AP Psychology Semester 1 Final (Study Guide)

According to the behaviorist perspective, psychological science should be rooted in what?

Observation

Self-reflective introspection about the elements of experience best describes a technique used by which school of psychology?

Structuralism

Which of the following kinds of psychologists would most likely explore how we process and remember information?

Cognitive Psychologists

What are some examples of applied research?

Using psychological concepts to produce worker productivity

What psychological professionals are required to have a medical degree?

Psychiatrist

Which psychological perspective is most likely to focus on how our interpretation of a situation affects how we react to it?

Cognitive

What was the main difference between the psychological thinking of Wilhelm Wundt and earlier philosophers who were also interested in thinking and behavior?

Wundt was the first to establish a lab

The science of behavior and mental processes is the definition of which field of study?

Psychology

Which field of psychology is most interested in studying the link between mental activity and brain activity?

Cognitive neuroscience

The debate about the relative contributions of biology and experience to human development is most often referred to as what?

Nature vs. Nurture

The study of the importance of satisfying love and acceptance needs best describes which school of psychology?

Humanistic

Which subfield of psychologists would most likely conduct psychotherapy?

Clinical

Which perspective would be most useful when explaining how people from different countries express anger?

Socio - cultural

Which school of psychology focused on the adaptive nature of thinking and how our consciousness evolves to meet our needs?

Functionalism

Examples of Independent and Dependent Variables in an experiment

Little Albert Experiment

Independent: sound

Dependent: Little Albert’s fear

Example of a random sample in an experiment

Choosing names out of a hat

Example of a naturalistic observation

Studying animals through observing their behavior in their natural environment

Example of a positive correlation

More caffeine, more energy

Which measure can be precisely located on the graph of a skewed distribution without doing any calculations?

Mode

When a distribution of scores is skewed, what would be the most representative measure of central tendency?

Median

Identify ethical principles regarding research on humans:

Informed consent

Maintain confidentiality

Debriefing

Protect from harm and discomfort

It is important for researchers to use precise operational definitions when they want to be able to ____an experiment

Replicate

Identify potential problems with case studies

May be misleading because they don’t fairly represent other cases

A scientist’s willingness to admit that she is wrong is an example of

Humility

“Monday morning quarterbacks” rarely act surprised about the outcome of weekend football games. This tendency to believe they knew how the game would turn out is best explained by which psychological principle?

Hindsight bias

Which method should a psychology researcher use if she is interested in testing whether a specific reward in a classroom situation causes students to behave better?

Experiment

Which descriptive statistic would a researcher use to describe how close a student’s SAT score is to school’s average SAT score?

Standard deviation

There is a negative correlation between TV watching and grades. What can we conclude from this research finding?

More TV, lower grades

When Dari and Lucy surgically lesioned the amygdala of a rhesus monkey’s brain, what was the impact on the monkey’s behavior?

Less agressive

Which is the most influential of the endocrine glands?

Pituitary gland

What were the major findings of Thomas Bouchard’s study of twins?

Identical twins who are reared apart had the same chance of being similar as twins who were raised together

Damage to the hippocampus would result in what?

Memory Issues

Which of the following refers to an effect of life experience that leaves a molecular mark that affects gene expression?

Epigenetics

To walk across a street, a person would rely most directly on which division of the nervous system?

Somatic nervous system

Heritability refers to the percentage of what?

Variation among individual’s that we can attribute to genes

Epinephrine and norepinephrine increase energy and are released by the

Adrenal medulla

Which region of the brain controls our breathing and heartbeat?

Medulla

Brain plasticity refers to

The ability for the brain to change

A researcher interested in determining the size of a particular area of the brain would most likely use what kind of test?

MRI

Describe the peripheral nervous system

The sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous system and the rest of the body

Purpose of the myelin sheath

Encases the axons

Neurotransmitters cross the ____ to carry information to the next neuron

Synapses

What specific false sensations might result from surgical stimulation of the somatosensory cortex?

Someone tickling you

What is the brief electrical charge that travels down an axon called?

Action potential

What is the study of specific genes, and teams of genes, that influence behavior called?

Molecular genetics

Which branch of the nervous system calms a person?

Parasympathetic nervous system

When there is a negative charge inside an axon and a positive charge outside it, the neuron is

Resting potential

Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand how traits and behavioral tendencies have been shaped by what?

Natural selection

You do not feel like getting out of bed, have lost your appetite, and feel tired for the most of the day. What neurotransmitter is likely in short supply for you?

Serotonin

Identify major functions of the left hemisphere

Planning

Logic

Math

Science

Which region of the body has the largest area of sensory cortex devoted to it?

The face

Where is the Sensory Cortex located?

