1. The number of neural interconnections

a. increases dramatically after birth.*

b. decreases after age two.

c. is constant through infancy and childhood.

d. a and b.

43% of the class got this item right, and the item-to-total r_pb = -.06, which made it a really bad item. More students, 49%, went for Option D, and indeed an argument could be made for D over A, but even Option D failed to meet the statistical standards for an acceptable item, r_pb = .18. This same item appeared, accidentally, on an earlier exam as well (Fall 2004 final) -- and it was also a "bad item" then. I don't intentionally repeat items, but I do draw some exam items from a test-item supplied with the textbook, and when selecting items for a new test I don't go back and check the old ones. Just to show you that science does advance, the official answer to the question changed between the 6th edition of the text, which we used in 2004, and the 7th edition used in 2009! It doesn't help that as the science has progressed, it's also gotten more complicated. For those who are really interested, here's the scoop based on the best information I have:

• As far as the cerebral cortex is concerned, we're probably born with all the neurons we're going to get. The major change postnatally is in the the number, or the density, of interconnections among neurons -- a process called synaptogenesis, by which the axons of presynaptic neurons increasingly link to the dendrites of postsynaptic neurons. Viewed at the neuronal level, the big effect of normal development is the proliferation of neural interconnections, including an increase in dendritic arborization (like a tree sprouting branches) and the extension of axons (so as to make contact with more dendrites). So Option A is clearly correct.
• At the same time, but at a different rate, there is also some pruning, or elimination, of synapses -- a process by which neural connectivity is fine-tuned. So, for example early in development there is considerable overlap in the projections of neurons from the two eyes into the primary visual cortex; but after pruning, the two eyes project largely to two quite different segments of cortex, known as "ocular dominance columns". This pruning can continue well into childhood and adolescence. The 7th edition of Gleitman's text makes no reference to pruning (at least so far as I can discover). But still a good argument can be made for Option B as well.
• Neurons die. Fortunately, we are born with a lot of neurons, and unless neuronal death is accelerated by brain damage or something like Alzheimer's disease, neurons die relatively slowly. When neurons die their connections obviously disappear with them, which strengthens the case for Option B.
• The connections between neurons can also be altered by learning. Think of long-term potentiation. But LTP doesn't change the number of neural interconnections. What changes is the likelihood of synaptic transmission across a synapse that has already been established. So this doesn't provide additional support for Option A (which, remember, is already well supported).
• LTP is an example of a broader phenomenon called functional plasticity.
  • Violinists, who finger the strings with their left hands, show much larger cortical area in that portion of (right) parietal cortex that controls finger movements of the left hand, compared to nonmusicians.
  • If one finger of a hand is amputated, that portion of somatosensory cortex which would ordinarily receive input from that finger obviously doesn't do so any longer. But what can happen is that the somatosensory cortex can reorganize itself, so that this portion of the brain can now receive stimulation from fingers that are adjacent to the amputated one.
  • And if two fingers are sewn together, so that when one moves the other one does also, the areas of somatosensory cortex that would be devoted to each finger will now overlap.
• In each case, though, the physical connections between neurons -- the number of terminal fibers synapsing on dendrites -- don't appear to change. Much as with LTP, what changes is the likelihood of synaptic transmission across synapses that have already been established. So, again, this fact doesn't provide additional support for Option A (which doesn't really need any additional support).
• Finally, there's problem of neurogenesis. Traditional neuroscientific doctrine has held that new neurons can regenerate in the peripheral nervous system (as, for example, when a severed limb has been reattached), but not in the central nervous system. However, increasing evidence has been obtained for neurogenesis in central nervous system as well. This research is highly controversial (though I, personally, believe it to be true), but if confirmed it would provide basis for experimental "stem-cell" therapies for spinal-cord injuries (think of Christopher Reeve). If naturally occurring neurogenesis occurs at a rate greater than the rate of natural neuronal death, and if these new neurons could actually be integrated into pre-existing neural networks, that would supply yet an additional mechanism for a net increase in new physical interconnections between neurons -- but so far the evidence in both respects is ambiguous.

2. What is the difference between a sensitive period and a critical period?

a. A critical period applies to negative environmental influence, while a sensitive period applies to positive environmental influence.

b. A critical period applies to positive environmental influence, while a sensitive period applies to negative environmental influence.

c. A sensitive period is more flexible than a critical period.*

d. A critical period refers to genetic influences, while a sensitive period refers to environmental influences.

67% correct, r_pb = .46 -- much better! After a critical period has passed, the environmental stimulus no longer has any influence. A good example is imprinting in geese. But after a sensitive period has passed, the stimulus can still have some influence -- it's just diminished.

3. For infants who have not achieved object permanence,

a. a ball's continued existence is in no way dependent on its being held.

b. a ball must be seen in order for it to exist.*

c. a ball in two different locations is understood to remain the same ball.

d. All of the above answers are correct.

89%, .36. Object permanence is Piaget's term for memory. Without object permanence, "out of sight" is also "out of mind".

4. Which of the following is an example of assimilation?

a. A child deforms a ball somewhat in order to grasp it the same way he grasps a block.*

b. A child changes his grip so that he can grasp a ball as tightly as he grasps a block.

c. A child develops a new schema of bouncing, and now deals with a ball differently than with a block.

d. A child reorganizes his thinking in order to integrate his experiences with blocks, ball, and other solid objects.

46%, .33. We assimilate objects to prevailing schemata, and we accommodate our schemata to the objects we encounter. So, for an infant in the stage of sensory-motor intelligence, objects besides breast or bottle are all assimilated to the "put in your mouth and suck" schema. This is the cycle of cognitive development from Piaget's point of view.

5. According to Piaget, when a child is able to understand that adding 1 to 6 makes an odd number, but cannot grasp that 1 added to any even number makes it odd, the child is in the __________ stage.

a. sensorimotor

b. preoperational

c. concrete operational*

d. formal operational

64%, .43. Concrete operations are like addition, formal operations are like algebra. In concrete operations, the child can understand specific instances, but doesn't yet have the general, abstract, concept.

6. Studies of infants' reactions to partly occluded objects

a. support Piaget's view that infants have no understanding of object permanence during the sensorimotor stage.

b. indicate that infants as young as four months understand that a partly occluded object, such as a rod, is whole, even though they cannot see all of it.*

c. indicate that infants younger than eight months do not understand that a partly occluded object, such as a rod, is a single whole rather than two separate objects.

d. both a and c.

78%, .55. Remember that sensory-motor children aren't supposed to have object permanence, or memory. Out of sight, out of mind. But it turns out that this isn't true. Infants understand that objects continue behind another object that occludes them. This is just one of the empirical problems with Piaget's theory.

7. Research indicates that when six-month-olds see someone reach for an object, they view the behavior as

a. purely physical, showing no understanding of other minds.

b. purely physical, showing a sensitivity to others' intentions.

c. goal-driven, showing no understanding of other minds.

d. goal-driven, showing a sensitivity to others' intentions.*

53%, .40. And infants aren't supposed to have a "theory of mind", either. That's something that begins to emerge in the stage of concrete operations. But infants do appear to perceive other people's behaviors in terms of their intentions, goals, or motives. They do, in fact, have some sense of what other people want.

8. A three-year-old and a five-year-old watch Megan and Danika hide a cookie in a yellow box. They then watch Megan leave and Danika move the cookie to a blue box. When asked where Megan will look for the cookie,

a. both children will most likely say, "The yellow box."

b. both children will most likely say, "The blue box."

c. the older child will say, "The yellow box"; the younger child will say, "The blue box."*

d. the younger child will say, "The yellow box"; the older child will say, "The blue box."

66%, .35. This is about the "false belief" test of the theory of mind. Three-year-olds tend to fail the test, such and the three-year old thinks that Megan knows what she knows while five-year-olds tend to pass it, so that the five-year-old will know both where the cookie is and where Megan thinks it is.

9. Biological inheritance plays a role in shaping our abilities. For instance, the genome specifies:

a. particular mental contents.

b. specialized learning mechanisms.*

c. beliefs about why people act as they do.

d. vocabulary.

64%, .29. The genome, the individual's genetic inheritance, lies at the basis of our innate abilities. For example, we seem to have an innate mechanism for learning language. And, if you remember back to the discussion of learning, certain stimulus-response connections are "prepared" by evolution: These, too, are carried on the genome.

10. Metacognition means __________ mental functioning.

a. complex

b. adult

c. thinking about*

d. poorly developed

50%, .39. Metacognition is thinking about thinking -- our knowledge of how our minds work. Meta-language is a subset of metacognition, referring to our knowledge of the rules of language. Meta-memory is another, referring to our knowledge of what's stored in memory, as well as our knowledge of how memory works (the rules of rehearsal, cue-dependency, and so on).

