1. Mrs. Allen is pregnant. Her baby's major organs have begun to form, as have its facial features. In addition, the neural tube is beginning to develop. The baby is in the __________ stage of prenatal development.

a. zygotic

b. fetal

c. embryonic ##

d. neonatal

17% of the class got this correct; item-to-total r_pb = -.18. A bad item. This was a straight factual item. A lot of people went for B, but there's an important technical difference between an embryo and a fetus that bears on a lot of psychological issues. The embryonic stage of development begins at about the 10^th day after fertilization, and continues on until the 8^th week. During this time, all major organ systems develop, the beginnings of the nervous system and the skeletal system. The zygotic stage is from conception to the second week, and the fetal stage is the majority of the development time, from the 8^th week until birth. Neonatal means "newly born," so that wouldn't be when organs are just forming. Chapter 14

2. Studies of infants' reactions to physically possible and physically impossible events indicated that infants __________.

a. were equally surprised by both sorts of events, indicating that they had no idea that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time

b. were more surprised by impossible events, indicating that they understood that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time ##

c. were equally uninterested in both possible and impossible events, indicating that they saw the world as a place in which the basic relationships between objects could change from moment to moment

d. showed more of an interest in the possible event, presumably because it was familiar

61% correct, r_pb = -.18. Looking-time studies typically interpret increased looking time at one condition over another as a violation of an expectation that the infant had in mind. Infants look longer at impossible events, and we interpret that as them having a sense of what would be expected in that situation and when it doesn't happen, they are "surprised," and look longer at it to "figure out" the violation. In some studies, infants do look longer at the familiar, but not in the impossible event studies. Chapter 14

3. Susie tells Sally that she does not eat cookies before dinner because her parents will send her to her room for the rest of the night. Susie is in which stage of Kohlberg's moral reasoning?

a. rationalization

b. postconventional

c. conventional

d. preconventional ##

67%; .36. Preconventional reasoning is the first stage in Kohlberg's system, and is identified by being aware of earning rewards and avoiding punishments. Going to your room is a punishment, and that's all Susie is concerned about. Conventional reasoning focuses on social relationships and being thought of as "bad" if you misbehave. Postconventional reasoning is more concerned with broad ideas and principles regarding right and wrong. Rationalization is more about explaining why you would be able to or should be able to do something rather than why you shouldn't. Chapter 14

4. According to Piaget, a child who moves from the observation that 4 + 1 and 6 + 1 both produce odd numbers to the principle that adding 1 to any even number makes an odd number is in which stage?

a. formal operational ##

b. preoperational

c. sensorimotor

d. concrete operational

59%; .33. Formal operational stage is the stage at which a child is able to keep two or more abstract concepts in mind and see the formal relationships between them, thus enabling them to see the rules behind how odd numbers work rather than just memorizing the outcomes of an addition problem. Sensorimotor stage is in infancy, where the world is just about sensations and not about reasoning; the preoperational stage is when children can think representationally, but cannot think flexibly about things like conservation of volume; and the concrete operational stage is when they can do conservation and can transform their mental representations on concrete objects (as opposed to manipulating ideas). Chapter 14

5. In a memory study, Dr. Ling tests young and old adults' memory for a word list using either an explicit free-recall task or an implicit fragment-completion task. Which pattern of results might she expect?

a. The older adults should perform more poorly than the younger adults on the free-recall task, but just as well as the young adults on the fragment-completion task. ##

b. The older adults should perform just as well as the younger adults on the free-recall task, but more poorly than the young adults on the fragment-completion task.

c. The older adults should perform just as well as the younger adults on both tasks.

d. The older adults should perform more poorly than the younger adults on both tasks.

77%; .34. As we age, we experience cognitive decline at a steady rate, though it isn't always noticeable in every day life. Older adults should perform more poorly than younger adults on things regarding access to stored memories, since accessing memories is a skill that typically declines most noticeably. Since fragment completion is more of a recognition or cued task, which experiences little decline, their performances should be about equal. Chapter 14

6. Suppose that a twin study of emotionality revealed an MZ correlation of .50 and a DZ correlation of .50. This would indicate that:

a. twins are more alike than nontwins.

b. there is a substantial genetic contribution to individual differences in emotionality.

c. genes are more important than the environment as a determinant of an individual's level of emotionality.

d. individual differences in emotionality are largely determined by within-family differences in environment. ##

54%; .15. Answer A cannot be correct because there are no non-twins in this question. We are comparing monozygotic twins with dizygotic twins, or identical twins to fraternal. Remember that mz twins share all their genes in common. If B were true, that there was a significant genetic contribution to this trait, then you would expect the mz twins to have a higher correlation than the dz, and they don't, so it isn't true. C can't be true for the same reason; if genes were more important than environment, then the mz twins would have a higher correlation than the dz twins. D is correct because although there are genetic differences between mz and dz twins, there is no difference in correlation, and if genes were responsible, there would be a difference. So, we conclude that it is the environment that determined that trait. Lecture 33

7. Child-rearing data indicates that fathers treat their sons and daughters differently -- more so than mothers do. This fact is indicative of a _____ effect.

a. child-driven

b. relationship-driven ##

c. parent-driven

d. family context

43%; .05. A bad item. The key here is that the fathers' behavior depends on the gender of the child. If fathers were more strict than mothers, for example, that would be a parent-driven effect. If girls required less discipline than boys, that would be a child-driven effect. But in this case, what drives the effect is the relationship between the gender of the parent and the gender of the child. Many factors influence personality. Relationship-driven effects are a person by situation interaction, and you can see that an interaction is involved here because sons and daughters are treated differently, but that DEPENDS on which parent is involved. Relationship effects highlight the fit of the child into the parental situation, where neither the child alone or the parent alone is solely responsible. Child-driven effects hinge on the temperament of the child, and family context is related to the make-up of the family structure and how that differs for each child. Parent-driven effects, which you might have been tempted by, are more about how the parents as a whole react to the child, say as wanted or unwanted. Lecture 34

8. Individual differences in masculinity and femininity are primarily determined by:

a. the distribution of sex hormones.

b. genetic factors.

c. the nonshared environment. ##

d. the shared environment.

41%; .37. Individual differences in masculinity (or femininity) cannot be due to genetic factors, since the genes that are involved are shared by all of the same physical gender, and the same applies to sex hormones. And since all men do not share the same environment, we cannot say that any differences between them are due to that shared environment. So, C is the answer. The difference between any two men in their masculinity would be primarily driven by the environment they find themselves in, and that is nonshared. Some men will be influenced to behave in certain ways by their environment, and those choices will be seen as "more" or "less" masculine by others. Lecture 35

9. According to the "theory theory" of cognitive development:

a. development is a process of biological maturation, largely independent of environmental influences.

b. development proceeds in a step-wise fashion, following qualitatively distinct, universal, obligatory stages.

c. as children develop, they become more expert at generating hypotheses about their world, and evaluating the fit of these hypotheses to empirical data.

d. children are constantly testing their understanding of the world through processes analogous to classical and instrumental conditioning. ##

30%;, -.13. A bad item. The "theory theory" of development says that children are "hypothesis testers," checking to see if the world in front of them works the way they suspect, and if not, they revise their understanding to fit the evidence they're gathering about the world. But this isn't a sophisticated process, with reasoning and design; it is more the product of acting in the world and seeing what is associated with what, and what happens when you do things, which is precisely what classical and operant conditioning are. Still, an argument could be made for C, in that children, as naive scientists, do become better hypothesis-testers. Children do not go through distinct, universal stages, and while we are biological beings, we are experience-dependent in many ways, shaped by the experiences we have. Lecture 36

10. Introspection was one of the earliest methods for studying internal phenomena. Why are most modern psychologists wary of introspective data?

a. Words describing our own internal states are often hard to interpret. ##

b. When we think about our own mental processes, we tend to be unrealistically negative in our self-appraisals.

c. It is too time-consuming to gather data using introspection.

d. All of the above answers are correct.

