PSYCH FINAL PRIOR EXAMS-PORTION

In order from Exam 1 to Exam 3

Most Americans do not get sufficient sleep, despite knowing the likely consequences of sleep deprivation. Based on your textbook, two likely consequences of sleep deprivation (other than fatigue) are ___________ and ___________.

Difficulty to perform boring/quiet/mundane tasks; Reduced Short-term Memory; Mood problems; Decreased Cognitive Performance

One of the best ways to increase access to information in memory is to re-create the original learning conditions. The ___________ refers to the idea that retrieval will be more successful when conditions of information retrieval such as a similar room, smell, or background music are similar to conditions of information encoding.

Encoding Specificity Principle; Context-Dependent Memory

The neurotransmitter ___________ is the brain’s most common excitatory neurotransmitter. Higher amounts of this neurotransmitter will lead to other neurons firing, as when learning occurs. Higher amounts of this neurotransmitter are also important for the flight-or-flight response, learning, and memory.

Glutamine.

The neurotransmitter ___________ controls mood, appetite, and arousal. High amounts lead to positive feelings, although too much is linked with obsessive behaviors. Low amounts lead to aggression in some cases and depression (clinical or PMS) in other cases.

Serotonin.

If there is no effort to maintain it, information can be stored in your visual sensory memory for about ___________ (length of time); If there is no effort to maintain it, information can be stored in short term memory for about ___________ (length of time).

500 ms; 30 seconds

Chester the dog loves to eat frozen green beans, and soon begins to salivate when she hears the freezer door open. Due to a national shortage of beans, Dr. Butler stops giving Chester frozen beans, and Chester stops salivating when the door opens. However, at apparently random times Chester will start salivating again upon hearing the freezer door. This is an example of ___________ .

Spontaneous Recovery.

In a well-known experiment by Bandura, preschool children pounded and kicked a large inflated Bobo doll that an adult just punched and kicked. This experiment served to illustrate the importance of ___________ .

Modeling.

Two of the most common sleep disorders are ___________ and ___________ .

Insomnia; Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Jane Goodall became famous for her research on apes in Africa. To conduct her research, she lived very near to the apes and recorded their behaviors, but did not interfere with their daily life. This kind of study would be called a ___________ .

Naturalistic Observation

The principle that either a neuron is sufficiently stimulated and an action potential occurs, or a neuron is not sufficiently stimulated and an action potential does not occur is known as ___________ .

All-or-none principle.

Seeing your friend after a new haircut, or seeing the same friend in a club at a distance as compared to in sunshine sitting next to you will lead to strong differences in sensory information, as when a lighting or relative size on the visual field change, the brain still perceives the object as the same object. This is known as ___________ .

Object Constancy.

On your way out to go to the grocery store, your roommate asks you to buy items for the house. Your roommate states each item clearly and encourages you to write them down. You, however, are confident in your memory and go to the store without a written list. The items in the list are: bread, beer, milk, chips, chocolate, jelly beans, cereal, soda, cheese, apples. The item you are most likely to remember according to the primacy effect would be ___________ ; according to the recency effect, you are likely to also remember ___________ .

bread; apples

Joey is playing Candy Crush on his phone. He is totally involved in the game, and is ignoring the conversation behind him. However, when a friend whispers his name from across the room, he looks immediately. Joey is experiencing ___________ .

Cocktail Party Phenomenon

In an attempt to understand why some people are much more creative than others, you decide to do an in-depth study of Jackson Pollack, the world-famous painter. You examine his life from early childhood through all of his active painting career. This type of experiment is known as ___________ .

Case Study

Your doctor insists that eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast will lower your cholesterol and lead to improvements in health. You insist that a bacon smoothie is the best way to start out your day for a happy mood and thus better health. Being a scientifically minded person, you decide to run an experiment on the value of these breakfast options You have some participants eat oatmeal, others consume a bacon smoothie, and others do not eat breakfast at all to see which leads to better health. In this experiment, the independent variable is ___________ and the dependent variable is ___________ .

Breakfast Options (Oatmeal/Bacon Smoothie/None); Relative Health (Improvement or Not)

The insulating material that surrounds the axon and increases the speed of neural transmissions is the ___________ .

Myelin sheath

Information that is available in memory even though there was not conscious effort to encode or recover information is known as ___________ .

Implicit Memory

Without any efforts to increase memory, it is possible to hold about ___________ items in a person’s short term memory (what is the number?)

