Psychology Study Guide

B

The _______ theory of emotion proposes that the physiological arousal and behavioral responses and the emotional feeling all occur simultaneously but independently.
A. Schacter-Singer two factor
B. Cannon-Bard
C. James-Lange
D. commonsense

B

The amount of energy in a sensory stimulus detected 50% of the time is called the _______.
A. difference threshold
B. absolute threshold
C. false alarm rate
D. miss rate

C

If a person is using a very strict criterion for a signal detection task, the false alarm rate will be ______, and the miss rate will be ________.
A. high; high
B. high; low
C. low; high
D. low; low

C

According to the opponent-process theory for color vision, if you stared at a blue circle for a while and then looked at a white surface, you would see a circular _______ afterimage.
A. blue
B. green
C. yellow
D. black

C

The best explanation for how we perceive low pitches (<500 Hz) is the ________ theory, and the best explanation for how we perceive high pitches (>5,000 Hz) is the _______ theory.
A. place; place
B. place; frequency
C. frequency; place
D. frequency; frequency

D

Perceptual set is a good example of ______
A. the figure-ground principle
B. perceptual constancy
C. bottom-up processing
D. top-down processing

C

Which of the following is a binocular depth cue?
A. linear perspective
B. interposition
C. retinal disparity
D. all of the above

A

Damage to the hair cells in the cochlea causes _______ deafness, and _______ occurs when light waves from distant objects come into focus in front of the retina.
A. nerve; nearsightedness
B. conduction; nearsightedness
C. nerve; farsightedness
D. conduction; farsightedness

B

Perceiving either a vase or two facial silhouettes looking at each other was used to illustrate the Gestalt principle of ______; perceiving two ambiguous characters numerically as 13 or alphabetically as the letter B was used to illustrate _________.
A. closure; subjective contours
B. figure and ground; contextual effects
C. closure; contextual effects
D. figure and ground; subjective contours

B

In Pavlov's classical conditioning research, a tone was used as the ________, and meat powder inserted in the mouth served as the _______.
A. UCS; CS
B. CS; UCS
C. UCR; CR
D. CR; UCR

A

Which of the following is the best example of a primary reinforcer?
A. a cheeseburger
B. a grade of "A" on an exam
C. praise from your teacher
D. winning the lottery

B

The stimulus in whose presence a response will be reinforced is called the _______ stimulus in operant conditioning.
A. generalization
B. discriminative
C. acquisition
D. extinction

C

A video game that requires the player to collect a set number of tokens to advance to the next level in the game is an example of a _________ schedule of reinforcement; a slot machine is an example of a ___________ schedule of reinforcement.
A. variable-ratio; fixed-interval
B. fixed-interval; variable-ratio
C. fixed-ratio; variable-ratio
D. variable-ratio; fixed-ratio

B

The Brelands' difficulties in training animals were the result of _______.
A. the partial-reinforcement effect
B. instinctual drift
C. a token economy
D. latent learning

A

The ___________ effect is a decrease in an intrinsically motivated behavior after the behavior is extrinsically reinforced and the reinforcement is discontinued.
A. overjustification
B. partial reinforcement
C. shaping
D. instinctual drift

C

A sleep cumulative record in operant conditioning indicates _______, and a flat cumulative record indicates _________.
A. a slow rate of responding; no responding
B. a slow rate of responding; a fast rate of responding
C. a fast rate of responding; no responding
D. a fast rate of responding; a slow rate of responding

B

Which of the following types of memory holds sensory input until we can attend to and recognize it?
A. short-term memory
B. sensory memory
C. semantic memory
D. episodic memory

A

Which of the following types of memory has the shortest duration?
A. sensory memory
B. short-term memory
C. semantic memory
D. episodic memory

D

Procedural memories are _________ memories and thus are probably processed in the __________.
A. explicit; hippocampus
B. explicit; cerebellum
C. implicit; hippocampus
D. implicit; cerebellum

B

Which of the following leads to the best long-term memory?
A. maintenance rehearsal
B. elaborative rehearsal
C. physical processing
D. acoustic processing

B

Piaget's false memory of a kidnapping attempt when he was a child was the result of _________.
A. infantile amnesia
B. source misattribution
C. encoding failure
D. storage decay

