Psychology Midterm Flashcards

Intro to Psych with Cynthia Engel Midterm

Dr. Guttierez is examining a research question and has posted a hypothesis, but his student points out, “Dr. G., the assumption that you have made cannot be disproven no matter what data we gather!” This research study suffers from an absence of ________.

falsifiability

________ is/are often conducted with large numbers of participants and can even be conducted by phone, email, or mail.

Surveys

A group of preschool-age children are enrolled in a study that plans to follow them over time in order to assess behaviors and other characteristics that may predict later development of schizophrenia. This is an example of a(n) ________ design.

longitudinal

A negative correlation means ________.

one variable decreases as the other increases

Sandra strongly believes that attending daycare is detrimental to children’s development so she decides to write her psychology term paper on this topic. She does a literature search and finds several sources supporting her opinion, but she finds that the majority of research indicates that children attending daycare experience healthy development. She writes a paper using the sources that find negative associations with daycare attendance. This is an example of ________.

confirmation bias

A group of researchers 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

In a ________ study, both the researchers and the participants are unaware of the group assignments.

double-blind

________ (IRB) reviews research that is involves the use of human participants.

Institutional Review Board

An upper-level psychology class is conducting an experiment on racial prejudice that involves having participants rate the likeability of faces in a set of photos. However, they tell participants that the study is about the effects of aging on likeability. When participants are finished, they are thanked for their time and leave the experiment. In this example, the class forgot to ________ in order to resolve the ________ in the study.

debrief participants; deception

Which of the following is NOT part of obtaining informed consent?

explaining the hypothesis to the participants

Name the structure

soma

Name the structure

dendrites

Name the structure

terminal buttons

A(n) ________ is the electrical signal that typically moves from the neuron’s cell body down the axon to the axon terminals.

action potential

Which of the following is NOT a part sympathetic activation during the fight or flight response?

digestion function becomes more active

Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the case study of Phineas Gage’s accident, which led to brain injury?

Injury to the brain causes changes in behavior, and specific brain areas are linked to particular behaviors.

A(n) ___ is a drug that mimics or strengthens the effects of a neurotransmitter, while a(n) ____ is a drug that blocks or impedes the normal activity of a given neurotransmitter.

agonist; antagonist

Match the neurotransmitter with it's actions.
1) serotonin
2) dopamine
3) epinephrine

a) Increased pleasure, suppressed appetite
b) Initiates fight-or-flight response
c) Modulated mood, supressed appetite

1) Serotonin - Modulated mood, supressed appetite
2) Dopamine - increased pleasure, suppressed appetite
3) epinephrine - initiates fight-or-flight response

What does nature refer to in the nature vs. nurture debate?

genes and biology

Age-specific approximations of when a certain skill or ability should first occur in normal development are called developmental ________.

milestones

If a person is excessively tidy and has a strong need for control, Freud would state that they had not successfully resolved the _________ stage of development.

anal

Between birth and one year, infants are dependent on their caregivers; therefore, caregivers who are responsive and sensitive to their infant’s needs help their baby to develop a sense of the world as a safe, predictable place. In Erikson’s developmental theory, what is the primary developmental task of this stage?

trust vs. mistrust

Madeline is seven months old. Her mother is eating a cookie and Madeline wants some. Her mother hides the cookie under a napkin, but Madeline is not fooled. She knows the cookie is still there. What does this exemplify?

object permanence

Britta knows that it is wrong to break into a store that is closed, but there is a medical emergency and she has no cell phone with her. Her date has collapsed on the street and is having a seizure. Britta breaks the window of a local store, unlocks the door, and lets herself in to call the police. She stays behind to explain her behavior to the store owner, who shows up shortly after he is called. Britta is operating at the ________ level of Kohlberg’s theory of morality.

post-conventional

Adolescents (ages 12–18) experiment with and develop a sense of who they are and what roles they want to play. Erik Erikson would argue that during this period adolescents face the________ task of development.

