Midterm Exam — Cumulative (Weeks 1–7) · Objectives 1–5

Course: Introduction to Psychology (PSYC 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Bennett
Scope: Cumulative — Weeks 1–7, Objectives 1–5 (the science & perspectives · research methods & ethics · biological bases of behavior · sensation, perception & consciousness · learning & memory).
Format: 20 items, 100 points (5 each) · concept- and scenario-based (no arithmetic — that's the statistics course's job) · mixed item types (multiple-choice, matching, multiple-answer, true/false).
Points: 100 · Assignment group: Midterm (20% of the course grade) · Window: opens at the start of the Week 8 module; due 6 days later. The midterm replaces Week 8's quiz and assignment.

This is the human-readable exam with its vetted answer key and one-line feedback. The import-ready Classic QTI 1.2 is in L-midterm-week-08-qti.xml (generated by a validated Python script — parses with 20 items, every single-answer item exactly one correct). The item-bank/coverage note and the Canvas placement block are at the bottom of this file.

This is the live exam. Its paired ungraded rehearsal — O-practice-exam-week-08.md — mirrors this blueprint with fresh variants and shares none of these items.

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Blueprint (items → objective → source week)

Coverage is proportional to teaching time: Obj 1 = 3 · Obj 2 = 3 · Obj 3 = 3 · Obj 4 = 5 · Obj 5 = 6. No trick questions; every single-answer item has exactly one correct option; the matching item pairs one-to-one; the multiple-answer item lists every correct option.

#	Type	Concept	Objective	Week
1	Multiple choice	Definition of psychology (behavior + mental processes)	1	1
2	Matching	The six perspectives → core idea	1	1
3	Multiple choice	Structuralism vs. functionalism (Wundt 1879)	1	1
4	Multiple choice	Identify the independent & dependent variable	2	2
5	Multiple choice	Correlation ≠ causation / third variable	2	2
6	True / False	Random assignment vs. random sampling	2	2
7	Multiple choice	A neurotransmitter's role (serotonin)	3	3
8	Multiple choice	Brain structure → function (amygdala)	3	3
9	Multiple choice	Parasympathetic nervous system (rest-and-digest)	3	3
10	Multiple choice	Sensation vs. perception / transduction	4	4
11	Multiple choice	A Gestalt principle (closure)	4	4
12	Multiple choice	A sleep stage / REM feature	4	5
13	True / False	Tolerance vs. withdrawal	4	5
14	Multiple choice	Depressant vs. stimulant	4	5
15	Multiple choice	Classical conditioning — identify the CS	5	6
16	Multiple choice	Negative reinforcement ≠ punishment	5	6
17	Multiple choice	A schedule of reinforcement (fixed-interval)	5	6
18	Multiple choice	Observational learning (Bandura)	5	6
19	Multiple choice	The three-stage memory model / STM capacity	5	7
20	Multiple answer	Reconstructive memory / the misinformation effect	5	7

Objective totals: Obj 1 = 3 items (15 pts) · Obj 2 = 3 (15) · Obj 3 = 3 (15) · Obj 4 = 5 (25) · Obj 5 = 6 (30) → 20 items, 100 points.

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Questions, key, and feedback

Objective 1 — The Science of Psychology & Its Perspectives (Week 1)

Q1 (MC). A researcher records both how quickly volunteers press a button when a light flashes and what the volunteers report feeling while they wait. Studying both the observable button-press and the private feelings reflects psychology's definition as the —
- A. study of mental illness and its treatment
- B. scientific study of behavior and mental processes ✅
- C. study of the brain and nervous system only
- D. philosophy of how the mind ought to reason
Feedback: Psychology is the scientific study of behavior (the button-press, observable) and mental processes (the felt experience, internal). It covers both the outside and the inside. (A is one clinical corner; C is only the biological perspective.)

Q2 (Matching). Match each major perspective in psychology to its core idea.
| Perspective | Correct core idea |
|---|---|
| Biological | Behavior arises from brain activity, neurotransmitters, and genes |
| Behavioral | Behavior is learned through conditioning and shaped by the environment |
| Cognitive | Behavior is driven by how we take in, process, and store information |
| Psychodynamic | Behavior is driven by unconscious conflicts and early childhood experience |
Feedback: These are lenses, not rivals — the same behavior can be viewed through several. Watch the classic mix-ups: biological (inside the body) vs. behavioral (learned from the outside environment); cognitive (information processing) vs. psychodynamic (the unconscious).

