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Psych Test 2
GWU
135
Psychology
Undergraduate 3
10/05/2010
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Term
To discuss the difference between objects in the world and images on your retina, you have brought to class a large red ball and a cardboard circle painted the same color. In the demonstration, the ball will serve best as the ________ stimulus and the circle will serve best as the ________ stimulus.
 Definition
a. distal; proximal
Term
Thor has been given a new box of crayons. He draws a thick plus sign (+) with red for the horizontal line and blue for the vertical line. Thor notices that the overlap looks purple. He has just discovered the effects of
 Definition
c. subtractive color mixing.
Term
How could you make a green circle look greener?
 Definition
b. Look at a red circle before looking at the green circle.
Term
You hear someone call out “Help!” The shout arrives at your right ear shortly after your left ear. The source is likely to be
 Definition
a. off to your left.
Term
The volley principle suggests that
 Definition
a. several neurons firing in sequence could signal high-frequency sounds.
Term
You wash your new pair of blue jeans in bleach so that they have a faded look. The dimension of their color you have changed the most is ________.
 Definition
d. saturation
Term
If all the cones in your eyes stopped functioning, then you would
 Definition
a. no longer have color vision.
Term
You’ve been watching television for a while. It seems, over time, that the volume on the TV has been getting softer and softer. This impression may be a consequence of
 Definition
d. sensory adaptation.
Term
With your eyes closed, touch your finger to your nose. Your ________ sense allows you to succeed at this task.
 Definition
b. kinesthetic
Term
The ________ provides part of the link between the eardrum and the cochlea
 Definition
b. anvil
Term
In one experiment, participants did not notice relatively large changes between two arrays of familiar objects. What is one explanation for this result?
 Definition
d. The world itself is generally a stable source of information.
Term
You walk by a classroom and see a professor drawing a large rectangle on the blackboard. Next, he asks his class to tilt their heads about 45 degrees. It’s likely that he is making a point about ________ constancy.
 Definition
c. shape
Term
Lightness constancy works because the ________ of light reflected off an object remains about the same even as the ________ changes.
 Definition
a. percentage; absolute amount
Term
Erika is viewing a display that has a row of three red circles on top of a row of three green circles (all the circles are evenly spaced). Erika reports that she sees three columns, each with a red circle and a green circle. Call the perception police! Erika’s percept violates the Gestalt law of
 Definition
c. similarity.
Term
A friend asks you to close your eyes and then places an object in your hand. You can tell that it is in the shape of a cube, but not much else. The process of perception has been halted when you reached the stage of
 Definition
b. object recognition.
Term
Try this demonstration. Hold your pen or pencil as far away from your head as you can. Now keep your eyes focused on it as you bring it toward you. Can you feel the strain on your eye muscles? You have just experienced the way that ________ can be used as a cue to depth.
 Definition
d. convergence
Term
You are looking at a painting that consists of a circular canvas with a black circle painted in the middle. The name of the painting is “White Doughnut on Black Table.” Suppose the title were changed to “Black Disk on White Iceberg.” The black circle should now look ________ you.
 Definition
a. closer to
Term
Your friend Hiram believes that illusions are only things that psychologists make up to trick people in the classroom. To convince him otherwise, you ask him to think about why
 Definition
b. it looks like the moon is always chasing you.
Term
Dichotic listening tasks have often been used to study the extent to which
 Definition
c. unattended information is processed for meaning.
Term
Even though she reread her research paper three times, Selena still missed several typographical errors. This is best explained by
 Definition
c. percept.
Term
The children are at a walk-through science museum exhibit entitled “The Ear.” They are to act as vibrating air molecules entering the ear. What is the order in which they will encounter the structures listed below as they move through the ear?
 Definition
d. pinna, tympanic membrane, middle ear, cochlea
Term
By using light of various wavelengths, vision researchers have discovered that different cone cells are maximally responsive to
 Definition
b. blue, green, and red.
