Examination — Foundations of Psychology

1.Two people disagree about whether a full night's sleep improves memory. What turns this from a matter of opinion into a scientific question?

2.A researcher tests whether background music affects reading speed. Half of the group reads in silence, half with music, and everything else is kept the same. What is the independent variable?

3.Across the year, ice-cream sales and drowning deaths rise and fall together. What is the soundest conclusion?

4.Before a modern memory experiment begins, people are told what will happen, agree to take part, and are free to stop at any moment. This set of protections is called:

5.In one sentence, explain why Milgram's original obedience study would not be approved by an ethics board today.

6.A neuron receives a jolt just past its threshold, and then a much stronger jolt. How do the two impulses it sends compare in size?

7.Put these events in the order a signal actually travels through and out of a neuron, from first to last.

1. ⋮⋮The axon carries the impulse toward the terminals ↑ ↓
2. ⋮⋮Dendrites receive signals from other neurons ↑ ↓
3. ⋮⋮Neurotransmitters cross the synaptic gap to the next cell ↑ ↓
4. ⋮⋮The cell body sums the incoming signals ↑ ↓

8.A patient understands speech perfectly but, after damage to one frontal region, can no longer produce fluent sentences. Historically, cases like this let researchers conclude that:

9.A car swerves toward you. Within a second your heart races; over the next minutes a slower hormonal wave sustains the alarm. Which pairing names the two waves correctly?

10.Absorbed in a phone call, you walk right past a friend who is waving at you. Light from your friend clearly reached your eyes. What does this best illustrate?

11.Sketch how the percentage of a fresh word list you can still recall changes over the seven days after you finish studying it. Commit the curve in pencil first.

12.After watching a video of a car crash, people asked how fast the cars "smashed" together later recall broken glass that was never in the film. What does this reveal about memory?

13.After seeing vivid news coverage of a shark attack, many people rate ocean swimming as more dangerous than the drive to the beach, though the drive kills far more people each year. Which thinking shortcut is at work?

14.Given a candle, a box of tacks, and matches, people struggle to fix the candle to the wall because they see the tack box only as a container, never as a small shelf. This block is called:

15.In Pavlov's setup, a bell is rung just before food is placed in a dog's mouth. Match each element to its correct term.

16.A slot machine pays out after an unpredictable number of pulls. Players keep pulling at a high, steady rate that stubbornly resists quitting. Which schedule of reinforcement explains this?

17.Your heart pounds as you meet someone new. Whether you read that pounding as attraction or as nerves depends on how you interpret it. Which account of emotion does this fit?

18.A nine-month-old watches you hide a toy under a blanket and then does not reach for it, as if it has ceased to exist. In Piaget's terms, the infant has not yet acquired:

19.Without looking back: name the five broad dimensions of the Big Five model, and state the one idea that keeps traits from fully predicting what a person does.

20.A pattern of thought or behavior is most likely to be judged a psychological disorder when it:

21.A driver cuts you off. You think "what a reckless person," not "he may be rushing to an emergency." Naming his character while ignoring his circumstances is: