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Week 8 · Midterm study guide

Midterm Exam — Study Guide

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

Coverage — what the midterm covers

The midterm is cumulative over Weeks 1–7. It opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. There is no time limit, and you get one attempt. The questions appear one at a time, and you cannot go back once you move on.

Format: 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Eighteen ask you to pick one option, five ask you to judge a statement as true or false, and two ask you to pick every option that applies. You will not need a calculator, because any number a question uses is given in the question.

What is in scope, with the number of midterm questions on each course objective:

Midterm coverage by course objective: the weeks that teach it, its main skills, and its number of questions out of 25
Course objective Weeks Main skills Questions
Psychology as a science 1, used again in 2 Behavior and mental processes; Wundt and the early schools; the six perspectives and the biopsychosocial model; hindsight bias; theory and hypothesis; a measurement's mean and median 2
Research methods and ethics 2, used again in 3 Operational definitions; descriptive, correlational, and experimental designs; reading r; third variables and directionality; random sampling and random assignment; reliability and validity; research ethics 4
Biological bases of behavior 3, used again in 4, 5, and 7 The neuron and the action potential; the synapse and neurotransmitters; the divisions of the nervous system; brain structures and lobes; the brain behind sensing, sleep, and memory 6
Sensation, perception, and consciousness 4–5 Sensation and perception; thresholds and Weber's law; adaptation; the eye and ear; Gestalt principles and depth cues; the circadian rhythm; sleep stages; dream theories; drug families 7
Learning and memory 6–7 Classical and operant conditioning; schedules of reinforcement; observational learning; the three-stage model; encoding strategies; memory types; forgetting; reconstructive memory 6

Sensation, perception, and consciousness carry the most questions, and the biological bases and learning and memory are close behind, so put the most review time there. Week 8's "how do we know?" checklist is not scored on its own, but it runs on the Week 2 ideas the midterm does check, so practicing it is good review.

Topic-by-topic review

Each topic gives the key idea in plain words, the course's own definitions, the mistake students make most often, and its cure. The deeper review for every topic is that week's chapter, lecture page, and slide deck.

Week 1 — The science of psychology

  • Key idea: psychology asks "how do we know?" about people, and it answers with evidence rather than with what feels true.
  • Definitions: psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Behavior is anything a person or animal does that someone else could observe and record. Mental processes are the inner experiences that cannot be watched directly, such as thinking, remembering, feeling, and perceiving, which psychologists infer from behavior.
  • History: Wilhelm Wundt opened his laboratory at Leipzig in 1879, used introspection, and timed reactions. Edward Titchener built structuralism, which broke conscious experience into its basic elements. William James led functionalism, which asked what mental processes are for. Then came Freud's psychoanalysis, behaviorism (Watson, then Skinner), the humanistic movement (Maslow and Rogers), and the cognitive and biological eras.
  • Course example: the nine-trial reaction-time sample (illustrative, not real data) totals 2,971 ms, so its mean is x̄ = 2,971 ⁄ 9 = 330.1111 ms. Its median is 312 ms, and its range is 401 − 275 = 126 ms. Two slow trials, 388 ms and 401 ms, pull the mean above the median.
  • Six perspectives: biological (brain, body, hormones, genes), psychodynamic (motives a person may not be aware of), behavioral (rewards and consequences), cognitive (what a person notices, expects, and believes), humanistic (growth and choices), and sociocultural (other people, groups, and culture). The biopsychosocial model holds the biological, psychological, and social levels of analysis together.
  • Science habits: empiricism tests claims against gathered evidence. Hindsight bias is the feeling of having known it all along. A theory is a broad explanation already backed by evidence; a hypothesis is a specific prediction stated precisely enough that data could show it to be wrong.
  • Predictable mistake → cure: "common sense already explains people." Common sense explains everything after the fact and predicts nothing before it. Cure: ask what the claim would have predicted before the result was known, then check the evidence.