D

After learning the phone number for Five Star Pizza, Bob cannot remember the phone number he learned last week for the Donut Connection. After living in Los Angeles for 3 years, Jim is unable to remember his way around his hometown in which he had lived the previous 10 years prior to moving to Los Angeles. Bob is experiencing ________ interference, and Jim is experiencing the effects of ______ interference.
A. proactive; proactive
B. proactive; retroactive
C. retroactive; proactive
D. retroactive; retroactive

B

In the 2-4-6 task, participants demonstrate ________ in testing their hypothesis.
A. mental set
B. confirmation bias
C. person-who reasoning
D. belief perseverance

B

Mistakenly believing that two events are related is called ________.
A. functional fixedness
B. illusory correlation
C. the Flynn effect
D. the conjunction fallacy

C

Which of the following statements about test reliability and validity is false?
A. A test can be reliable and valid
B. A test can be reliable but not valid
C. A test can be valid but not reliable
D. A test can be neither reliable nor valid

A

The Flynn effect refers to the observation that average intelligence test scores in the United States and other Western industrialized nations have _______ over the past century.
A. increased
B. decreased
C. stayed the same
D. first increased but then decreased

A

Which of the following intelligence theorists proposed three types of intelligence- analytical, practical, and creative?
A. Sternberg
B. Gardner
C. Thurstone
D. Spearman

C

A person who questions the validity of the research findings that indicate smoking leads to health problems as a result of his knowing someone who has smoked most of their life and has no health problems is using ________.
A. representativeness heuristic
B. the availability heuristic
C. person-who reasoning
D. inferential-statistical reasoning

D

In the Linda problem, if you judge that it is more likely that Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement than that Linda is a bank teller, you are likely using the _______ heuristic and committing the ________ fallacy.
A. availability; gambling
B. availability; conjunction
C. representativeness; gambling
D. representativeness; conjunction

B

According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, children are in the _______ stage if they have symbolic ability but lack conservation.
A. sensorimotor
B. preoperational
C. concrete operational
D. formal operational

A

In a _________ study, people of different ages are studied at one point in time and compared with one another.
A. cross-sectional
B. longitudinal
C. habituation
D. scaffolding

A

According to Kohlberg, a person who complies with rules and laws to avoid punishment is in the _________ level of moral development.
A. preconventional
B. conventional
C. postconventional
D. authoritarian

C

According to Erikson's psychosocial theory, _________ is the issue that a person faces during adolescence.
A. initiative versus guilt
B. industry versus inferiority
C. identity versus role confusion
D. intimacy versus isolation

B

During the ______ stage of prenatal development (the final stage starting about 2 months after conception), the body structures and organs complete their growth.
A. embryonic
B. fetal
C. germinal
D. zygote

B

Johnny, who is only 4 years old, stands in front of you blocking your view of the television screen, and he does not realize that he is doing so. He thinks that his view is the same as yours. Johnny is displaying _______ and is in Piaget's ________ stage of cognitive development.
A. egocentrism; concrete
B. egocentrisim; preoperational
C. centration; concrete
D. centration; preoperational

C

Studies of intelligence in adulthood reveal that fluid intelligence abilities _______ with age, and crystallized intelligence abilities ______ with age.
A. increase; increase
B. increase; decrease
C. decrease; increase
D. decrease; decrease

B

A woman has unacceptable feelings of hatred toward her mother, but lavishes attention and love on her. Freud would say that this is an example of _________.
A. projection
B. reaction formation
C. displacement
D. sublimation

C

Which of the following neo-Freudian theorists proposed "striving for superiority" as the primary motivation for personality development?
A. Carl Jung
B. Karen Horney
C. Alfred Adler
D. Erik Erikson

B

"Self-efficacy" is the answer to which of the following questions?
A. What is the fullest realization of a person's potential?
B. What is a sense of one's effectiveness in dealing with a particular situation?
C. What is the perception that one controls one's own fate?
D. What is the tendency to make attributions so that one can view one's self favorably?

