Section 1
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The median is a better measure of central tendency than the mean for which of the following distributions?
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Cards (119)
Section 1
(50 cards)
The median is a better measure of central tendency than the mean for which of the following distributions?
10, 12, 13, 14, 106
A researcher would be most likely to find a negative correlation between _______ and _______.
shyness; party attendance
Xander has taken a medication that is an endorphin antagonist. Which side effect is most likely?
Increased pain sensitivity
According to the social brain hypothesis, each of us can deal effectively with social interactions with roughly 150 people. This implies that
We are capable of maintaining social networks of up to 150 people throughout our lives
Whether depression levels are truly lower in a treatment group than in a control group is assessed by determining the _______ of the difference in scores between groups.
statistical significance
What is the primary difference between a hypothesis and a theory?
A theory is a collection of data-based hypotheses
A patient has a dangerously low heart rate and is having difficulty breathing. The neurotransmitter that would be most helpful to him is
norepinephrine
A researcher testing a new medication for attention deficit disorder randomly assigns half of the participants to get the actual medication and half to get a sugar pill. Neither the researcher nor the participants know who is getting what. This study design will
Reduce unconscious bias
Which statement reflects a reasonable attitude for a good student of psychology to have toward any claim about human behavior?
Skepticism is advisable until an idea is proven right
What is a mainstream psychologist most likely to think about Sigmund Freud?
Freudian theory is untestable and not grounded in science
Which of the following is a myth of psychology?
Heritable traits, such as IQ, cannot be altered by experience
Which approach would be most appropriate for testing the hypothesis that taking practice tests improves learning more than studying alone does?
Experimental research
A professor wanted to learn more about the body image concerns of young teenage girls. She randomly selected 200 girls from local middle schools to complete her questionnaire. These girls were
A representative sample
A research team was investigating the impact of stereotypes on performance. In one group, women read a magazine article about why the structure of men's brains makes them better at math. In the second group, women read a magazine article saying there are no biological differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women. All women in the study then took a challenging math test. Researchers scored the number of items women answered correctly. In this study, which of the following was the dependent variable?
Women's scores on the math test
How is natural selection related to psychology?
Humans behave as they do in part because that behavior promotes survival
Which of the following approaches to psychology did Edward Titchener advocate in the late 1800s?
Structuralism
A self-report measure of the personality trait of agreeableness produces very similar scores each time the same person completes it. It is also strongly correlated with whether family members describe a person as friendly and cooperative. This measure appears to be
reliable and valid
Students _______ would be the most representative sample for a study of competitiveness in high school.
In a required health class
Which is the correct order of measures of central tendency, from lowest to highest, for a positively skewed distribution?
Mode, median, mean
You feel sick after eating leftovers you found in the back of the refrigerator. Occam's razor would favor the hypothesis that you have
food poisoning
A researcher presents his participant with a series of flashing lights at varying intervals. After each presentation of a light, he asks the participant to fully describe her internal experiences, a method known as
Introspection
Which neurotransmitter would you be most likely to find in the synaptic cleft between a motor neuron and a muscle?
Acetylcholine
Cognitive Psychology
Sensory input-->Participant processing information-->report, press button, etc.
In an analysis testing differences between an experimental and a control group on the dependent variable, a p-value of 0.07 means there is a
7 percent chance that differences between the two samples are due to chance alone
The idea that children are born with no knowledge or "content" whatsoever and are "filled" by life experiences is called
Tabula rasa
An unethical experimenter wants to test the relationship between discomfort and aggression. On a hot day, she turns off the air conditioning in one dorm and leaves it on in another, then has her research assistants count occurrences of verbal aggression in common areas of the buildings. Students in the air-conditioned dorm would be the _______, and students in the overheated dorm would be the _______.
control group; experimental group
Which of these correlations has the least predictive value?
+0.10
The mind and behavior
Psychology is best defined as the study of
A news organization wanted to predict who would win the next U.S. presidential election. They sent an opinion poll to every fifteenth person on a list of students enrolled at a nearby college. Which of the following is the study population?