11. Which of the following statements is true?

a. Both crystallized and fluid intelligence remain relatively stable across the life span.

b. While crystallized intelligence remains relatively stable across the life span, fluid intelligence begins to decline in the 20s.*

c. While fluid intelligence remains relatively stable across the life span, crystallized intelligence begins to decline in the 20s.

d. Both crystallized and fluid intelligence begin to decline in the 20s.

94%, .38. Fluid intelligence is raw, intellectual ability, and apparently it declines with age. Crystallized intelligence is "book learning", the skills and other knowledge that we acquire through the exercise of fluid intelligence, and apparently that sticks with us forever (except in cases of dementia).

12. Research shows that infants respond more positively when their mothers' facial expression (whether happy or sad)

a. is extreme.

b. is accompanied by a variety of speech sounds.

c. is accompanied by clapping.

d. matches the emotional tone of her voice.*

81%, .30. Whether it's innate, or they just learn it very quickly, infants are in the business of learning what goes with what. So, one way or another, they expect that the mood expressed on someone's face will match the mood expressed in their voice -- and they get confused, and unhappy.

13. Harlow studied the role of surrogate mothers in comforting the infant monkey during times of danger or stress. He found that

a. neither the wire mother nor the cloth mother was effective in comforting the infant during times of stress.

b. the cloth mother, but not the wire mother, was effective in comforting the infant during times of stress.*

c. both the wire mother and the cloth mother comforted the infant during times of stress, but the cloth mother was more effective.

d. only the mother that had furnished nourishment to the infant, whether wire or cloth, was effective in comforting the infant during times of stress.

79%, .50. One of Harlow's big ideas was that of "contact comfort" -- that we have an intrinsic need for contact, and that our need for contact is not derived from other things such as our need for food. So even though the wire mother might have furnished food, the infants still preferred the cloth mother as a source of contact when under stress.

14. In Ainsworth's studies with the Strange Situation, children are classified as securely attached if they

a. stay close to the mother instead of exploring the toys.

b. continue to play with toys and ignore the mother when she returns.

c. do not show distress when the mother leaves.

d. seem comfortable in the mother's presence, show some distress at her absence, and greet her return enthusiastically.*

93%, .30. Just because children are securely attached, it doesn't mean that they're not unhappy when separated from their mothers. It's just that they don't get too unhappy, and they bounce back pretty fast when she returns.

15. Harlow found that monkeys that spend their first three months without human or animal contact and are then exposed to social contact

a. show minimal long-term effects of the early isolation.

b. spend most of their time rocking and biting themselves.*

c. are sexually incompetent as adults.

d. demonstrate very disturbed parental behavior.

67%, .33. This is one of those critical (or at least sensitive) period phenomena. Infant deprivation of contact comfort has long-term consequences both for the behavior of the individual when alone, and also for how the individual will relate to others.

16. The most independent, competent, and socially responsible children are generally those who are raised by parents using the

a. authoritative pattern of parenting, in which the child's point of view is taken into account.*

b. permissive pattern of parenting, in which few demands are placed on the child, allowing her to become more independent.

c. authoritarian style of parenting, in which the child's behavior is strictly controlled leading her to become more responsible.

d. authoritative pattern of parenting, in which few demands are placed on the child, allowing her to become more independent.

81%, .42. There's a difference between authoritative parenting and authoritarian parenting. Authoritative parents take the child's viewpoint into account, but they're still the parents, and they get to decide. Authoritarian parents just decide. Permissive parenting lets the child decide.

17. According to Kohlberg's view of moral development,

a. the earliest form of moral reasoning tends to be based on fears of punishment or the desire for personal gain.*

b. moral reasoning based on personal principles is followed by moral reasoning based on social or cultural standards of acceptable behavior.

c. morality based on personal fears or desires develops later than moral reasoning based on social conventions.

d. All of the above.

71%, .48. Kohlberg applied Piaget's notion of developmental stages to the development of moral reasoning -- not moral behavior, but rather reasoning and judgment about moral questions. Just as the pre-operational child is egocentric, children at early stages of development are concerned with rewards and punishments. Just as the concrete-operational child can deal with concrete objects, in the middle stages of development the child obeys rules because they're the rules. And at the last stages of development, the formal-operational child reasons about moral dilemmas in terms of abstract principles.

18. Gender identity is

a. external behavior patterns that are appropriate for each sex.

b. our inner sense of whether we are male or female.*

c. attraction to a sexual partner.

d. a description of men or women using adjectives that generally describe each.

88%, .36. Gender refers to biological sex, male or female. Gender identity is one's sense of oneself, one's self-identification, as a man or woman, boy or girl. Gender role is the expression of masculine or feminine attitudes and behaviors, in line with cultural conceptions. Sexual orientation is one's attraction toward persons of the opposite or same sex.

19. Attempts to identify biological factors in homosexuality have found that

a. if a twin is homosexual, the probability that his or her co-twin will be also is more than twice as high if they are identical than if they are fraternal.*

b. homosexuality might involve the action of one or more genes in a specific area of the X chromosome.

c. high testosterone levels in gay males are associated with weaker homosexual urges.

d. Both a and b.

22%, .10. A bad item. There does appear to be a genetic component to homosexuality, as the concordance rate for homosexuality is higher in MZ twins than in DZ twins. But the concordance rate is far below zero, so the genetic determinants are not decisive -- for sexual orientation or for anything else of psychological interest. Some students were apparently influenced by research by Dean Hamer and his colleagues, which was prsented in some integrative biology classes, to the effect that a region on the X chromosome is linked to homosexuality. This might well be true -- though, frankly, such a finding might imply that male homosexuals are "feminine", or in some way "inverted males", which is an old stereotype of homosexuality. The fact is that we don't have the foggiest idea what causes either male or female homosexuality to occur. The differential concordance rates suggests that there is a genetic component, and I suppose there's at least a 1/46 chance that that genetic component lies on the X chromosome.

20. According to Erikson, the major goal of adolescent development is

a. learning to deal with new sexuality.

b. learning to think abstractly.

c. distinguishing oneself from younger siblings.

d. developing a sense of identity.*

93%, .31. This was one of Erikson's biggest contributions to our understanding of development throughout the lifespan -- the idea of the identity crisis, which adolescents go through regardless of their cultural background.

21. The distinction between psychogenic and somatogenic disorders

a. will ultimately be a moot issue because all psychological events are based on neurophysiological processes.

b. will remain with us until the discovery of the neurophysiological basis of learning and memory.

c. is actually based on the differences between conditions with a known organic basis and those for which causes are as yet unknown.

d. really amounts to saying that the most direct explanation of some disorders is at the psychological level, while for others it is at the organic level.*

82%, .36. Psychogenic disorders have psychological causes. Like acquiring a snake phobia through learning. Somatogenic disorders have biological causes. Presumably, a syndrome like schizophrenia, where defects in the dopamine system appear to be implicated, is somatogenic.

22. If a person is at genetic risk for developing a particular disorder and then, when under stress, begins to experience assorted symptoms, which part of this equation would be referred to as the diathesis?

a. the genetic risk for the disorder*

b. the presence of stress

c. the exact nature of the stress

d. the precise symptoms that developed

86%, .54. In most applications of diathesis-stress theory, the diathesis is biological in nature, like a genetic predisposition. But it doesn't have to be. According to the hopelessness theory of depression, individuals can be predisposed to depression by a particular "attributional style" -- their characteristic way of explaining events, particularly negative ones.

23. In making psychiatric diagnoses, the distinction between symptoms and signs is that

a. symptoms are complaints by the patient, while signs are behaviors or physiological measures that accompany the symptoms.*

b. signs are complaints by the patient, and symptoms are behaviors or physiological measures that accompany the signs.

c. signs are complaints by the patient, while a symptom is a recurring pattern of signs.

d. None of the above.

61%, .34. Symptoms are apparent to the patient him- or herself. Signs are apparent only to a professional using particular tests. In the medical domain, a person with a fever will "feel warm" -- that's a symptom. But he or she will also have a temperature -- that's a sign. Hallucinations are symptoms of schizophrenia, but a formal test of thought disorder would be a sign.

24. The strong conviction that television commercials contain a coded message especially for a particular viewer is an example of a(n)

a. delusion of reference.*

b. hallucination.

c. disturbance of attention.

d. word salad.

85%, .35. Delusions are irrational, unwarranted beliefs, and a delusion of reference is the patient's delusion that some event is directed at him- or herself -- that it refers to the patient.

25. Research findings suggest that family relations may determine how well a schizophrenic individual copes with the illness. Specifically,

a. hostile and critical parents are associated with relapse and readmission.*

b. conflicts between parents, but not conflicts between siblings, are associated with relapse and readmission.

c. families that provide emotional "crutches" and overattention are associated with relapse and readmission.

d. All of the above.