Week 2 — Research methods and ethics

  • Key idea: the design decides the claim. Ask three questions about any finding: what design produced it, what that design may conclude, and what third variable could explain it.
  • Definitions: an operational definition is the exact, observable procedure a researcher uses to measure a construct. Descriptive research (case study, naturalistic observation, survey) describes behavior but cannot show its cause. A correlational study measures two variables as they occur and reports r; nothing is manipulated, so it has no independent or dependent variable. In an experiment, the researcher manipulates the independent variable (IV), measures the dependent variable (DV), and uses random assignment so that a difference between the groups can be traced to the manipulation.
  • Reading r: r runs from −1 to +1. Its sign gives the direction and its size gives the strength, and r is never a percentage. For the course's sleep and quiz-score data (illustrative), r = 0.8457: positive and strong. In this sample, students who slept more tended to score higher.
  • Why correlation is not causation: the third-variable problem (a student who slept more may also have finished studying earlier) and the directionality problem (a good study day may have made sleep easier).
  • Course examples: Ebbinghaus (1885) operationally defined memory as percent savings, which fell from 58.2% to 21.1%, a drop of 58.2 − 21.1 = 37.1 percentage points. In Loftus and Palmer (1974), the verb was the IV and the speed estimate the DV: "smashed" averaged 40.8 mph and "contacted" 31.8 mph, a gap of 9.0 mph.
  • Two random procedures: random sampling decides who is studied and supports generalizing to the population. Random assignment decides who gets which condition and supports a cause.
  • Measures: reliability is consistency; validity is whether a measure captures what it claims to. A measure can be reliable without being valid.
  • Ethics: Milgram (1963) reported that 65% of participants (26 of 40) continued to the 450-volt switch, believing the shocks were real. Today's rules require informed consent, the right to withdraw, protection from harm, deception only when justified and followed by debriefing, confidentiality, and approval by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) before a study begins.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) correlation read as causation. Cure: name a third variable and a reversed arrow before you trust the claim. (2) random sampling and random assignment swapped. Cure: sampling answers "who is in the study?"; assignment answers "who gets which condition?" (3) "the IV is the important variable." Cure: the IV is the one the researcher changes, and the DV is the one the researcher measures.

Week 3 — Biological bases of behavior

  • Key idea: behavior lives in a chain of cells and chemical messages, and biology is described with "associated with," never "causes."
  • The neuron: dendrites receive, the soma adds up incoming signals, the axon carries the impulse, the myelin sheath insulates it and makes it travel faster, and the terminal buttons release neurotransmitter molecules.
  • The impulse: a resting neuron sits at its resting potential of about −70 mV. Input that reaches the threshold fires an action potential, which is all-or-none. A brief refractory period follows. A stronger stimulus changes how often the neuron fires, not how big each impulse is.
  • The synapse: neurons do not touch. Neurotransmitters cross the gap, and reuptake clears it.
  • Neurotransmitters: each one goes with several functions rather than causing any one of them. Acetylcholine goes with muscle contraction, attention, and memory; dopamine with reward, motivation, learning, and movement; serotonin with mood, sleep, and appetite. GABA is the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter, making receiving neurons less likely to fire, and it is linked to calming. Glutamate is the brain's main excitatory neurotransmitter, making them more likely to fire, and it is involved in learning and memory. Endorphins are natural chemical messengers linked to pain relief and pleasure.
  • The nervous system: the central nervous system (CNS) is the brain and spinal cord; the peripheral nervous system (PNS) is every nerve outside them. The PNS splits into the somatic branch (senses and voluntary movement) and the autonomic branch (organs and glands). The autonomic branch splits into the sympathetic division (fight-or-flight) and the parasympathetic division (rest-and-digest).
  • The brain: medulla (breathing and heart rate), cerebellum (movement, balance, motor skills), thalamus (relay station), hypothalamus (hunger, thirst, temperature, hormones), amygdala (fear and emotional memory), hippocampus (forming new declarative memories). The frontal lobe plans and decides, the parietal lobe processes touch and body position, the temporal lobe handles hearing, language, and memory, and the occipital lobe processes vision.
  • How do we know? The case of H.M. (Scoville & Milner, 1957) tied the hippocampus to forming new memories. A single case can suggest a link, but it cannot show that the result fits everyone. Neuroplasticity is the brain's lifelong ability to rewire, and the "10 percent of the brain" claim is a myth.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) dopamine and serotonin swapped. Cure: dopamine goes with reward and movement; serotonin goes with mood and sleep. (2) "a stronger stimulus makes a bigger action potential." Cure: all-or-none; only the firing rate changes. (3) "serotonin causes depression." Cure: write "associated with"; the evidence links serotonin to mood without making it the single cause of a condition a person lives with.