Students at this particular college
"Green is the prettiest color" is a _______ hypothesis because it is _______.
poor; not testable
A correlation of −0.80 between meditation and anxiety symptoms would indicate
meditation predicts lower levels of anxiety
To identify the most popular exhibits at a science museum, visitors were asked every day for six weeks to rate how much they enjoyed each exhibit. The data were analyzed to look for age and sex differences in exhibit preferences. This was an example of
Survey research
A quarter in your hand casts a different image on your retina than a quarter taped to the wall across the room, yet you know that the quarters have exactly the same dimensions. This phenomenon would be best explained by a
Gestalt psychologist
The key purpose of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to
determine whether a proposed study is ethical
When the U.S. Supreme Court was deliberating on whether to require schools to integrate black children and white children, their decision to strike down laws permitting segregated schools was greatly influenced by the "Doll Test," conducted by
Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark
The action potential of a neuron is best compared to
a heavier bowling ball knocking down more pins than a lighter ball does
The year 1879 might be thought of as the beginning of psychology as a science because that is the year
Wilhelm Wundt developed and opened the first psychology laboratory
Following a head injury, Maria experienced a dramatic personality change. She now gambles heavily, swears and yells at work, and has difficulty planning ahead. She most likely experienced damage to her
prefrontal cortex
You take a job selling magazine subscriptions from home because the recruitment video says the average earnings per employee are $90,000 a year. You work 60 hours a week for a year and earn $30,000. An Internet search reveals that hundreds of people have had the same experience with this and other work-at-home schemes. How can companies legitimately claim that the average salary is $90,000 if most employees make less than $30,000?
The mean salary reflects the presence of outliers
Which type of neuron is most common in the brain?
Interneuron
On an empathy questionnaire, Group 1 had a mean score of 117 with a standard deviation of 14. Group 2 had a mean score of 96 with a standard deviation of 23. Therefore, _______ scored higher on average and their scores were _______ spread out than scores from _______.
Group 1; less; Group 2
The study of the nervous system is called
neuroscience
Dopamine is most directly involved in
signaling pleasure
In Plato's cave allegory, a prisoner was temporarily unchained and allowed to see the fire at the mouth of the cave. When he returned to the chains, the other prisoners
refused to believe him
A depressed teenager treated with medication begins feeling better immediately, even though the medication typically takes weeks to work. This is an example of a _______ effect.
Placebo
Which statement about vesicles is accurate?
They empty neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft
Which of the following perspectives argues that human behavior develops in certain ways because it serves a useful purpose?
Functionalism
The sensation of a fly landing on your arm is weaker than the sensation of being hit with a dodgeball because
the dodgeball triggers more action potentials per second from each sensory neuron
In experimental research, which of the following variables is controlled by the researcher?
Independent
Your uncle tells you about an interesting magazine article explaining that humans use only 10 percent of their brains. As a student of psychology, your response should be:
"Well, research actually shows that almost all of the brain is continually active."
Section 2
(50 cards)
Neural development begins with rapid division of nerve cells in a process called
neurogenesis
Frontal Lobe
During neural development, the nervous system generates more cells than it ultimately needs. Over half of the extra cells
Die though a natural process before birth
Kobe, a native English speaker, has moved to Germany and is learning to speak German. Which brain region is likely to show the greatest plasticity?
Temporal lobe
Twin studies of the heritability of schizophrenia generally show that
the heritability of schizophrenia is about 50 percent
After being diagnosed with thyroid cancer, Kaela had her thyroid removed. The effects of this are likely to include
changes in metabolism
Dizygotic twins
grow from separate zygotes
What is the key difference between twin studies and adoption studies?
In adoption studies, twins are separated at birth, adopted, and raised apart
A neuron with _______ would be expected to have the slowest-moving action potential.
an unmyelinated, thin axon
How do gene mutations contribute to evolution?