61%, .32. This is about "expressed emotion", which is a euphemism for hostility and criticism directed at recovered schizophrenic patients by their families and others. It's a good example of the stress side of the diathesis stress model -- a stress that precipitates relapse, if not the initial episode of the illness.

26. Most patients with unipolar disorder

a. remain either manic or depressed throughout the lifespan.

b. suffer periods of deep depression.*

c. experience mood swings every few hours.

d. experience only one manic episode in their lives.

72%, .49. In bipolar disorder, the patient cycles between episodes of mania and depression. In unipolar disorder, there's only mania or depression -- and depression is far more frequent. Unipolar disorder is, for that reason, often called "major depressive disorder" or somesuch.

27. A serious problem with chemical models of depression is that

a. drugs work immediately to increase neurotransmission but clinical effects generally do not become apparent for several weeks.*

b. the chemical structure of the drugs is impossible to assay.

c. the proper drug dosage is impossible to decide on.

d. brain chemicals can only be measured post-mortem.

67%, .20. That's one of the interesting things about drugs: they have their biological effects almost immediately, but it takes a lot longer than that for patients to experience remission of their symptoms. That tells us that there's something more going on than a simple neurotransmitter deficit. It may not be easy to measure brain chemicals in vivo, as opposed to post-mortem, but that's a practical problem. The biggest empirical problem for drug models is that correcting the patient's biochemical environment through drugs doesn't have an immediate effect on symptoms (the way, for example, antibiotics have an immediate effect on infection). The other options are not issues for chemical models of depression: in fact, we know precisely the chemical structure of antidepressant drugs (in fact, some of them are "designer" drugs); the standards for the proper drug dosage are pretty clear, and dosages can be manipulated as needed while treatment continues.

28. Which of the following is true regarding specific phobias?

a. Phobic individuals typically know that their fears are irrational.

b. People can have more than one specific phobia.

c. Although a phobic individual may not be incapacitated by avoidance of a feared object, the individual is at risk because fear can generalize to other objects.

d. All of the above answers are correct.*

73%, .18. Specific phobias are specific, but they can generalize to other objects besides the original phobic stimulus. And you can have more than one of them, and all of them can generalize, at which point you're really in trouble.

29. A person tells you that she is constantly tense and has difficulty concentrating. She frequently suffers from insomnia and a rapid heartbeat. She probably has

a. panic disorder.

b. phobia of some sort.

c. a conversion disorder.

d. a generalized anxiety disorder.*

92%, .33. It's the constant tension that distinguishes anxiety disorder from panic disorder, and the generalized anxiety that distinguishes anxiety disorder from phobic disorder. And because there is no loss of conscious sensory or motor function, it isn't conversion disorder.

30. In dissociative fugue, the individual

a. experiences amnesia and wanders away from home.*

b. shows inappropriate emotional responses, but cannot remember doing so.

c. acts aggressively toward others, but cannot remember having done so.

d. behaves aggressively toward others, but cannot remember doing so.

65%, .44. Disruptions of consciousness affecting memory and/or identity are the hallmark of the dissociative disorders. In fugue, the person suffers an extensive functional retrograde amnesia affecting episodic memory, but also a loss of personal identity. At the same time, a fugue patient may physically relocate to another town or country -- which is where the syndrome gets its name -- "fugue", as in "flight".

31. How does autism differ from mental retardation?

a. It doesn't: autism is a form of mental retardation.

b. Autistic children and adults do not show deficits in language function.

c. Autistic children eventually "grow out" of their problem, whereas mental retardation is a chronic condition.

d. Autistic children often show preserved, or even remarkable, levels of skill in some areas of functioning.*

90%, .19. Autistic children don't always perform poorly on IQ tests, but even when they do they can also show high levels of skill in some areas -- dinosaurs, calculation, musical performance, etc. -- such that they sometimes known as "savants".

32. How do personality disorders differ from disorders such as schizophrenia or depression?

a. Personality disorders are characterized by broad patterns of maladaptive behavior, rather than specific pathological symptoms.*

b. Personality disorders have their onset in adulthood.

c. Personality disorders are typically easier to treat effectively.

d. Personality disorders represent "subsyndromal" variants of disorders such as schizophrenia and depression.

84%, .26. Personality disorders get their name partly because they sometimes appear to be exacerbations of normal personality characteristics -- so there's nothing mild or "subsyndromal" about them. But they also get their name because they appear to "infect" the whole of the person's personality and social relations -- they're not isolated, like thought disorder in schizophrenia or maladaptive fear in phobia.

33. The so-called classical antipsychotics were somewhat effective in reducing positive symptoms of schizophrenia. On the other hand, they did not seem to effectively

a. reduce negative symptoms.*

b. reduce hallucinations.

c. reduce disorganized behavior.

d. reduce disorganized speech.

87%, .47. Positive symptoms are features that schizophrenics have that normal people don't, like hallucinations. Negative symptoms are features that schizophrenics don't have that normal people do, like flat affect. Most antipsychotic drugs alleviate positive symptoms, reducing the frequency and intensity of hallucinations, for example; but they don't do much for the negative symptoms, like promoting normal emotional reactions.

34. Which of the following statements regarding MAO inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants is true?

a. Both increase the amounts of norepinephrine and serotonin available for synaptic transmission.

b. MAO inhibitors are prescribed less than tricyclics because MAO inhibitors require dietary restrictions.

c. These drugs are effective treatments for about 65% of depressed patients.

d. All of the above statements are true.*

63%, .20 Two neurotransmitters are especially implicated in depression: norepinephrine and serotonin. The MAO inhibitors and the tricyclic antidepressants act on both, while the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors act selectivelyon the serotonin system.

35. Drugs called benzodiazepines are used to treat anxiety. Research has shown that they sometimes cause "rebound" effects, which means that

a. they instantly help the patient rebound from his or her disorder.

b. anxiety returns even more strongly once the person stops taking the drug.*

c. they interact with multiple neurotransmitter systems simultaneously, some of which counteract the very effect the drug produces.

d. to be effective, they need to be taken in the morning, at 5 p.m., and at 9 p.m. daily.

85%, .25. That's the problem with drug treatments -- they're not a cure, so that when the patient stops taking them, the symptoms can come back -- and in the case of anxiety disorder, they can come back worse than they were before.

36. One advantage of electroconvulsive shock treatment that makes it the treatment of choice in some cases is that it

a. has no adverse side effects.

b. is very fast acting.*

c. alleviates both schizophrenic and depressive symptoms.

d. rarely requires more than one or two administrations.

61%, 21. ECT is far more effective for depression than for schizophrenia, and it works really fast, often producing some remission even after the first treatment, but one treatment won't usually do the trick on a long-term basis. A typical course of ECT may involve five or more treatments. But it still works faster than antidepressant drugs. The side effects of ECT can be ameliorated somewhat by reducing the frequency of treatments, and delivering the treatment unilaterally, but the side effects can be severe, and the treatment itself -- which involves anesthesia -- is not without its own risks.

37. Classical psychoanalysis is based on the idea that neurotic symptoms will disappear when

a. long-buried conflicts are uncovered and resolved.*

b. new adaptive behaviors are learned.

c. childhood events prior to ages three to four are remembered.

d. the patient learns to view his impulses as unacceptable.

85%, .49. Psychoanalysis is about the past, and especially about childhood conflicts concerning sex and aggression. Anxiety concerning sexual and aggressive impulses leads to repression and other defense mechanisms, and repression leads to the symptoms of neurosis. So, if you want to be cured of your neurosis, psychoanalysis says that you've got to deal with your repressed impulses.

38. Interpersonal therapy

a. combines aspects of psychodynamic and cognitive therapies.

b. argues that depression is maintained by self-imposed social isolation.

c. teaches patients new and better ways of interacting and communicating.

d. All of the above.*

79, .05. Interpersonal therapy is related to psychoanalysis, but focuses more on the patient's current interpersonal relations, not repressed psychosexual material.

39. What role does the therapist play in cognitive therapy?

a. The therapist is merely a sounding board for the client, whom is provided a safe means of confronting sensitive issues.

b. The therapist attempts to cause the client to have an anxiety attack in a setting where it can be controlled and studied.

c. The therapist plays the role of a sympathetic Socrates who asks questions to show the client that certain thoughts are irrational.*

d. The therapist asks a series of very personal questions to desensitize the client and facilitate discussion of sometimes embarrassing problems.

67%, .40. Cognitive therapy is essentially educational in nature, and so the cognitive therapist will arrange various kinds of learning experiences which will help the patient acquire new ways of thinking about self, the world, the present, the past, and the future.