Week 4 — Sensation and perception

  • Key idea: sensing is detection, and perceiving is construction.
  • Definitions: sensation is receptors detecting physical energy and turning it into neural signals; perception is the brain organizing and interpreting those signals. Transduction is that conversion of energy into neural signals. Bottom-up processing builds from the features of the stimulus; top-down processing is shaped by what you already know or expect.
  • Thresholds: the absolute threshold is the weakest stimulus detected 50 percent of the time. Galanter (1962) illustrated it with a candle flame about 30 miles away on a clear, dark night and a clock ticking about 20 feet away in a quiet room. The difference threshold, or just noticeable difference (JND), is the smallest change detected 50 percent of the time. Weber's law says the difference threshold is a constant proportion of the original stimulus, not a fixed amount.
  • Sensory adaptation is the decline in sensitivity to a stimulus that does not change.
  • The eye and ear: light passes the cornea, the pupil and iris, and the lens to the retina. Rods work in dim light and carry no color; cones give color and fine detail. The occipital lobe processes vision. Sound waves reach the hair cells of the inner ear, which transduce them.
  • Organizing: the Gestalt principles are figure-ground, proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity. Binocular depth cues need both eyes; monocular depth cues work with one eye. Perceptual constancy and illusions show that perception is constructed rather than copied.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) absolute and difference thresholds conflated. Cure: nothing-to-something is absolute; a change in something already present is a difference threshold. (2) "rods see color." Cure: cones do. (3) "we see the world as it is." Cure: point to a constancy or an illusion as the evidence that the brain builds what you see.

Week 5 — Consciousness

  • Key idea: consciousness is awareness of yourself and your surroundings, on a continuum from alert to asleep, and the brain is never "off."
  • The body clock: the circadian rhythm repeats about every 24 hours. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) receives light information from the eyes and keeps the rhythm in step, and melatonin rises when light falls and helps start sleep.
  • One night: NREM-1 (light, drifting), NREM-2 (sleep spindles), NREM-3 (deep, slow-wave sleep), and REM sleep (darting eyes, wake-like brain activity, voluntary muscles paralyzed, the most vivid dreams). The first REM period arrives about 90 minutes after falling asleep, and the cycle repeats. NREM-3 is the deepest sleep; REM is the most brain-active.
  • What sleep is for: memory consolidation, and most adults need about 7 to 9 hours a night.
  • Course example: in the sleep and quiz-score data (illustrative), the 3 students who slept under 7 hours averaged 37 ÷ 3 ≈ 12.3 out of 20. The 7 who slept 7 to 9 hours averaged 110 ÷ 7 ≈ 15.7. This is a correlational study, so it earns "associated with" and nothing stronger.
  • Dream theories: Freud's wish-fulfillment theory splits manifest content (the remembered story) from latent content (the hidden wish). The activation-synthesis hypothesis says the brain builds a story from largely random activity during REM sleep. The information-processing view treats dreaming as sorting and storing the day's experiences.
  • Drug families: depressants such as alcohol slow the nervous system, stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine speed it up, and hallucinogens distort perception. Tolerance means a larger dose is needed for the same effect; dependence is a physical or psychological need for the drug; withdrawal is the unpleasant symptoms that follow stopping it.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) "REM is the deepest sleep." Cure: NREM-3 is deepest; REM is the most brain-active. (2) "alcohol is a stimulant." Cure: it is a depressant, whatever the first half-hour feels like. (3) "dreams only happen in REM." Cure: most vivid dreams do, and some dreaming happens in NREM sleep too.

