U of U Psychology 1010 Exam 1

Central Nervous System

The brain and spinal cord

Peripheral Nervous System

Links the CNS with the body's sensory receptors, muscles, and glands

Somatic Nervous System

Enables voluntary control of muscles

Automatic Nervous System

Controls the glands and muscles of internal organs. Functions non-conciously

Sympathetic Nervous System

Part of the automatic nervous system. It arouses and expends energy

Parasympathetic Nervous System

Part of the automatic nervous system. It calms and conserves energy

Adrenal gland

Produces epinephrine and nor-epinephrine for a flight or fight response

Pituitary gland

Master gland that regulates other glands

Thyroid gland

controls metabolism

Pancreas

regulates blood glucose levels

Testes and ovaries

regulates the production of testosterone or estrogen

frontal lobe

What lobe is the arrow pointing at?

occipital lobe

What lobe is the arrow pointing at?

parietal lobe

What lobe is the arrow pointing at?

temporal lobe

What lobe is the arrow pointing at?

medulla

part of the brain stem that controls heartbeat and breathing

pons

part of the brain stem that coordinates movement

thalamus

routes sensory information to other brain areas

cerebellum

nonverbal learning and memory, judging time, modulating emotions, discriminating textures, and coordinating voluntary movement

hippocampus

critical to the formation of memories

amygdala

helps to process emotions, particularly emotion and fear

hypothalamus

monitors the body's internal states and sends messages to the endocrine system

association areas

coordinate and integrate information

pre-frontal cortex

used in judgement, planning, personality, voluntary attention, and inhibitory control

corpus callosum

band of neurons that connect the right and left hemispheres

left hemisphere

language, calculations, literal interpretations

right hemisphere

perceptual tasks, making inferences, modulating speech, self-awareness

to speed neural impulses

What is the primary function of a myelin sheath?

A tiny gap that separates the sending neuron's axon terminal from the receiving neuron's dendrite

What is a synapse?

clean up after neural transmission (mop up excess neural transmitters)

insulate and guide neural connections

provide nutrients to neural cells

What do glial cells do?

sensory neurons

gather information from the body and direct it to the spinal cord/brain

interneurons

neurons in the brain and spinal cord that communicate with each other and other types of neurons

motor neurons

neurons that send information from the brain to the muscles, directing movement

1) The action potential travels down the axon of the sending neurons

2) The axon terminal releases the neurotransmitter into the synapse.

3) The neurotransmitter crosses the synaptic gap and binds onto the receptor sites on the dendrite of the receiving neuron.

4) Excess neurotransmitters are reabsorbed by the sending neuron.

Arrange the following sequence of neural transmission in order by matching each step to the description on the right.

The time a neuron needs after it has been depolarized (after it has fired) to prepare to fire again.

What is a refractory period?

A chemical messenger that carries signals between neurons by way of the synapse

What is a neurotransmitter?

The reabsorption of excess neurotransmitters by the sending neuron

The process of reuptake is...

Agonist molecules increase the effect of the neurotransmitter.

Agonist molecules can increase the production of the neurotransmitter

Agonist molecules may block the neurotransmitter's reuptake.

Which of the following are true of agonist molecules?

Antagonist molecules decrease the neurotransmitter's effect.

Antagonist molecules may block the release of the neurotransmitter.

Antagonist molecules may occupy the receptor site to block neurotransmission

Which of the following are true of antagonist molecules?

Neural networks are clusters of the brain's neurons that work together in groups

Learning occurs as connections are built and strengthened.

Learning actually changes the strength and number of connections in your brain.

Which of the following statements about neural networks and brain structure are true?

true

Glands in the endocrine system secrete hormones that travel through the bloodstream to the brain and other tissue.

hypothalamus

Which brain area directly affects the endocrine system by controlling the pituitary gland?

DTI

What type of scan is this?

EEG

What type of scan is this?

MRI

What type of scan is this?

adaptation

traits and behaviors that evolved over time to increase reproductive success

survival adaptation

traits and behaviors that help us survive the forces of nature

reproductive adaptations

traits and behaviors that give us a better chance at mating, and producing offspring

intrasexual adaptations

a process by which the qualities desired by one sex are selected for, and passed down to future generations.

psychological adaptations

mechanisms of the mind that have evolved to specific problems of survival or reproduction

sexual strategies theory

humans have evolved mating strategies that vary depending on culture, social context, parental influence, and personal mate value

error management theory

we psychologically adapt to prefer choices that minimize the cost of errors

ethology

emphasizes common traits in a species that may have facilitated survival of the individual

modern evolutionary theory

emphasizes motives and behaviors that facilitate that facilitate both survival and prorogation of ones genes

evolutionary psychology

emphasize psychological adaptations that promote survival and mating adaptations

It explains, rather than predicts phenomena

It's not falsifiable

Which of the following are criticisms of evolutionary theory?