Term
While at the art museum, Juán learns a neat trick. If he stares at a painting for a few minutes, then looks away at a blank wall, he “sees” colors that are opposite to those in the original painting. Juán has discovered the
 Definition
d. negative afterimage.
Term
The value of the difference threshold is known as a
 Definition
a. just noticeable difference.
Term
Your uncle, recently arrived from South America, finds it difficult to distinguish the difference in sound between the word man and the word men. As far as he is concerned, the words sound the same, although you can detect a difference. The judgments that you and your uncle are making about these sounds are similar to that of a participant in a study of
 Definition
a. difference thresholds.
Term
Jeremy’s father is celebrating his 50th birthday. When he tries to read the card his son has given him, he jokes that his arms have gotten too short to be able to read without his glasses. In reality, his vision problem is most likely due to
 Definition
c. the loss of elasticity of the lens.
Term
The sense that tells us whether the elevator we are riding is going up or down is called the ________ sense.
 Definition
b. vestibular
Term
In signal detection theory, a “payoff matrix” is
 Definition
b. a reflection of anticipated gains and losses associated with a decision.
Term
Kim is confused about how external sensations, such as light, are changed to neural sensations by the brain to produce the experience of seeing. Once Kim learns about ________, she will have the answer to her question.
 Definition
d. transduction
Term
Herbie is a “yea sayer.” On a signal detection task, he is likely to be ________ on hits and ________ on false alarms.
 Definition
c. high; high
Term
Joyce stared at the lovely trees. Several different species were growing together, their branches intertwined and overlapped. However, the leaves of each variety could easily be seen as separate, somehow grouping themselves together. What Joyce is witnessing is the Gestalt law of
 Definition
c. similarity.
Term
When two stationary spots of light in different positions in the visual field are turned on and off alternately, it may seem like a single light is moving back and forth between the two spots. This effect is known as
 Definition
c. the phi phenomenon.
Term
You are still a novice when it comes to skiing, so when you find yourself heading for a tree, you fall to the side in order to avoid a potential collision. What mechanism allowed you to sense that the tree was getting closer and closer?
 Definition
b. The rate at which your retinal image of the tree expanded.
Term
Your psychology teacher asks students to break into small groups to discuss the relative merits of different theories of attention. As the groups begin their separate discussions, the room becomes quite noisy and you have a difficult time hearing the members of your own group. Suddenly, you hear your name being mentioned by someone in another group. The fact that you attended to your name has been called
 Definition
b. the cocktail party phenomenon.
Term
As you read this question, the words stand out against a backdrop. This illustrates the concept of
 Definition
a. figure and ground.
Term
Despite your reckless journey down the sidewalk on Roller blades, you see the world as stable even though there are dramatic changes in stimulation of your sensory systems. This is referred to as
 Definition
d. perceptual constancy.
Term
A friend’s 4-year-old daughter shows you a drawing she made in preschool. You have no idea what the picture shows until she says, “It’s a doggie!” At that point, you are able to see that the picture portrays a dog. This is an example of ________ processing.
 Definition
c. top-down
Term
You are watching children at play. One group is playing on the swings, a few feet away is another group on the slide, and removed from these two is a third group playing catch. Your tendency to see separate groups of children playing is explained by
 Definition
c. the law of proximity.
Term
You are taking a walk through a forest with your friend Ricardo. After 10 minutes, you emerge from the forest into bright sunlight. Despite the change in illumination, your white t-shirt looks equally as light to you inside and outside the forest. This is an example of
 Definition
d. lightness constancy.
Term
Courtney, a new mother, is typically a sound sleeper. Yet, when her newborn cries in the middle of the night, Courtney is the first to hear her. Courtney’s response is due to the presence of
 Definition
a. a percept.