Week 6 — Learning

  • Key idea: learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior that comes from experience. You learn by pairing, by consequences, and by watching.
  • Classical conditioning (first studied by Pavlov): a neutral stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), which already triggers an unconditioned response (UCR), becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) that triggers a conditioned response (CR) on its own. The response is involuntary.
  • Changes to the link: acquisition is the link forming, and extinction is the CR fading when the CS keeps arriving without the UCS. Spontaneous recovery is the CR returning after a rest. Generalization is a similar stimulus triggering the CR, and discrimination is responding only to the CS.
  • Ethics case: Watson and Rayner (1920) conditioned fear in the infant known as Little Albert. An infant cannot give informed consent, and creating fear on purpose fails the protection-from-harm standard.
  • Operant conditioning (developed by Skinner): consequences change how often a voluntary behavior happens. Positive means something is added and negative means something is removed; neither means good or bad. Reinforcement makes a behavior more likely, and punishment makes it less likely.
  • Shaping reinforces successive approximations of a target behavior. The four partial schedules of reinforcement are fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, and variable-interval; variable-ratio produces the highest and most extinction-resistant response rates.
  • Observational learning: in Bandura's Bobo doll study (1961), children who watched an adult attack an inflatable doll were more likely to act aggressively toward it. Seeing a model rewarded is vicarious reinforcement; seeing a model punished is vicarious punishment.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) negative reinforcement called punishment. Cure: ask "did the behavior go up or down?" Up is reinforcement, even when something was removed. (2) the CS and UCS swapped. Cure: the UCS works with no learning; the CS only works after pairing. (3) "positive" read as "good." Cure: say "added" out loud instead.

Week 7 — Memory

  • Key idea: memory is three processes in order, encoding, storage, and retrieval, and forgetting is a failure at any one of them.
  • The three-stage model: sensory memory holds a near-copy for a second or two. Short-term memory holds about 7 ± 2 items, Miller's (1956) "magical number seven," for about 15 to 30 seconds without rehearsal. Long-term memory is a relatively permanent store. Peterson and Peterson (1959) found recall of a letter trio of about 80% after 3 seconds and about 10% after 18 seconds when rehearsal was blocked.
  • Working memory is the active workspace where you hold and manipulate information; Cowan (2010) put its capacity at about 4 ± 1 chunks, or 3 to 5. Chunking groups items into meaningful units so more fits.
  • Encoding that sticks: deep processing (meaning), elaborative rehearsal (linking to what you know), chunking, and the spacing effect all beat rote repetition and cramming.
  • Memory types: explicit (declarative) memory includes episodic memory for personal events and semantic memory for facts. Implicit (nondeclarative) memory includes procedural memory for skills.
  • Forgetting: Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve fell from 58.2% at 19 minutes to 44.2% at 63 minutes, a drop of 58.2 − 44.2 = 14.0 points in the first hour, then flattened. Forgetting comes from encoding failure, retrieval failure, proactive interference (old learning blocks new), and retroactive interference (new learning blocks old).
  • Reconstruction: recall rebuilds a memory rather than replaying it. In Loftus and Palmer (1974), a week later 32% of the "smashed" group (16 of 50) reported broken glass that was never in the film, against 14% for "hit" and 12% for the control group. That is the misinformation effect, and it is why confidence, even in a flashbulb memory, is not accuracy.
  • Brain callback: the hippocampus forms new explicit memories, the amygdala strengthens emotional ones, and the cerebellum supports procedural learning.
  • Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) proactive and retroactive interference reversed. Cure: pro means forward, so old learning reaches forward to block the new. (2) short-term memory inflated to "hours." Cure: about 15 to 30 seconds without rehearsal. (3) "a vivid, confident memory is an accurate one." Cure: remember the broken glass that was never there.

Representative practice

These are fresh variants, not the midterm's questions. Work each worked example yourself first, then compare your steps. Every number below is computed and checked in advance.

Worked example — measuring a mental process (Week 1)

At a library open house, nine visitors play a word game. A string of letters flashes, and each visitor presses a key as soon as they decide whether it is a real word. Their times, in milliseconds (illustrative numbers made up for this guide, not real data): 480, 512, 495, 530, 468, 505, 760, 521, and 499.

  • Behavior or mental process? The key press is behavior, because anyone could watch and record it. Deciding whether the letters form a word is a mental process, inferred from the timing.
  • Mean: the times add to 4,770 ms, so x̄ = 4,770 ⁄ 9 = 530 ms.
  • Median: sorted, the times are 468, 480, 495, 499, 505, 512, 521, 530, 760, so the median is the 5th value, 505 ms.
  • Range: 760 − 468 = 292 ms.
  • Reading: the mean, 530 ms, sits above the median, 505 ms, because one slow trial of 760 ms pulls the mean up.