33%; .24. We are not universally negative when appraising ourselves and our functioning, so neither b nor d can be correct. It is no more time-consuming to collect data via self-report than it is to put people into experiments, at least not universally so, and besides, if it took more time researchers might avoid that procedure, but it wouldn't make them wary of it. The reason they are wary is because there is little consistency from person to person in the words we use to describe our subjective feelings, and what one person might to communicate might not get across to the researcher intact. It is difficult to compare data this way, and to have confidence in what you are finding. Chapter 6

11. What is meant by the neural correlates of consciousness?

a. The brain models the changes that occur in the mind during consciousness.

b. Specific states of the brain correspond to the exact content of an individual's conscious experience. ##

c. The body models changes that occur in the mind during consciousness.

d. Specific states of the body correspond to the exact content of an individual's mental experience.

33%; -.20. A bad item. Neural correlates of consciousness refer to what neurons are firing, or in which areas of the brain neurons are especially active, during a given conscous mental state. In the book, you read about the different areas that are active when we are looking at faces as opposed to when we are looking at houses. That different areas are activated supports the idea that these truly are different states internally. A lot of you went for A, which incorrectly implies that changes in consciousness occur before changes in brain activity. Anyway, we dropped the item. Chapter 6

12. Frank is awake but relaxed. He is sitting quietly with his eyes partially closed. Which of the following brain wave rhythms would Frank likely show if you were to obtain an EEG recording while Frank is in this state?

a. alpha rhythm ##

b. beta rhythm

c. delta rhythm

d. slow-wave sleep rhythm

35%; .31. Alpha rhythm is the EEG pattern found in people who are relaxed but awake, and usually with their eyes closed (this reduces brain activity from visual input). Beta rhythm is usually observed when a person is actively thinking about a topic. Delta rhythm is observed when a person is in slow-wave sleep, making it a slow-wave sleep rhythm. Chapter 6

13. Implicit perception differs from implicit memory in that:

a. in implicit perception, the priming stimulus was consciously perceived at the time it occurred.

b. in implicit memory, the priming stimulus is no longer held in short-term or working memory. ##

c. implicit memory is limited to emotionally charged priming stimuli.

d. implicit perception is limited to emotionally charged priming stimuli.

55%; .20. Implicit means that what is happening is registering only in the unconscious mind, not the conscious one, so a cannot be correct. Implicit memories don't have to be emotional at all, and neutral stimuli are frequently used to prime subjects in memory experiments. What is key in the implicit process is that the subject is unaware of the stimulus on a conscious level, and that it doesn't linger in working memory so as to be consciously "noted." Lecture 37

14. According to the diathesis-stress model of mental disorder, __________.

a. genes play little role in insanity

b. disorders will emerge only when both diathesis and stress are present ##

c. diathesis is a more important factor than is stress

d. stress is a more important factor than is diathesis

83%; .46. The diathesis-stress model says that there are genetic vulnerabilities, or predispositions inherent in certain people (diathesis) that interact with the stressors in the environment to create disorders, if the stressors are significant and sufficient. If the vulnerabilities aren't there, then the stressors themselves wouldn't be enough to cause the disorder in a given person, and if the vulnerabilities are there but the environmental stress is minor, the disorder doesn't develop. Neither factor is more important in this model, as they work synergistically; this model says both have to be there for the disorder to occur. Chapter 16

15. In her first therapy session, Tara's therapist makes a number of observations during the clinical interview. Which of the following observations of Tara would be considered a symptom as opposed to a sign?

a. looking teary-eyed

b. not making eye contact

c. shaking visibly

d. saying "I feel nervous a lot" ##

33%; .26. Symptoms are a patient's set of complaints, a reporting of the way they feel. Signs are what the clinician observes. They may or may not correspond to the symptoms. They may corroborate a symptom, but can also be connected to other states. Just because Tara is teary-eyed or shaking or not making eye contact doesn't mean she's nervous or anxious (she might be allergic, cold or polite), but taken together they are in line with her direct report of what she's feeling and so are useful in helping the clinician make a diagnosis. Chapter 16

16. Jean has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, following several years of symptoms. Which of the following symptoms would not have been relevant to her diagnosis?

a. oversensitivity

b. inability to concentrate

c. fear of a particular object or situation ##

d. insomnia

51%; .46. Generalized anxiety disorder is marked by having a free-floating feeling of anxiety, tied to no particular trigger. C is correct because people with GAD do not typically fear specific objects or situations but instead are generally anxious in many situations. Insomnia, oversensitivity and the lack of ability to concentrate are typical of people who are chronically anxious. Chapter 16

17. A depressed individual is most likely to commit suicide __________.

a. at the onset of a depressive episode

b. at the point of deepest despair

c. at the beginning of recovery from a depressive episode ##

d. between depressive episodes

43%; .34. Depression, and major depressive episodes, often lead to thoughts of suicide, but depression is also characterized by a lack of initiative and follow-through of plans in general. While people may feel their lowest and suicidal at onsets, or at deepest points of depressions, they are more likely to act on those feelings when they start recovering, since they now can respond efficaciously. Until the depression itself starts to lift and thought patterns start to change, the person is at increased risk of suicide. Chapter 16

18. Gregory has been recently diagnosed with schizophrenia. His primary symptoms include emotional blunting, apathy, lack of speech, and the inability to experience pleasure. These symptoms are considered __________.

a. positive symptoms of schizophrenia

b. negative symptoms of schizophrenia ##

c. not often seen in schizophrenics

d. characteristic of those suffering from paranoia

71%; .33. Positive symptoms entail the presence of something that is normally absent, such as delusions or hallucinations, and negative symptoms entail the absence of something that is usually present, such as appropriate emotional responses. Since Gregory's symptoms are in the negative column (less emotion, less passion, less speech, less pleasure), he is having the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Paranoia is consistent feelings of persecution or that people are "out to get you." Chapter 16

19. Heidi is viewed by her friends as extremely thin, yet she sees herself as needing to lose at least 10 more pounds. This disturbance in self-perception is most consistent with __________.

a. anorexia nervosa ##

b. bulimia nervosa

c. binge eating disorder

d. body dysmorphic disorder

57%; .23. Anorexia nervosa is characterized by a distortion in self-perception leading to seeing oneself as heavier than you are in reality, and by restricting food intake in order to lose that perceived weight. Bulimia is more characterized by the "binge and purge" cycle, where food is vomited to control weight. Seeing oneself as overweight while thin in reality is not involved with binge eating as disorder, and while elements of body dysmorphic disorder can be present in many eating disorders, the specific situation of seeing oneself as heavy while actually being very think is a specific kind of dysmorphia typical of anorexics. Chapter 16

20. Jon views himself as the smartest, most attractive, and most desirable person in the city and becomes angry when others do not show him the deference and admiration he believes he deserves. This lifelong pattern has caused difficulties in relationships and at work. Jon would likely have __________.

a. histrionic personality disorder

b. narcissistic personality disorder ##

c. antisocial personality disorder

d. obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

88%; .02. Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by a sense of grandiosity and lack of empathy toward others, along with an insatiable need for the admiration of others. Antisocial personality disorder is where people show consistent disregard for and violation of others' rights. In obsessive-compulsive disorder, people are plagued by obsessive thoughts and compulsions, emphasizing order and control. Histrionic personality disorder is marked by an unusual degree of attention seeking and emotionality. Chapter 16

21. The long-term prognosis for those with schizophrenia is __________.

a. better in developing countries than it is in the United States ##

b. worse in developing counties than it is in the United States

c. quite good if patients take their medicine regularly

d. quite good if the illness begins early in life

22%; .21. The prognosis for people with schizophrenia is considerably better in developing countries than in the US. Patients in India show far more remission of symptoms and fewer relapses, with people often able to hold jobs, marry and live normally. This might be because here in the US we emphasize medication and have fewer social resources employed. In India, patients mostly live at home and receive social support, whereas here, only 15%-20% of patients live at home. Chapter 17

22. According to classical and neo-Freudian psychoanalysts, what is the key to a neurosis?

a. the conflict between the patient and her parents

b. the hidden sexual desires of the patient

c. unconscious conflicts ##

d. a struggle between the id and the ego

59%; .27. Freud thought the key to a person's neurosis was his or her unconscious conflicts, established in childhood. By adulthood, people have built up defenses against the conflicts and work through them in psychotherapy. The conflict isn't in relation to the parents or to one's sexuality, but in the buried thoughts and desires of childhood. The id and ego, while Freud's ideas, are not the key to neuroses. Chapter 17

23. In her work as a therapist, what role will Karla primarily play in cognitive therapy?

a. She is merely a sounding board for the client, who is provided a safe means of confronting sensitive issues.

