General PsychologyFinal Examination Study Guide
Psych 110 B, Spring 20031
The test is worth 100 points. There will be 7 short essay questions each worth 5 points and 65 multiple choice questions to be answered using a Scantron form. Here are the questions.
Candidate 5 point short essay questions
Seven of the following 10 questions will be on the test. Use the spaces provided to answer them. You do not need to fill the entire space. Neatness is important. If I cannot read your answer, it will receive no points.
Briefly describe and differentiate between the three components of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Describe the process of transduction in hearing.
Describe why correlational studies cannot be used to infer causation and why experiments do support inferences about causation.
Detail two lines of evidence that support Chomsky’s hypothesis that humans are born with a “language acquisition device.”
Discuss and differentiate the three broad clusters of symptoms associated with schizophrenia.
Distinguish between top-down and bottom-up processes.
Sketch and explain Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Uncle Zeb has had a stoke that wiped out the function of his hypothalamus. Describe three distinctly different behavioral consequences of his misfortune.
Use the Tower of Hanoi problem as an example in your discussion of the “problem space” representation of problem solving.
What will you remember from this class when you are old?
Multiple choice questions
A problem space contains an initial state, a goal state, and ______.
As children age, they grow taller. Is this a positive or negative correlation?
As inflation increases, interest rates drop. Is this a positive or negative correlation?
As partying increases, grades decrease. Is this a positive or negative correlation?
Cognitive psychology claims that thinking is the ______and that mind and behavior are ______.
Complete the saying: “A good representation ______.”
Describe the general pattern of sleep over the course of a normal night.
Dramatic effects on an animal's drives are most likely to result from a lesion in the ______.
During which stage of sleep is brain activity most like that of an awake, alert person?
Each complete sleep cycle lasts about ______minutes.
Evidence from research involving patients with prosopagnosia suggests that we have a special brain mechanism for recognizing ______.
Following extreme physical exercise, sleep is usually deeper and lasts somewhat longer. This fact suggests that sleep has a ______function.
Freud taught that the driving force behind every dream is ______.
How do drives and incentives complement one another?
Humans have effectively superseded the processes of evolution because of our great intelligence. True or false?
Hunger is an example of a(n) ______and food is an example of the corresponding ______.
If a sound's amplitude were increasing and its frequency decreasing, the sound would be experienced as becoming both ______and ______.
If hair cells on the portion of the basilar membrane closest to the oval window were destroyed, what would be the most pronounced effect on hearing?
If you had a patch over one eye, you would no longer be able to use the depth perception cue of ______.
In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World, infants develop a fear of books after books are repeatedly presented with a loud noise. In this fictional example, the loud noise is a(n) ______.
In humans, injections of testosterone will cause ______in men and ______in women.
In the somatosensory cortex, the amount of cortex devoted to each body part corresponds to the ______of that body part.
Is the recognition process is more likely to be top-down or bottom-up when a person can identify an object faster if it is part of a meaningful scene than if it is part of an unrelated collection of objects?
Jung taught that the driving force behind every dream is ______.
Lash LaRue watches Doc Holiday ride away into the sunset. Although Lash's retinal image of Doc decreases as he rides away, Lash does not perceive Doc as physically shrinking due to ______.
Many of the neurons in the pathway containing the most effective neural reward areas use ______as their neurotransmitter.
One of the fundamental assumptions of cognitive psychology is that the mind operates on ______.
One way to make a white circle appear green is to stare at a red circle for a period of time before looking at the white circle. This phenomenon, known as an afterimage, can be accounted for by the ______theory of color vision.
Psychology is a science that allows us to answer questions by using objective evidence. We can use the scientific method to answer some questions but not others. Indicate whether we can answer the question using the scientific method for questions like: Is there a God? and Why is the sky blue?
Research findings concerning the physiology of smell indicate that most of the output from the glomeruli goes to ______.
Research with rats indicates that male-female brain differences associated with adult sexual behaviors are determined by the presence or absence of ______.during ______.
Simon LeVay discovered a nucleus within the hypothalamus that was consistently and significantly smaller in ______.
Skepticism is not necessary in science when you are conducting a true experiment. True or false?
Species typical behaviors are learned by observation. True or false?
Studies suggest that the same sets of neurons that mediate the rewarding effect of electrical brain stimulation also mediate the rewarding effect of ______.
Suppose that a blindfolded person is holding 10 pennies in one hand and that 3 pennies have to be added before the person reports that the pennies feel heavier. According to Weber's law, how many pennies would have to be added to get a just noticeable difference if the person were holding 1000 pennies?
The ______is the area of the retina that is in the most direct line of sight where the greatest concentration of ______is located.
The absolute threshold is the ______.
The addition of constraints makes problem solving and decision making ______.
The advent of the digital computer profoundly influenced the development of ______.
The body releases endorphins (endogenous morphine-like substances) into the bloodstream in order to ______.
The claim that knowledge is organized hierarchically finds support from ______.
The existence of phantom-limb pain suggests that ______.
The Gestalt psychologists claimed that we are innately predisposed to ______.
The insular cortex plays a role in an aspect of pain experience; specifically, this brain area appears to support the following function: ______.
The major function of the structures in the middle ear is to ______.
The mythical one-eyed creature called the Cyclops would be expected to have trouble with ______.
The part of the brain called the ______plays a central role in assessing the emotional significance of stimuli and generating an immediate emotional response.
The quantitative dimension of a stimulus (such as brightness of a light, loudness of a sound) is coded at the level of sensory neurons by ______.
The rate of human evolution is much slower than the rate of environmental change caused by human activity. True or false?
The scientist always tries to disprove hypotheses, even those that are his or her own. True or false?
The theories that scientists accept as correct could potentially be disproved but have survived all attempts so far to do so. True or false?
There have been hundreds of reported cases of observed evolution since Darwin’s time. True or false?
Timbergen wrote: “The stickleback turned out to be an excellent subject for studying ______. … A stickleback is different from a rat. Its behavior is much more purely ______. and much more ______. Because of its relative ______, it shows some phenomena more clearly than the behavior of any mammal can.”
To enable you to smell smoke in your apartment, the receptor cells in your nose must respond to the physical stimulus by producing an electrical change, which is the process of ______.
What is the difference between risk and ambiguity?
What is the difference between risk and certainty?
What is the relationship between arousal and task performance, according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law?
When Samantha's phone rings, she picks up the receiver and hears a voice say “Hi. It's me.” Since Sam has known her friend Bianca for, like, years and is very familiar with her voice, Sam is able to identify her. Is this recognition process more likely to be top-down or bottom-up?
While enjoying one of Monet's paintings of water lilies, you notice that some lilies appear to be more distant than others are because they have been painted smaller and more densely packed. This perception is based on the pictorial cue for depth known as ______.
Women are most sensitive to bitter tastes during the first three months of pregnancy, the period in which the fetus is most vulnerable to poisons. This finding supports a(n) ______perspective on the bitter rejection response.
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