Sectional Exam 1 for Psych 150

Rosemary had a stroke about a year ago and now she cannot understand what people are saying to her. This is embarrassing for her, so she responds using vague language and tries to make it appear as though she understands. Which area of Rosemary's brain was likely damaged by the stroke?

Wernicke's area

According to William James, the purpose of psychology was to ________.

study the function of behavior

LeVon convinces his wealthy clients that they can move objects with their minds. He tells them that if they truly believe, the objects will move. If the objects do not move, it is because they do not truly believe. LeVon's argument fails which important criteria of science?

Falsifiability

Which scenario best illustrates the concept of a night terror?

Hector demonstrates acute distress even though he is asleep. When his roommate wakes him up, he is confused and does not remember being so upset.

Which of the following statements about Freud's work is true?

His theories do not lend themselves to experimentation.

Tao wakes up his roommate Don so that he doesn't miss his morning classes again. Don tells Tao, "I wish you hadn't woken me up, I was about to land on Mars after winning a fierce battle against flying jellyfish." Don was most likely in ____.

REM sleep

James is writing a paper on the nature of human ideas. In his paper he argues that our emotions and ideas are inborn. Which of the following philosophers is he referencing in his paper?

Rene Descartes

In order to assess whether viewpoints on decriminalization of marijuana for medical purposes change with age, four groups of participants, ages 20, 30, 40, and 50, are asked whether they support this issue. What is one flaw of this design?

Social or cultural generational factors may influence the results, not age.

Marcus is conducting a squid axon electrophysiology experiment with Dr. Flores. While monitoring a recording electrode placed within a squid axon, Marcus reports to Dr. Flores that the neuron is in a refractory period. What does this mean?

The cell is hyperpolarized and another action potential is unlikely or impossible.

Which statement best describes the relationship between the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system?

The central nervous system is the command center; the peripheral nervous system carries out the commands.

Brindel is a contemporary psychologist who has been examining the "nature versus nurture" question. Which of the following would she be most likely to conclude?

The mind is a result of interactions between inborn characteristics and everyday experiences.

Which cliché most fully encompasses the beliefs of early Gestalt psychologists?

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

A newspaper headline reads, "Are intellectual pursuits the key to preventing Alzheimer's disease?" The researchers scanned the brains of healthy seniors with no memory loss and asked the seniors to recall how much reading, writing, and game-playing they did in childhood. Those who reported doing daily brain activities from a young age had very low levels of amyloid plaques, which are associated with Alzheimer's disease. Which of the following best describes this study's findings?

There is a negative correlation between intellectual pursuits and the presence of amyloid plaques.

How do drugs classified as "SSRIs," such as Prozac, alter neuronal communication?

They increase the effectiveness of the neurotransmitter serotonin by blocking its reuptake into the axon terminal.

Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the formative role of early childhood experiences and focuses on ____.

a person's unconscious

On a graph of a correlation coefficient, points falling near to a straight sloped line indicate ________.

a strong correlation

Which of the following refers to the very private and internal mental processes that the behaviorists avoided studying—information processing, thinking, reasoning, and problem solving?

cognition

Which of the following is not a risk factor for SIDS?

above average birth weight

The arrival of a(n)____ causes synaptic vesicles to be released from their protein anchors, allowing the vesicles to fuse with the cell membrane and release ____ into the synaptic cleft.

action potential; neurotransmitters

The ________, which is involved in identifying, remembering, and responding to fear and aggression, takes its name from the Greek word for "________."

amygdala; almond

Dru is reading about the different types of research. If he reads, "This type of research has the primary advantage of allowing a scientist to determine cause and effect relationships," what kind of research method is he studying?

an experimental laboratory study

Police Officer Amy Randall suspects that the driver of a car in front of her is driving under the influence of alcohol. She pulls the driver over and administers a field sobriety test. She asks the driver to stand on one leg so that she can evaluate the driver's balance. This test is performed because the ____ is one of the first structures in the brain to be affected by alcohol.

cerebellum

Synaptic communication between two neurons usually occurs via ____.

chemical messengers

Dr. Sanchez is a behavioral psychologist who studies learning and memory in rats. Because rats are most active at night, she asks the animal resource facility to reverse their light‑dark cycle to accommodate her experiments. However, the animal facility is reluctant to disrupt the rats' current ____, aka internal clock.