Five

You are sharing a suite with a particularly noisy roommate. At first you show a startle response each time you hear the shrieking alarm clock, slamming of doors, and loud music. However, after a short period of time, you have obviously learned that these occur in your environment, and do not react anymore. You are demonstrating the phenomenon of ___________ .

Habituation

The stage of sleep in which long, slow brain waves called delta waves appear and deep muscle repair happens is ___________ . By contrast, ___________ sleep is marked by a slowing of alpha brain waves, although sleep spindles and K-complex patterns are apparent in response to stimuli.

Stage 3-4; Stage 2

Many people who are good at remembering names are skilled at transferring what they perceive or think about the person into an enduring memory. In other words, these people are good at the step of memory known as ___________ .

Encoding

Your book describes the Dunning-Kreuger effect, which states that people in your math class with the lowest level grades would rate their mastery of academic skills in math much higher than their poor performance would suggest they should. The research methods term to describe this specific, testable prediction based on a theory is known as a ___________.

Hypothesis

(L) On your visit to the Carribean, you settle into your beach chair, enjoying the warm breeze and the sound of the waves. You look up and notice that there are swimmers in the water, and a sailboat a bit further in the distance. Briefly explain and provide an example of two monocular depth cues and one binocular depth cue that we discussed in class that might be used to tell that the swimmers are closer to you than the sailboat.

The Monocular Depth Cues would be Texture Gradient and Relative Size. We may also consider Accommodation. For Texture Gradient, this works because the waves become more dense toward the boat rather than the swimmers. Relative Size works because the swimmers would be larger than the boat due to their proximity. The Binocular Depth Cue is Convergence, since the swimmers are closer, the eyes would be more inward compared to looking at the boat, which makes them more forward.

(L) Penny has just started to learn french horn. Initially, her teacher praises her for making any sounds at all, even if they are badly out of tune. How might her teacher use shaping to improve Penny' technique?

By praising her, she is rewarding the behavior of blowing into the french horn and pressing any keys. Her teacher will begin to praise specific notes and actions on the french horn, getting more specific until Penny learns how to play properly.

(L) What are the 4 main components of a neuron? You should name and explain the basic function of each part to receive full credit.

Cell Body (Soma), which is where the neuron integrates and interprets signals; Dendrites, which are short branchlike protrusions that intake signals; Axon, which sends action potentials as signals to the Terminal Buttons, which release neurotransmitters into the synapse region.

(L) What is the difference between semantic, episodic, and procedural memory? You should include an example of each to make your point clearly.

Semantic is the memory that you can say you know but lack the knowledge of origin for - such as knowing who George Washington is but having no idea where or when you learned about him. Episodic is the memory from a specific event - such as recalling that you ate eggs yesterday morning at home. Procedural is the memory for skills and actions deemed important and automatic - such as how to walk.

(L) Chester the dog has been going to dog training classes. In the classes, Dr. Butler teaches Chester to respond to a clicker by making the clicking noise, then giving Chester a piece of cheese. By the end of the first training session, Chester salivates each time he hears the clicking noise. Identify the following parts of this scenario: Unconditioned Stimulus, Unconditioned Response, Conditioned Stimulus, Conditioned response.

The Unconditioned Stimulus is the cheese. The Unconditioned Response is salivation. The Conditioned Stimulus is the clicker’s sound. The Conditioned Response is salivation.

(L) What is chunking? What is depth of processing? Explain why each helps you to remember ideas from class.

Chunking is the method of organizing information into groups. Depth of Processing refers to how deeply you process information when learning it, particularly, with linking concepts to meaningful context or associations. Both are methods of organizing and relating information into easier units to recall so that it is easier to recall.

(L) What is an action potential? You should explain briefly how the action potential works.

Action potential is the electric signal sent down an axon after the threshold is passed. Sodium ions enter the region, causing depolarization. Potassium ions exit while sodium remains, hyper-polarizing the region (which ensures the action potential moves down the axon). Slowly, the region is depolarized back to resting potential as sodium and potassium switches places.

(L) What is the difference between a variable interval, variable ratio, and fixed ratio reinforcement schedules? Which, once learned, will lead to the fastest responses? You should provide an example of each.

Variable Interval is giving reinforcement over differing lengths of time (not usually the same) - such as pop quizzes given at random points in the week. Variable Ratio is giving reinforcement over differing numbers of time - such as slot machine rewarding after random numbers of time. Fixed Ratio is giving reinforcement over set numbers of times - such as getting paid after a certain number of projects are completed. Fixed Ratio gives the fastest responses.