40. Advocates of group therapy claim that group experience is more effective than individual therapy because

a. the individual client gets much more personalized attention.

b. the group provides on-the-spot practice in interpersonal skills.*

c. group therapists typically use a client-centered approach.

d. each patient learns that she is special and unique.

93%, .29. Human experience, thought, and action occur in a social context, and this is true for mental illness as well as for normal mental life. So, the argument goes, the individual's mental illness is best addressed in a social context as well.

41. One problem with before and after assessment of clinical efficacy is that it ignores the possibility of

a. spontaneous improvement.*

b. drug interactions.

c. clinician bias.

d. unmatched samples.

80%, .44. In mental health as in the rest of healthcare, people sometimes get better all on their own -- a phenomenon known as spontaneous remission. If all you've got is the difference between pre-treatment and post-treatment, you don't know whether any treatment gains were really attributable to the treatment itself. For that, you need to compare scores with something like an untreated control group.

42. According to a "meta-analytic" analysis therapy outcomes, a review of 475 studies revealed that the average person who receives therapy is better off at the end of it than _____% of patients who do not receive therapy.

a. 10

b. 25

c. 50

d. 80*

85%, .45. Meta-analysis is a way of quantitatively summarizing the results of a lot of studies. And when you perform a meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies, you discover that psychotherapy actually works -- that the average patient who gets it does better than most patients who do not. If the average therapy patient did only as well as the modal (50%) untreated patient, then there would be no evidence that psychotherapy worked at all. And if the average patient did only as well as 25% of patients who got nothing, meaning that most patients who got nothing did better than the average patient who got psychotherapy, the conclusion would be that psychotherapy actually made people worse.

43. In this course, students are guaranteed some form of "A" if they achieve at least 90% of the total points available; some form of "B" if they achieve at least 80% of the total points available; and some form of "C" if they achieve more than 50% of the available points. As such, these letter grades constitute a(n) _____ scale.

a. categorical

b. ordinal*

c. interval

d. ratio

17%, .16. A bad item. The difference between an A and a B is 10 percentage points, but the difference between a B and a C is 30 percentage points. Therefore, there are not equal intervals, and so the scale can be neither an interval scale or a ratio scale. But an A is higher than a B, which in turn is higher than a C, which is a characteristic of an ordinal scale. If we imposed the usual cutpoints, 90% for A, 80% for B, 70% for C, and 60% for D, then we'd have an interval scale -- a scale where equal differences represent equal intervals. But we don't.

44. In the following distribution of scores, the mean score is:

4 5 5 6 7 8 9 9 9 11 11 12

a. 8.0*

b. 8.5

c. 9.0

d. None of the above.

87%, .39. The mean is the arithmetical average. The median is the midpoint, which is 8.5. And the mode is the most frequent score, which is 9.

45. In order to interpret an individual's score on a personality test, we must know the _____ of the population on that test.

a. median

b. mode

c. standard deviation*

d. percentile rank

63%, .15. In order to interpret the individual's score, we need to know the mean and the standard deviation, so we can determine whether, for example, the individual's score is X standard deviations above or below the mean. The median and the mode of the distribution don't really help us with this, because they're not always the same as the mean. In the absence of the mean and the median, it would help to know the individual's percentile rank -- that is, whether he scored higher than Y% of the population. But percentile ranks apply to individual scores, not to entire populations, which is why D isn't the correct answer.

46. An individual has a z-score of 1 on a personality test. This means that she scores higher than _____ of the population.

a. 16%

b. 50%

c. 84%*

c. 98%

51%, .23. A z-score represents the difference between the individual's score and the population mean, expressed in standard deviation units. Therefore, a z-score of 1 means that the individual's score lies 1 standard deviation above the mean. Given a normal distribution, we know that 50% of the poulation scores will lie below the mean. Applying "The Rule of 68, 95, and 99", we know that 34% of scores (1/2 of 68%) lie between the mean and 1 standard deviation above the mean. Therefore, the individual has scored higher than 84% (50% + 34%) of the population.

47. The correlation coefficient:

a. represents the causal relationship between two variables.

b. represents the strength and direction of association between two variables.*

c. is generally higher for physical traits than for psychological traits.

d. is perpendicular to the line of best fit" in a scatter diagram.

82%, .41. Correlation does not imply causation -- not in the absence of other evidence. Two variables that are correlated with each other may both be effects of some third cause. But a correlation coefficient always indicates the strength (between 0 and 1) and direction (negative or positive) of association between two variables. Correlation can be estimated from the envelope drawn around the points in a scatter diagram, but not from the scatter diagram itself. And as for physical and psychological traits, the magnitude of the correlation will depend entirely on what these traits are correlated with.

48. A poll finds that 65% of California residents favor a lottery to support higher education, with a margin of error of 5%. Given this information, we can be reasonably certain that the true percentage is:

a. between 55% and 75%.

b. between 60% and 70%.*

c. between 61.75% and 68.25%.

d. between 58.5% and 71.5%.

82%, .11. The confidence interval around a percentage estimate indicates the range within which we can be 95% confident that the true percentage lies. That is to say, there is less than a 5% chance that the true value lies outside the confidence interval. That's what statisticians mean by "reasonable" certainty. Therefore, given the information in question, we can be 95% confident, reasonably certain, that somewhere between 60% and 70% of California residents favor the lottery.

49. Which of the following works on the basis of negative feedback?

a. A firecracker: a little heat will get some powder burning.

b. Cruise control on a car: if the car starts to slow down the engine runs harder; if the car speeds up the engine runs less hard.*

c. The start of a war: one country provokes an action by the opponent, which in turn elicits a full-scale attack by the provoker.

d. Addiction to a drug: a little bit makes the user want more.

84%, .47. Remember that in psychology "negative feedback" has a technical meaning -- it doesn't refer to punishment or anything like that. Negative feedback reverses -- slows or stops -- the process that produces it. Positive feedback isn't reward; rather, it promotes -- intensifies -- the process that produces it. Homeostatic regulation works on a principle of negative feedback. If your blood-sugar levels drop too low, it stimulates eating to restore them to normal levels. If it gets too high, it terminates eating until they drop back where they're supposed to be. Thermostats operate the same way. So does cruise control: if your car is too moving too slowly, with respect to its set point, it speeds up; if it's moving too fast, it slows down.

50. Which of the following occurs when the sympathetic nervous system is activated?

a. reduction in blood pressure

b. peristaltic movements of the stomach and intestines

c. inhibition of sexual activity*

d. reduction in heart rate

49%, .30. Remember that sympathetic action prepares the organism to meet an emergency, through flight or fight, tend and befriend. Parasympapthetic activity restores bodily resources depleted by sympathetic activity. Sympathetic activity increases blood pressure and heart rate, and inhibits sexual activity. Parasympathetic activity involves peristaltic movements of the stomach and intestines, moving food through the system so that it can be digested.

51. How does sex differ from other biological motives?

a. It involves negative feedback.

b. It is necessary for biological reproduction.

c. It is inherently social.*

d. It involves a system of neurological control.

49%, .19. A bad item. All biological motives, almost by definition, involve some kind of neurological control -- because they're biological. And eating, drinking, and thermoregulation, being necessary to support life, are also necessary for reproduction. But you can eat and drink and thermoregulate all by yourself. Sex, you've got to do with someone else. At least, that's true of the kind of sex that's involved in reproduction.

52. Equal-sized areas of the body do not receive equal amounts of cortical space. For instance, more cortical space is devoted to the __________ than to the __________.

a. shoulder: tongue.

b. abdomen: fingers.

c. tongue: shoulder.*

d. abdomen: tongue.

90%, .39. Remember the principle of proportional representation: More cortical space (in the sensory and motor homunculi) is devoted to parts of the body that require acute tactile sensitivity and fine motor control. So more cortical space is devoted to the tongue (which demands lots of fine motor control as part of the speech apparatus) than to the shoulder (compared to the hand and fingers).

53. The region of the brain closest to Broca's area is the

a. motor representation for the hand.

b. somatosensory representation for the hand.

c. motor representation for the tongue.*

d. somatosensory representation for the tongue.

66%, .37. Broca's aphasia is expressive aphasia, and has more to do with speech than with language per se. So it would make sense for Broca's area, which is damaged in Broca's aphasia, to be located near those portions of the primary motor cortex (in the frontal lobe) that control the speech apparatus -- the lips, tongue, and the like.