Why it matters: the median is the better picture of a typical visitor here, which is the same reading the course gave Wundt-style reaction times.

Worked example — six lenses on one behavior (Week 1)

A college student volunteers at a food bank every weekend. Here is the same behavior through all six perspectives:

  • Biological: helping may be associated with a lift in mood involving the brain's reward system.
  • Psychodynamic: a motive the student is not fully aware of, such as wanting to repay help their family once received.
  • Behavioral: past thanks and smiles from the people in line have rewarded showing up.
  • Cognitive: the student believes small actions add up and expects each shift to matter.
  • Humanistic: volunteering fits the person the student wants to become.
  • Sociocultural: the student's community treats helping neighbors as normal.

Why it matters: the biopsychosocial model holds these together across three levels: biological (body and brain), psychological (thoughts, feelings, learning), and social (family, friends, culture).

Worked example — run the three questions on two headlines (Week 2)

Headline 1: "Daily reminders make people practice more." A language-learning app randomly assigns 200 new users to two groups of 100. One group gets a daily reminder and the other gets none, and the app records minutes practiced over the next month.

  • What design? An experiment. The IV is the reminder (on or off); the DV is minutes practiced.
  • What may it conclude? Because chance decided who got reminders, a difference in practice can be traced to the reminders. A causal claim fits.
  • Who does it speak for? The 200 were new users of one app, not a random sample of all language learners, so the claim stays with users like them. Random assignment earns the cause; random sampling would be needed to generalize widely.

Headline 2: "Gardening makes people calm." A community garden asks its 30 volunteers how many hours they gardened last month and how calm they feel on a scale from 1 to 10. Suppose r comes out at about 0.45 (an illustrative value).

  • What design? A correlational study. Nothing was manipulated, so there is no IV or DV.
  • What may it conclude? r is positive, so hours and calm rise together, and about 0.45 is a moderate association. In this sample, volunteers who gardened more tended to rate themselves calmer. Nothing stronger fits.
  • What else could explain it? A third variable: volunteers with lighter work schedules may garden more and feel calmer. Directionality: calmer people may choose to spend more time gardening. To test a cause, you would randomly assign people to garden or not.

A measure check. An online quiz claims to measure leadership. It gives you the same score every time you take it, but its scores do not match how people actually lead teams. It is reliable (consistent) but not valid (it does not capture leadership).

Worked example — trace one signal (Week 3)

Walking barefoot on a beach, you step on a sharp shell and lift your foot before you think.

  1. At rest: the sensory neuron in your sole sits at its resting potential of about −70 mV.
  2. Receive and combine: its dendrites respond to the pressure, and the soma adds up the signals.
  3. Fire: the input passes threshold, so the neuron fires an all-or-none action potential. A sharper shell makes it fire more often each second, not with bigger impulses.
  4. Travel and cross: the impulse runs down the myelinated axon to the terminal buttons, which release neurotransmitter across the synapse; reuptake clears the gap.
  5. Pull back: in the spinal cord, part of the CNS, the message passes to motor neurons of the somatic nervous system, which signal your leg muscles with acetylcholine. Your foot lifts.
  6. Alarm, then calm: the sympathetic division speeds your heart; a few minutes later the parasympathetic division slows it.
  7. Brain: the thalamus relays the message, the parietal lobe registers the touch and where it landed, the amygdala flags the scare, the cerebellum keeps your balance on one foot, and the hippocampus helps store the episode ("wear sandals").

Why it matters: every station is a Week 3 term, and each later week (seeing, sleeping, remembering) reuses part of this chain.

Worked example — thresholds at a reading lamp (Week 4)

You turn a dimmer lamp up from off in a dark bedroom.