___________ refers to the difference between what children can accomplish on their own and what they can accomplish with the help of others who are more competent.

Zone of proximal development

In class, we discussed a study in which some “executive” monkeys got shocked if they did not do their task correctly, and other “lowly peon” monkeys received shocks only if the executive monkey got shocked. The executive monkey study is important in understanding responses to stress because it suggest that ___________.

Making decisions is stressful.

According to your textbook, two reasons that aerobic exercise helps to improve health is ___________ and ___________.

Increases gray matter in the brain; lowers resting heart rate; enhances mood; lowers blood pressure.

Piaget argued that children learn by interpreting new information by making it fit in with old schemas for how the world works. Piaget referred to this as ___________.

Assimilation.

“Aha” experiences, when people set aside a seemingly insoluble problem only to find hours later that the answer suddenly comes to them or when people experience a leap of logic to come up with the answer to the question, are examples of problem solving through the technique of ___________.

Insight

When estimating numbers, people have a tendency to not compensate appropriately for their original starting value. For example, when estimating the amount of alcohol a college student consumes each week, people tend to be biased by the amount of alcohol they consume themselves. This tendency is known as ___________.

Anchoring-Adjustment

According to the psychodynamic perspective, the two basic drives are ___________ and ___________.

Eros (Sex) and Thanatos (Aggression)

You saw a video in class where children were told that if they could not eat a marshmallow, when the researcher came back into the room the children would be given a second marshmallow. This study tested the ability of children to guide their behavior in order to achieve a long-term goal. In other words, the video measured the children’s ability for ___________ .

Delayed Gratification

Positive events such as marriage are likely to be stressful because ___________.

Changes in identity are stressful.

Piaget argued that children learn through direct interaction with the environment. This idea is known as ___________.

Adaptation.

People are more likely to get sick during finals than at other times of the year. This happens because during periods of high stress ___________.

The immune system works less efficiently.

In class, we discussed a study in which some dogs learned that shock could be escaped, but others learned that shock could not be escaped. The dogs who experienced inescapable stress ended up being more passive and did not even try to escape negative life events. This phenomenon is known as ___________.

Learned Helplessness

Antonia watches you open a container for candies, and is surprised that the container actually holds pencils. You ask Antonia what Blake, who has not seen the open container, will suspect is inside the candy container. If Antonia thinks that Blake knows that there are pencils in the container, you know that Antonia has not yet developed ___________, which is the capacity to understand another person’s mental state.

Theory of Mind.

According to your textbook, one reason that social support helps to reduce stress is ___________.

Shared Experience; Buffering Hypothesis; Feelings of Gratitude.

The tendency for people to ignore other possible functions of an object when they have a single use in mind is known as ___________.

Functional Fixedness

You study hard for your exams because you believe that you can perform the necessary behaviors to achieve a good grade. The expectation that a person has that they are capable of achieving success is known as ___________.

Self-efficacy

If you want someone to work hard in the short run, then the best type of motivation is ___________; If you want someone to keep working at the task in the long run and be very creative, the best type of motivation is ___________.

Extrinsic / Intrinsic

According to your textbook, females respond to stress by protecting and caring for their offspring as well as by forming alliances with social groups. This phenomenon is known as ___________.

Tend-and-Befriend.

Consumers respond more positively to ground beef advertised as “75 percent lean” than to ground beef described as “25 percent fat”. This illustrates that consumer reactions are influenced by the way that the choices are described. This tendency is known as ___________.

Framing

We recognize the furniture in the front of the classroom as a desk because it shares more properties with “desk” than with “table”. The mental categories we form to group objects or ideas based on sharing similar features or characteristics are known as ___________.

Concepts

Comparing all swimming creatures to a goldfish to determine whether they are also fish is an example of the ___________ model, which assumes that one object can serve as a single best example of its category.

Prototype

(L) What is the overjustification effect? Based on our conversation in class, what is one thing that can reduce the overjustification effect?

Overjustification is when external factors (such as money) reduces a person’s intrinsic motivation to perform a task they enjoy. One way to avoid this is to treat the task as a challenge of your skills.

(L) What is the fight-or-flight theory of stress? Why is the fight-or-flight response to stress associated with poor health outcomes for humans?

When introduced to a stressor, the body mobilizes its resources so that it may be able to flee from the stressor or fight it to resolve conflict. The response elevates cortisol, blood pressure, and heart rate. It also weakens digestion and immunity. These are harmful for humans if the response is maintained for a long period of time.