chromosome

46 threadlike structures, each containing DNA

DNA

complex molecule that contains genetic material that makes up the chromosome

genes

A segment of DNA capable of synthesizing a protein.

genome

The complete instructions for making an organism

genotype

the actual genes that a person inherits

phenotype

the outward expression of a person's genes

The relative influence of genes vs. the environment

Studies of identical twins versus fraternal twins who are raised in their families of origin can tell us

values

faith

manners

political orientation

Adopted children are more like their adoptive parents than their biological parents on which of the following dimensions

histones

The DNA in our bodies is wrapped around

tightly wrapping inactive genes to make them unreadable

The epigenome affects the physical structure of the DNA by

true

The epigenome changes in response to enviornmental factors

epigenetic responses to differing environmental factors

The epigenome changes in response to enviornmental factors

behavioral genetics

studies the relative effect of genes and environment on behavior

epigenetics

studies environmental factors that effect gene expression

authority

you consult a dictionary to determine the proper spelling of a word

intuition

You have an inexplicable liking for a person whom you just met. You know that you will be friends

logic

Your car only holds 5 passengers, so you reason that you will have to borrow a van to pick up your 7 friends from the airport

empiricism

You notice the parking lot is full by 8:00 on Monday and Wednesday, but not Tuesday and Thursday.

vividness

Your little sister has a severe allergy to bee stings. The last time she got stung, you watched her swell up and struggle to breathe until the paramedics got there. You also have a friend with mild asthma. When the news reports that asthma threatens the lives of more people than do allergies, you don't believe it.

overconfidence

You are so sure that your brainy roommate is going to ace all of her classes, you publicly predict she will get a 4.0. When she gets a 3.8, you point out that she got A's in all but one class. You were mostly right.

hindsight bias

Two friends are discussing whether the football game is on Thursday or Saturday this week. One of them looks it up, and announces the game is on Saturday. You think, "I knew that even before she looked it up."

perceiving order in random events

You notice that your brainy roommate loves anchovy pizza. The biology TA also mentions that she loves anchovy pizza. When you find out that your physics professor also loves anchovy pizza, you deduce that smart people like anchovies.

theory

Is the following a theory, or a hypothesis?

Women can multi-task better than men.

hypothesis

Is the following a theory or a hypothesis?

Women will make more progress on a 500 piece puzzle than men will during a 20 minute period while they are talking on the phone.

hypothesis

Is the following a theory or a hypothesis?

People who spend more than $100 at the grocery store are more likely than those who spend less than $100 to donate cash to a charity when invited to by the cashier.

theory

Is the following a theory, or a hypothesis?

Dog owners are friendlier than cat owners.

true experiment

You want to test whether drinking milk may affect bone density in women. You randomly assign women to either drink 20 oz of whole milk every day for 2 months, or to drink only water. You then compare the bone density of the women.

quasi-experiment

You want to test whether smoking cigarettes affects memory. You find a group of self-described heavy smokers, and match them to a group of non-smokers (of the same age and gender). You then administer a memory test to both groups, to see whether the smokers memories are better or worse than the non-smokers' memories

descriptive study

You perform a case study on your little sister in order to better understand the inner workings of the 10-year old female mind.

correlational study

You test whether income affects happiness by asking 200 people how much money they make, and to rate how happy they are.

as exercise increases, mood increases

the correlation is moderate

The correlation between minutes spent in daily aerobic exercise and mood (higher scores = better mood) is +0.64. This means that:

we can predict people's moods based on exercise

The correlation between minutes spent in daily aerobic exercise and mood (higher scores = better mood) is +0.64. Which conclusion can you draw?

true

The best way to establish causality (figuring out whether changing one variable causes changes in another variable) is to perform a true experiment

random assignment

manipulation of the independent variable

Which of the following are necessary components for a true experiment?

a group of participants who do not drink caffeinated coffee before the exam

If I want to test my theory that drinking caffeinated coffee right before an exam will improve performance on the exam, which of the following describes an appropriate control group?

independent variable

If I want to test my theory that drinking caffeinated coffee before an exam will improve performance on that exam.

drinking one cup of caffeinated coffee

dependent variable

If I want to test my theory that drinking caffeinated coffee before an exam will improve performance on that exam.

exam score

confounding variable

If I want to test my theory that drinking caffeinated coffee before an exam will improve performance on that exam.

drinking a caffeinated energy drink

a cup of decaffinated coffee

In my experiment to test whether drinking caffeinated coffee will improve test scores, which of the following would make the best placebo?

allows you to manage confounding variables without having to measure and control each of them

Random assignment is important in a true experiment because it...

Do college women floss more often than college men?

Which of the following research questions would be best tested with a quasi-experimental design, rather than a true experimental design?

True Experiments use operational definitions, but quasi-experiments don't.

One of the following statements about quasi-experiments is NOT TRUE. Which is it?

true experiment

low on external validity

descriptive studies

can't actually test a hypothesis