Psychology Flashcards
The science of psychology is typically dated from the establishment of the late-nineteenthcentury Leipzig laboratory of
Wilhelm Wundt
Reasoning is: German father of Psych
The behavioral research perspective is similar to the sociocultural research perspective because both focus on how behavior and mental processes are explained by
the external environment
Reasoning: sociocultural perspective is awarness of behaviors affteded by their surroundings
Which of the following types of research design is most appropriate for establishing a cause-andeffect relationship between two variables?
Experimental
Reasoning: key words are variable, experiments use variables to affect the cause and effect
Frequency theory and place theory attempt to explain how the inner ear registers the pitch of sound
Place theory explains the perception of high-frequency sounds well, and frequency theory explains the perception of low-frequency sounds well. correct
Reasoning: just vocab,
The requirement that prospective participants know the general nature of a study so that they can decide whether to participate is a major part of
informed consent
Reasoning: informed, meaning understanding of the study, and consent is the deciding factor to go through with the study
The term “etiology” refers to the study of which of the following aspects of an illness?
Origins and causes
Reasoning: vocab
A neuron is said to be polarized when
it is in a resting state
Reasoning: vocab
How many pairs of chromosomes are contained in most human cells?
23
Reasoning: Knowledge
The release of a neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft is caused by which of the following?
an action potential
Reasoning: the neurons talk to each other across synapses
Damage to an individual’s parietal lobes is most likely to result in
reduced sensitivity to touch
Reasoning: processes sensory information relating to touch, taste, and temp.
Which of the following cortical areas is most closely associated with vision?
Occipital
Reasoning: Cortical areas in the brain include:
Occipital: vision
Frontal: movement and decision making
Parietal: sensory info (touch, pain, pressure, position, vibration, temp)
Temporal: language, memory, hearing, nonverbal cues, sound to visual image conversion
The receptors for hearing are the
hair cells on the basilar membrane
Reasoning: i just knew about the hair cells and went with gut feeling
Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the facial feedback hypothesis of emotion?
Ellen says that hanging up the laundry on a clothesline makes her feel happy; she holds the clothespins in her teeth as she hangs each piece of clothing.
Reasoning: deals with emotion, smiling makes you happy
According to current psychological research, hypnosis is most useful for which of the following purposes?
Pain control
Reasoning: Hypnosis isn’t about convincing you that you don’t feel pain; it’s about helping you manage the fear and anxiety you feel related to that pain. It relaxes you, and it redirects your attention from the sensation of pain.
Which of the following drugs is most likely to cause hyperalertness, agitation, and general euphoria?
stimulant
Reasoning: elevates mood, and increasing feelings of wellbeing, energy, and alertness
Brain waves during REM sleep generally appear as
rapid low-amp waves
reasoning: knowledge
According to the activation-synthesis hypothesis of dreaming, dreams serve which of the following purposes?
To make sense of random neural activity during sleep
REasoning: its a a hypothesis that explains dreams as a product of cortical interpretation of random neural activity rising from the brainstem
After initial conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with the conditioned stimulus, and the conditioned response gradually stops occurring. This change in behavior is called
extinction
Reasoing: it occurs when a response is no longer reinforced following a discriminative stimulus
so not doing the same task, reinforcing it, your muscle memory weakens, becomes extinct
Research has shown that students generally perform better if tested in the same room where they originally learned the material. This shows the importance of which of the following in memory?
Context
Reasomong: memory performance is reduced when an individual’s environment differs from encoding to retrieval than if the two environments were the same. This effect is known as context-dependent forgetting.
Albert Bandura conducted a study in which a child viewed an adult playing with toys. The adult stood up and kicked and yelled at an inflated doll. The child was then taken to another room containing toys. When left alone, the child lashed out at a similar doll in the room. The child’s behavior toward the doll is most likely a result of
Observational learning
Reasoning: the child is learning from its observations of the older man
Making the amount of time a child can spend playing video games contingent on the amount of time the child spends practicing the piano is an illustration of
operant conditioning
reasoning: learning through rewards
the child will play video games more than the piano since it is more rewarding to learn about the video game than piano
Priming is considered part of implicit memory because it
occurs without conscious awarness
reasoing: implicit memory is when you dont know you are remembering something, priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.
In problem solving, which of the following approaches almost always guarantees a correct solution?
algorithm
reasoning: knowledge
Stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus will result in which of the following behaviors in laboratory rats?
An increase in eating behavior
Reasoning: lateral hypothalamus links to food intake
Which of the following is a disadvantage of relying on external rewards to motivate behavior?
There is a potential to reduce intrinsic motivation
Reasoning: intrinsic motivation is the the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence.
so rewards reduces the motivation to do what you like for the fun and happiness of it
One theory of the effects of arousal holds that efficiency of behavior can be described as an inverted U-shaped function of increasing arousal. Which of the following accurately describes this relationship?
Low and high levels of arousal lead to poorest performance.
Reasoning: this answer has two low points
Which of the following presents a pair of needs from Abraham Maslow’s hierarchical need structure, in order from lower to higher need?
Physiological needs, safety correct
Reasoning: Low to high, key word a pair of needs
phys needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, self actualization
In which of the following areas does research show most clearly that girls develop earlier than boys?
Adolescent physical growth spurt
Reasoning: knowledge
Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas have classified temperament into which of the following clusters?
easy, difficult, slow to warm up
reasoning: knowledge
Developmental psychologists are most likely to prefer longitudinal research designs to cross-sectional research designs because longitudinal designs
utilize the participants as their own experimental controls
Reasoning: The main difference is that cross-sectional studies interview a fresh sample of people each time they are carried out, whereas longitudinal studies follow the same sample of people over time.
Researchers know that infants’ sense of smell is fairly well developed at birth because newborns prefer the smell of
a nursing pad from their mother to the smell of a pad from another mother
Reasoining: knowledge, just makes sense
A young child breaks her cookie into a number of pieces and asserts that ‘‘now there is more to eat.’’ In Jean Piaget’s analysis, the child’s behavior is evidence of
preoperational thought
Reasoning: leads to logical thinking, the child thought logically when saying we have more to eat
The use of projective tests is associated with which of the following psychological approaches?
Psychoanalysis
Reasoning: projective test are dealing with uncovering feelins desire and conflicts that are hidden, psycoanalysis is the awarness of the unconsous aspects of a persons emotions
The key distinction between a personality trait and an attitude is
durability
Reason: bc
An attribution that focuses on an individual’s ability or personality characteristics is described as
dispositional
Reasoinng: deals with personality traits, efforts, moods, judgements, abilities, motives, or beliefs
The case study method of conducting research is justifiably criticized because
the results are difficult to generalize to a larger population
Reasoning: cant create a general conclusion
A man’s life has been filled with misfortune and tragic experiences that were unexpected, unavoidable, and unpredictable. He is depressed and tells his therapist that he feels he cannot control the outcome of the events in his life. Which of the following best explains his depression?
learned helplessness
Reasoning: occurs after experince of a stressful situation repeatedly