The front of the parietal lobe

The network of structures involved in emotion, motivation, and memory is the

Limbic system

What does a PET scan best allow researchers to examine?

Function of structures

An individual experiences brain damage that produces a coma. Which part of the brain was probably damaged?

Reticular formation

Opiate drugs such as morphine are classified as what?

Agonists

A gymnast falls and hits their head on the floor. They attempt to continue practicing, but have trouble maintaining balance. What part of their brain has probably been affected?

The cerebellum

The most noticeable difference between human brains and other mammalian brains is the size of the

Association areas

The most active tasks of the right hemisphere of the brain

Creative

Imagination

Art

Writing

Multiple sclerosis is a result of degeneration in the

Myelin sheath

Which scanning technique measures glucose consumption as an indicator of brain activity?

PET scan

The hypothalamus is a/an ____center for the brain

Reward

You are aware that an animal is viciously growling at you, but you are not aware of the type of animal. Later, you are able to describe the type and color of the animal. This ability to process information without conscious awareness best exemplifies?

Dual processing

Primary function of Hippocampus in processing memories

Forms, organizes and stores memories

Which division of the nervous system produces the startle response?

The sympathetic nervous system

Stimulation at a point on _____ may cause a person to report being touched on the knee.

Somatosensory cortex

An individual is having trouble with cognitive tasks related to learning and memory. Which neurotransmitter is most likely to be involved with the problem?

Acetyllcholine

You can move your hand to sign a document because the _____located in the ______ lobe of the brain, allows you to activate the proper muscles

Motor cortex, frontal lobe

Damage to which part of the brain would most likely interfere with the ability to plan for the future?

The frontal lobe

What is sometimes referred to as the brain’s train hub, because it directs incoming sensory messages (with the exception of smell) to their proper places in the brain?

Thalamus

Hormones are ________released into the_____

Chemical messengers, bloodstream

Examples of what might result from a disruption of your vestibular sense

Loss of balance

What principle states that to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a minimum percentage rather than a constant amount?

Weber’s Law

___ is the process by which rods and cones change electromagnetic energy into neural messages

Transduction

Which perception process are the hammer, anvil and stirrup involved in?

Transmitting sounds to the cochlea

Examples of what represents perceptual constancy

We know that the color of printed paper doesn’t change moving into the shadows

 Examples of top-down processing

Splashed water on a letter and smudges the words but you still know what it says

Light’s _____ is the distance from one wave peak to the next. This dimension determines the ____ we experience

wavelength, hue

Frequency theory relates to which element of the hearing process?

The rate at which the basilar membrane vibrates

Two monocular depth cues are most responsible for our ability to know that a jet flying overhead is at an elevation of several miles. One cue is relative size. What is the other?

Relative motion

Examples of an absolute threshold

Cook can barely taste salt added to soup

Our tendency to see faces in clouds and other ambiguous stimuli is partly based on what perception principle?

Perceptual set

Signal detection theory is most closely associated with which perception process?

Absolute threshold

What do we call the transparent, protective layer that light passes through as it enters the eye?

Cornea

What are some examples of things most likely influencing our memory of a painful event?

The intensity of the pain

What reflects the notion that pitch is related to the number of impulses traveling up the auditory nerve in a unit of time?

Frequency theory

Your friend doesn’t want to get into the pool because the water feels cold. They jump in, and after a few minutes they say, “it was cold when I first got in, but now my body is used to it. Come on in!“ The body became accustomed to the water due to

Sensory adaptation

Examples of sensory interaction

Occurs when different senses work together

Examples of kinesthesia

Awareness of position of your arm when swimming backstroke

When we go to the movies, we see smooth continuous motion rather than a series of still images because of which process?

Stroboscopic movement

What do we call the conversion of stimulus energies, like sights and sounds, into neural impulses?

Transduction

What do we call the specialized neurons in the occipital lobe’s visual cortex that respond to particular edges, lines, angles and movements?

Feature detectors

The three small bones of the ear are located in the

Middle ear

What theory explains reversed-color afterimages?

Opponent processing

The view from one’s left eye is slightly different from the view from the right eye. This is due to which depth cue?

Retinal disparity

What is the purpose of the iris?

Controls size of pupil

Someone is washing their hands and adjusts the faucet handle until the water feels just slightly hotter than it did before. Their adjustment until they feel a difference is an example of

Difference threshold

A couple are in a dancing competition. It is easy for spectators to see them against the dance floor because of

Figure ground

The effects of opiates are similar to the effects of which neurotransmitter?

Endorphins

Muscles are relaxed, body is basically paralyzed, and hard to awaken. Which sleep state is someone probably experiencing?

REM sleep