Term
Norman has a strange picture of a woman on his wall. First, it looks as though it is a picture of a young woman, but as one stares at it, it suddenly looks as though it is a picture of an older woman. This important characteristic of ambiguous figures is known as
 Definition
b. an illusion.
Term
The fifth-grade teacher has his students engaged in a “treasure hunt.” He asks his students to look around in the room and find as quickly as possible the following objects: a red circle, an object that is soft that one can sit on it, anything colored yellow, and an object that can be used for holding a book but will also roll on the floor. Based on your reading of the information in the textbook, which of the objects is most likely to be found first?
 Definition
c. Any object colored yellow.
Term
Sensory evidence is the starting point for _____ processing.
 Definition
b. bottom-up
Term
Knowing that illusions exist, you can accurately conclude that
 Definition
a. perceptual systems are sometimes imperfect in recovering the distal stimulus from the proximal stimulus.
Term
Synthesis occurs in the ________ stage of perceptual processing.
 Definition
a. perceptual organization
Term
A person who practices meditation may minimize external stimulation with the goal of
 Definition
d. enhancing self-knowledge.
Term
According to Freud, which of the following would be an example of an unconscious process?
 Definition
b. You are afraid of rabbits, but do not know why.
Term
Each day that Paul shoots up with heroin, he needs a slightly bigger dose to get the same effect. This is a phenomenon called ________.
 Definition
d. tolerance
Term
Self-hypnosis is particularly valuable for controlling pain because patients can
 Definition
c. use the procedure whenever they need it.
Term
Which statement is true about patterns of hypnotizability in adulthood?
 Definition
d. People’s hypnotizability is relatively stable over time.
Term
You find it very difficult to tune out information that is not relevant to the immediate goals you are pursuing. You might be concerned that your consciousness is not serving its proper ________ function.
 Definition
a. restrictive
Term
Danielle believes that she may suffer from sleep apnea. How could you determine if she is correct?
 Definition
c. Monitor her breathing patterns during the night.
Term
A man is telling his friends about his hallucinations. How are his friends most likely to react?
 Definition
d. Their reaction will depend on the culture in which the man lives.
Term
Which of the following is NOT a function of consciousness? .
 Definition
d. categorizing stimuli
Term
Memories that are accessible to consciousness only after something calls your attention to them are known as ________ memories.
 Definition
b. preconscious
Term
Participants sometimes will incorrectly report that an individual is famous because they fail to remember that they had read the name on an earlier list. What lesson does this result provide about the functions of consciousness?
 Definition
d. Unconscious memories can influence conscious judgments.
Term
Carmen is mesmerized by the television documentary depicting the Holy Ghost people of Appalachia handling poisonous snakes and fire. She learns that these intensely religious people prepare for their participation in the “signs of the spirits” by
 Definition
b. listening to long sermons, singing, and dancing wildly.
Term
Flying east generally creates greater jet lag than flying west because your
 Definition
a. biological clock can be more readily extended than shortened.
Term
One feature of many non-Western approaches to dream interpretation is that dreams are believed
 Definition
a. to provide a vision of the future.
Term
For a research project, you are asked to wear an electronic pager. At random times during the day, the pager signals you to write down the most recent thoughts you were having. The research project is probably studying the ________ of consciousness.
 Definition
c. contents
Term
You tell your therapist that you had a dream in which “a bear growled at you in the woods and then chased you.” Your therapist tells you that you are concerned about being yelled at by your boss. This interpretation suggests that your therapist believes in the importance of the ________ content of dreams.
 Definition
c. latent
Term
Different drugs can affect the messages neurotransmitters send to the body: ________ decrease arousal; ________ increase arousal.
 Definition
c. barbiturates; amphetamines
Term
During a typical night you go through the sleep cycle about ________ times; you have the most REM sleep in the ________ cycles.
 Definition
b. four to six; late
Term
Olga claims to be a lucid dreamer, which means that she can
 Definition
c. control the content of her dreams.
Term
Right before you started to read this question, its answer was ________.