B

Which of the following theoretical approaches uses factor analysis to determine the number of factors necessary to describe human personality?
A. the psychoanalytic approach
B. the trait approach
C. the humanistic approach
D. the social-cognitive approach

B

According to the social-cognitive personality theorists, which of the following is least likely to lead to depression?
A. low sense of self-esteem
B. self-serving bias
C. external locus of control
D. learned helplessness

C

Glenn's room looks like a tornado hit it. He is incredibly messy. His car is filled with old pizza boxes, last month's newspapers, and dirty laundry. According to Freud, Glenn is most likely fixated at the _______ stage.
A. phallic
B. oral
C. anal
D. genital

C

The conformity demonstrated in Sherif's study using the autokinetic effect stems from _______.
A. actor-observer bias
B. self-serving bias
C. informational social influence
D. normative social influence

C

Which of the following factors increases conformity?
A. group is not unanimous
B. responding secretly
C. correct action is not clear
D. being of higher status than other group members

A

Which of the following situational factors in Milgram's shock experiments led to the highest maximum obedience rate?
A. experiment conducted in a rundown office building
B. two co-teachers disobey experimenter
C. experimenter not present
D. teacher has to force learner's hand onto shock plate

B

_______ is the strengthening of a group's prevailing opinion on a topic following group discussion of the topic.
A. Deindividuation
B. Group polarization
C. Groupthink
D. Social facilitation

B

When committing the fundamental attribution error, we tend to _________ the influence of dispositional factors and ________ the influence of situational factors.
A. overestimate; overestimate
B. overestimate; underestimate
C. underestimate; overestimate
D. underestimate; underestimate

A

Two groups of children are told to not play with a very attractive toy in a playroom. One group is threatened very severely, while the other group is only threatened mildly. Neither group played with the toy. According to cognitive dissonance theory, which group(s) should later still rate the toy as very attractive?
A. severe threat group
B. mild threat group
C. neither groups
D. both groups

D

Which two compliance techniques involve the rule of reciprocity?
A. foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face
B. low-ball and that's-not-all
C. foot-in-the-door and low-ball
D. door-in-the-face and that's-not-all

A

Conformity is higher for a person when the group ________ thee person's responses and when the person is of _________ status than the other group members.
A. hears; lesser
B. does not hear; lesser
C. hears; higher
D. does not hear; higher

B

___________ is the fear of being in places or situations from which escape may be difficult or embarrassing.
A. a specific phobia
B. agoraphobia
C. social anxiety disorder
D. panic disorder

A

Which of the following disorders has the highest concordance rate for identical twins?
A. bipolar disorder
B. schizophrenia
C. major depressive disorder
D. the concordance rates for all of the above are the same

B

Tardive dyskinesia is a side effect of long-term use of _______.
A. SSRIs
B. traditional antipsychotic drugs
C. lithium
D. tricyclics

C

Maladaptive behavior is to maladaptive thinking as ________ is to ________.
A. psychoanalysis; client-centered therapy
B. client-centered therapy; psychoanalysis
C. behavioral therapy; cognitive therapy
D. cognitive therapy; behavioral therapy

C

Which of the following psychotherapies is most effect in treating phobic disorders?
A. psychoanalysis
B. cognitive therapy
C. behavioral therapy
D. client-centered therapy

A

Which of the following is a part of rational-emotive therapy?
A. ABC model
B. token economy
C. free association
D. flooding

D

Unconditional positive regard and empathy are to resistance and transference as ________ is to _________.
A. rational-emotive therapy; Beck's cognitive therapy
B. Beck's cognitive therapy; rational-emotive therapy
C. psychoanalysis; client-centered therapy
D. client-centered therapy; psychoanalysis

B

Which of the following is the best example of a biopsychosocial explanation of a mental disorder?
A. the ABC model
B. the vulnerability-stress model
C. counterconditioning
D. meta-analysis

B

Which of the following disorders is classified as an obsessive-compulsive related disorder?
A. panic disorder
B. trichotillomania
C. agoraphobia
D. social anxiety disorder

C

In a left-skewed distribution, the mean is ______ than the median; in a right-skewed distribution, the mean is ______ than the median.
A. greater; greater
B. greater; less
C. less; greater
D. less; less