54. Inhibition and excitation at synapses operate by

a. some synapses being inhibitory, others excitatory.

b. the release of one transmitter substance under some conditions and release of other transmitter substances under different conditions, all by the same neuron.

c. taking in (inhibition) and releasing (excitation) transmitter substances.

d. All of the above.*

36%, -.16. A bad item. But synaptic transmission is a complicated thing, and there are lots of different processes that determine whether a presynaptic neuron will depolarize a postsynaptic neuron.There are, first, both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. Activity at an excitatory synapse depolarizes the postsynaptic neuron, while activity at an inhibitory synapse increases its polarization. Then there are both excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters: excitatory neurotransmitters. Excitatory neurotransmitters decrease the polarization of the of the postsynaptic neuron, while inhibitory neurotransmitters increase it. Presumably, excitatory and inhibitory synapses work by releasing excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters, but the point is that there's a difference between the synapse and the neurotransmitter. This is an important point, because -- just to make things even more complicated -- there are also conditional neurotransmitters, which, depending on the presence or absence of another transmitter, can be either excitatory or inhibitory.

55. What is the distal stimulus?

a. an object or event in the world*

b. a pattern of activity in a sensory organ

c. an image on one's retina

d. a perceptual anomaly

86%, .50. The distal stimulus is the object in the world, like a tree. The proximal stimulus refers to the pattern of physical energy that falls on the sensory surfaces -- the light waves that fall on the rods and cones of the retina, the sound waves that fall on the eardrum, the chemicals that enter the mouth and the nose, etc.

56. Suppose you can just tell the difference between lifting 100 grams and 102 grams. According to Weber's law, you would need to add __________ grams to tell the new weight from a standard weight of 1,000 grams.

a. 2

b. 10

c. 20*

d. 100

89%, .38. According to Weber's Law, the amount of change needed to produce a "just-noticeable difference" in intensity is a constant fraction of the original intensity. So, if a 2% change is needed to detect a difference from 100 grams, then a 2% change is needed to detect a difference from 1000 grams. Weber's Fraction is important because is provides a universal index of sensory acuity, applicable across all sensory modalities in all species.

57. One unusual person was red-green color blind in one eye but had normal color vision in the other eye. She was able to describe what she saw with the defective eye by using the color language she had learned to use with her good eye. As she described it, with the color-blind eye she saw only

a. gray.

b. yellow and gray.

c. grays, blues, and yellows.*

d. browns.

79%, .40. In color blindness, hues appear as various shades of gray. A person with red-green color blindness sees red and green as gray, but can still see the other basic colors produced by the opponent-process system -- in this case, blue and yellow.

58. As you look down a long street, the buildings on the right side of the street seem to be getting closer to the buildings on the left side of the street. What is this apparent convergence an example of?

a. linear perspective*

b. motion parallax

c. binocular disparity

d. interposition

81%, .36. "Convergence" is the big hint here, that the depth/distance cue at issue is linear perspective, produced by converging lines (as in railroad tracks or the nave of a really big church).

59. What is the essential first step in organizing the world that we see?

a. defining the color levels and brightness definition in the scene

b. identifying which areas of the scene are large and which are small

c. determining which parts of the scene go together*

d. knowing whether the scene is viewed in one's central or peripheral vision

58%, .35. We parse the visual world, just as we parse the speech-stream First we divide up the stimulus array into things that go together. Just as we group phonemes and syllables with each other to make words which are distinct from other words, so we also group visual features together to form figures, background, and the like.

60. In bottom-up processing, which mechanism determines what a stimulus is?

a. the context of the stimulus

b. one's expectations

c. induced motion and optic flow of the stimulus*

d. the use of feature detection

14%, -15. A bad item. Bottom-up processing is "data-driven", building up a perceptual representation from elementary features of the stimulus array. Top-down processing is "conceptually driven", so that our knowledge, beliefs, and expectations affect what we see and how we see it.

61. Testosterone levels rise in male rats if they smell a nearby female rat that is in heat. In a proposed experiment, one male rat was allowed to mate only with females who wore oil of wintergreen "perfume." After several such exposures, the male's testosterone levels rose whenever he smelled oil of wintergreen. What serves as the CS in this example?

a. the opportunity to mate

b. the male rat's testosterone level

c. the natural smell of the female

d. the smell of oil of wintergreen*

94%, .28. This is a lovely example of environmental control of hormonal activity, mediated by classical conditioning. Oil of wintergreen is ordinarily a neutral stimulus, which elicits no reflexive response from the organism. The pheromones emitted by a female rat in heat elicit rising testosterone levels as a reflex. Therefore, oil of wintergreen is a conditioned stimulus, which is paired with the natural smell of the female as an unconditioned stimulus, which raises testosterone levels as an unconditioned response (UR). After pairing oil of wintergreen (CS) with the natural smell of the female (US), the oil of wintergreen will acquire the power to raise testosterone levels as a conditioned response (CR).

62. In determining whether two events are contiguous, what must one consider?

a. the number of times the two events have co-occurred

b. the number of times the two events have not co-occurred

c. how closely paired in time the two events are*

d. both a and b

30%, .09. A bad item. Contiguity has to do with proximity -- how close two events are to each other in space and time. The traditional view of classical conditioning was that associations are formed between two events that occur close together in space and time. We now know that contiguity is not the important principle, but that contingency is -- whether one event predicts, or provides information about, the other event. To evaluate contingency, we have to know two things -- the number of times two events have occurred together, and the number of times they have not occurred together. Conditioning occurs when the probability of the US following the CS is greater than the probability of the US in the absence of the CS. But this question wasn't about contingency. It was about the other thing: contiguity.

63. In a hypothetical study, laboratory rats are always fed in a black box, never in a white box. They are then placed in a T-maze, one side of which contains a black box, the other side a white box. Neither box contains food, but even so, the rats will run to the black box. According to B. F. Skinner, what can be assumed?

a. The black box serves as a primary reinforcer.

b. The white box serves as a primary reinforcer.

c. The black box serves as a conditioned reinforcer.*

d. The white box serves as a conditioned reinforcer.

86%, .19. Because the rats were fed in a black box, they formed an association between the black box and food. In this way, the black box acquired a new status, as a conditioned or secondary reinforcer -- so the rats will prefer it under new circumstances, unless they learn something different -- for example, if food is introduced into the white box.

64. Two groups hear a list of 20 unrelated items and are tested for immediate recall a few seconds after they hear the last word. In group I, the items are presented at the rate of one second per item; in group II, they are presented at two seconds per item. Which of the following should we expect?

a. the same primacy effect for both groups; a greater recency effect for group I

b. the same primacy effect for both groups; a greater recency effect for group II

c. the same recency effect in both groups; a greater primacy effect for group I

d. the same recency effect for both groups; a greater primacy effect for group II*

62%, .26. Primacy refers to the advantage of items appearing early in a list compared to items in the middle; in theory, it reflects retrieval from long-term memory. Recency refers to the advantage of items appearing late in a list compared to items in the middle; in theory, it reflects retrieval from short-term memory. Therefore, any manipulation that affects LTM will affect primacy but not recency, while any manipulation that affects STM will affect recency but not primary. Reducing the retention interval, and consequently the opportunity for distraction and forgetting by virtue of decay or displacement, will affect STM, and thus recency. A couple of students noted that an item similar to this had appeared on an earlier test, with a different answer. The important thing is that the items were similar, but not identical. Items like this are a good measure of students' understanding of the difference between short-term and long-term memory, which is why items like this appear so often on my exams, but you've got to read the item -- not just bubble in some answer memorized from an old test.

65. __________ is a theory of forgetting in which a memory is said to be forgotten, not because it was lost or damaged, but rather because it was misplaced among other memories learned before or after it.

a. Decay

b. The peg method

c. Interference*

d. The method of loci

88%, .33. The peg-word method and the method of loci are mnemonic techniques, designed to help people remember things. They're based on theories of forgetting, but they're not themselves theories of memory -- they're methods. Of the two theories of memory given as options, the decay theory holds simply that memories fade, are lost from storage, with time; the interference theory assumes that storage is essentially permanent, but that forgetting reflects a failure of accessibility from storage, not a failure of availability in storage.

66. You might expect an anterograde amnesiac to be unable to do which of the following tasks?

a. learn to solve a complicated maze

b. tell you about an event that occurred in his childhood

c. recall having met his newborn grandchild yesterday*

d. utter a complete sentence

74%, .23. Anterograde amnesia, such as that suffered by the late Patient H.M., affects recent episodic memories, such that the patient cannot remember events that occurred since the brain damage occurred. Anterograde amnesia generally spares the patient's world-knowledge, as recorded in semantic memory, as well as the procedural knowledge that is entailed by maze-learning and language-use.

67. The Roman numeral X is an example of a(n) __________ representation.

a. symbolic*

b. analogical

c. hypothetical

d. psychological

89%, .28. Analog representations are like pictures -- they somehow resemble the thing they represent. A picture of a dog is an analog representation of a member of the canine family. Symbolic representations don't resemble the things they represent. The word "dog" doesn't look anything like a dog.