(L) In terms of Kohlberg’s theory, explain the differences between preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.

Preconventional Morality is similar to the morality a child would exhibit. It focuses on self-interest and avoidance of punishment. Conventional Morality focuses on external pressures such as rules, laws, and approval from others. Postconventional Morality is concerned with abstract problems of justice, rights, and fairness.

(L) According to your textbook, SMART goals are more likely to be achieved than non-SMART goals. What are the factors that make up SMART goals? You should provide an example of each part.

A SMART goal is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound. The goal of walking for 20 minutes everyday after lunch for the next two weeks to improve fitness is specific because it describes what will be done, measurable by the amount of time of walking, achievable as it fits easily to a routine, realistic because it is not extreme, and bound to two weeks.

(L) Explain the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic. You should give an example of each in order to make your point more clearly.

The representativeness heuristic is when people make judgments about how likely something belongs to a category based on how closely it resembles the idea of that category. For example, one might label a person who reads a lot of books as a librarian. The availability heuristic is when people make judgements about the frequency or likelihood of an event by how easily an example comes to mind. An example includes shark attacks, where are exceptionally rare but we believe they occur much more often because it comes to mind easy.

(L) According to the Cognitive Appraisal theory, what are the two questions that people ask themselves in the process of stress and coping? Use your upcoming exams as an example of each type of appraisal.

People undergo primary appraisal, where they ask how difficult or stressful is the situation. Then they undergo secondary appraisal, asking what resources and skills do they have to handle the situation. When primary is considered more pressing and secondary as low, it is a threat situation. When secondary is higher than the difficulty found in primary, it is a challenge situation. For an upcoming exam, I may ask if I perceive a particular exam as difficult (primary appraisal) and then ask if I have the skills and resources to study for it (secondary).

(L) What are Piaget’s 4 stages of development, and what is the major development that marks progression through each stage?

First stage is sensorimotor, where progression is marked by object permanence. Then its pre-operational thought, with progression marked once mental operations are mastered (conservation, egocentrism, animalism are all overcome). Next is concrete operations stage and is progressed once children grasp abstract reasoning. The final stage of formal operations and is the final stage, so no express development marker.

(L) What is the General Adaptation Syndrome? You should give an example of each of the three stages of the model.

It is the way we handle stress. The first stage is Alarm, where it is very similar to fight-or-flight to a stressor - such as when we see a bear in front of us and feel an immediate response to fight or run. Next is Resistance, where recovery from fight-or-flight is occurring but one is hypersensitive to stress. This is similar to having just escaped a car crash but remaining close to a street. The final stage is Exhaustion, where the body essentially gives up against the stressor. This is similar to when a student in the middle of exam week comes to terms with failing exams.

The three parts of emotion described in class are the ___________, the ___________, and the ___________ components.

Affective; Physiological; Cognitive

The four subscales in the most recently designed version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale are (1) ___________, (2) ___________, (3) ___________, and (4) ___________.

Verbal-Comprehension; Working Memory; Perceptual Reasoning; Processing Speed.

Other than being underweight, two of the symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa that we discussed in class are ___________ and ___________.

Distorted perception of body; Excessive fear of gaining weight.

Many symptoms of psychological disorders (e.g. avoidance and depressed mood) are also experienced among healthy individuals. ___________ and ___________ caused by symptoms are two factors that help to differentiate normative experiences from psychopathology.

Maladaptive Behavior; Distress

The Red Cross wants you to donate to their charity. In order to persuade you, they give you a free t-shirt or a gift card for a blood donation. This is the persuasion rule of ___________.

Reciprocity

There are 6 basic emotions that seem to exist in all cultures. These emotions are (1) ___________, (2) ___________, (3) ___________, (4) ___________, (5) ___________, and (6) ___________.

Fear; Surprise; Disgust; Sadness; Anger; Happiness

According to the James Lange theory, the experience of emotion involves first ___________ and then ___________.

Physiological response; Interpretation of that response.

Bob has extremely unstable interpersonal relationships, dramatic mood swings, an unstable sense of identity, intense fear of abandonment, manipulativeness, and impulse behavior. Bob is most likely to be diagnosed with ___________.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Personality tests that involve presenting an ambiguous stimulus to a subject and asking the subject to give it meaning or to define it are known as ___________

Projection Tests

In an experiment described in your book, people were asked to sign a petition for increasing safe driving. Then, they were asked to put a large sign in their front yard. This is an example of the persuasion rule of ___________.

