likely to retain the information far into the future. This best illustrates the value of

distributed practice.

Mentally rehearsing the glossary definitions of unfamiliar terms in order to remember them for a later test illustrates

effortful processing.

Holding a heavy rather than a light clipboard leads people to perceive job candidates as more important. This best illustrates

embodied cognition

Natural, opiate-like neurotransmitters linked to pain control are called

endorphins.

Mr. Nydam is unable to remember playing golf several times each week on a particular course. Yet the more he plays the course, the more his game improves. His experience illustrates the need to distinguish between

explicit memory and implicit memory.

During a typical morning, Colin checks the clock frequently before being reinforced with confirmation that the time for his regularly scheduled lunch break has arrived. In this case, Colin's behavior is reinforced on a ________ schedule.

fixed-interval

Airline frequent flyer programs that reward customers with a free flight after every 75,000 miles of travel illustrate the use of a ________ schedule of reinforcement.

fixed-ratio

Which portion of the cerebral cortex is most directly involved in making plans and formulating moral judgments?

frontal lobes

The limbic system's hippocampus

helps process explicit memories for storage

An inability to form semantic memories would most likely result from damage to the

hippocampus

Dissociation has been used as an explanation for

hypnotic pain relief

The limbic system structure that regulates hunger is called the

hypothalamus.

In one experiment, many of the research participants who were keeping track of basketball tosses between players failed to notice a gorilla-suited research assistant thumping his chest as he moved among the players. This failure best illustrated

inattentional blindness.

The vast majority of neurons in the body's information system are

interneurons

Which of the following is believed to be the synaptic basis for learning and memory?

long-term potentiation

Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system ________ blood sugar levels and ________ the pupils of the eyes.

lowers; contracts

Bright light inhibits our feelings of sleepiness by influencing the production of Correct!

melatonin

Retaining information over time through encoding, storage, and retrieval best describes

memory

An empathic husband who sees his wife in pain will exhibit some of the same brain activity she is showing. According to many researchers, this best illustrates the functioning of

mirror neurons

To remember that a wagon, a baseball, and a doll were items on her Christmas shopping list, Julia formed a vivid mental image of an oversize doll pulling a bright red wagon loaded with baseballs. Julia's strategy best illustrates the use of

mnemonics.

The messages neurons carry are nerve impulses called

neurotransmitters.

Another term for implicit memory is ________ memory.

nondeclarative

Rats most easily learn to associate being sick and nauseated with

novel tastes

John B. Watson believed that psychology should be the science of

observable behavior.

If one chimpanzee watches a second chimp solve a puzzle for a food reward, the first chimp may thereby learn how to solve the puzzle. This best illustrates

observational learning.

Which hormone enables contractions associated with birthing and milk flow during nursing?

oxytocin

Some stroke victims lose the capacity to perceive motion but retain the capacity to perceive shapes and colors. Others lose the capacity to perceive colors but retain the capacity to perceive movement and form. These peculiar visual disabilities best illustrate our normal capacity for

parallel processing.

The fact that we recognize objects as having a consistent form regardless of changing viewing angles illustrates

perceptual constancy

Karen's years of experience navigating the streets of a very large city as a taxi driver have resulted in changes in her brain's spatial memory centers that support her detailed street location memory. This best illustrates the value of

plasticity

Psychics are unable to make millions of dollars betting on horse races. This undermines their claims to possess the power of

precognition

During her evening Spanish language exam, Janica so easily remembers the French vocabulary she studied that morning that she finds it difficult to recall the Spanish vocabulary she rehearsed that afternoon. Her difficulty best illustrates

proactive interference.

The way in which you quickly group the individual letters in this test item into separate words best illustrates the principle of

proximity

When Aaron's teacher began responding to his habit of kicking other children with an immediate time-out, the frequency of this misbehavior steadily declined. The time-out best illustrates a

punishment

The happier Judie is, the more readily she recalls positive life experiences. This best illustrates that emotional states can become

retrieval cues.

Multiple ________ send combined messages to a bipolar cell, whereas a single ________ may link directly to a single bipolar cell.

rods; cone

The distinction between manifest content and latent content is central to an explanation of dreams that emphasizes

satisfaction of one's own wishes.

A teenager focused on texting while crossing the street is not likely to notice a car rounding the corner and about to cross her path. This best illustrates the unfortunate consequences of

selective attention.

Normal vision accompanied by prosopagnosia best illustrates the distinction between

sensation and perception.

If you move your watchband up your wrist an inch or so, you will feel it for only a few moments. This best illustrates

sensory adaption

In teaching her son to play basketball, Mrs. Richards initially reinforces him with praise for simply dribbling while standing still, then only for walking while dribbling, and finally only for running while dribbling. She is using a procedure known as

shaping

After Maya told her friend the five-digit password to a protected website, her friend was able to remember it only long enough to type it into the password box. In this instance, the password was clearly stored in her friend's ________ memory.

short-term

Long after her conditioned fear of dogs had been extinguished, Marcy experienced an unexpected surge of nervousness when first shown her cousin's new cocker spaniel. Her unexpected nervousness best illustrates

spontaneous recovery.

One child who participated in a memory experiment falsely remembered that he once went to the hospital because he had caught his finger in a mousetrap. His false memory best illustrated the impact of

suggestive interviewing.

Drugs that block the reuptake of serotonin will thereby increase the concentration of serotonin molecules in the

synaptic gaps.

Which brain structure relays information from the eyes to the visual cortex?

thalamus

Cats received a fish reward whenever they maneuvered themselves out of an enclosed puzzle box. With successive trials, the cats escaped from the box with increasing speed. This illustrates

the law of effect

After Teresa was verbally threatened by someone in a passing car, she was asked whether she recognized the man who was driving the car. Several hours later, Teresa mistakenly recalled that the driver was a male rather than a female. Teresa's experience best illustrates

the misinformation effect.

At a block party, Cyndi is introduced to eight new neighbors. Moments later, she remembers only the names of the first three and last two neighbors. Her experience best illustrates

the serial position effect.

The local fire department sounds the 12 o'clock whistle. The process by which your ears transform the sound waves from the siren into neural impulses is an example of

transduction