Q3 (MC). Two early schools competed over what the new science should study. One used introspection to break consciousness into its basic elements; the other asked what mind and behavior are for — how they help us adapt. These two schools were, respectively —
- A. structuralism and functionalism ✅
- B. behaviorism and cognitivism
- C. functionalism and psychoanalysis
- D. humanism and structuralism
Feedback: Structuralism (Wundt/Titchener) used introspection to find the elements of consciousness; functionalism (William James) asked about the purpose — what mind is for. Wundt's 1879 Leipzig lab marks psychology's start as a formal science.

Objective 2 — Research Methods & Ethics (Week 2)

Q4 (MC). A sleep researcher tests whether a warm bath before bed helps people fall asleep faster. Half the volunteers take a warm bath one hour before bed; the other half take no bath. The researcher then records how many minutes each person takes to fall asleep. In this experiment, the independent variable and the dependent variable are, respectively —
- A. minutes to fall asleep; whether a bath was taken
- B. whether a warm bath was taken; minutes to fall asleep ✅
- C. the water temperature; the room temperature
- D. how tired the volunteers already were; the time of night
Feedback: The independent variable is what the researcher manipulates (the suspected cause — bath vs. no bath); the dependent variable is the outcome measured (minutes to fall asleep). "I manipulate the IV; I depend on the DV to see what happened."

Q5 (MC). A news story reports that towns with more libraries also tend to have longer average lifespans, and suggests that building libraries makes people live longer. What is the most defensible conclusion?
- A. Building libraries causes people to live longer.
- B. Living longer causes towns to build more libraries.
- C. The two are associated, but a third variable (such as town wealth) likely explains both ✅
- D. The two variables are unrelated.
Feedback: This is observational data, so it shows an association, not a cause. A third variable — for example, a town's wealth — could fund both more libraries and better healthcare. Correlation does not establish causation.

Q6 (True / False). Random assignment and random sampling do the same job: both make a study's sample represent the whole population.
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. Random sampling (who gets studied) makes a sample representative so results generalize; random assignment (who gets which treatment) balances the groups so a cause-and-effect claim is justified. Different jobs — generalizing vs. causation.

Objective 3 — Biological Bases of Behavior (Week 3)

Q7 (MC). A physician is considering a medication that raises the available level of a neurotransmitter closely linked to mood, sleep, and appetite, and whose low activity is associated with depression. Which neurotransmitter fits this description?
- A. Dopamine
- B. Serotonin ✅
- C. Acetylcholine
- D. GABA
Feedback: Serotonin is most associated with mood, sleep, and appetite, and low activity is linked to depression (the target of many antidepressants). Don't swap it with dopamine (reward, movement, Parkinson's). (Acetylcholine handles muscle action and memory; GABA is the calming brake.)

Q8 (MC). A person sees a snake on a hiking trail and feels an instant jolt of fear before they have even consciously identified the shape. Which brain structure is most responsible for this rapid fear response?
- A. The hippocampus
- B. The cerebellum
- C. The amygdala ✅
- D. The medulla
Feedback: The amygdala is the brain's rapid fear/threat detector. Don't confuse it with the hippocampus (forming new memories), the cerebellum (balance and coordination), or the medulla (heartbeat and breathing).

Q9 (MC). After a frightening near-miss while driving, a person slowly calms down: their heart rate drops back to normal, breathing slows, and digestion resumes. Which branch of the nervous system produces this "rest-and-digest" calming?
- A. The sympathetic nervous system
- B. The parasympathetic nervous system ✅
- C. The somatic nervous system
- D. The central nervous system
Feedback: The parasympathetic branch is the body's "brake" — it returns you to baseline (rest-and-digest) after arousal. Its partner, the sympathetic branch, is the "gas pedal" that produced the fight-or-flight surge in the first place.

Objective 4 — Sensation, Perception & Consciousness (Weeks 4–5)

Q10 (MC). Sound waves enter your ear and make tiny hair cells fire, sending neural signals toward the brain — and then you recognize the pattern as your favorite song. The first step (hair cells converting sound-wave energy into neural signals) is best described as —
- A. perception
- B. transduction ✅
- C. a perceptual set
- D. top-down processing
Feedback: Transduction is the conversion of physical energy (sound waves) into neural signals the brain can use — the bridge from sensation to perception. Recognizing the song is the later, interpretive (perception) step. (C and D are interpretation phenomena, not the energy-conversion step.)

Q11 (MC). You glance at a logo made of a few disconnected arcs and dots, yet your brain automatically "fills in" the gaps and sees a complete circle. This illustrates which Gestalt principle?
- A. Figure-ground
- B. Proximity
- C. Closure ✅
- D. Similarity
Feedback: Closure is the brain's tendency to fill in gaps to perceive a complete, whole object. (Figure-ground separates an object from its background; proximity groups things that are near each other; similarity groups things that look alike.)

