Psych Chapters 1-5 – Flashcards

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When Anne Treisman (1960) repeated the research of Donald Broadbent in an attempt to clarify his theory that attentional processes act as a filter through which certain stimuli pass, she was able to verify his findings and extended his theory in different ways. This demonstrates the incredible value of
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replication
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Which part of a neuron is a long, tail-like extension that carries messages out to other cells?
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Axon
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Which of the following is the best example of the signal-to-noise ratio?
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Robyn has to shout over the boisterous crowd at the football game to be heard.
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A mental shortcut that helps us to streamline our thinking and make sense of our world is called a
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Heuristic
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Jason was conducting an evaluation of a restaurant waitress. He sat at the table with a list of things to observe in front of him, and the waitress noticed that he was assessing her every move. He noticed that she began acting more professionally around him, was friendlier, and gave him extra attention. Why would Jason have been better off using naturalistic observation for this assessment?
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So that his observations would not have changed the waitress's behaviors.
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Quentin is suffering from a disorder that causes him to have problems recognizing everyday objects. The other day he was looking at a wine glass and couldn't come up with its name. He said to his wife, "I want one of those things that you hold the wine in," but try as he did he could not find the word "glass." This demonstrates a form of visual ________.
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agnosia
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As we age, we are more likely to need glasses because
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Our lens lose flexibility
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Our visual sensory receptor cells are located
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Retina
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With its concern on the adaptive functions provided by the various psychological characteristics, evolutionary psychology is most like what early psychological school of thought?
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Functionalism
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Occam's Razor is another name for what critical thinking principle?
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Principle of parsimony
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Your teacher asks you to describe the sequence of parts of a neuron that the impulse travels during neural conduction. Which of the following sequences will you offer?
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dendrites, soma, axon, axon termina
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Dr. Richburg's botany class gathers specimens outside of the classroom for further study. Dr. Richburg instructs his students to develop a scientific theory that helps explain the biodiversity of the plants. The resulting theory should
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explain observations about the plants and predict new findings about plant biodiversity.
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The term __________ refers to the tendency to perceive meaningful connections among unrelated phenomena.
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Paternicity
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A brain-imaging method using magnetic fields to measure the release of energy from water in biological tissues is called ______________.
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magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
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One difficulty in conducting medical research is that participants often assume that any treatment will be effective in alleviating their symptoms. Therefore, a researcher has to design an experiment that measures the influence of
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the placebo effect.
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Stanton is taking chemistry with Ms. Neville and has heard many negative stories about her class from his friends. The fact that his beliefs about Ms. Neville affect his interpretation of his interactions with her during the school year is an example of
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top-down processing.
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Which of these is part of the APA ethical principles for human research?
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Research participants must give informed consent.
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Sigmund Freud was a leading figure in which perspective of psychology?
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Psychoanalysis
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Cason is initially blinded as he walks out of a daytime movie. However, very rapidly his eyes begin to adjust to the bright light. What is the best explanation for his rapid recovery?
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Sensory adaptation
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The study of rare or unusual phenomena is most easily done through the use of the ________ design.
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Case Study
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The fact that our eyes see near objects as being quite different while seeing distant objects as being quite similar is known as __________.
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binocular disparity
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The assumption that a relationship between two variables indicates a direct, cause-and-effect relationship between them is the basis of the ________ fallacy.
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correlation-causation
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A classmate tells you the following, "It's not how a teacher answers your question that matters but how you interpret his or her attempt at answering your question that leaves you satisfied or unsatisfied with his or her answer." This statement fits most closely with ideas from the school of thought known as
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cognitivism
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Vincent is designing a research study as part of his Master's thesis. He wants to do a laboratory study where he can control as many variables as possible, but he is concerned that his findings will not generalize very well from the laboratory setting to the real world. In technical terms, Vincent is concerned about the ________ of his study.
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external validity
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Modern psychology is best considered to be a
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science.
