AAMC Practice

Question 1

Brocas area function and location (hemisphere)

Answer 1

speech production

left hemisphere (for most people)

Question 2

Wernicke’s Area function and location (hemisphere)

Answer 2

language comprehension

left hemisphere (for most people)

Question 3

“shadowing”

Answer 3

a cognitive test used in attention studies

a participant repeats aloud a message word for word at the same time that the message is being presented, often while other stimuli are presented in the background

Question 4

predictive validity

Answer 4

the ability of a test to predict the future behavior of a person who takes it.

Question 5

What side of the brain is most related to speech and language?

Answer 5

the LEFT hemisphere

Question 6

thalamus function

Answer 6

information relay station

all information from your body’s senses (except smell) must be processed through your thalamus before being sent to your brain’s cerebral cortex for interpretation

also plays a role in sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, learning and memory

Question 7

hypothalamus function:

Answer 7

controls _H_omeostasis and _H_ormones

controls hormone release by controlling the pituitary gland

Question 8

hippocampus function

Question 9

input to the left ear goes to the auditory cortex is in the _____ (left/right) hemisphere

Answer 9

RIGHT

(opposite)

Question 10

Sensory memory

Answer 10

the most fleeting kind of memory storage

our eyes and ears remember a large amount of visual and auditory information for a brief moment follow exposure

Question 11

sensory coding

Question 12

confounding variables

Answer 12

a third variable that influences both the independent and dependent variables

Question 13

Weschler Scale of intelligence (WISC)

Question 14

cocaine drug type

Answer 14

stimulant

Question 15

internalization of receptors

Answer 15

a receptor-mediated endocytosis process that results in the movement of receptors from the plasma membrane to the inside of the cell

Question 16

what do endocrine glands produce?

Question 17

endocrine vs exocrine

Question 18

“shaping”

Answer 18

a variant of operant conditioning; the process of rewarding increasingly specific behaviours (any behaviour that may eventually lead to the desired behaviour)

Question 19

instinctive drift

Answer 19

the tendency of some trained animals to revert back to instinctual behaviors

Question 20

stimulus generalization

Answer 20

when a stimulus similar enough to the conditioned stimulus can also produce the conditioned response

ex. little albert

Question 21

partial reinforcement

Answer 21

reinforcing an organism only sometimes and not everytime the desired behavior occurs

Question 22

the serial-position effect

Answer 22

the tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle

Question 23

hindsight bias

Answer 23

the tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were

“i knew it all along”

Question 24

chunking

Answer 24

a memory trick that involves taking individual elements of a large list and grouping them together into groups of elements with related meanings

Question 25

memory decay

Answer 25

natural memory loss that occurs over time (not a result of disorder)

Question 26

aging and memory

Question 27

retention function

Question 28

episodic memory

Answer 28

the memory of everyday events that can be explicitly stated or conjured

It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at particular times and places

Question 29

semantic memory

Answer 29

conscious long-term memory for meaning, understanding, and conceptual facts about the world

Question 30

implicit memory

Answer 30

memory that does not require the conscious recollection of past events or information, and the individual is unaware that remembering has occurred

Question 31

counterculture

Question 32

socialization

Question 33

material culture

Question 34

social reproduction

Question 35

front stage self

Question 36

back stage self

Question 37

culture lag

Question 38

cultural assimilation

Question 39

culture shock

Answer 39

the feeling of disorientation that occurs due to an encounter with an unfamiliar culture

Question 40

cultural transmission

Answer 40

the process through which cultural elements are passed onto and taught to individuals and groups (ex. from one generation to another)