Introduction to General Psychology Notes for Test 1

Test 1 1) Debates as to whether the excessive use of alcohol is biologically determined or culturally influenced are most relevant to the issue of nature and nurture. 2) Understanding why the fear of darkness may have contributed to the survival of our human ancestors is most relevant to the evolutionary perspective. 3) After the horror of 9/11, many people said the American government should obviously have foreseen the likelihood of this form of terrorism. This perception most clearly illustrates hindsight bias. 4) Stacey suggests that because children are more impulsive than adults, they will have more difficulty controlling their anger. Stacey’s prediction regarding anger management is an example of a hypothesis. 5) Which method offers the most reliable way of assessing whether athletic performance is boosted by drinking soda with caffeine in it? The experiment 6) In an experimental study of the extent to which mental alertness is inhibited by sleep deprivation, mental alertness would be the dependent variable. 7) The “Marshmellow Test” was performed to see whether children who can delay gratification: D. all of the above 8) If you are a victim of pluralistic ignorance, you may not raise your hand in class because you assume you’re the only one who doesn’t understand the topic. 9) The “Full Moon Effect” has been shown to be nonexistent, based on hundreds of studies. 10) The Framingham Heart Study, which looked for causes of heart disease is an example of a longitudinal study. 11) Subliminal messages, examined in the 1950s were believed to encourage people to buy and do things without their realization about why they were doing it. 12) Rats that are given lots of stimulation in the form of socializing and lots of “toys” to play with were found to have enriched brain cells. 13) Repeating the essence of a previous research study to verify whether its findings extend to a new group of research participants and to different circumstances is called replication. 14) The Peppered Moth changed color to match its surroundings. 15) Phineas Gage, a Vermont railroad worker who had an accident that destroyed his left eye and part of his frontal lobe, experienced a dramatic change in his personality. 16) In class, we watched two videos about patients who had split-brain surgery. After the surgery both A and B. 17) Charles Darwin famously discovered that the same type of finch in the Galapagos Islands developed different beak types depending on all of the above. 18) The reason that one gender is more likely to inherit a sex-linked trait is because all of the above. 19) Surveys indicate that people are less likely to support “welfare” than “aid to the needy.” These somewhat paradoxical survey results best illustrate the importance of wording effects. 20) It’s possible for a set of identical twins to include a boy and a girl in the same set. False 21) The cells that serve as the basic building blocks of the body’s information system are called neurons. 22) The slowdown of neural communication in multiple sclerosis results from the degeneration of the myelin sheath. 23) A descriptive technique of monitoring and recording behavior in naturally occurring situations without trying to change or control the situation is called naturalistic observation. 24) For a survey, you need to establish a group of people who represent your country’s entire adult population. To do this, you will need a question a random sample of the population. 25) Brain scans indicate that well-practiced pianists have a larger-than-usual auditory cortex area that encodes piano sounds. This best illustrates the impact of plasticity. 26) A study finds that the more childbirth training classes women attend, the less pain medication they require during childbirth. This finding can be stated as a negative correlation. 27) Research with split-brain patients suggests that the left cerebral hemisphere typically constructs the theories people offer to explain their own behaviors. 28) If you know a correlation in a study, you have discovered a casual relationship. False 29) Following massive damage to his frontal lobes, Phineas Gage was most strikingly debilitated by irritability. 30) To test the effect of a new drug on depression, we randomly assign people to control and experimental group. Those in the control group take a pill that contains no medication. This pill is a placebo. 31) Testing hypotheses and refining theories in light of those tests is central to the scientific method. 32) The 23rd pair of chromosomes in humans determine your gender and most sex-linked traits if you’re male. 33) The frontal cortex, the part of your brain that is largely responsible for your ability to make decisions that involve risk, isn’t typically fully mature until about 25 years of age. 34) In class, we saw a video about a little girl who had Rasmussen syndrome (a type of epilepsy), and had most of her right hemisphere removed. The results was/were all of the above. 35) In the Achieve section entitled, “How Would You Know if you're Right-Brained or Left-Brained?” you got to be the “experimenter.” 36) If an individual’s right cerebral hemisphere is completely destroyed by disease, that person is unable to see anything in his or her left field of vision. 37) In the Achieve section for Chapter 2, a young woman named Michelle was an experimental subject. In this experiment she was blindfolded to stimulate blindness. 38) The above experiment lasted for Monday to Friday. 39) The same experiment showed that all of the above. 40) In class, I demonstrated an unscientific finding: people in the art (singers, painters) had higher left eyebrows, indicating stronger right hemispheres. 41) For evolution to take place, two things are usually necessary: time and reproductive ability. 42) In class, our five brave volunteers did an unscientific study to demonstrate that they would look to the left if they had a “right hemisphere” question. 43) The following topics all have one thing in common: smoking and lung cancer, passive smoking and lung cancer at work, homework, and academic achievement. They all have positive correlations. 44) “Joe,” who was a “split-brain patient,” suffered from untreatable epilepsy. 45) When “Joe” was shown two parts of the word “heart,” he had difficulty saying what the word was because he had both A and B are correct. 46) The following topics all have one thing in common: condom use and sexually transmitted HIV, exposure to lead and IQ scores in children, self-examination, and extent of breast cancer: they all have negative correlation. 47) In general, the left hemisphere has the functions of talking, math, and analytical thinking. 48) In general, the right hemisphere has the functions of nonverbal, spatial, and holistic thinking. 49) In class, I talked about the most predictive factor in a study done in Korea about the use of birth control, and it found it was the number of electrical appliances in the home. 50) What was the above study actually was able to conclude was that the users of birth control were more likely to be educated.