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__________ studies allow us to make predictions about one variable based on the knowledge of another.
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Correlational
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The conversion of external energy into something that the nervous system can understand is known as
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transduction
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The ________ speeds up the passage of electrical messages by acting as an insulator of the neuronal signal.
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myelin sheath
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Developmental psychologists are trying to evaluate different explanations for the effects of poor parenting on behavior problems in children. One important scientific thinking principle that the psychologists should keep in mind is to
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rule out rival hypotheses using additional research.
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Brittany, a softball player who plays catcher for the local college, has thrown out base stealers at a 42, 39, and 41 percent rate over her three years. Her performance could be considered which of the following?
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Reliable
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Clay has played professional soccer for seven years and is easily able to tune out the sound of the crowd and all other irrelevant sensory information during the game. Bruce is a rookie and is often distracted by what his opponents are saying and the mood of the crowd. Clay and Bruce are showing differing levels of
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selective attention.
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__________ involves the detection of energy by sense organs, whereas __________ involves interpreting sensory inputs.
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sensation, transduction
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Which of the following are the three basic types of neurons?
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interneurons, sensory nerves, motor nerves
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When Stewart wakes up at night and has to walk from his bedroom to the bathroom in the dark, he is most directly aided in this process by his
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rods.
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If research finds that those who drive taxicabs have enlarged areas of their hippocampi, you may be tempted to believe that driving a cab and engaging in such visuospatial activities each day causes the hippocampus areas to grow. This may or may not be the case, and this riddle demonstrates the principle of
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correlation vs. causation.
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Which of the following is one of the two types of statistics that researchers use to analyze the data that they collect?
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Inferential statistics
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When a neuron fires, it fires in a(n) ________ fashion as there is no such thing as "partial" firing.
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all-or-none
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Light, a central player in our visual perception of the world, is a form of
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...
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What psychological school first identified that visual perception occurs in terms of whole objects rather than individual component parts?
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Gestalt
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Sarah is a pianist who reports that she sees musical tones as colors. This is one example of
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synesthesia
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Roger feels something land on his hand but has yet to interpret that feeling in order to interpret or identify it. At this point in time, Roger has experienced which process(es)?
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Sensation
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The lowest level of a stimulus needed for the nervous system to detect a change half the time is called the
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just noticeable difference
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What is one take home message from the discussion of autism and facilitated communication?
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...
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Rona believes that women make better elementary school teachers than men because women are more nurturing and less legalistic. When you present her with data that indicate male teachers perform very well at the elementary level, she tries to discredit the information. Rona is a victim of
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belief perseverance
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While listening to the radio, Mrs. Schwartz heard about a new product. "Swallow our capsule, and it will grow to 100 times its size! This keeps your stomach feeling full and decreases your appetite. You can lose up to 20 pounds in the first two weeks!" Which principle of critical thinking should Mrs. Schwartz use before ordering this magic pill?
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Remembering that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
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When assessing patients' personalities using an "ink blot" test that she created, Dr. Hardcastle is gaining confidence in the test's reliability. Which of the following is likely to be happening?
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...
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The ________ nervous system is composed of the brain and the spinal cord.
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central
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Bill was admitted to the hospital last week after he fell. When Bill's son visited, he found his father was unable to get words out in a smooth, connected fashion. If Bill's difficulty speaking is due to brain damage, what is the likely location of the damage?
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Broca's area
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Phineas Gage tragically had a tamping iron propelled through his head. Both left and right sides of the prefrontal cortex were severely damaged. As a result of the accident, Phineas Gage
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suffered a change in personality.
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Which of the following is the section of the brain located at the rear of each cerebral hemisphere and contains the visual centers of the brain?
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Occipital lobe
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As Joe walks to his car late at night, he hears footsteps behind him. Feeling afraid, Joe grips his keys and quickens his pace. It is likely that Joe's ________ has been activated
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amygdala
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