Natural selection favors beneficial mutations, so they survive and are passed on to future generations
In the experiment with dull and bright rats, Cooper and Zubek demonstrated a gene—environment interaction by showing that when navigating the maze
dull rats raised in enriched environments eventually performed as well as bright rats
After a skydiving accident, an MRI showed damage to Rose's cerebellum. She is most likely to have difficulty with
practicing yoga
To prove that electrical stimulation can produce intense feelings of anxiety, the mad scientist would stimulate his victim's
amygdala
The fusion of your father's sperm and your mother's egg is referred to as
fertilization
Parietal Lobe
Which statement best describes a valid gene—environment interaction on behavior?
Identical twins adopted by different families often display behaviors typical of their adoptive families
Temporal Lobe
Before the mechanisms behind PKU were known to science, infants that inherited the genes for the disorder almost always
Developed mental impairments
Twins who do not share 100 percent of their genes are called
dizygotic
Which confounding variable is teased out when psychologists study the traits of identical twins?
Similar environments shared by relatives
Twins who share a certain physical or behavioral trait are _______ for that trait.
concordant
Any substance that can potentially harm the fetus during birth is called a
teratogen
Which statement regarding brain development is true?
Children's brains are much more plastic than adults' brains
In cases where only one of two identical twins develops schizophrenia, all of the following factors may be responsible except
Birth order
Schizophrenia most often presents itself at what stage?
Early adulthood, when people begin to face the world on their own
Vision researchers have shown that a person will fail to develop visual perception abilities if light does not stimulate the eye early in development. This is evidence of _______ during development.
sensitive periods
The process by which a cell directs a gene to make a certain protein is called
Gene Expression
Epigenetics is most concerned with
the expression of a particular gene as influenced by external inputs
In the final stages of synaptogenesis, neurons
grow dendrites and axons
Occipital Lobe
A doctor needs a brain imaging technique that shows brain structure but not brain function. Which technique should the doctor choose?
Computed tomography (CT)
What do studies of maternal nurturing behavior in rats suggest about humans?
Maternal neglect early in life may have lasting impacts on a person's ability to cope with life's challenges
Each of our _______ consists of tightly coiled DNA.
Chromosomes
Which situation is most consistent with the results of twin studies of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia is more likely to materialize in a twin who experiences extreme stress
Which single gene effect do men display more often than women?
The inability to distinguish red from green
After her stroke, Mei was able to hear, smell, and taste normally. However, she had difficulty with her vision. She most likely experienced damage to her
occipital lobe
A researcher plans to study changes in patients' brain activity as Alzheimer's disease progresses by detecting changes in blood flow and oxygen content. The appropriate brain imaging technique to use is
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Heritability estimates tell us
the degree to which variations in a population can be attributed to genetics
Why are dominant, yet harmful, alleles like the huntington's gene so rare in our genomes?
The carrier does not survive long enough to pass on the allele
Inhibitory synapses
hyperpolarize neurons
Neurotransmitters influence the polarization of a neuron by
causing receptor channels to open, allowing positively charged sodium ions to flow into the neuron
Computed tomography (CT) scans
show brain structures but not areas of brain activity
A technique that tracks blood flow to measure brain activity is
positron emission tomography (PET)
A scientist has inserted an electrode into the frontal lobe of a monkey. Electrical stimulation would most likely cause the monkey to
make a kicking motion
Genes regulate protein synthesis by
specifying which amino acids will be joined together, and in what order
A researcher would most likely use _______ to investigate which brain areas are active during speech.
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Even though your body changes and you develop new physical and behavioral characteristics, your _______ never changes.
genotype
The peripheral nervous system is divided into the _______ nervous system and the _______ nervous system.
somatic; autonomic.
The effects of PKU are epigenetic because
PKU is harmful only if a child ingests significant amounts of phenylalanine
One reason dysfunctional alleles can have such specific effects on the workings of our sensory systems is that
our sensory systems rely on the functioning of more than one protein
Section 3
(19 cards)