Midterm Practice Exam

A parent explains why a child keeps whining in the checkout line by pointing to the candy that whining has earned there before. Which of the course's perspectives explains behavior this way?

Select one.

• The psychodynamic perspective
• The cognitive perspective
• The behavioral perspective
• The biological perspective

At a crosswalk, a pedestrian sees the walk signal change, recalls that this signal is a short one, decides to hurry, and steps off the curb. Which part of this sequence is a behavior rather than a mental process?

Select one.

• Seeing that the walk signal has changed
• Recalling that the signal is a short one
• Choosing to hurry across before it ends
• Stepping off the curb into the crosswalk

A cyclist swerves to miss a car door that suddenly opens: her breathing quickens and her pupils widen. Ten minutes later, resting on a bench, her breathing settles and digestion resumes. Which autonomic divisions acted, in that order?

Select one.

• Sympathetic, then parasympathetic
• Parasympathetic, then sympathetic
• Somatic, then autonomic
• Peripheral, then central

A lab director tells her team to drop all questions about thoughts and feelings and to record only the actions their animals perform and the rewards or penalties those actions bring. Which school of psychology is she following?

Select one.

• Functionalism
• Structuralism
• Behaviorism
• The humanistic movement

A methods class is asked to find the testable predictions, meaning statements specific enough that collected data could prove them false. Which statements qualify? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Most people feel better when life is going well.
• Shoppers who are offered a free sample at the door will spend more on average than shoppers who are not offered one.
• Human nature is shaped by many different forces.
• Commuters who listen to calm music on the drive home will report lower stress ratings on arrival than commuters who drive in silence.

In a sleep lab, a volunteer who fell asleep about an hour and a half ago now shows darting eyes, brain waves that look almost like waking, and limp voluntary muscles. Which stage has begun?

Select one.

• Deep slow-wave sleep
• Light sleep at the very start of the night
• The first REM period of the night
• The stage marked by sleep spindles

A driving-simulator demonstration (illustrative numbers constructed for this course, not real data) timed how long one volunteer took to press the brake after a hazard appeared, over nine runs, in milliseconds: 455, 512, 438, 497, 610, 470, 529, 446, and 583. What is the median braking time across the nine runs, in milliseconds? Enter the number only.

Type a short answer.

True or false: a neuron that is not currently firing holds a resting potential in which the inside of the cell is negatively charged relative to the fluid outside it.

True or false.

• True
• False

Illustrative data from 14 students pair the minutes they spent on a phone in bed with the hours they slept that night; r = −0.8273. Which conclusion does this correlational study support?

Select one.

• Phone use in bed caused the students to sleep less
• In this sample, more phone time in bed was associated with less sleep
• About 82.73 percent of each student's lost sleep came from the phone use
• Phone time and sleep were unrelated in this sample

A man dozing on a commuter train sleeps through the conductor's routine announcements but wakes when the name of his own station is called. Which statement best fits how this course describes consciousness?

Select one.

• Consciousness is an on-off switch that sleep turns all the way off
• Awareness runs along a continuum, and the sleeping brain stays active
• Consciousness exists only while a person is able to speak and to answer questions
• Consciousness stops during sleep and comes back only in dreams

George Miller's classic paper on the limits of immediate memory estimated how many items short-term memory typically holds. Written as a range, what span did he estimate?

Select one.

• From about 5 to 9 items
• From about 3 to 5 chunks
• From about 15 to 30 items
• An unlimited number of items

In an illustrative study of how feedback affects mood, 60 participants took a personality test and 38 of them were shown a falsely negative score. Under today's research ethics rules, what must follow a deception like this?

Select one.

• A follow-up session that gives the same false score a second time
• A questionnaire asking whether participants enjoyed the session
• Debriefing that reveals the study's real aim and the false score
• Publication of every participant's name next to their fake test result

In an illustrative study, teenagers were randomly assigned to watch either a video of a peer cheating at a game or a video of a peer playing fairly, and the researchers then counted how often each teenager cheated when given the chance. What was the independent variable (IV)?