 Definition
a. a preconscious memory
Term
The chemicals in nicotine stimulate patterns in the brain which are similar to those activated when one is addicted to
 Definition
b. cocaine.
Term
Substances such as ________ and ________ tend to depress the body’s mental and physical activity.
 Definition
c. alcohol; barbiturates
Term
If you are a modern sleep researcher, your work has probably been most influenced by the
 Definition
a. invention of the EEG and the discovery of rapid eye movements.
Term
One day a friend confides in you that she has narcolepsy. You understand this to mean that she
 Definition
c. has a periodic compulsion to sleep during the daytime.
Term
Timothy “sees” nonexistent mice running up and down the building walls and “hears” voices speaking to him from his unplugged radio. Timothy is apparently experiencing
 Definition
b. hallucinations.
Term
Just for the fun of it, you have decided to keep a dream diary. Today, when you wake up, you remember a very long and interesting dream. It is most likely that this dream occurred
 Definition
b. shortly before you awakened.
Term
Which of the following procedures would be most likely to be a part of the SLIP technique?
 Definition
a. Asking participants to say a series of words.
Term
Professor Templin’s students are participating in a study in which they have to report what they are thinking about when a bell goes off at different times during the class. The research that Professor Templin’s students are participating in is using the ________ method.
 Definition
a. experience-sampling
Term
The use of mind-altering drugs
 Definition
c. can be traced to ancient times.
Term
Curtis is an anthropologist who is visiting a Mayan village in Guatemala in order to learn more about the Mayan Indians’ views on dreams. He will find out that
 Definition
d. Mayan mothers are curious about the dreams of their children and will ask them to recount their dreams.
Term
Hillary is participating in an experiment on pain reduction. Assuming Hillary is highly hypnotizable she will experience the most pain relief
 Definition
a. following the induction of hypnotic analgesia.
Term
The regulation of blood pressure, the beating of your heart, and the automatic process of breathing are all examples of
 Definition
b. nonconscious processes.
Term
How do we know when children have developed a sense of self? When they have
 Definition
d. consciousness of what they are doing and that they are doing it, and that others will react to those actions.
Term
Zoltan the Magnificent is sharing information with his pupil Voltan about using hypnosis as part of his stage act. Which of the following statements would be accurate information?
 Definition
c. More people have more low responses to hypnotic inductions than high responses.
Term
To explain the importance of the ________ function of consciousness, Stanley says, “Suppose you never threw out any junk mail? How cluttered would your home become?”
 Definition
d. selective storage
Term
One of the most important functions of REM sleep is maintenance of
 Definition
a. learning and memory
Term
Dee Dee is studying botany. She comes across a plant with psychoactive effects, whose active ingredient is THC. It can impair motor coordination and affects receptors common in the hippocampus. This psychoactive plant is probably a
 Definition
a. cannabis.
Term
Hal believes that the scientists of the future will be able to “create” androids that will have a sense of self. It can be inferred that the androids probably will
 Definition
b. experience consciousness.
Term
A man claims that he has terrible insomnia and hardly sleeps at all. The fact that his wife complains that his constant snoring disturbs her sleep suggests that the man’s condition is
 Definition
b. subjective insomnia.
Term
Max is playing the part of a hypnotized person in a school play. In order for the audience to believe that Max is hypnotized, he needs to communicate to them that he
 Definition
c. is in a state of heightened responsiveness.
Term
Which of the following is the sleep disorder in which the person stops breathing while asleep?
 Definition
c. sleep apnea
Term
Freud believed that memories that are too painful to remember are repressed, or put out of our awareness. According to Freud these memories go into the __________.
 Definition
b. unconscious
Term
Due to our circadian rhythms, our 24-25 hour biological clock, it is much easier to fly on a _________ flight because we can expect to experience less jet lag.
 Definition
b. westbound
Term
The _________ content of a dream conveys the deeper, hidden meaning according to Freud.
