Psychology: A concise Intro. 5th Edition; Chapter 1-3

Different Psychological perspectives

Four perspectives are complementary and work together to provide more complete psychological explanations.

Biological explanation for why a depressed mother killed her children would focus on:

Deficiency in the activity of the certain chemicals in the brain.

How people evaluate different options when making a decision Dr. Wilson's research most directly illustrates psychology's?

Cognitive Perspective

A psychologist using the _____ perspective would be MOST interested in studying why Canadians have almost as many guns per capita as Americans but a significantly lower level of per capita murders.

Sociocultural

Which perspectives emphasize internal factors as determinates of behavior?

Cognitive and Biological

When Carla works in a group, she may not exert as much effort as she does when she is working alone. This example of the effect of other people on behavior is MOST directly related to psychology's _____ perspective.

Sociocultural

Which research technique would be MOST well suited to examining whether the number of hours spent watching TV predicts hours spent exercising?

Correlational Study

Caitlin plans to conduct research to answer the question, "Does loud music cause people to remember less of what they read?" Which research method should she use to answer her question?

Experiment

Dr. Matthews is observing children on the playground and recording instances of aggression. This BEST illustrates which research method?

Naturalistic Observation

To develop hypotheses about why people commit sex-related crimes, Dr. Green conducted an in-depth investigation of an individual convicted of indecent exposure. Dr. Green's investigation illustrated which methodology?

Case Study

"Random assignment" is the answer to which question?

What control measure can be used only for experimental research?

One group of 15 students studies the text of a story about gang violence while listening to rap music. A second group of 10 students studies the same story while listening to classical music. The experimenter then asks both groups to write down any details they can remember from the story. In this research design, the independent variable MOST likely is the:

type of music listened to.

If a marketing researcher is trying to determine whether or not adults living in Boston prefer domestic or imported beer, which technique would MOST likely yield a sample that would generalize to this population?

surveying Boston adults who were randomly selected from a list of Boston residents

Experimental study is to _____ as correlational study is to _____.

explain; predict

As Jimmy constructs a survey about attitudes toward health care, he words the questions carefully to minimize the possibility that participants will respond in a way that does not reflect what they actually think. By attending to question construction, Jimmy aims to minimize:

social desirability bias.

Phineas Gage's accident led neuroscientists to hypothesize the involvement of the:

frontal lobes in impulse control

The process of neural transmission within a neuron begins at the _____ and ends at the _____.

dendrites; axon terminals

Within neurons, communication is _____. Between neurons, communication is _____.

electrical; chemical

What happens when the impulse reaches the axon terminals?

The vesicles in the axon terminals open and neurotransmitters enter the synaptic gap.

Amphetamines are to cocaine as _____ is to _____.

dopamine agonist; dopamine agonist

_____ carry information to the CNS, whereas _____ carry information from the CNS.

Sensory neurons; motor neurons

Hypothalamus is to _____ as hippocampus is to _____.

sex; memory

The ability to see the beautiful dance movements in a ballet performance results from processing in the _____ lobe. The ability to hear the music accompanying the dance movements results from processing in the _____ lobe.

occipital; temporal

In February 2015, "The Dress" color debate went viral on the Internet. While looking at the same photograph of a dress, some people saw it as white-and-gold while others saw it as blue-and-black. Which statement is NOT true of the proposed explanations for why people saw the colors differently?

If the assumed source of illumination was the blue sky, then the perception of the dress would be blue and black.

John is participating in an experiment that is designed to determine how much brighter a light has to be before he perceives the magnitude as twice as bright as the original light. Jane is participating in an experiment to determine how strong an odor has to be before she initially perceives the odor. The experiment in which John is participating relates to the _____ question and the experiment in which Jane is participating relates to the _____ question.

scaling; detection

Rods and cones are to _____ as hair cells are to _____.

the retina; the basilar membrane

The Gestalt principle of subjective contours is to _____ as the Gestalt principle of closure is to _____.

lines or shapes that are perceived to be present but do not really exist; the tendency to complete incomplete figures to form meaningful objects

Which statement about subjective contours is TRUE?

Subjective contours contain lines that appear to be present but in fact are absent.

Which principle of perception would BEST explain why you have no trouble reading messages or emails in which letters are missing from words?

contextual effect

Four parts of the brain

Frontal Lobe, Partietal Lobe, Occipital Lobe and Temporal Lobe

Hypothalamus

Involved in regulating basic drives such as eating, drinking, and having sex; directing the endocrine glandular system; and maintaining the body's internal environment.

Hippocampus

Involved in formation of memories and via neurogenesis may play a role in depression.

Amygdala

Involved in emotions by influencing aggression, anger, and fear and by providing emotional element of our memories and the interpretation of emotional expressions in others.

Cerebral Cortex

The layers of interconnected cells covering the brains two hemispheres. This is the control and information-processing center for the nervous system; where perception, memory, language, decision making, and all other higher-level cognitive processing occur.

Corpus Callosum

The bridge of neurons that connects the two cerebral hemispheres.

Broca's area

area in cerebral cortex responsible for fluent speech production. It is in the left frontal lobe of the majority of people, regardless of handedness.

Associate Cortex

all of the cerebral cortex except those areas devoted to primary sensory processing or motor processing. This is where all the higher-level cognitive processing that requires the association (integration) of information, such as perception and language, occur.

Wrenicke's area

Area in the cerebral cortex responsible for comprehension os speech and text. It is in the left temporal lobe of the majority of people, regardless of handedness.

Consciousness

Individual's subjective awareness of their inner thinking and feeling and their external environment.

medulla

brain stem structure involved in many essential body functions, such as heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, digestion, and swallowing.

Cerebellum

Part of the brain involved in the coordination of our movements, sense of balance and motor learning.

Thalamus

a part of brain that serves as a relay station for incoming sensory information.

Reticular formation

Network of neurons running up the center of the brain stem that is responsible for our different levels of arousal and consciousness.

pons

Brain stem structure that serves as a bridge between the cerebellum and the rest of the brain and is involved in sleep and dreaming.

Neurontransmitter

Naturally occurring chemical in the nervous system that specializes in transmitting information between neurons.

Synapse

The microscopic gap between neurons across which neurotransmitter travel to carry their messages to other neurons.

Axon

The long singular fiber projecting out of the cell body of a neuron, whose function is to conduct the neural impulse from the cell body to the axon terminals, triggering chemical communicate with other neurons.