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

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

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

43%; .59. A therapist is not just a friendly ear, or sounding board for someone, although they do provide a safe place to confront issues. They play a more active than passive role, typically. That said, it would be inappropriate or even harmful to cause a client to experience an anxiety attack, even for the purposes of study. Clinicians are there to help patients, not study them, and should strive to do no harm. Similarly, they also don't desensitize patients by being too personal or embarrassing, which could also cause more harm than good, breaking therapeutic trust. A clinician typically is there to help the patient think through an issue, helping them see some alternatives and to see where there may be irrationalities in their thinking processes. They are sympathetic and compassionate in this pursuit. Chapter 17

24. Antipsychotic drugs are not the perfect treatment for schizophrenia. For example, __________.

a. because of their side effects, many patients do not reliably take their medications. ##

b. about 97% of patients taking medication regularly have further outbreaks of the illness requiring hospitalization.

c. antipsychotics are ineffective in about 80% of schizophrenic patients.

d. all of the above

54%; .42. Drug treatment for schizophrenia is complicated by the difficulties in administering drugs reliably. People are understandably reluctant to take medications that make them feel bad or think less clearly, and sometimes the mental illness itself can create a lack of organization and memory for taking daily medication. It is not true, however, that medication causes further outbreaks, or that they are ineffective for the majority of patients. Chapter 17

25. Electroconvulsive therapy was used quite frequently in past decades. However, the benefits of this treatment must be weighed against the potential negative consequences associated with its use, such as memory loss. ECT is used less frequently today. In weighing the costs and benefits of using this treatment, which of the following situations would be appropriate cases for using ECT?

a. when drug therapy does not work

b. when the patient is suicidal

c. both a and b ##

d. none of the above

45%; .26. ECT is personally costly, and as such should be only used when other therapies have been tried first, and when the patient is at significant risk, thereby making the downsides to the treatment the lesser consequence. Once other therapies have been tried and the patient is still at risk of suicide, ECT is an appropriate course of action and often beneficial. Chapter 17

26. In evaluating drug therapies, a method of controlling for spontaneous improvements might be __________.

a. to carry out a longitudinal study on all of the subjects

b. to administer before and after tests with many subjects

c. to use a comparison group of untreated subjects that has the same diagnosis ##

d. to simultaneously give each subject a placebo along with the medication

77%; .35. The treatment of mental illnesses presents unique challenges, one of which is that patients sometimes improve regardless of which intervention is used, and can improve spontaneously. It can be difficult to know which intervention works best, so the use of control groups is important. To control for spontaneous improvement, it is most useful to leave some people with the same illness untreated, thereby allowing improvement to occur, if it will. Longitudinal studies aren't applicable here, as that doesn't separate out people who recover on their own, and before and after tests still assume that everyone has been treated. Giving a placebo just doesn't make sense if it's given to all subjects. Chapter 17

27. In current psychiatric practice, as represented by the DSM-IV:

a. the various categories of mental illness are distinguished from each other by their presumed biological origins in genetic, biochemical, or cortical disorders.

b. the signs and symptoms of mental illness are construed as "characteristic", not defining features. ##

c. the syndromes of mental illness are assessed in terms of continuous dimensions, rather than categories.

d. the various types of psychosis and neurosis are arranged so as to maximize heterogeneity within each category.

68%; .34. Mental illness is often hard to define and diagnose, and rarely has convenient biological distinguishers. Most diagnoses involve looking for clusters of symptoms or syndromes that are characteristic or typical of a disorder. However, each mental illness is distinct from another, and are not all on one continuum (depression isn't a mild form of schizophrenia, for example). Categorization helps us to cluster people so we can help apply useful interventions (behavioral and medical), but are not meant to be taken as immutable dividing lines and aren't arranged for heterogeneity. Lecture 38

28. Studies of anhedonia in schizophrenia indicate that:

a. schizophrenics' emotional responses are flat or blunted affect, but still appropriate to the situation.

b. schizophrenics show anhedonia in terms of their overt behavior, but not in terms of their physiological arousal. ##

c. schizophrenics differ from controls more with respect to positive than negative emotions.

d. schizophrenics experience much more negative emotion than controls do.

45%; .31. Schizophrenics don't express emotions in ways that other people can "read", like on their faces; but self-report and psychophysiological evidence tells a different story, suggesting that schizophrenia entails a dissociation between the behavioral and the cognitive and physiological components of emotional response. Schizophrenics do have difficulty expressing positive emotions both facially and in affect, even though they often report feeling positive emotions when exposed to the same stimuli as controls. They don't necessarily experience more negative emotions, though they may have trouble expressing emotions appropriately no matter what they report feeling on the inside. Lecture 39

29. Studies of the MAO-A gene indicate that:

a. low levels of MAOA activity predispose males to adolescent conduct disorder. ##

b. high levels of MAOA activity, when combined with a history of severe maltreatment, are likely to be found in cases of adolescent conduct disorder.

c. possessing two copies of the "short" allele, combined with high levels of adolescent stress, is likely to precipitate an episode of depression.

d. high levels of MAOA activity are associated with pathological shyness in children.

12%; .08. A bad item. This was a truly bad item, because it required students to remember that it's low levels of MAO-A activity, as opposed to high levels, that constitute the diathesis. But the important point is much more abstract, which is the interaction between MAO-A and maltreatment. The diathesis-stress model says that genetic vulnerabilities combined with environmental stressors leads to disorders becoming apparent. In this case, low MAOA is the vulnerability, and in the right (or wrong) environment can lead to adolescent conduct disorder. B is wrong because it says high levels of MAOA, C and D are wrong because MAOA is connected to conduct disorder not depression or shyness. Lecture 40

30. Why are "behavioral" therapies such as systematic desensitization essentially cognitive in nature?

a. Physiological relaxation reciprocally inhibits the physiological arousal that accompanies phobic anxiety.

b. The patient learns to ignore anxiolytic schemata.

c. The patient develops a new set of expectations concerning the consequences of contact with the phobic object. ##

d. The patient gains insight into the learning experiences through which he or she acquired the phobia in the first place.

64%; .28. Therapies for fears and phobias that involve desensitization rely on retraining the response to the stimuli, challenging the assumptions of catastrophe the patient already has. This isn't done by the patient getting an insight into the problem, because just knowing the origin of the fear isn't as directly helpful as working on changing the response itself. Ignoring the stimuli isn't helpful for resolution, as it just avoids the problem. And while answer A may be helpful in resolving fears, it is not a cognitive approach. Lecture 41

31. Which was not a cause of the failure of de-institutionalization in the 1960s and thereafter?

a. Many patients were discharged before they were ready to return to the community.

b. Most psychotropic drugs caused unpleasant side-effects. ##

c. Group homes and other community-based resources did not receive adequate financing.

d. Residents reacted negatively to the prospect that mental patients would be housed in their neighborhoods.

61%; .34. De-institutionalization led to many issues in caring for the mentally ill. With the closing of institutions, many patients were discharged while still needing services, putting the burden on families and on the community at large to care for them, while funding for such services were not increased, and neighborhoods were resistant to having mentally ill people live in close integration with them. Side effects from psychotropic drugs were not a major problem for de-institutionalized people; indeed without supervision, consistent use of psychotropics faltered. Lecture 42

32. What is the paradox of evolution?

a. Intelligence, consciousness, and language create the possibility of cultural evolution, which outpaces biological evolution. ##

b. Biological evolution applies only to nonhuman animals.

c. Biological evolution shapes body morphology, but has no effect on mind or behavior.

d. Biological evolution is responsible for the mental modules that impair reasoning and rational decision-making.