Commitment and Consistency; Foot-In-The-Door Technique

According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, persuasion occurs either through the ___________ or the ___________.

Central Route; Peripheral Route

In order to overcome prejudice, your textbook recommends strategies that provide ___________.

Understanding Perspectives (Perspective Taking and Perspective Giving.

A repetitive, intrusive and uncontrollable thought is known as a(n) ___________; a repetitive uncontrollable behavior is known as a(n) ___________.

Obsession; Compulsion

According to the Schacter-Singer theory of emotion, the steps involved in experiencing an emotion are first ___________ and then ___________.

Physiological Arousal; Cognitive Labeling of the situation.

For the third time in two months, Erica’s husband rushed her to the hospital emergency room because Erica thought she was having a heart attack. Her symptoms included a racing, pounding heart, weakness, feeling faint, and feeling as if she were unable to breathe. Although her doctor says she is physically healthy, Erica lives in fear of another attack. Erica is most likely suffering from ___________.

Panic Disorder

The fear of confirming the negative beliefs that others may hold can cause a person to make errors, thus performing well below their true level of ability. This phenomenon is known as ___________.

Stereotype Threat

Psychologists and psychiatrists use a book which contains categories of disorders based on the appearance of symptoms. The full name of the current version of this book is ___________.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Version 5, TR (Text Revision)

In the context of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, recurrent nightmares and intense/prolonged emotional distress following trauma reminders are examples of ___________ symptoms, while exaggerated startle response and irritable behavior are examples of ___________ symptoms.

Persistent memory/thoughts (such as flashbacks, nightmares, recurrent memories; criterion B); Hypersensitivity/Irritability (criterion E).

Based on our class discussion, for most commonly used intelligence tests the average score is ___________ and the standard deviation is ___________.

100; 15

People inherit a certain vulnerability toward particular disorders, but the disorder will only occur if there is a sufficient environmental trigger. This theory is known as ___________.

Diathesis-Stress Model

(L) What are the traits that make up the Big 5 Factor Model of personality?

In order: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.

(L) List and describe the two functions of emotions that were discussed in class.

One function arises from understanding what others are feeling through facial expression and body language so that one may interpret situations and avoid unfavorable interactions. Another function is that our emotions signal others of what we are experiencing, steering social interactions. It also categorizes our experiences in memory so that we may remember how to treat similar experiences.

(L) What are 3 symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder? How do they differ from symptoms of Bipolar Disorder?

For Major Depressive Disorder, three symptoms are persistent sadness, empty mood/loss of pleasure in activities, and passivity. Bipolar Disorder may show similar symptoms as those who have the disorder experience depressive episodes. However, the difference is that Bipolar Disorder also has manic episodes, which are periods of at least a week long that exhibit elevated mood, restlessness, grandiose ideas, and decreased need for sleep.

(L) Josie believes in recycling, but she just tossed her soda bottle into the trash, instead of the nearby recycling bin. What are three factors that will keep Josie from experiencing cognitive dissonance?

Josie may change her behavior by going back to take the bottle out and put it into the recycling. OR she may justify her behavior by saying that one bottle won’t make too much of a difference. Or she may change her attitude toward recycling and realign her thoughts with her actions.

(L) What is the difference between positive symptoms and negative symptoms of schizophrenia? You should include 2 positive symptoms and one negative symptom to make your point more clear.

Positive symptoms are active additions to behavior or thought due to the disorder. These may be the introduction of delusions and hallucinations, which are symptoms that those without the disorder lack. Also included disordered thought and speech. Negative symptoms are those that remove or inhibit regular behavior, such as a severe lack of motivation that others do not experience.

(L) According to Stanford-Binet, how is mental age calculated? How is the intelligence quotient calculated?

Mental age is calculated by your cognitive ability or skills that you exhibit relative to others expected at a certain age. IQ is determined by dividing your mental age by your actual age and multiplying by 100.

(L) What is Spearman’s theory of intelligence? How does this test help to understand the scoring of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test?

Spearman developed the two-factor model, where general intelligence is described by g while specific skills and intelligence is described by s. Different types of s together describe g. This explains the Wechsler Test because said test measures specific subscales of intelligence that make up s to find g from those subscales.

(L) List five of the types of intelligence described in Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Verbal-Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Musical Rhythmic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Visual-Spatial.