AP Psych all units Flashcards
Julie is interested in developing a test to measure achievement levels of middle school students. Which of the following domains of psychology is most applicable to Julie’s interest?
Psychometric
presenting a participant with an object, such as a can of soda, and having the subject report his or her perceptions or experience of the can
structuralist school of thought
Samantha experienced a traumatic brain injury and afterward began to exhibit bizarre symptoms that no one had ever documented before. The best research method to study Samantha would be
a case study
Dr. Rodriguez is interested in finding out if stress levels throughout the year have a relationship with students’ grades. The research method she most likely used is
a correlational study
What is the primary advantage of conducting a survey rather than using other types of research methods?
Surveys can gather information from a diverse representation of and a large number of people.
A researcher was interested in studying the effects of a new medication on depression. One group received the new medication and another group received a standard medication for depression. The researcher asked participants to answer a series of questions rating their mood levels before and after six weeks of taking the medications. Which of the following is the control condition in this study?
The group receiving the standard medication
The advantage of an experiment is that it allows a researcher to
infer cause and affect
Dr. Wilson, who teaches engineering classes, is interested in learning about how lack of sleep affects performance. What would be the best way to ensure that her findings are generalizable to all the students at her university?
Surveying every tenth student listed in the university directory about their sleep habits
Mr. Gregg wants to help his second-grade students improve their reading skills. He tests the students with 20 reading comprehension questions at the beginning of the year. Every week throughout the year he gives the students 30 minutes of reading comprehension tips. He tests the students at the end of the year with 20 reading comprehension questions that are similar in difficulty to those on the original test. He finds that the students’ reading comprehension has increased and concludes that his tips worked. Which of the following describes the most significant problem with Mr. Gregg’s study?
Mr. Gregg failed to account for changes in the students’ maturity.
Ms. Li, a principal, is interested in the differences in student behavior between two of the third-grade classrooms at her school. She asks the teachers, Mr. Williams, whose class meets at 9:00, and Ms. Walsh, whose class meets at 1:00, to record over a week the number of times students in their classrooms act out. Mr. Williams’ class has 31 students, and Ms. Walsh’s class has 32 students. “Acting out” is defined as students speaking without raising their hand or getting out of their seats without being given permission. At the end of the week, Mr. Williams reports that on average, his students acted out 73 times a day, and Ms. Walsh reports that, on average, her students acted out 27 times a day. Ms. Li decides that the students in Ms. Walsh’s classroom act out more often than those in Mr. William’s class. The results of this study are inconclusive because
the time of day was a confounding variable
Kara works as a dog trainer. She reads a new book that describes some unusual training methods, and she wants to test them out on the dogs she works with. She assigns each dog to one of two groups by picking a number out of a hat. Half the dogs are assigned to one group, and half the dogs are assigned to the other group. For a month, she trains one group using her old methods and the other group using the unusual methods. At the end of the month, Kara records that the dogs that were trained with her old methods obey her 80 percent of the time and those that were trained with the unique methods obey her 90 percent of the time. Kara concludes that the unique methods work better. Kara can best improve her experimental design by
having someone else test the dogs
2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16
What is the range of the numbers above?
14
7, 5, 10, 4, 4
What is the median of the numbers above?
5
The benefit of using inferential statistics is that it allows a researcher to
make generalizations about a population
Deception can be used in research when
it is appropriate for what is being studied
When seeking approval to conduct an experiment using participants from her college psychology course, a student researcher should
apply to the institutional review board at the university
Which of the following is true of the American Psychological Association?
It addresses a number of ethical guidelines for the practice of psychology.
Ruth and Debbie are identical twins who were raised by the same family. Vince and Frankie are identical twins who were separated at birth and raised by different families. According to research on the heritability of personality traits, Ruth’s and Debbie’s personalities are statistically
likely to be as similar and dissimilar to one another as are Vince’s and Frankie’s personalities
Johnny often hits his brother even though his brother does not do anything to antagonize him. Johnny’s aggression is most likely due to a combination of
his genetic makeup, the environment he grew up in, and the fact that aggression can be evolutionarily adaptive
Madeline has previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. She has an identical twin sister, Josephine, and a nonidentical sister, Abigail. Neither of Madeline’s sisters have previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Which of the following statements is true of Madeline’s sisters?
Josephine is more likely to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder than Abigail in response to a stressful or traumatic event.
Which hormone is released when a person is under stress?
Cortisol
A person whose body is not producing enough testosterone is most likely to exhibit
fatigue
The hormone most associated with the fight or flight response is
epinephrine
A neuron sends a signal along its
axon
The medulla oblongata is a part of the
brain stem
The fatty casing that helps speed up the neural transmissions of a neuron is called the
myelin sheath
The neuron goes from being negatively charged to briefly being positively charged, and finally returns to being negatively charged again. The magnitude of the negative charge is fixed regardless of the strength of the input signal it receives.
what happens when a neuron sends a signal
If a body does not have enough potassium, how might that affect neuronal firing?
The neurons will struggle to fire because there will not be enough positively charged ions to trigger the firing of the neuron.
At a synapse, neurotransmitters released by the sending neuron do which of the following
They bind to receptors at the receiving neuron, which opens ion channels.
Antagonists function by
blocking receptors to prevent other neurotransmitters from binding to the neural receptors