49%; .00. A bad item. Evolution applies to all living things and shapes all elements of the organism, including physical appearance and function, and behavior and the brain, so B and C are wrong. D is wrong because the specific kinds of reasoning and decision-making strategies we employ are not impairments, since they differ from context to context. If we were biologically impaired, then context wouldn't matter. A is correct because cultural evolution, once in place, can move very quickly and does not rely on the slow pace that biological changes are tied to. Behavior can change much more quickly than biology, and so cultures can evolve and change and spread in a comparatively short amount of time. The paradox is that biological evolution gave rise to cultural evolution, while cultural evolution outstrips biological evolution. Lecture 43

33. Why did personality and social psychology emerge relatively late in the historical development of scientific psychology?

a. The 19^th-century psychophysicists, being physicists first and psychologists second, tended to ignore "soft" subject-matter like social and cultural processes.

b. Wundt and other pioneering psychologists thought that the experimental method could not be used to study topics in the social sciences. ##

c. Helmholtz and other "physiological" psychologists believed that theoretical concepts in psychology must be closely tied to knowledge of physiology.

d. Early investigators, such as Triplett and Sherif, found that experimental manipulations of social influences lacked ecological validity.

42%; .32. Wundt, Kant and others believe that all mental processes were invisible and unobservable, and as such weren't open to scientific methods. Only phenomena that could be seen and tested directly were the purview of science. Even behavior wasn't applicable since they believed that the mind and body were separate entities, governed by different phenomena, with the physiological and psychological not relating. Lecture 1

34. The idea that anything natural is good or that more recently evolved traits are better than traits evolved earlier is called __________.

a. naturalistic fallacy ##

b. evolutionary fallacy

c. trait inheritance

d. evolution

46%; .19. A bad item. The phrase "naturalistic fallacy" is used to refer to the claim that what is natural is inherently good or right, and that what is unnatural is bad or wrong. The misconception that nature is good leads one to assume that evolution is "progress," and that things more newly evolved are necessarily improvements on the old. Evolution is just stepwise changes in genetics over time, and is not purposeful or directed. Some evolutionary changes cause extinction in the right conditions. Evolution isn't a fallacy; the fallacy is that what is "natural" is also "good". Chapter 2

35. An expressive smile is characterized by __________.

a. expression even when others are not around

b. changes in both the shape of the mouth and the shape of the upper face and eyes

c. when an animal or human experiences pleasure

d. all of the above ##

71%; .11. Expressive smiles are smiles that are genuine reactions to pleasing stimuli, as opposed to smiles made on purpose, unconnected to pleasant events. Expressive smiles have a characteristic pattern of facial muscles that cannot be contracted in exactly the same way voluntarily, and are not necessarily social events (happen when laughing alone at a movie, for instance). They are true signals of internal states, and evolved to be a trusted signal. Chapter 2

36. What do heritability estimates tell us about the degree of genetic influence on an individual's traits?

a. the certainty of the measurement

b. the range of the influence

c. the magnitude of the influence

d. absolutely nothing ##

17%; .13. A bad item. Heritability is a measure of the degree to which genes influence a particular trait for a given population of people, taking into account the environment's influence. The ratio will change when the environment changes, and/or when the genetic variability of a population changes. Heritability can tell us nothing about any individual, since every trait every person has is a result of genes and environment in its creation. You cannot pull any one trait apart into component pieces. Heritability only speaks to the patterns in a population, helping us see how much constraint there is on whether a gene will be able to be fully expressed; it has nothing to say about the causes of some trait in any particular individual. Chapter 2

37. The dendrites of a neuron __________.

a. contain the neuron's nucleus and all the elements needed for metabolic function

b. receives inputs or signals from many other neurons ##

c. send signals to other neurons

d. hold the neuron in place

78%; .14. The neuron is composed of three major parts: the axon, the cell body and the dendrites. The axon is a long, myelinated tendril that carries signals from the neuron to other neurons, sometimes far away; the cell body is the metabolic center, which makes proteins and contains the nucleus; and the dendrites receive incoming signals from the axons of other neurons. Chapter 3

38. The sympathetic system is to the parasympathetic system as __________ is to __________.

a. voluntary; involuntary

b. arousal; restoration ##

c. hormones; neurotransmitters

d. central; peripheral

58%; .47. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems work synergistically to ready the body for action and help the body recover subsequently. They work together to regulate homeostasis. Arousal is the job of the sympathetic, and restoration the job of the parasympathetic. A can't be right because they are both involuntary systems, and d can't be right because that is a physical division, with the brain and spinal cord in one, and the rest of the nerves in the body in the other, while the sympathetic and parasympathetic isn't divided that way. Chapter 3

39. The hypothalamus is critical __________.

a. for controlling emotions

b. in split-brain patients only

c. in control of motivated behavior ##

d. in primates only

46%; .35. The hypothalamus is a subcortical structure that plays a vital role in controlling many motivated behaviors like eating, drinking and sexual activity. It is not a structure limited to only primates, and is conserved widely throughout evolution. The thalamus and hypothalamus lie beneath the limbic system, which is the system that controls emotion processing in the brain, but are not a part of it. Being split-brain does not affect this structure, as it isn't related to lateralization or the corpus callosum. Chapter 3

40. A general characteristic of the primary motor area is that __________.

a. the amount of tissue devoted to a specific area is related to that area's function ##

b. the primary motor area contains the sensory area that corresponds to the same area of the body

c. primary motor areas are localized in only two lobes of the cerebral hemispheres

d. the location of a neuron in the primary motor area depends on the importance of the body area to which that neuron corresponds

49%; .50. As the homunculus makes clear, equal-sized areas of the body are not controlled by equal amounts of cortical space. Instead, the parts we can move with precision receive more cortical area than parts that require more gross control. Areas that involve complexity need more cortical area to process that complexity. B cannot be correct because the primary motor area and primary sensory areas are separate. Neurons are not located by importance. Chapter 3

41. From what you know about the position of the various brain areas, which of the following seems most probable?

a. Damage to Wernicke's area is more likely to be accompanied by paralysis than is damage to Broca's area.

b. Damage to Wernicke's area is more likely to be accompanied by deafness in the left ear than in the right ear.

c. Damage to Broca's area is more likely to be accompanied by paralysis of the left arm than by paralysis of the right arm.

d. Damage to Broca's area is more likely to be accompanied by paralysis than is damage to Wernicke's area. ##

43%; .26. Broca's and Wernicke's area are both involved in aphasia, but only in Broca's is there a problem with production of speech itself, where the speaker may stumble or even be entirely silent. Since Broca's area lies close to the primary motor cortex, it involves interruptions of the motor element of speaking, and is more likely to be accompanied by paralysis than Wernicke's. Wernicke's sufferers speak fluently while making no sense, and Wernicke's area lies much farther from the motor cortex. Chapter 3

42. In a scientific experiment, the variable that is measured by the experimenter to determine whether it has changed is called the __________, while the variable that is manipulated by the experimenter is called the __________.

a. dependent variable; independent variable ##

b. independent variable; dependent variable

c. experimental group; independent variable

d. Dependent variable; operational definition

80%; .38. Memory question. The manipulated variable is always independent, while what you are measuring is always dependent. Try to remember it by thinking that the outcome is "dependent" on what you manipulated in the experiment. C cannot be correct because the experimental group is not itself a variable, and D cannot be correct because operational definitions also aren't variables (though it is a related concept: you have to define each variable carefully). Chapter 1

43. External validity means that a study __________.

a. is representative of the world as it is outside of the investigation ##

b. is measuring only changes in the independent variable

c. has numerous possible confounds

d. is measuring much more than it claims to be measuring

80%; .37. There are several types of validity. Remember that internal validity refers to the causal relationship between two variables being properly demonstrated and external validity means that what you are measuring is actually related to a real-world phenomenon that occurs beyond your experiment. You do not measure changes in the independent variable, because it is "independent" of your study (you measure dependent variables). Validity seeks to minimize confounds, so C cannot be correct. Chapter 1

44. Internal validity refers to __________.

a. having the properties that allow the conclusion that the independent variable manipulation produced the changes in the dependent variable ##

b. having the properties that allow the conclusion that the dependent variable manipulation produced the changes in the independent variable

c. having the properties that allow the conclusion that the dependent variable(s) reflect real-world variables

d. having the properties that allow the conclusion that the independent variable(s) reflect real-world variables

55%; .65. There are several types of validity. Remember that internal validity refers to the causal relationship between two variables being properly demonstrated. If all confounds have been eliminated, then we can be sure that any effects found in the study are due to the experimental manipulation, rather than to some other confounding variable, and this means that the study is internally valid. You want your IV to predict change in the DV, not the other way around. C and D are examples of external validity. Chapter 4

45. Consider the following two distributions of scores:

9 6 6 0 4 6 1 3 7 8

and

6 1 8 3 5 2 7 4 9 5

These two distributions differ in terms of

a. mean, but not variance.

b. variance, but not mean. ##

c. neither mean nor variance.

d. both mean and variance.