Q12 (MC). A sleeper's brain waves look almost like those of someone awake, their eyes dart rapidly beneath closed lids, and they are in the middle of a vivid, story-like dream. Which stage of sleep is this?
- A. NREM-1 (the light doorway into sleep)
- B. NREM-3 (deep slow-wave sleep)
- C. REM sleep ✅
- D. The circadian rhythm
Feedback: REM (rapid eye movement) sleep features an active, awake-like brain, darting eyes, and vivid dreaming — sometimes called "paradoxical sleep" because the brain is busy while the body's voluntary muscles are essentially paralyzed. (NREM-3 is the deepest slow-wave stage; the circadian rhythm is the ~24-hour clock, not a stage.)

Q13 (True / False). A coffee drinker who once felt alert after one cup now needs three cups to feel the same alertness. This change — needing more of a substance over time to get the same effect — is called withdrawal.
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. Needing more over time for the same effect is tolerance. Withdrawal is the set of unpleasant symptoms that appear when a dependent person stops using a substance. Keep the trio apart: tolerance (need more), dependence (rely on it), withdrawal (symptoms on stopping).

Q14 (MC). A substance slows down the central nervous system — slowing reactions, lowering inhibitions, and at higher doses producing sedation. This describes which drug category, and which is an example?
- A. A depressant, such as alcohol ✅
- B. A stimulant, such as caffeine
- C. A hallucinogen, such as LSD
- D. A stimulant, such as cocaine
Feedback: A depressant slows the nervous system; alcohol is the classic example. Sort drugs by direction: depressants slow, stimulants (caffeine, cocaine) speed up, hallucinogens distort perception. Alcohol's early "buzz" is lowered inhibition, not stimulation.

Objective 5 — Learning & Memory (Weeks 6–7)

Q15 (MC). A dog hears an electric can opener every time its food is served. After many pairings, the dog now runs to its bowl and drools the instant it hears the can opener — before any food appears. In this example, the can-opener sound is the —
- A. unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
- B. unconditioned response (UCR)
- C. conditioned stimulus (CS) ✅
- D. conditioned response (CR)
Feedback: The can-opener sound started neutral and triggers drooling only after being paired with food — that makes it the conditioned stimulus (CS). The food (which causes drooling automatically) is the UCS; the drooling to the sound is the conditioned response (CR).

Q16 (MC). Every morning a commuter's car beeps loudly until the seatbelt is fastened; to stop the beeping, the commuter now buckles up immediately, and over time buckles up faster and faster. The increase in buckling is best explained as —
- A. positive punishment
- B. negative punishment
- C. negative reinforcement ✅
- D. extinction
Feedback: This is the classic trap. The behavior (buckling) increases, so it must be reinforcement, not punishment — apply the test: did the behavior go up? Yes. And the increase comes from removing something aversive (the beeping), which makes it negative reinforcement.

Q17 (MC). A worker is paid every two weeks like clockwork, regardless of how much they produce in between. Their effort tends to dip right after payday and rise as the next payday approaches. This pattern is produced by which schedule of reinforcement?
- A. variable-ratio
- B. fixed-ratio
- C. fixed-interval ✅
- D. variable-interval
Feedback: Reinforcement here depends on a fixed amount of time (every two weeks) → fixed-interval, which produces the telltale "scalloped" pattern: effort sags after reinforcement and climbs as the next scheduled reward nears. (Ratio schedules depend on the number of responses, not the clock.)

Q18 (MC). A toddler watches an older sibling stomp loudly up the stairs, and later — with no one encouraging or rewarding the toddler — imitates the stomping exactly. This best demonstrates the kind of learning that Albert Bandura studied with his Bobo doll experiments, namely —
- A. classical conditioning
- B. negative reinforcement
- C. observational learning ✅
- D. spontaneous recovery
Feedback: The toddler learned by watching a model and imitating, with no direct reinforcement to themselves — that is observational learning (Bandura). (Watching the model get rewarded or punished would be vicarious reinforcement.)

Q19 (MC). A friend reads you a 9-digit confirmation code once, and you try to hold it in mind just long enough to type it. You manage about the first 7 digits before the rest slip away. The store that briefly held those digits, with its famous capacity of about 7 (give or take 2) items, is —
- A. sensory memory
- B. short-term memory ✅
- C. long-term memory
- D. procedural memory
Feedback: Short-term memory holds about 7±2 items (George Miller's "magic number") for only ~20–30 seconds without rehearsal — which is why the tail of a long code slips away. (Sensory memory is the split-second trace; long-term memory has effectively unlimited capacity.)