68. One's knowledge of the multiplication tables resides in __________ memory.

a. episodic

b. semantic*

c. semantic

d. short-term

81%, .06. A bad item. So much for my proofreading (I had originally intended that Option C be "procedural"). We initially accepted both B and C as correct, but even though -- maybe because? -- the correct answer was repeated twice, the item still proved to be a bad one. Anyway, episodic memory is memory for events -- things that have a unique location in space and time. Semantic memory is the "mental dictionary" of generic factual knowledge -- like that Columbus discovered America in 1492, that Arnold Schwartzenegger is Governor of California, that most automobiles have internal-combustion engines, and that 2x2=4. Knowing how to multiply two numbers is a skill that's part of procedural knowledge, but knowing the "times tables" -- the fact that 2x2=4, 4x4=16, etc. -- is part of declarative knowledge - -declarative knowledge of a semantic form. Remembering when you learned the times tables -- 2nd grade, or whatever -- would be part of episodic memory. But episodic, semantic, and procedural knowledge are all stored in long-term, not short-term memory.

69. When people are asked which is more common, death by homicide or death by stroke, they often choose the former (homicide) because they simply hear more about it than they do the latter (stroke). This means they are being led astray in their judgment by

a. the representativeness heuristic.

b. mental set.

c. deductive reasoning.

d. the availability heuristic.*

86%, .36. The representativeness heuristic is employed when people make judgments based on resemblance, or similarity. The availability heuristic is employed when people make judgments based on the ease with which instances can be retrieved from memory. The simulation heuristic is employed when people make judgments based on the ease with which they can imagine plausible scenarios The anchoring and adjustment heuristic is employed when judgments are inordinately influenced by early data returns.

70. The word cowboys contains __________ morphemes.

a. one

b. two

c. three*

d. seven

85%, .48. Morphemes are the smallest units in language that convey meaning. They're not letters (of which there are seven), or phonemes, or syllables (of which there are two), or words (of which there is just one). There are three morphemes in the word cowboys: cow (referring to the bovine animal); boy (referring to the young male of the human species), and -s (meaning that there is more than one of them).

71. What evidence is consistent with the prototype theory of meaning?

a. Subjects are able to identify the single feature that is necessary and sufficient to define something as a member of a class.

b. Subjects find it easier to list words that are similar in meaning (wicked-evil) than words that are opposite in meaning (wicked-good).

c. Subjects are easily able to list words that define a particular member of a category.

d. Subjects judge some members of a category to be more representative than others.*

64%, .43. There are two basic views of word meaning. According to the definitional theory, the meaning of a word consists of the features that define the word -- much in the manner of the classical "proper set" view of categories, with its singly necessary and jointly sufficient defining features. According to the prototype theory, the meaning of a word is not constrained by such defining features, but rather a "fuzzy set" of probabilistic features -- which is why some "cowboys" can be very old -- and even female.

72. What observation contradicts the idea that imitation is the method by which children acquire language?

a. Children are not capable of imitation at the age they acquire language.

b. Reinforcement, not imitation, appears to be the mechanism by which children acquire language.

c. Children utter sentences that they have never heard spoken by the people in their environment.*

d. Children who frequently imitate others tend to acquire language more quickly than children who do not imitate.

83%, .43. The most important property of human language is its creativity: that language users can speak and understand sentences that have never been uttered before. This linguistic creativity is the psychological basis of human freedom. Children imitate others, to the extent that they can, long before they can talk. And the idea that even children can speak and understand sentences that they've never heard before also undermines the idea that children learn to talk by being reinforced for putting the right words together in the right way. In fact, language acquisition is a classic example of social learning -- of learning simply by virtue of exposure to others who are also using language.

73. Piaget

a. viewed the cognitive abilities of the child as fundamentally similar to those of the adult.

b. regarded the child as an adult-like thinker but without the range of associations available to the adult.

c. saw development as a progression through a series of qualitatively different states of cognitive ability.*

d. argued that cognitive development differed dramatically from child to child because of genetic differences.

95%, .36. The idea of the child as intuitive scientist has its origins with Piaget. But in order to get to the "formal operations" that characterize scientific thinking, the child has to pass through other, qualitatively different, stages of thought, beginning with the sensory-motor period (lacking the capacity to form internal, mental representations of objects in the external world), through the preoperational period (and the acquisition of object permanance) and the period of concrete operations (and the loss of egocentricity and the acquisition of conservation).

74. Critics of Piaget's claims have argued that

a. young children sometimes have pockets of competence that Piaget apparently missed.

b. under the right circumstances, children in Piaget's sensorimotor stage may demonstrate skills ordinarily not seen until the preoperational period.

c. under the right circumstances, preoperational children may demonstrate skills ordinarily not seen until the concrete operational stage.

d. all of the above.*

91%, .32. Piaget's theory of child development were enormously influential, and a necessary corrective to the maturational theories that prevailed in the early part of the 20th century, but empirical testing proved them wanting. Children don't abruptly move from one of mode of thought to another; and if you look hard enough, you can determine that children who are, ostensibly, at one stage of development actually have capacities supposedly characteristic of later stages -- if sometimes in rudimentary form.

75. In a recent study, eighteen-month-olds watched an experimenter show pleasure after eating broccoli and distaste after eating crackers. When the experimenter then asked the children for more food, the children typically offered

a. whichever food they themselves preferred, as predicted by Piaget's claims of egocentrism.

b. whichever food they themselves preferred, in contrast to the predictions of Piaget's claims of egocentrism.

c. broccoli, even if they themselves preferred crackers, as predicted by Piaget's claims of egocentrism.

d. broccoli, even if they themselves preferred crackers, in contrast to the predictions of Piaget's claims of egocentrism.*

74%, .41. Here's an example of what's wrong with Piaget. Children of this age should be highly egocentric -- they think that everybody else knows, feels, and desires what they themselves know, feel, or desire. But they're not. They understand that the adult like broccoli, even though they won't let it pass their own lips. So, when responding to the experimenter, they discount their own preferences, and act according to the experimenter's.

76. Harlow's studies of infant monkeys raised with surrogate mothers indicate that infants became attached to the surrogate mother

a. that provided the most contact comfort.*

b. from which food was most often delivered.

c. that was present when danger threatened.

d. that was present for the greater amount of time.

90%, .46. Harlow's studies of contact comfort disproved the idea that the infant's attachment to its mother (or any other caregiver) is a secondary drive, derived from the fact that the caregiver supplied the infant's biological needs, such as hunger and thirst. When frightened, infant monkeys preferred the surrogate mother wrapped in terrycloth, rather than the wire surroga thta provided them with food. Harlow argued that "contact comfort" was a primary biological need, not derived from something more basic like hunger or thirst.

77. When securely attached infants are with their mothers in the Strange Situation, they tend to

a. be impulsive.

b. explore their surroundings.*

c. be clingy.

d. show increased fear of strangers.

81%, .51. Securely attached infants are distressed when separated from their mothers, but they get over it, bouncing right back. They're not afraid of strangers -- but because they're attached to their mothers, they'd just rather be with, or near, her. And they're not "clingy" -- so long as they're near their mothers, they'll venture away from her to explore their environment -- secure in the knowledge that she'll be there when they need her.

78. There is a severe drought and there is a ban on outdoor watering. The Robinsons decide they will not water their new shrubs because the neighbors would disapprove. Their reasoning places them in which of Kohlberg's stages?

a. preconventional

b. conventional*

c. unconventional

d. postconventional

62%, .32. Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning are derived from Piaget's stages of cognitive development -- in Kohlberg's view, moral reasoning develops from more concrete to more abstract principles. At the preconventional stage, moral reasoning is based mostly on concerns about physical punishment. At the conventional stage, reasoning is based on things like social disapproval and rule-following. At the postconventional stage, moral reasoning is based on abstract principles like the Golden Rule.

79. After failing an exam, Timmy exclaims that the questions were too difficult and that his professor is terrible. What type of attribution is Timmy making for his failure?

a. situational*

b. dispositional

c. emotional

d. physical

87%, .42. According to traditional social-psychological theory, causal attributions -- how we explain why events occurred the way they did -- focus either on internal personal causes (like personality traits) or on external environmental causes (like environmental stimuli). Given the choice, people tend to attribute the behavior of other people to internal personal factors (what is known as the Fundamental Attributional Error) but their own behavior to external, environmental factors (the Self-Other Difference in Causal Attribution) -- and, in particular, we tend to take personal credit for good outcomes but attribute bad outcomes to external circumstances. Failing an exam is a bad thing; Timmy failed it, not his roommate; therefore Timmy will deny personal responsibility for his failure, and instead put responsibility off on his teacher or some other external factor. (Actually, things are a lot more complicated than this, as you learn if you take a more advanced course in social psychology.)