65%; .34. Mean is another way of saying "average," or the sum of the numbers divided by the number of actual numbers (you can do quick math to see if the means are the same or different, and the mean here is 5). If the means are the same, then you can rule out answers A and D. If the mean is the same, now just look at the spread of numbers from the mean and see whether they are different from each other. There is clearly more spread in one, so B is the only answer. Lecture 6

46. Unconditioned responses by definition occur __________.

a. independent of any learning ##

b. only in lower organisms

c. only in conditions of deprivation

d. only in response to secondary reinforcers

90%; .19. "Unconditioned" means that it wasn't learned. Conditioning, for the purposes of psychology, is a form of learning. Examples of unconditioned responses are salivation, sweating, trembling, heart rate increase and pupil dilation. No organism needs to learn to do any of those things, and they are not reinforced. All living organisms have these, so B cannot be correct. Chapter 7

47. Of the options listed here, what is the most important thing that animals learn in classical conditioning?

a. the contingency between the CS and the US ##

b. the motivational significance of the US

c. the degree of contiguity between stimuli and particular responses

d. the predictive power of the US

62%; .16. The motivational significance of the US isn't something that is learned (the U stands for "unconditioned"), so A is incorrect. The US also does not predict anything; prediction is the domain of the conditioned stimulus, which by definition is paired with something unconditioned and therefore becomes predictive. The most important thing any animal can learn in classical conditioning is that there is a contingency between two stimuli; not that they appear contiguously, but that they are contingent (contingent denotes relationship, contiguous has no predictive power). Chapter 7

48. Instrumental conditioning differs from classical conditioning in which of the following ways?

a. Reinforcement is contingent upon a response in instrumental conditioning but not in classical conditioning.

b. Instrumental conditioning requires "insight" but classical conditioning does not.

c. Classical, but not instrumental, conditioning is impossible with autonomic responses.

d. Instrumental conditioning involves stimulus-stimulus associations, while conditioning involves stimulus-response associations. ##

26%; -.28. A bad item. Remember that from a cognitive point of view, classical conditioning is about predictability, while instrumental conditioning is about controllability. In classical conditioning, the organism acquires knowledge of the associations between events (stimuli). In instrumental conditioning, the organism acquires knowledge of the associations between behaviors (responses) and outcomes (stimuli). Chapter 7

49. Rats A and B receive shocks in a Skinner box. Rat A can terminate the shock by pressing a bar. For Rat B, there is no response that leads to shock termination. The experimenter then tries to teach both rats another similar shock-avoidance task. What result would one expect?

a. Rat A will learn the avoidance task more quickly than rat B. ##

b. Rat B will learn the avoidance task more quickly than rat A.

c. The rats will learn the avoidance task at equal rates.

d. Neither rat A nor rat B will be able to learn the avoidance task.

88%; .27. Rat B, who had no control over the shocks, will have some level of learned helplessness and that leads to difficulty in learning to have control in similar circumstances. Rat A, who already learned how to turn off shock, will experience a savings in the new task and learn more quickly. Chapter 7

50. A man is looking at a tree. What is the proximal stimulus?

a. the tree

b. the light waves reflected by the tree

c. the image cast by the tree on the man's retina ##

d. the pattern of nerve impulses triggered by the retinal image and conducted by the optic nerve to the brain

36%; -.04. A bad item. But I ask a question like this all the time! Perception involves many elements: the distal stimulus, or the tree is available to be perceived; the light waves of the tree, after reflecting off the tree, that reach the sensory system of the perceiver (in this case the retina) and become the proximal stimulus; the transduction into a pattern of nerve impulses and carried to the brain for processing. Proximal stimuli are only those that intersect with the sensory organs. Chapter 4

51. What does Weber's law assert?

a. Only three types of color receptors are required to see the full color spectrum.

b. A constant, low-pitched stimulus produces a stronger sensation than an infrequent, high-pitched stimulus.

c. Different sound frequencies trigger activity in different neurons.

d. The difference threshold is a constant proportion of stimulus intensity. ##

64%; .47. Chapter 4: Weber's law is a psychophysical law stating that the amount of intensity that needs to be added to a stimulus to produce a just noticeable difference is a constant fraction of that intensity. For example, if the constant, C equals 1/10 and the intensity of the original stimulus is 10 units, then a change in that stimulus is first noticeable at 11 units. If the intensity of the original stimulus is 200 units, then a change is detected at 220 units, etc.

52. According to the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies, why does NutraSweet taste similar to sugar?

a. Sugar and NutraSweet have the same chemical structure.

b. Sugar and NutraSweet stimulate the same type of neurons. ##

c. Sugar and NutraSweet stimulate a variety of taste receptors.

d. For Sugar and NutraSweet, the intensity of taste sensation increases in a logarithmic proportion.

74%; .48. Chapter 4: The Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies is a component of Specificity Theory, which suggests that different sensory qualities (like sweet vs. bitter) are signaled by different neurons and, similar sensory qualities are signaled by the same neurons (like artificial sweeteners and organic sugars).

53. Which of the following is true about color receptors?

a. Any wavelength will stimulate all four types of color receptors but will do so unequally.

b. Any wavelength will stimulate all three types of color receptors but will do so unequally. ##

c. Any wavelength will stimulate only one or two of the four types of color receptors.

d. Any wavelength will stimulate only one or two of the three types of color receptors.

55%; .23. Chapter 4: To get this right you first have to remember that there are three types of color receptors not four ' human color vision is trichromatic. The photopigment in each of the three cone types is sensitive to most wavelengths in the visual spectrum but each type responds maximally to different wavelengths.

54. Look at the following figure. It is usually perceived as a diamond set inside a rectangle. Which gestalt grouping factor of perceptual organization best applies to this percept?

a. subjective contour

b. good continuation

c. similarity ##

d. proximity

32%; .38. Chapter 5: Similarity is a gestalt principle wherein we tend to group similar figures together. If we weren't grouping by similarity here (O's with O's and crosses with crosses), we would just see rows and columns of objects and no further organization.

55. Which of the following best describes the phenomenon of perceptual constancy?

a. Our perception of an object changes when the proximal stimuli changes.

b. Our perception of an object remains the same in spite of changes in the proximal stimuli. ##

c. Our perception of an object changes when the distal stimuli changes.

d. Our perception of an object remains the same in spite of changes in the distal stimuli.

32%; .26. Chapter 5: Perceptual constancy describes the phenomenon that we continue to perceive important aspects of distal objects in a constant way despite the fact that the sensory information we receive changes as our view of the objects change (e.g., by changes to the proximal stimuli).

56. A is farther away from an observer than is B. What will happen if the observer moves his head from right to left?

a. A will seem to move more quickly than B in a direction opposite to that of the observer.

b. B will seem to move more quickly than A in a direction opposite to that of the observer. ##

c. A will seem to move more quickly than B in the same direction as that of the observer.

d. B will seem to move more quickly than A in the same direction as that of the observer.

54%; .24. Lecture 14: This is a description of a distance cue called motion parallax. When you turn your head, the images of objects move across your retina and closer objects appear to move more quickly than further ones. In addition, this always appears to go backwards ' if you're going from right to left, the objects appear to go in the opposite direction.

57. When we see a ball rolling on a pool table, we conclude that it is the ball that moves, not the table. Therefore, we not only need to detect motion, but also to __________.

a. interpret it ##

b. enhance it

c. ignore it

d. separate it from its context

75%; .25. Chapter 5: When we perceive something, we have to also interpret it. We know that this happens partly because of the visual illusions we sometimes experience. We typically perceive large objects as stationary and smaller objects as moving. Think of the rectangle and dot experiment from the textbook.