C

The actions of the pituitary gland are controlled by the _______
A. hippocampus
B. amygdala
C. hypothalamus
D. medulla

C

The limbic system consists of the ________
A. thalamus, hypothalamus, and amygdala
B. hypothalamus, medulla, and reticular formation
C. amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus
D. basal ganglia, amygdala, and cerebellum

D

In the majority of people, Broca's area is located in the _________ hemisphere, and Wernicke's area is located in the ________ hemisphere.
A. right; right
B. right; left
C. left; right
D. left; left

D

Which of the following stages of sleep is referred to as paradoxical sleep?
A. Stage 2
B. Stage 3
C. Stage 4
D. REM sleep

C

At dinner, when Josh picks up his fork, his _____ nervous system controls the movement of his fingers. His _________ nervous system regulates his stomach and controls the digestion of food.
A. autonomic; autonomic
B. autonomic; somatic
C. somatic; autonomic
D. somatic; somatic

A

Botulinum poisoning (food poisoning) causes paralysis by blocking the release of _______, and curare paralyzes by occupying the receptor sites for _______
A. acetylcholine; acetylcholine
B. acetylcholine; GABA
C. GABA; acetylcholine
D. GABA; GABA

B

The amount of space devoted to each part of the body in the motor cortex is _______.
A. proportional to the actual size of that part of the body
B. proportional to the complexity and precision of movement of which that part of the body is capable
C. the same for all body parts
D. greater for your torso than for your hands

B

According to Weber's law, if the difference threshold constant = 150, then the difference threshold for a standard stimulus of 100 units would be _______
A. 1
B. 2
C. 5
D. 10

D

Transduction of sound waves into neural impulses is performed by the _________
A. eardrum
B. oval window
C. malleus, incus, and stapes
D. hair cells in the basilar membrane

B

What is the purpose of transduction?
A. increasing the intensity of a stimulus so it is easier for the brain to detect
B. translating physical energy into neural signals that the brain can understand
C. determining whether or not a stimulus is detectable
D. integrating visual signals with auditory signals

B

Even though the image of your dog on your retina changes as your dog runs to fetch a stick, you do not perceive your dog as getting smaller. Which process of perception explains this phenomenon?
A. perceptual set
B. perceptual constancy
C. dark adaption
D. accomodation

B

Although Henry's watchband was bothering him when he first put it on, a short while later he did not even notice he was wearing it. This illustrates ________.
A. accommodation
B. sensory adaption
C. subliminal perception
D. perceptual constancy

C

In classical conditioning, the diminishing of the CR following removal of the UCS is called ________.
A. acquisition
B. discrimination
C. extinction
D. generalization

A

In stimulus generalization in classical conditioning, the strength of the CR ________, as the similarity of the generalization stimulus to the ___________ increases.
A. increases; CS
B. decreases; CS
C. increases; UCS
D. decreases; UCS

B

In reinforcement, the probability of a behavior _________; in punishment, the probability of a behavior _________.
A. increases; increases
B. increases; decreases
C. decreases; increases
D. decreases; decreases

D

Negative reinforcement occurs when an ________ stimulus is _______.
A. appetitive; presented
B. appetitive; removed
C. aversive; presented
D. aversive; removed

B

Tolman's research with rats in mazes indicated the occurrence of _________
A. observational learning
B. latent learning
C. the partial-reinforcement effect
D. instinctual drift

D

Which of the following is an example of a secondary reinforcer?
A. money
B. a money order
C. a check
D. all of the above

B

The results of Bandura's Bobo doll studies illustrate _______, and Tolman and Honzik's studies of latent learning indicate the importance of ________ in maze learning by rats.
A. observational learning; the overjustification effect
B. observational learning; cognitive maps
C. the partial-reinforcement effect; the overjustification effect
D. the partial-reinforcement effect; cognitive maps

D

Continuing to take Advil because it alleviates headaches is an example of ________, and no longer parking in "No Parking" zones because you lost money in fines for doing so is an example of ________.
A. positive punishment; positive reinforcement
B. positive reinforcement; positive punishment
C. negative punishment; negative reinforcement
D. negative reinforcement; negative punishment