80. Sheila is worried that she will not do well on an exam, yet she spends the night before the exam partying rather than studying. Sheila seems to engage in

a. self-handicapping.*

b. cognitive dissonance.

c. self-serving bias.

d. justification of effort.

55%, .22. Self-handicapping is, in a sense, a strategy for avoiding, or at least diminishing, personal responsibility for bad outcomes. People set themselves up so that they have a ready excuse for failure. It doesn't work, of course -- Sheila is still responsible for the fact that she spent the night partying. But somehow, at least until you really think about it, that excuse sounds better than that she's just stupid, or too irresponsible to have studied adequately.

81. The results of the Schachter-Singer experiment with epinephrine-treated research participants indicate that

a. the James-Lange theory was correct.

b. environment has little to do with the nature of the emotion.

c. emotions follow the reciprocity rule.

d. visceral reactions by themselves do not produce genuine emotions.*

54%, .30. Remember that in the S&S experiment, subjects interpreted their increased emotional arousal in accordance with situational cues -- specifically, what the confederate was doing at the time. S&S concluded that emotions were not determined by specific patterns of physiological arousal, as implied by the James-Lange theory (actually, it was Lange, not James, that focused on visceral physiology; James focused on motor behavior as well as the autonomic nervous system). Rather, they argued that physiological arousal was undifferentiated, meaning that the same pattern of physiological activity was common to all emotional states. What makes the difference among the emotions, in their view, are the different circumstances in which undifferentiated physiological arousal occurs.

82. Laboratory studies of leadership indicate that

a. people perceived as leaders tend to be more intelligent and more outgoing than those not regarded as leaders.

b. leaders are most effective when the task to be performed is clear-cut.

c. leaders are most effective when they have considerable authority and group members get along well with each other.

d. All of the above.*

81%, .25. It's a little counterintuitive, perhaps, but that's one of the reasons we do science -- to check our intuitions. People are most responsive to leaders when it's clear what has to be done, and when leaders are clear about what they are doing.

83. Diffusion of responsibility refers to the fact that

a. people are more likely to intervene in an emergency if there are others present to share the responsibility of helping.

b. people are less likely to act in an emergency if there are others present because they feel less responsible for taking action.*

c. when others do not act in an emergency, a bystander is less likely to define the situation as an emergency requiring action.

d. in an emergency, people are likely to follow the lead of a single dominant individual in a group.

82%, .45. This is about the Darley-Latane bystander intervention studies of altruism and other forms of helping behavior. Sometimes we don't offer to help someone because we don't think we're capable of helping, or it's too dangerous to do so (which is why we train and pay first responders like police officers, fire fighters, and EMTs). Sometimes we don't offer to help because it's not clear that help is wanted, needed, or required (this is pluralistic ignorance). And sometimes we don't offer to help because we figure that someone else has already done so, or is about to help, or is more capable of helping, or is being paid to help (this is diffusion of responsibility).

84. Evidence suggests that people tend to like those who

a. are similar to them.

b. live close by.

c. are opposite to them.

d. Both a and b.*

75, .43.Aside from target characteristics like physical appearance and competence, we tend to be attracted to people with whom we are familiar (the mere exposure effect), and to people who are like us (opposites don't really attract, except in magnetism).

85. In order to understand the meaning of an individual test score, it is necessary to know

a. an individual's score on a criterion measure.

b. the norms of the standardization sample.*

c. the degree of predictive validity.

d. the reliability coefficient.

61%, .21. Psychological tests are supposed to predict an individual's performance on some criterion measure, the way the SAT predicts college GPA. If we knew how the individual scored on a criterion measure (Option A), we wouldn't need the test. Tests are supposed to be reliable (Option D) and valid (Option C), for sure, but even with a reliable and valid test we have no way to understand the meaning of an individual's test score unless we know where he or she stands with respect to the distribution of scores in the sample who provided the standardization data for the test. For example, if we know a test has a mean score of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, then we know that an individual who scores 700 is 2 standard deviations above the mean, and thus higher than 97.5% (50% below the mean plus 47.5% above the mean) of the standardization sample.

86. The ability to deal with essentially new problems is called __________ intelligence.

a. verbal

b. general

c. crystallized

d. fluid*

93%, .44. Cattell distinguished between two major forms of intelligence. "Fluid" intelligence is the individual's native (i.e., innate) intellectual ability, which can presumably be applied in any direction. "Crystallized" intelligence refers to the knowledge and skills acquired through experience (including formal education).

87. With regard to intellectual capacities, adopted children

a. are more highly correlated with their adoptive than biological parents in early childhood.

b. increasingly resemble their biological mothers as they reach adolescence.*

c. are uncorrelated with their biological mothers in early childhood.

d. All of the above.

66%, .33. There's a genetic component to intelligence, and it's not trivial, which means that there's a correlation between genetic similarity and similarity in intelligence. Identical twins are more alike in IQ than fraternal twins; siblings are more alike than cousins; and adoptees are more similar to their biological parents than to their adoptive parents. That doesn't mean that there's no correlation between the IQ scores of adoptees and their adoptive parents. There is, and that testifies to the environmental contribution to IQ. But the correlation between adoptees and their biological parents is stronger. And it gets stronger the older the child gets -- because that's true for all children, whether adopted or not.

88. Mahalia and Martin are each given two tests of fearfulness, both rated on a 10-point scale, on which zero means no fear and 10 means maximum fear. In the first tests, both Mahalia and Martin are confronted with a vicious dog. Here, Mahalia's fear rating is 4 points while Martin's is 8 points. In the second test, both Mahalia and Martin are about to take a difficult examination. Here, Mahalia's rating is 4 points while Martin's is 8 points. The results illustrate

a. situational effects.

b. differences in personal traits.*

c. a person-by-situation interactions.

d. None of the above.

57%, .34. This is another one of those kinds of questions that I really love, and some of you noted that similar questions, with different answers, have appeared on past exams. But, as before, the emphasis has to be on similar, not identical. Sometimes the pattern of data reveals situational effects, sometimes trait differences, sometimes both, and sometimes an interaction. But you have to read the question to get the answer. Here's how to figure out questions like these:

• First, get an average score for each subject, across situations.
  • For Mahalia, that's 4 points for the dog scenario and 4 points for the exam scenarios, for an average of 4 points.
  • For Martin, that's 8 points for the dog and 8 points for the exam, for an average of 8 points.
  • So Martin scores consistently higher than Mahalia, by 4 points. There's a difference between them in terms of their personal trait of fearfulness. Score one for Option B..
• Then, get an average score for each situation, across subjects.
  • For the dog scenario, that's 4 points for Mahalia and 8 points for Martin, for an average of 6 points.
  • For the exam scenarios, that's 4 points for Mahalia and 8 points for Martin, for an average of 6 points.
  • So, on average, the dog and the exam are equally frightening. There's no situational difference in fear. Option A can't be right.
• Then, determine whether the difference between the subjects depends on the situation, or the difference between the situations depends on the subjects.
  • The difference in fear between Mahalia and Martin remains constant, at 4 points, across the two situations.
  • The difference in fear between the dog and exam situations remains constant, and 0 points, from one subject to another.
  • If there were either of these differences, then we would conclude that there is a person-by-situation interaction, in addition to, or even in the absence of, any "main effects" of personal traits or situations. Option C isn't right either.

89. If you've got a devil on one shoulder telling you to do something "naughty," and an angel on the other urging you to remain upright and moral, then the angel, according to Freud, would represent the

a. ego.

b. id.

c. superego.*

d. mother.

65%, .34. In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the id is the repository of primitive sexual and aggressive instincts -- the "naughty" part, as it were. The ego represents the constraints of external reality, while the superego represents the constraints of social reality. The id doesn't distinguish between reality and fantasy. The ego distinguishes between those objects in the real world that will actually satisfy the instinctual desires and those that won't, while the superego makes a further distinction, among those objects that will actually satisfy the instinctual desires, between those that are deemed socially appropriate and those that are not.

90. Sonya is very accepting of herself. She sets realistic goals and sees her problems through to their conclusion. She has a satisfying relationship with her husband and several close friends. From Maslow's point of view, Sonya could best be described as

a. being self-directed and strong.

b. having a positive self-image.

c. being self-actualizing.*

d. having a strong sense of self-worth.

71%, .28. The key to Maslow's theory is the concept of self-actualization, which can only be achieved after all the individual's other needs have been satisfied. Self-actualized people have lots of good qualities, including self-direction, personal (not necessarily physical) strength and resilience and appropriately high self-esteem.