  • Absolute threshold: the faintest glow you detect on half of your tries. It goes from nothing to something.
  • Difference threshold (JND): with the lamp already glowing, the smallest extra turn you notice on half of your tries.
  • Weber's law: when the lamp is already bright, that same small turn goes unnoticed. The change you need is a constant proportion of the starting brightness, so twice the brightness needs twice the change.
  • Rods and cones: in the faint glow, the colors on a book cover look gray, because rods do the work in dim light and carry no color. Cones need brighter light.
  • Sensation and perception: the rods transduce light into neural signals (sensation); recognizing the book as your own is perception.
  • Adaptation, a separate idea: the steady hum of a fan in the room fades from notice even though it never got quieter.

Why it matters: "first notice" and "notice a change" are two different measurements, each with the same 50 percent rule behind it.

Worked example — one night at summer camp (Week 5)

A camp counselor falls asleep 15 minutes after lights-out, and the wake-up bell rings 6.5 hours after the counselor falls asleep.

  • First REM period: about 90 minutes after falling asleep, so about 15 + 90 = 105 minutes after lights-out.
  • The order of a cycle: NREM-1, then NREM-2 with its sleep spindles, then NREM-3, the deepest sleep, then REM; the cycle repeats.
  • Sleep need: 6.5 hours falls short of the low end of the 7-to-9-hour adult range by 7 − 6.5 = 0.5 hour.
  • Body clock: after a week of early bells and morning sun, the SCN keeps the counselor's rhythm in step with camp's light-dark cycle, and melatonin rises in the evening as light falls.
  • Dreams: the counselor dreams of losing a camper on a hike. Freud would call that story the manifest content and look for a hidden wish, the latent content. Activation-synthesis says the brain built the story from largely random REM activity. The information-processing view says the brain was sorting the day's worries about safety.
  • Drug families: an iced coffee at breakfast is caffeine, a stimulant. A glass of wine at dinner on a day off is alcohol, a depressant, even if it feels relaxing at first.

Why it matters: "about 90 minutes," "about 7 to 9 hours," and "about 24 hours" are the course's pinned sleep numbers, and each one is reasoned with here, not memorized alone.

Worked example — label the learning (Week 6)

  • Pairing: a person gets a stomach bug that starts right after eating tacos. Now the smell of tacos alone brings queasiness. The bug is the UCS and the nausea it brings is the UCR. The taco smell, once neutral, is now the CS, and queasiness at the smell is the CR. The response is involuntary, so this is classical conditioning. Eating tacos many times without getting sick would fade the queasiness (extinction); a burrito's similar smell bringing it on is generalization.
  • Consequences: a car's chime stops the moment you buckle up, and you buckle up faster: something unpleasant is removed and the behavior increases, so it is negative reinforcement. A library late fee takes money away, and you return books late less often: something valued is removed and the behavior decreases, so it is negative punishment. A coworker's sharp remark follows your interrupting, and you interrupt less: something unpleasant is added and the behavior decreases, so it is positive punishment. A tutor praises a student's question, and the student asks more: positive reinforcement.
  • Schedules: a sales bonus after every 5 cars sold is fixed-ratio. An allowance paid every 7 days is fixed-interval. Checking the porch for a package that arrives at unpredictable times is variable-interval. A scratch-off ticket that pays after an unpredictable number of purchases is variable-ratio.
  • Watching: a teen learns to change a bike tire from a video and then sees a friend praised for doing the same. Learning from the video is observational learning, and the praise the friend gets is vicarious reinforcement.

Why it matters: two questions sort every case: is the response involuntary or voluntary, and what was added or removed?

Worked example — memory at a cafe counter (Week 7)

  • Chunking: the cafe's Wi-Fi password is 12 characters long. Held as 12 single characters, it is more than Miller's upper limit of 7 + 2 = 9 items and Cowan's upper limit of 4 + 1 = 5 chunks. Held as three groups of 4, it is 3 chunks, inside Cowan's range of 3 to 5.
  • Interference: a barista learns this season's new menu prices but keeps ringing up last season's prices. Old learning is blocking new, so that is proactive interference. Later, the barista cannot recall last season's prices at all: new learning blocking old is retroactive interference.
  • Encoding: linking a regular's name to their usual order is elaborative rehearsal, and it beats repeating the name over and over.
  • Memory types: remembering the morning the cafe first opened is episodic memory; knowing what goes into a latte is semantic memory.
  • Reconstruction: a customer who saw a tray fall is asked, "How big was the puddle when the tray crashed?" The wording can make the customer later remember a bigger mess than there was, and feeling sure does not make it accurate.