58. Which of the following lists exceeds the capacity of the average person's working memory?

a. BOATLOADDOCKROPELAND

b. MNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEF

c. MQTLNRAZPCDBLQNVUDSD ##

d. NBCAOLMCIIBMCSIFBIUSAPHD

87%; .21. Chapter 8: Answers A, B, and D all provide a conceptual framework to aid in memory. Answer A can be chunked into 5 words; B follows a well-known pattern that exists in memory and D contains 8 acronyms that are already familiar as well. C is a string of random letters with no obvious conceptual content and there is no easy way to chunk this, thus it is well beyond our working memory capacity.

59. Which of the following is the best reason that we have trouble remembering the license plate number of a car that we just passed 10 minutes ago?

a. Working memory lasts only a minute or so.

b. Seven-digit numbers are too difficult to remember easily.

c. We probably never actively encoded the number in the first place. ##

d. The memory, though present, is too difficult to retrieve except under special circumstances, such as hypnosis or substantial amounts of stress.

74%; .41. Chapter 8: B is incorrect because we know the limit tends to be somewhere between 5 and 9, 7 is right on the average. C is correct because we typically don't fully attend to every license plate we see, unless we make an effort to attend to and remember it for some reason (e.g., the car is involved in an accident or the driver is erratic). We have to attend to stimuli to hold it in working memory.

60. Memory consolidation, the process through which memories get transformed from a transient to a more permanent state, can be disrupted by __________.

a. blocking protein synthesis ##

b. antidepressant usage

c. sleep deprivation

d. exercise

12%; .06. A bad item. Chapter 8: New patterns of communication need to be established between neurons for consolidation to happen. This requires the creation (i.e., synthesis) of new proteins. Antidepressants and sleep deprivation have been linked to some memory problems but this question asks specifically about consolidation, which is most directly related to protein synthesis. So they wee OK answers, which made this a bad item.

61. When a memory is presently inaccessible, it may sometimes be recalled by using an appropriate __________.

a. chunk

b. nonsense syllable

c. retrieval cue ##

d. mnemonic device

96%; .05. Chapter 8: Forgetting is typically a failure of retrieval. Chunking and mnemonic devices are meant to be techniques that are used when attempting to memorize material at the outset but a retrieval cue is used to help a person remember information they already have. Retrieval cues are best when they help a person remember the learning context.

62. The Arabic number 3 is an example of a(n) __________ representation.

a. mental

b. hypothetical

c. analogical

d. symbolic ##

84%; .14. Chapter 9: The symbol 3 represents the number three ' there is nothing about a "3" that feels like, or looks like the number 3, we've just previously mapped this symbol to this concept 3. An analogical representation would be something like 3 dots or a 3-unit long number line.

63. Which of the following is an advantage of the use of heuristics?

a. A heuristic will present a clearly defined solution to a problem.

b. A heuristic is often efficient. ##

c. A heuristic is guaranteed to result in a correct response.

d. A heuristic results in only one possible solution to a problem.

72%; .42. Chapter 9: (A) and (C) are incorrect because a heuristic often provides more of an estimate than a clear solution. D is not quite right either because they can produce a number or a range of possible answers. (B) is the best answer because this is the most useful characteristic of a heuristic; it is a mental shortcut.

64. Carl is the one person Craig has ever met from New Zealand. Carl strikes Craig as being quite friendly and funny. When asked what he would expect to find if he went to New Zealand, Craig says that he would expect the people to be quite friendly and funny. What might he have used to make this judgment?

a. the representativeness heuristic ##

b. the confirmation bias

c. framing effects

d. the availability heuristic

62%; .37. Chapter 9: Although the availability heuristic might be a tempting answer here because you have a single example that sticks out and is thus easy to remember but the better answer is the representativeness heuristic. The representativeness heuristic is about category membership (nationality is a type of category). People tend to assume that each member of a category is representative of that category.

65. Why should we be reluctant to accept the unflattering view of human reasoning offered by research studies of, say, the confirmation bias and syllogistic reasoning?

a. People actually perform fairly well on most of the reasoning tasks psychologists have studied in the laboratory.

b. People would be unable to manage the world's demands as well as they do if they were as poor at reasoning as some research suggests.

c. People's performance varies dramatically depending on the content of the reasoning task. ##

d. People are heavily influenced by the plausibility of arguments, and by their consistency with the beliefs they already hold.

38%; -.12. A bad item. Chapter 9: In the chapter, we saw that in classic selection tasks, people do not perform very well but in a selection task that is set in an appropriate context people perform better. For example, when the task is abstract (i.e., cards with letters and numbers) it is very challenging but when it's concrete (i.e. beer and the legal drinking age) people fair better. D is not correct because it's an example of why people are bad at syllogistic reasoning and B is not necessarily true. People may appear to lack rationality when they're given very abstract tasks, but will act rationally when the same problems are made more concrete.

66. Based on years of research, what can we comfortably assert about IQ and reliability?

a. Score at age 6 correlates with score at age 18. ##

b. The older we get, the dumber we become, as measured by IQ.

c. There is no correlation between childhood IQ and IQ in adulthood.

d. IQ tests are valid but not reliable.

46%; .58. Chapter 11: There does tend to be a positive relationship between an individual's IQ at one developmental stage as compared to another. D is not the correct answer because, if anything, most experts would agree that IQ tests may not have great validity (i.e., they may not actually measure pure intelligence) but reliability is tends to be pretty good.

67. Spearman argued that g stood for basic intelligence. According to Spearman, individuals with a lot of g __________.

a. has an advantage in every intellectual endeavor ##

b. excel at math but not at verbal fluency

c. excel at figure analysis but not at computation

d. excel at word problems but not at pattern recognition

75%; .31. Chapter 11: The answers B-D are related to the other (lower) levels of the intelligence hierarchy but g is meant to be a measure of general, global intelligence. It is meant to subsume the other intelligences.

68. Which of the following coefficients probably best reflects the correlation between intelligence test scores and scores on a measure of working memory capacity?

a. .95

b. -.45

c. .45 ##

d. .00

59%; .34. Chapter 11: D is probably not correct because it suggests that working memory capacity and intelligence test scores are completely unrelated and we know that's not true. B suggests that they are negatively correlated ' people high in working memory capacity score worse on intelligence tests ' and we also know that is not true. Answer A is too high of a correlation, it suggests that 90% of the variance in intelligence test scores is due to working memory capacity alone, and that number is too high. We saw in the textbook that WMC and SAT scores are positively correlated, .45 seems reasonable.

69. The value of Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences lies mainly in __________.

a. the empirical support it has received

b. the intuitive appeal of the underlying concept

c. its emphasis on important abilities that have been neglected in education ##

d. its focus on cases of brain damage and mental retardation and giftedness

23%; .12. A bad item. Chapter 11: The major contribution of this theory is answer C. Although the aspects under g are important, people recognize that there is more than verbal, numerical and spatial intelligence. The major addition of this theory is to include things like: social intelligence, emotional intelligence, naturalistic intelligence, etc. People tend to identify intelligence with the sorts of abilities measured by traditional IQ tests, the SAT, and the like. Gardner's major, and lasting, point is that there is a lot more to intelligence than that.

70. The word cowboys contains __________ morphemes.

a. one

b. two

c. three ##

d. seven

59%; .44. Chapter 10: The definition of morpheme is that it's the smallest unit of sound that carries meaning on its own. cow ' boy ' s. It's tempting to forget the s, but this is a function morpheme, letting one know that the word is plural.

71. A concept has a family resemblance structure when __________.

a. its meaning is different from its reference

b. it is described by a set of defining features

c. it is described by a set of defining features, no one of which is individually either necessary or sufficient ##

d. it cannot be represented by a mental image, but it shares features with other words

48%; .42. Chapter 10: The definition from your text of family resemblance structure: An overlapping set of semantic features shared by members of a category. No members need all the features but all have to have at least one. This means that none of the features are necessary (a bird doesn't have to fly) and none are sufficient (it's not definitely a bird just because it flies). This is part of prototype theory.

72. When two-day-old babies are exposed to recordings of normal human speech, they experience a(n) __________ in blood flow in the __________ hemisphere.

a. increase; left ##

b. decrease; left

c. increase; right

d. decrease; right

74%; .41. Chapter 10: Generally speaking, increased blood flow to a brain area signifies activation of that area. This finding cites the work of Judit Gervain and her colleagues who noted that blood flow to the left hemisphere (typically reserved for language processing) increases even in very young infants when they hear speech as opposed to non-speech (in their case, non-speech was created using speech played backwards).