91. The dopamine hypothesis is based on the idea that schizophrenia results from

a. the production of an abnormal brain chemical called dopamine.

b. the overactivity of brain circuits sensitive to the neurotransmitter dopamine.*

c. an inability to produce enough of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

d. the inhibition of brain activity caused by dopamine.

74%, .40. According to the dopamine hypothesis, the manifest symptoms of schizophrenia, especially things like hallucinations and thought disorder, are caused by excessive activity of a particular neurotransmitter, dopamine. There's too much of it. That's why, according to theory, antipsychotic medications work -- one way or another, they effectively lower the level of dopamine in the central nervous system. A similar argument is made with respect to depression by the serotonin hypothesis: the symptoms of depression are caused by diminished activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin. There's too little of it. That's why, according to theory, antidepressant medications work -- either by increasing the release of serotonin (in the case of the monoamine antidepressants), or inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin (in the case of SSRIs such as Paxil and Zoloft).

92. Some of the symptoms that may occur in cases of major depression include

a. delusions or hallucinations.

b. disrupted attention and short-term memory.

c. fatigue, weakness, and sleep disorders.

d. All of the above.*

30%, -.11.A bad item. The primary symptom of depression is -- well, depression. But there are other symptoms as well, and these can include such "psychotic" symptoms as hallucinations and delusions (particularly, delusory feelings of worthlessness), "vegetative" symptoms such as fatigue and insomnia, and problems with memory (perhaps because the depressed patient fails to exert enough cognitive effort to information processing, perhaps because of reduced cognitive resources). Because of these ancillary symptoms, patients can be diagnosed with "depression" even though they don't complain of being depressed.

93. Generalized anxiety disorders, unlike phobias, characteristically involve

a. episodes of irrational panic.

b. displacement.

c. constant and pervasive anxiety.*

d. unpleasant physiological arousal.

91%, .49. Phobias are fears of specific objects, events, or situations, like snakes or spiders, heights, dark places, open spaces, being in public places, or being observed (this is pretty much a catalog of the most frequent phobias encountered in the clinic). The thing about anxiety disorder is that it's generalized and pervasive -- not so much a fear of everything, but rather a state of worry, fear, uneasiness that's attached to nothing at all. It's just there. Yes, it's an unpleasant state of physiological arousal, but so is the specific fear that is characteristic of phobia. Panic attacks can occur in generalized anxiety disorder, but what really distinguishes GAD from phobia is that the anxiety is not attached to any specific object or situation.

94. What effect do both MAOIs and tricyclics have on neurochemistry?

a. They block dopamine transmission.

b. They block serotonin transmission.

c. They augment dopamine transmission.

d. They increase norepinephrine and serotonin transmission.*

85%, .41. The serotonin hypothesis of depression is a more recent variant on an earlier "monoamine" hypothesis, which implicated norepinephrine as well as serotonin, which are both in the "monoamine" class of neurotransmitters. The older tricyclic antidepressants increased the release of both norepinephrine and serotonin into the synapse; the MAO-inhibitors accomplished the same end by inhibiting monoamine oxidase, a substance that metabolizes the monoamine neurotransmitters (and thus also makes them less available at the synapse). By contrast, the newer antidepressant drugs, known as SSRIs, act selectivly on serontonin, and have no effecs on monoamine; and they work by preventing the premature reuptake of serotonin, rather than making more serotonin available in the first place.

95. Cognitive therapy deals primarily with teaching

a. the client to recall traumatic events from childhood.

b. the mind to react positively to stressful situations.

c. mind and body relaxation techniques.

d. the client to identify and change maladaptive patterns of thinking.*

86%, .35. Enough on drugs, already! All psychotherapies are essentially educational in nature. Cognitive therapy makes this property explicit, by formulating the cause of psychopathology in terms of the patient's knowledge, expectations, and beliefs; and by working actively and directly to correct the cognitions that are causing the patient so much trouble. In Beck's cognitive therapy for depression, for example, the therapist seeks to alter the triad of "depressogenic schemata" -- negative beliefs about self, the world, and the future -- that cause the patient to be depressed.

96. Which of the following best describes the dodo bird verdict?

a. Only therapies that deal with the underlying cause of the problem can be effective.

b. Clients who come to a therapist with a hostile attitude are less likely to be helped than those who come with a positive attitude.

c. The differences between the effectiveness of various psychotherapies are very slight or nonexistent.*

d. Therapies that force the client to confront personal problems are the most effective.

79%, .50. The Dodo-Bird Verdict brings the debate over the effectiveness of psychotherapy to a close by declaring that "all have won and so all must have prizes" -- that is, that all forms of psychotherapy are effective, and equally so. The DBV may be reassuring to those psychotherpists who don't practice active "cognitive-behavioral" forms of therapy, but the fact of the matter is that it just isn't true. In the first place, some forms of therapy are more effective with some forms of mental illnesss than others -- an evident fact that would be predicted by the person (patient)-by-situation (therapy) if people would just think about it that way. Setting aside the illness-treatment interaction, it's a simple fact that, on the whole, cognitive-behavioral therapies are generally better than the traditional alternatives; and they're more efficient as well as more effective, in that they achieve their results in less time, and at less expense. On those grounds alone, cognitive-behavioral therapies are increasingly the standard of care in pschotherapy.

97. The MZ correlation for IQ is approximately .86, while the DZ correlation is approximately .60. This pattern of results provides evidence that, with respect to the determination of IQ scores:

a. The environment is more important than heredity.

b. The nonshared environment is more important than the shared environment.

c. The shared environment is more important than the nonshared environment.*

d. The shared environment is more important than heredity.

29%, .06. A bad item. This was an experimental item. I know that I told you that you didn't have to know these formulas, but I spend so much time in lecture on the logic of the twin-study design, with so many examples, that I wanted to see how such an item would fare anyway. And there's no way to find out except to include such an item. Even if it had performed well psychometrically, which it didn't, I'd have had to drop it as if it were bad. In retrospect, it's pretty clear from the MZ correlation that the contribution of the nonshared environment was pretty small (100 - 86 = .14), but you'd really have to had gotten the formulas into your head to chose between Option C and its competitors. For the record, with respect to Option A, the contribution of genes is estimated by doubling the difference between MZ and DZ ((.86 -. 60 =.26) x 2 = .52)), so heredity is (marginally) more important than environment. And after computing G and E_NS, you know that ES= (1.00 - .52 - .14) = .34, so the shared environment is more important than the nonshared environment but less important than heredity.

98. Jenna and Barbara are twins, but their parents dressed them differently, and encouraged them to go to different colleges. This illustrates a _____ effect on development.

a. child-driven

b. parent-driven*

c. relationship-driven

d. family context

91%, .23. It's the children who are twins, but the simple fact of being twins doesn't determine what the parents do, so this isn't an example of a child-driven effect. Because the parents have decided to treat their two children differently, this is a pretty clear example of a parent-driven effect -- and one I specifically used in lecture. It's not a relationship-driven effect -- although it might be, if one or both of the parents also had identical twins for siblings, I suppose. And it's not a family context effect either, because there's no reference to birth order or other features of the family context.

99. A twin study of adolescent conduct disorder showed that:

a. genes were more important than environment.

b. the child's genetic inheritance interacted with his history of maltreatment.*

c. genes were more important in determining conduct disorder in boys, while the nonshared environment was more important in girls.

d. the stress of maltreatment was more important than the genetic diathesis.

65%, .34. In the original exam there were two answers labeled "C", but since the correct answer was B, that shouldn't have made much difference. But I referred to this study in lecture as an illustration of the "diathesis-stress" framework for understanding the etiology of mental illness. In all diathesis-stress interactions, an episode of mental illness results from the combination -- the interaction -- of a biological or psychological predisposition to some form of mental illness, and a biological or psychological event that precipitates an acute episode in vulnerable individuals. Neither diathesis nor stress alone are sufficient. In this case, a specific genetic feature -- a specific variant of the MAO-A gene -- interacting with a family history of maltreatment led to the generation of adolescent conduct disorder.

100. In terms of "effect size", the most effective forms of psychotherapy focus on:

a. early childhood experiences.

b. self-actualization.

c. the individual's relationships with other people.

d. the individual's maladaptive beliefs and behaviors.*

75%, .43. This returns us to the Dodo Bird Verdict. Yes, it's true, that the major forms of psychotherapy, meaning psychodynamic, interpersonal, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, "work" in terms of yielding significantly positive outcomes compared to a control group. But when you look at the magnitude of the difference between treatment and control groups, in terms of effect size, it's pretty clear that, overall, cognitive-behavioral forms of psychotherapy are more effective -- in my view, far more effective, and certainly far more efficient -- than psychodynamic or interpersonal forms. This difference between "effective" forms of psychotherapy was evident even in the very first modern analysis, by Glass et al. -- and the situation hasn't changed materially since then.