Why it matters: the same three processes, encoding, storage, and retrieval, explain each case.

Self-check questions

Try each one, then read the check and the one-line why.

  1. After a local team wins its championship, a fan says, "I knew all season they would win." Which course idea fits? Check: hindsight bias. Why: knowing the outcome makes it feel as if it had been predictable all along.
  2. A researcher asks how worry helps people prepare for real dangers. Which early school asked questions like this? Check: functionalism, led by William James. Why: functionalism asks what mental processes are for.
  3. A radio host invites listeners to text in their opinions, and 2,000 do. Can the host generalize to every adult in the city? Check: no. Why: listeners chose themselves, so this is not random sampling, and 2,000 replies do not fix that.
  4. A supplement ad says, "GABA causes calm." How would the course rewrite it? Check: "GABA is associated with calming." Why: GABA is the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter, and the course writes biology with "associated with," never "causes."
  5. A row of evenly spaced dots bends in a smooth curve. Why do you see one curving line rather than separate dots changing direction? Check: continuity. Why: the brain sees lines and patterns as continuing smoothly in one direction.
  6. A student now needs two cups of coffee to feel what one cup used to do. Which term fits? Check: tolerance. Why: a larger dose is needed for the same effect.
  7. After weeks of no likes, a person posts photos less and less often. Which change to a learned behavior is this? Check: extinction. Why: the behavior is no longer reinforced, so it fades.
  8. Remembering the evening you got your driver's license, versus knowing how many days are in a leap year. Which memory type is each? Check: episodic, then semantic. Why: one is a personal event tied to a time and place; the other is a fact.

Check yourself — choose one. Write two or three sentences to a friend.

  • (a) Explain why the community garden survey cannot show that gardening causes calm, and what study could.
  • (b) Explain why the seatbelt chime is negative reinforcement and not punishment.

Either one rehearses an explain-why skill the midterm checks.

Watch before the exam

These four videos come from the course's Readings & Resources pages for Weeks 1 to 8, and every one has captions. Use them to review and to connect weeks, not to learn anything new.

Study plan

A short countdown for a course that meets twice a week. Count back from the day you plan to sit the midterm.

  • Two weeks out: as you finish Week 6, start a one-page list of the course's paired distinctions, such as IV and DV, rods and cones, and negative reinforcement and punishment. Add to it each week.
  • One week out: as you finish Week 7, reread the topic reviews above for Weeks 1 to 3, the weeks furthest back.
  • At the start of Week 8: take the practice exam once, cold and closed-note. Note which objectives cost you the most.
  • Before the first class meeting of Week 8: reread the topic reviews for your weakest two objectives. Redo the matching worked examples from scratch, without looking.
  • Between the two class meetings: run the paired exam-prep tutorial (the copy-and-paste chatbot tutor) for active recall. Tell it which areas the practice exam exposed.
  • The day before you sit the midterm: retake the practice exam, explain every miss out loud, and work the self-check questions above.
  • Right before: skim the "predictable mistake → cure" lines for all seven weeks. Then stop studying.

This guide is for review. The exam-prep tutorial and the practice exam are where you rehearse. Pulling ideas back out of memory, not rereading, is what makes them stick, and spreading that practice over several days is the Week 7 spacing effect at work.

Exam format

Every one of the 25 questions counts the same, and the midterm checks your own understanding without AI. The questions come one at a time, and there is no going back, so settle each one before you move on.

Test-taking strategies for this material:

  • Name the design before you judge the claim. For any cause-and-effect wording, ask first whether anything was manipulated and assigned at random.
  • Read "associated with" as a signal. A biology or correlation question that says "causes" is often the trap.
  • Ask "added or removed?" and then "up or down?" Those two questions sort all four operant consequences.
  • Find the stimulus that worked before any learning. That is the UCS; the CS only works after pairing.
  • Say "nothing to something" or "a change in something." That splits the absolute threshold from the difference threshold.
  • Match a structure to its job, not its neighbor. The hippocampus forms new memories; the amygdala handles fear; the cerebellum handles balance and skills.
  • For a "select every option" question, judge each statement on its own, as if it were a true-or-false question.

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