circadian rhythm

In order for researchers to be able to say that Variable A causes Variable B, they must eliminate the possible influence of ________.

confounding variables

Alcohol is considered a ________ because it tends to _________ central nervous system activity.

depressant; suppress

Lucy wants to study changes in cognitive skills, moral reasoning, and social behavior across the lifespan. Lucy should specialize in ________ psychology.

developmental

Dr. Pohler is a neurobiologist studying ways to enhance the perception of sound in people with hearing difficulties. He discovers a natural neurotransmitter that increases the chance a neuron will fire an action potential, increasing sensitivity to sound. What is the effect of this neurotransmitter on the receiving neuron?

excitatory, causing depolarization

Amanda and Toni work for a polling institute. They spend hours polling citizens about their positions on various political topics and then the results are compiled. The polling institute then assumes that the trends they see in several hundred respondents apply to the larger population as a whole, suggesting the findings are _________.

generalizable

The endocrine system is comprised of a number of glands that release chemical messengers known as ____ into the ____.

hormones; blood

Spurling et al. investigated the effects of two vocabulary learning strategies on word retention two weeks later. In this example, learning strategy is the ________ variable and word retention is the ________ variable.

independent; dependent

Statistical methods that allow experimenters to extend conclusions from samples to larger populations are called __________.

inferential statistics

Jack has no problem falling asleep each night, but he wakes up frequently in the middle of the night and often cannot fall back asleep. From what type of insomnia does Jack suffer?

maintenance insomnia

Isla is describing her dream to a friend. She explains that in her dream she being chased by zombies and she escaped them by hiding in a refrigerator. Her description of her dream is focused on ________ content.

manifest

Callie's data set regarding the working conditions and stress levels of domestic workers contains housing expenses. The average is surprisingly low, but then she realizes that many workers are live-in employees and report zero housing expense. A more useful measure of central tendency that would not be as impacted by these extreme, outlying scores would be the __________.

median

Consuela stands in front of her American History class to give a presentation. She suddenly loses consciousness and suffers a "sleep attack" referred to as ____.

narcolepsy

You decide to study weekend dorm life for a sociology term paper. In order to do this, you attend several fraternity parties at a large university, week after week. What method of research are you employing?

naturalistic observation

How frequently can scientists prove that their hypotheses are true?

never

Humanistic psychologists believed that ____.

people behave badly only when corrupted by society

Jared has to have a procedure where his physician will inject a radioactive substance into his bloodstream, and then will use that tracer to observe blood flow in Jared's brain while he performs certain tasks. Which neuroimaging study will Jared's physician order?

positron emission tomography (a PET scan)

The most forward part of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, known as the ____, is involved with ____.

prefrontal cortex; the planning of behavior, attention, and judgment

Tariq depends on cigarettes to relieve his stress, though he smokes so infrequently that he experiences no significant, noticeable physical symptoms when he is not smoking. What does this exemplify?

psychological dependence

In order to maximize the chances that experimental groups represent the population of interest, researchers should conduct ________ and ________.

random sampling; random group assignment

Our physiological state during REM sleep consists of ____.

rapid or irregular heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing; and paralysis of postural muscles

Junko's grandmother survived a stroke but is paralyzed on her left side. She has likely suffered damage to her ____.

right hemisphere

Following a spinal cord injury, formation of the ____ prevents neuronal regeneration in the ____.

scar tissue from glia; central nervous system

Tasha runs a daycare center. She places birthday hats on a group of children to celebrate 1-year-old Chantal's birthday. Tasha notices that when Chantal passes by a mirror she grabs for the hat by reaching for the mirror instead of reaching for her own head. Tasha picks up the baby and helps her find her hat. What aspect of consciousness has Chantal not yet reached?

self-awareness

Markita is sitting in the first row of a baseball game, when a foul ball comes streaking at her head. She barely has time to move out of the way, and narrowly avoids getting hit. Which part of her nervous system will go into overdrive and mobilize her energy resources in the face of this near disaster?

the sympathetic nervous system

Researchers find a correlation of +1.20 between coffee consumption and mental alertness. This indicates that:

there is a flaw in the computation of the correlation coefficient

Devine et al. are interested in assessing whether active versus passive play causes a preference for sweet or salty foods in toddlers. They assign groups of children to either an active play, passive play, or no play group and record their food choices when presented with a variety of sweet and salty foods. In this study, ________ is the independent variable and ________ is the control group.

type of play; no play