Select one.

• How often the teenager cheated afterward
• Which video the teenager watched
• Whether the teenager was rewarded for cheating
• How many games were available in the room

Ebbinghaus (1885), measuring memory as percent savings on relearning, saved 58.2% after 19 minutes, 35.8% after 8.8 hours, 33.7% after 1 day, 27.8% after 2 days, and 21.1% after 31 days. Which description of the curve fits these numbers?

Select one.

• Retention fell at a steady, even rate from the first hour to the last month
• Retention fell steeply in the first hours, then leveled off over the month
• Retention fell slowly at first and then dropped sharply near the end
• Retention reached zero by 31 days, so none of the learning was left

A researcher randomly assigns 80 volunteers to read a product review printed either in all capital letters or in normal type, then records how trustworthy each volunteer rates the review on a scale from 1 to 7. Which labels are correct?

Select one.

• The IV is the trust rating, and the DV is the typeface of the review
• The IV is the typeface of the review, and the DV is the trust rating
• The IV is the product being reviewed, and the DV is the typeface
• There is no IV or DV, because both variables are only measured

True or false: because brain scans show only some areas lighting up during any single task, people use only a small fraction of their brains overall.

True or false.

• True
• False

True or false: in B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning, a voluntary action such as raising a hand in class becomes more or less frequent depending on what happens right after it.

True or false.

• True
• False

Adding one paperback to an empty backpack is easy to feel, but adding the same paperback to a backpack already packed with heavy textbooks goes unnoticed. Which statement of Weber's law explains this?

Select one.

• The difference threshold is a set amount of change, whatever the starting weight
• The absolute threshold for weight is the same in every situation
• Sensory adaptation makes every added weight harder to notice
• The difference threshold is a constant proportion of the starting weight

A health class reviews what different substances do to the body. Which statements about psychoactive drugs are accurate? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Nicotine is a stimulant that speeds up the nervous system
• Withdrawal is the set of unpleasant symptoms that follows stopping a drug
• Tolerance means a smaller dose produces a stronger effect over time
• Alcohol is a depressant, even though a first drink can make someone chatty
• Caffeine is a depressant because it can calm some people down

For 15 adults, illustrative data pair the hours per week they spend exercising with their resting heart rate, and r = −0.9061. How would you describe this correlation?

Select one.

• Negative and strong: one measure tends to fall as the other rises
• Positive and strong: the two measures tend to rise together
• Negative and weak: the two measures barely move in opposite directions
• Near zero: there is little linear association between them

In a well-known illusion, two tabletops drawn at different angles have exactly the same shape and size, yet one looks long and narrow and the other looks nearly square. What does this show?

Select one.

• The retina records the tabletops at different sizes, and the brain reports this faithfully
• Sensation and perception are one and the same process
• The rods are responding to the drawing in place of the cones
• Perception is built by the brain rather than copied from the stimulus

Which pairings of a neurotransmitter with an associated function match what this course teaches? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Glutamate is the main excitatory transmitter and is involved in learning
• Dopamine is the main inhibitory transmitter that calms the brain
• GABA is the main inhibitory, calming transmitter
• Endorphins are associated with pain relief and pleasure
• Acetylcholine is associated mainly with appetite and mood

In the classic Little Albert study, researchers paired a white rat with a sudden loud noise until a baby feared the rat. Which reasons explain why a review board would not approve that study now? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• The researchers compared two variables with a correlation
• Deliberately frightening the baby violates protection from harm
• The study used random assignment, which is no longer permitted
• A baby cannot give informed consent to participate

A light tap on your shoulder and a hard shove both push a touch neuron in your skin past threshold. How does that neuron signal that the shove is the stronger stimulus?

Select one.

• It sends each action potential at a larger size for the shove
• It fires action potentials more often each second
• It fires without needing to reach threshold
• Its resting potential climbs above zero

True or false: once a claim about human behavior sounds like something everyone already knew, it can be accepted as fact without collecting any data.

True or false.

• True
• False