C

Our short-term memory capacity is ________ +- 2 chunks.
A. 3
B. 5
C. 7
D. 9

C

The primary and recency effects in free recall demonstrate that we have the greatest difficulty recalling the words _______ of a list.
A. at the beginning
B. at the end
C. in the middle
D. at the beginning and the end

C

Which of the following is not a mnemonic aid?
A. method of loci
B. peg-word system
C. temporal integration procedure
D. first-letter technique

B

An essay test measures ________, and a multiple-choice test measures _________.
A. recall; recall
B. recall; recognition
C. recognition; recall
D. recognition; recognition

B

Which of the following theories of forgetting argues that the forgotten information was in long-term memory but is no longer available?
A. encoding failure theory
B. storage decay theory
C. interference theory
D. cue-dependent theory

A

Per the levels-of-processing theory, which of the following questions about the word "depressed" would best prepare you to correctly remember tomorrow that you had seen the word in this practice test question today?
A. How well does the word describe you?
B. Does the word consist of 10 letters?
C. Is the word typed in capital letters?
D. Does the word rhyme with obsessed?

A

The forgetting curve for long-term memory in Ebbinghaus's relearning studies with nonsense syllables indicates that ________.
A. the greatest amount of forgetting occurs rather quickly and then it levels off
B. little forgetting occurs very quickly and the greatest amount occurs later, after a lengthy period of memory storage
C. forgetting occurs at a uniform rate after learning
D. little forgetting ever occurs

D

In the Loftus and Palmer experiment, participants were shown a film of a traffic accident and then later tested for their memory of it. The finding that memory differed based upon the specific words used in the test questions illustrated _______.
A. state-dependent memory
B. source misattribution
C. the self-reference effect
D. the misinformation effect

B

The results for the experiment in which word lists were studied either on land or underwater and then recalled either on land or underwater provide evidence for ________.
A. source misattribution
B. encoding specificity
C. proactive interference
D. retroactive interference

C

The tendency to think of only the most typical uses of objects in a problem setting is called _________.
A. fixation
B. mental set
C. functional fixedness
D. confirmation bias

A

If you compute the area of a room by using the formula length x width = area, you are using a(n)/the ________
A. algorithm
B. heuristic
C. conjunction rule
D. anchoring and adjustment heuristic

B

The representative heuristic leads us to _______.
A. judge the probability of an event in terms of its prominence in memory
B. judge the probability of category membership by resemblance to the category
C. seek only evidence that confirms our beliefs
D. maintain our beliefs even though we have been given evidence that contradicts them

B

Overestimating the probability of dying in an airplane crash is likely the results of using the _________.
A. representative heuristic
B. availability heuristic
C. anchoring heuristic
D. conjunction rule

A

The intelligence test scores for _______ are most strongly correlated.
A. identical twins reared apart
B. fraternal twins reared together
C. siblings reared together
D. unrelated people reared apart

C

Which of the following intelligence theorists emphasized the 'g' factor?
A. Sternberg
B. Gardner
C. Spearman
D. Thurstone

C

The folding problem in which you were asked to estimate the thickness of a 0.1 millimeter sheet of paper folded in on itself 100 times illustrates how the _______ can lead to dramatic underestimates of the correct answer to an estimation problem.
A. representativeness heuristic
B. availability heuristic
C. anchoring and adjustment heuristic
D. conjunction rule

A

A heritability estimate of 100% for intelligence in a given population means that the variation in intelligence for this population is determined ________.
A. solely by genetics
B. solely by environmental experiences
C. 50% by genetics and 50% by environmental experiences
D. 75% by genetics and 25% by environmental experiences

B

In human conception, another name for the fertilized egg is _______.
A. gene
B. zygote
C. chromosome
D. teratogen

D

At about 6 or 7 months of age, an infant starts rhythmically repeating various syllables. This is called _______
A. baby talk
B. holophrase
C. telegraphic speech
D. babbling

A

According to Piaget, ________ is the interpretation of new experiences in terms of present schemas, and ________ is the modification of present schemas to fit with new experiences.
A. assimilation; accommodation
B. accommodation; assimilation
C. reversibility; centration
D. centration; reversibility