73. Genie, a 14-year-old child, was abused all her life and never exposed to language. As a result, she was never able to develop normal language skills. Isabelle, a 6-year-old child, was given only minimal attention and never exposed to language, yet was able to learn normal language skills within a year. In what aspect of their lives did these two children differ that so affected the eventual outcome of their language development?

a. Genie was past puberty when she was first exposed to language; Isabelle was prepubescent. ##

b. Genie's parents could neither speak nor hear; Isabelle's mother could do both.

c. Genie was born with a lower than normal IQ; Isabelle was born with a nearly normal IQ.

d. Genie suffered severe physical abuse; Isabelle did not.

77%; .36. Chapter 10: The major difference here is that Genie was found after the sensitive period for language development had ended and Isabelle was found before this. Genie was particularly deficient in grammar, which we now know is most negatively affected by learning language after puberty.

74. Does drive theory offer a comprehensive account of motivation? Why or why not?

a. No. Drive theory offers a satisfactory explanation of physiological motives but fails to account for more psychologically oriented motives. ##

b. No. Drive theory fails to account for many motives, including physiological ones.

c. Yes. Drive theory offers a satisfactory explanation of not only physiological motives, but also more psychologically-oriented ones.

d. Yes. Drive theories of physiological motives have been empirically supported.

54%; .49. Chapter 12: Drive theory does a good job of accounting for drives such as thirst, hunger, and most other drives that help us maintain physical homeostasis. It doesn't account for psychological drives (e.g., drives that go beyond survival) as well. For example, someone will go outside in the cold to see the sunrise. They are motivated to do so but this is for enjoyment and is in conflict with a common physical drive.

75. Why might it be a bad idea to think of obesity as a genetic defect?

a. Some people lack adipose cells altogether but still become obese.

b. Obesity is too rare.

c. All people seem to be equally sensitive to leptin, a chemical secreted by fat cells.

d. The genes leading to fat storage may have conferred a survival advantage: They were assets for our ancestors, not defects. ##

80%; .12. Chapter 12: Sometimes it's tempting to only think of genes and the traits they give rise to in their current form and in the current context. However, you read in the text that in the distant past, it was probably advantageous to have an inefficient metabolism and to store fat easily. This would have conferred a survival advantage to people with this predisposition rather than the health problems and stigma that it currently tends to create.

76. A critical feature of aggression is the presence of __________. By this definition of aggression, predatory attacks are __________.

a. threat; excluded ##

b. hunger; included

c. anger; excluded

d. violence; included

32%; .39. Chapter 12: Animals' predatory attacks are not considered aggressive acts. This is because they are motivated by hunger and not anger or threat. Although these attacks appear quite violent, D is not correct because violence is not a critical feature of aggression.

77. 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%; .31. Chapter 12: The other biological motives: thermoregulation, hunger and response to threat are not inherently social. B is a tempting answer but it is not the best answer because our drives promote survival, and it is necessary to live at least until the reproductive age of your species in order to reproduce.

78. Situations in which we are most liable to show our "true colors" are __________.

a. ambiguous ##

b. highly structured

c. tension producing

d. composed of members of the same sex

30%; .16. A bad item. Chapter 15: Typically ambiguous situations allow for our true traits and thoughts to emerge. This is because there is simply a great deal left open for interpretation in these situations. Folk wisdom suggests that B might be the correct answer but controlled psychology experiments suggest that ambiguous situations are more telling. Highly structured situations create a lot of pressure, precisely because of their structure, that constrains behavior. When the situation is very ambiguous, unstructured, people have more freedom to "be themselves".

79. Which of the following is not a within-family difference in environment?

a. child-rearing attitudes in parents ##

b. birth order and spacing of children

c. accidents, injuries, and diseases that affect only a single child

d. differences in friends, teachers, and peers

25%; .53. Chapter 15: Answer A is something that remains relatively stable and that all children in a family will be exposed to in the same way. The other answers are all things that will not be constant for each child within a family.

80. In Freud's psychodynamic theory of personality, Id is to __________ as superego is to __________.

a. immediate satisfaction; internal prohibitions ##

b. conscious reaction; immediate satisfaction

c. internal prohibitions; conscious reactions

d. internal prohibitions; immediate satisfaction

58%; .53. Chapter 15: This is simply a terminology question. The Id is focused on immediate satisfaction and this is an early developmental stage (infants, according to Freud, only react to biological drives). The superego is an internalized code of conduct that either rewards or punishes based on that code.

81. Despite attending many workshops on personal growth and reading self-help books on how to be happier, Mary has never really become happier for any significant length of time. Researchers who study the stability of happiness would suggest that Mary's high degree of stability in happiness across time could be explained in terms of __________.

a. a genetically influenced happiness "set point" ##

b. unresolved unconscious conflicts

c. genetically determined low self-esteem

d. her failure to identify the hidden root cause of her unhappiness through psychoanalysis

38%; .54. Chapter 15: Although the other answers here are intuitively appealing, this question is specifically about the stability of happiness and so A is the best answer. This is probably due to adaptation. Psychologists have collected data suggesting that people tend to return to a set point of happiness even after major life events. For example, a group or people who had won the lottery and a group of people who had become paralyzed about a month after the incidents. It turns out that their happiness levels were similar.

82. When members of the personnel department at a company conduct hiring interviews, they listen to applicants' explanations for their performance at previous positions. They make inferences about the reasons applicants did what they did; in other words, the personnel officers are __________.

a. conducting an analysis of personality

b. attempting to eliminate their unconscious biases

c. forming stereotypes

d. making attributions ##

46%; .50. Chapter 13: These people are making attributions about the cause of a person's behavior. They might attribute some of their success or failure to the personality or ability of the individual and they might attribute others to the situation the person was in.

83. The effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door technique of persuasion suggests that __________.

a. actions always reflect prior beliefs about the self

b. we are more prone to do favors for people we like

c. our beliefs can change as a result of our own actions ##

d. we tend to like those who do favors for us

42%; .36. Chapter 13: According to self-perception theory, the FITD technique works because people will see themselves in a particular way after taking one action and then they will be more likely to continue to support similar behaviors in the future. For example, if people agree to put a small safe driving sign on their lawn, they're more likely to agree to a giant billboard with a similar testament later because they begin to view themselves as a person who cares greatly about driving safety.

84. Imagine an Asch-style social pressure experiment in which the judgments are made more difficult (e.g., 6.5 vs. 6.25 inches) than in the standard task. Most likely, compared to the standard task, subjects in the new version will __________.

a. yield more and be more emotionally disturbed

b. yield more and be less emotionally disturbed ##

c. yield less and be more emotionally disturbed

d. yield less and be less emotionally disturbed

35%; .27. Chapter 13: In this case, because people are less sure themselves, they will be much more likely to rely on the group. When doing this, they won't feel as negative about it because they will avoid the immense conflict caused by knowing one thing and saying another.

85. Which of the following clearly illustrates or involves pluralistic ignorance?

a. A bystander decides not to help a car accident victim because others are present who will undoubtedly do so.

b. A passerby decides a man lying on the sidewalk is not in trouble because nobody else in the vicinity is stopping to assist him. ##

c. A bystander does not help a heart attack victim because he is not sure how to administer CPR.

d. All of the above answers are correct.

58%; .20. Chapter 13: Although a number of things were going on in the case of Kitty Genovese, pluralistic ignorance was certainly one of them. This is the term used to describe the thought process that "if nobody around me thinks there is something wrong, then this must not be an emergency". This is different than answer A here, where people assume someone else will help (a diffusion of responsibility) and from C where a person is simply unsure about how to help.

86. Three-year-old Miguel knows that Julie wants a cookie and that Julie thinks there are cookies in the cabinet. Asked to predict what Julie will do, Miguel says that __________.

a. she will open the cabinet, indicating his developing sense of egocentrism

b. she will open the cabinet, indicating his developing theory of mind ##

c. she will open the cabinet, indicating his lack of theory of mind

d. he has no way of knowing

67%; .05. Chapter 14: By three years, children know that other people have thoughts and desires and this is a component of theory of mind. If you over-think this question, you might choose C or D, thinking that this is a three-year-old who doesn't understand false beliefs. However, a child at this stage does comprehend a true belief and this is a case where the belief is true (the cookies really are in the cabinet and everyone knows it).