Q20 (Multiple answer — select all that apply). After a minor traffic accident, witnesses are questioned, and some are asked leading questions. Based on what research on reconstructive memory and the misinformation effect shows, select all statements that are true.
- A. Memory is reconstructed each time it is recalled, not replayed like a recording ✅
- B. Misleading information introduced after an event can alter how a witness remembers it ✅
- C. A vividly detailed, confidently held memory is therefore guaranteed to be accurate
- D. The wording of a question (e.g., "smashed" vs. "hit") can change a witness's later report ✅
- E. Once stored, a long-term memory is permanently fixed and cannot be edited
Feedback: Memory is reconstructive (A), so post-event misinformation can reshape it (B), and even a single word in a question can move a later report (D) — the misinformation effect (Loftus). Confidence does not guarantee accuracy (C is false), and stored memories are not permanently fixed (E is false).

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Answer key (quick reference)

Q	Answer	Q	Answer
1	B	11	C (closure)
2	Biological→brain/genes / Behavioral→conditioning / Cognitive→information processing / Psychodynamic→unconscious & early childhood	12	C (REM)
3	A (structuralism & functionalism)	13	False (it's tolerance)
4	B	14	A (depressant — alcohol)
5	C	15	C (CS)
6	False	16	C (negative reinforcement)
7	B (serotonin)	17	C (fixed-interval)
8	C (amygdala)	18	C (observational learning)
9	B (parasympathetic)	19	B (short-term memory)
10	B (transduction)	20	A, B, D

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Quality gate (H5 — self-checked)

• Structure: 20 items, 5 points each, 100 points total; coverage Obj 1 = 3 · Obj 2 = 3 · Obj 3 = 3 · Obj 4 = 5 · Obj 5 = 6 matches the shared blueprint exactly.
• Single-answer integrity: every multiple-choice and true/false item (Q1, Q3–Q19) has exactly one correct option; the matching item (Q2) pairs all four perspectives one-to-one; the multiple-answer item (Q20) keys A, B, D (and requires C and E to be left unselected).
• No arithmetic: psychology is conceptual; all items test concepts, studies, and terms (no computation to mis-key), consistent with the course's discipline-fit note.
• Factual accuracy: real psychologists (Wundt, James, Pavlov, Miller, Bandura, Loftus) named factually; every neurotransmitter/structure/disorder link is stated as an association; no claim falls outside the Weeks 1–7 course definitions.
• QTI parse confirmation: L-midterm-week-08-qti.xml parses as imsqti_xmlv1p2 with 20 items; every single-answer respcondition sets SCORE = 100 on exactly one option; the matching item's four partial-credit blocks sum to 100; the multiple-answer item requires the exact A/B/D set.
• Integrity vs. the practice exam: 0 items are shared with O-practice-exam-week-08.md (verified by full stem-plus-options comparison; the maximum overlap is a same-concept slot filled by a different scenario).
• Freshness vs. the weekly quizzes: every scenario is a new variant — different contexts from the Week 1–7 quiz items (e.g., classical conditioning here uses a can opener, not the Week-6 white coat; the misinformation item uses a traffic accident witness scenario distinct from the Week-7 wording).

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Item-bank & coverage note

All 20 items are fresh variants assembled from the Week 1–7 item banks (changed scenarios and contexts to reduce answer-sharing with the weekly quizzes), tagged course=PSYC1 · exam=midterm · weeks=1–7 · objectives=1–5 and deposited back into the banks for future per-term ($39) regenerations:

Objective	Drawn from banks	Items
1	Week 1 (The Science of Psychology)	Q1–Q3
2	Week 2 (Research Methods & Ethics)	Q4–Q6
3	Week 3 (Biological Bases of Behavior)	Q7–Q9
4	Weeks 4–5 (Sensation & Perception; Consciousness)	Q10–Q14
5	Weeks 6–7 (Learning; Memory)	Q15–Q20

Each term's update regenerates fresh midterm variants from these same banks; the paired practice exam is regenerated alongside and continues to share none of the live items.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object             = Quizzes::Quiz
title                     = "Midterm Exam — Cumulative (Weeks 1–7)"
assignment_group          = "Midterm"
points_possible           = 100
grading_type              = points
available_from_offset_days = 0        # opens at the start of the Week 8 module
due_offset_days           = 6        # 6 days after module start
published                 = true
allowed_attempts          = 1
shuffle_answers           = true
provenance                = "~ Prof. Bennett's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"