identity vs. confusion

In the “Still Faces Experiment” video that we watched in class, the mother interacts with her baby, then stops interacting or reacting for a brief period of time, and then returns to interacting. What is Dr. Tronberg researching?  _________________________

attachment style

During Jean Piaget’s ________ stage, the world is experienced through what we can take in through our perceptual systems and how we can move our bodies.

sensorimotor

When development proceeds in a stepwise fashion with periods of growth interrupted by periods where growth is not occurring, we’d say that development is taking a(n) ________ trajectory.

discontinuous

Stanley was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to undergo several months of chemotherapy. During this time he would become very nauseated as a side effect, and unintentionally came to associate that nausea with his favorite grilled cheese sandwich. Now, years later, even thinking about a grilled cheese sandwich makes him sick. In this example, Stanley’s nauseous reaction to a grilled cheese sandwich is the ________.

conditioned response

What is the main idea of operant conditioning?

Behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior: reinforcements and punishments.

Dave’s boss told him that he doesn’t have to attend the company picnic (which everybody dislikes) if Dave meets his sales quota this month. Dave’s boss is using ________.

negative reinforcement

If the principles of social learning theory are true, then children may model aggressive behavior ________.

after seeing a television character receive a reward for taking violent action against another character

What impact did Genie’s early isolation have on her ability to acquire language? She never developed a(n) ________.

ability to use grammar

Illnesses such as diabetes and cancer kill more than twice the number of Americans than murder or car accidents. However, Zale sees car accidents as more dangerous because he often hears about car accident fatalities on the nightly news, and he doesn’t know anyone with diabetes or cancer. Therefore, Zale takes more precautions against car accidents. This exemplifies ________.

the availability heuristic

Jake is sympathetic and considerate of his friends’ moods. He really identifies with their feelings and readily understands their point of view. He is well-known around campus, and he has great relationships with his classmates and professors. Which area of the multiple intelligences model does this exemplify?

interpersonal

Which concept is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for?

functional fixedness

You see a television commercial for a product you may want to buy, and there is a telephone number you must call to place an order. Because you don’t have anything with which to write down the number, you repeat it to yourself over and over again until you feel like you won’t forget it. This process is called ________.

rehearsal

How is an explicit memory different from an implicit memory?

Explicit memories are memories we consciously try to remember and recall, while implicit memories are those that are not part of our consciousness.

Elaine wakes up in the hospital with a head injury. She gets to know her doctors and nurses over time, but it soon becomes clear that she has no memories from before she woke up in the hospital. Elaine has ________ amnesia.

retrograde

Dozens of people witness a purse snatching. One of the eyewitnesses loudly yells “the man with the blue shirt did it.” Later, when questioned by police, several other eyewitnesses remember the purse snatcher wearing a blue shirt, even though the purse snatcher was a woman in flowered dress. This is an example of ________, or the effects of misinformation from external sources that leads to the creation of false memories.

suggestibility

Ali is aware of his feelings, emotions, and thoughts. He is also aware of his surroundings, the warmth of the sun, and the sound of nearby traffic. Ali is in a state of ________.

consciousness

Which psychodynamic theorist proposed the idea of a collective unconscious that is shared by all members of the human species?

Carl Jung

Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when ________.

An individual’s airway becomes blocked during sleep

After Omar falls asleep he feels a sense of panic, screams, and attempts to escape from his room. Which parasomnia does Omar have?

night terrors

________ refers to the way that sensory information is interpreted and consciously experienced; ________ refers to what happens when sensory information is detected by a sensory receptor.

Perception; sensation

Participants were instructed to focus on either white or black objects, disregarding the other color. When a red cross passed across the screen, about one third of the subjects did not notice it. This research protocol demonstrates which concept?

inattentional blindness

Petra walks into a brightly lit Psychology lab to participate in an experiment involving the ability to perceive the colors of the rainbow. Which photoreceptors will be most useful during this experiment?

cones

Which perceptual system allows Nancy to run without watching her feet and hit a baseball without focusing on her hands?

proprioception