87. A 4-year-old child is shown a row of seven red checkers. He is asked to place a black checker immediately adjacent to each red one. Upon doing so, the child agrees that there are as many red as black checkers. The experimenter then spreads out the black checkers so that they lie in a line longer than the red checkers. The experimenter asks whether there are more red checkers or more black checkers in order to determine whether the child understands __________.

a. object permanence

b. conservation of number ##

c. conservation of quantity

d. object constancy

23%; .47. Chapter 14: This is a definition question. The correct terminology is conservation of number (not quantity). This states that if a set of objects undergoes a transformation that does not alter the actual quantity of objects, just the placement of them, one should realize that the quantity has not changed.

88. A child who has internalized codes of moral conduct __________.

a. will behave properly in order to avoid being punished

b. will behave properly in order to be rewarded

c. knows what she is supposed to do, but will break the rules whenever she can get away with doing so

d. will behave properly because she believes it is the right thing to do ##

74%; .17. Chapter 14: This is a child who is past the stage of behaving a certain way solely to avoid punishment or gain rewards and they are not simply following the rules of society to preserve law and order. , They have an internalized conception of morality based on their experiences and higher-level cognitive abilities.

89. Which of the following statements BEST expresses the influence of culture on the potential association of authoritative parenting with positive adolescent outcomes?

a. Authoritative parenting is not related to positive adolescent outcomes in either individualistic or collectivist cultures.

b. Authoritative parenting is associated with positive adolescent outcomes in individualistic but not collectivist cultures.

c. Authoritative parenting is associated with positive adolescent outcomes in collectivist but not individualistic cultures.

d. Authoritative parenting is associated with positive adolescent outcomes in both collectivist and individualistic cultures. ##

30%; -.10. A bad item. Chapter 14: Authoritative parenting ' a style that strikes a good balance between discipline/structure and exploration - turns out to be a good parenting style regardless of whether you are raising children in an individualistic or collectivist culture. Don't confuse authoritative parenting, which is a good thing, with authoritarian parenting, which is generally bad.

90. The difference between consciousness and the cognitive unconscious is that __________.

a. unlike consciousness, the cognitive unconscious has no effect on behavior

b. although both drive behavior, one is only aware of the effects of the conscious mind ##

c. unlike consciousness, the cognitive unconscious involves habits

d. unlike the conscious mind, the cognitive unconscious stores behaviors that were obtained without trying

64%; .32. Chapter 6: The role of the cognitive unconscious is to do the behind the scenes work when we attempt a task. It still affects behavior but we aren't aware of the processes. The example from the text of a computer is a good one. You click a link and a page appears, you don't notice all the computational mechanics behind this.

91. Unconscious processing tends to be fast and efficient. This raises the question, "Which of the following summarizes what consciousness is good for?"

a. It forces different brain areas to make connections with one another.

b. It allows us to break away from routine and habit. ##

c. It tends to produce insights that are more creative.

d. It allows for incubation.

43%; .18. A bad item. Chapter 6: When contrasting with unconscious processing, which we can't easily exert control over and tends to unfold without reflection or explicit effort, the contribution of consciousness is that we can exert control over it. Rather than always being fast and automatic, it can be flexible and laborious. Consciousness allows us to reflect on what we think and do out of habit and routine -- and so to change it.

92. If you have not slept enough over several days, which of the following is likely to happen when you do sleep?

a. You are likely to show an increase in REM sleep ##

b. You are likely to show a decrease in REM sleep but an increase in stage 3 and 4 sleep.

c. You will sleep less overall.

d. None of the above. There will be no change, as you will just resume your normal sleep patterns.

57%; .21. Chapter 6: It has been shown that if people are sleep deprived, they spend more time in REM sleep ' the stage of sleep where the brain is active but the skeletal muscles are paralyzed.

93. Darrin uses nose drops to help his nose feel less "stuffy". He has been frequently using the nose drops for several weeks. He now notices that it takes a higher and higher dose of the nose drops to get the same effect. You can conclude that Darrin now shows __________ the nose drop solution.

a. tolerance to ##

b. cravings for

c. preference for

d. withdrawal from

97%; .20. Chapter 6: Most people think of tolerance and withdrawal when they think about the long-term effects of using any drug. This is a case of tolerance ' stronger doses are needed because the body has become used to the drug (the body's general desire for homeostasis causes this). Withdrawal, on the other hand, is a set of symptoms that a person experiences when they no longer have access to a drug upon which they are dependent.

94. Which of the following is not part of the DSM-IV definition of mental disorder?

a. Mental disorders are clinically significant.

b. Mental disorders are associated with present distress.

c. Mental disorders are genetically inherited. ##

d. Mental disorders cause disability.

52%; .48. Chapter 16: Although some mental disorders are highly heritable, this is certainly not part of the definition of a mental disorder ' mental disorders can be cause by genetics, environment and (most often) a combination of these things.

95. John was robbed at gunpoint and beaten, and ever since has suffered from nightmares and other anxiety symptoms. John would be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder rather than acute stress disorder if __________.

a. the reaction to the stressful event is dissociation

b. the post-traumatic symptoms include waking flashbacks to the stressful event

c. the reaction to the stressful event had persisted for at least one month ##

d. all of the above

29%; .58. Chapter 16: The difference between PTSD and acute stress disorder is in the duration of symptoms. The symptoms are typically of the same sort with these two disorders but PTSD is only diagnosed when the disorder lingers for at least one month.

96. Henry has worked as a proofreader for a publishing company. Now that Henry has developed schizophrenia, we can expect that __________.

a. his performance will improve because he will desire to be isolated more and can focus on his work

b. his performance will worsen because his attention and executive functioning will be impaired as a result of the schizophrenia ##

c. although the symptoms of schizophrenia will be emotionally distressing, they should not affect his performance as a proofreader

d. if his performance is affected, it will be because of delusion-related anxiety

70%; .19. Chapter 16: Schizophrenia affects people in myriad ways. D is not the correct answer because not every person with schizophrenia even experiences delusions, and these may or may not cause anxiety at work. The best answer here is B. Schizophrenia has been shown to affect executive functioning (which allows for planning, etc) and attention. Both of these things are essential for most jobs.

97. Which of the following is not a common theme of the many schools of psychotherapy?

a. self-knowledge

b. interpersonal learning

c. emotional defusing

d. use of drugs ##

55%, .16. Chapter 17: Psychotherapy approaches and biomedical approaches are two separate approaches for dealing with mental disorders or difficulties. Although they can be used in combination, the terminology of psychotherapy is reserved for treatments that involve techniques other than drug treatment, whereas biomedical approaches include drug therapies.

98. Both __________ are therapies that are based on principles derived from classical conditioning.

a. transference and resistance

b. in vivo desensitization and systematic desensitization ##

c. applied tolerance therapy and free association

d. none of the above

64%; .38. Chapter 17: Transference and resistance are terms associated with psychodynamic approaches and are attributed to Freudian theorizing. Desensitization (aka: exposure therapy) involves repeated exposure to a stimulus, in hopes of changing one's reaction to that stimulus. These techniques borrow from the fundamentals of classical conditioning.

99. What do many couples and family therapists see as their primary task in providing therapy?

a. They want to improve the dynamic within the couple or family system. ##

b. They want to make each member recognize each other's individuality.

c. They want to open the lines of effective communication.

d. They want to encourage personal growth for each member.

46%; .43. Chapter 17: Although B-D are possible positive results of family or couples therapy, the major goal of most therapists in this situation is to improve the workings of the entire family system and structure.

100. Tracy is debating whether to try MAOIs or tricyclics to treat her depression. In what way are MAOIs and tricyclics very similar in terms of their effect on neurochemistry?

a. They both block dopamine transmission.

b. They both block serotonin transmission.

c. They both augment dopamine transmission.

d. They both increase norepinephrine and serotonin transmission. ##

61%; .37. Chapter 17: Although MAOI's work by preventing the breakdown of norepinephrine and serotonin and Tricyclics work by blocking their reuptake, both treat depression by increasing the amount of these NT's.