 Definition
a. latent
Term
All of the following are major psychoactive drug classifications EXCEPT:
 Definition
d. steroids
Term
Katie’s parents want her to stop screaming. She is warned that if she doesn’t stop screaming, she will not be allowed to have a slice of the chocolate cake she loves so much. What type of reinforcement contingency have Katie’s parents established?
 Definition
a. negative punishment
Term
Which statement might a person who espouses behavior analysis be most likely to make?
 Definition
c. I seek to identify the mechanisms that explain people’s actions in response to experience.
Term
In positive punishment, the probability of a response decreases over time when a stimulus is ________; in negative punishment; the probability of a response decreases over time when a stimulus is ________.
 Definition
b. presented; removed
Term
4. Gloria has just come from her doctor. The doctor has prescribed a drug that must be taken on a full stomach, but will inevitably make Gloria feel sick. Gloria, who is an expert on principles of learning, decides to have meatloaf for dinner. You would guess that meatloaf is
 Definition
c. not one of Gloria’s favorite foods.
Term
You go to the Rialto and watch a horror film that terrifies you. The next time a friend invites you to the movies, you are unwilling to set foot in the Rialto. In this situation, the Rialto is the ________, and your fear response is the ________.
 Definition
b. CS; CR
Term
You would like to train your new puppy using the Response Deprivation Theory (Premack principle). To get started, you should determine
 Definition
a. which behaviors are low- and high-probability.
Term
You are watching an experiment in which a rabbit’s eye blink is being classically conditioned. In the procedure, a tone sounds followed shortly by a puff of air to the eye. However, you notice that the air puff follows a 100-Hz tone but not a 120-Hz tone. It’s likely that the rabbit is undergoing ________ training.
 Definition
d. discrimination
Term
You hear on the news that a famous rock star has died of a heroin overdose. Apparently, he shot up twice every day. What other piece of information may have been an important part of the story?
 Definition
b. He was shooting up for the first time in his new home.
Term
Using classical conditioning, you have trained a rat that a bell predicts an electric shock. You now would like the rat to learn that a light also predicts the shock. In a long series of trials, you provide it with the sequence bell—light—shock. The outcome of this training is likely to be that the rat responds
 Definition
b. only to the bell.
Term
Shirlee works as an animal trainer for a circus. She is about to try training a ferret for the first time. She has spent the last few days at the library reading up on ferrets’ innate behavior patterns. Shirlee is trying to avoid problems with
 Definition
a. instinctual drift.
Term
You are conducting an experiment in which dogs receive electric shocks and produce fear responses. The whole time the experiment is going on, a loud fan is keeping the room cool. The next time the dogs are brought into the room, will the sound of the fan elicit a fear response?
 Definition
b. No, because the electric shock is not contingent on the fan.
Term
Which of the following scenarios sounds like an instance in which maladaptive behavior may be reinforced by secondary gains?
 Definition
c. The grandparents of a shy child bring him extra gifts.
Term
Taylor thinks she may have discovered a violation of the law of effect. She has been trying to teach her cat Jeffrey to jump on her lap by scratching him behind the ears each time he does so. Strangely, Jeffrey is spending less and less time in Taylor’s lap. You suggest to Taylor that her scratching may not be ________ for Jeffrey.
 Definition
d. rewarding
Term
Emily wants her son to learn a new behavior through vicarious reinforcement. She should try to find a situation in which her son can watch someone
 Definition
d. being given a reward for carrying out the relevant behavior.
Term
It is not always possible to judge the extent of learning by observing a person’s behavior because some learning
 Definition
b. is not immediately expressed in performance.
Term
You are a dog named Mr. Peabody. At first, your owner gave you a dog biscuit every time you sniffed around his slippers. Now you only get the biscuit when you actually pick up one of the slippers. Your owner is probably using ________ to teach you a complex behavior.
 Definition
d. shaping
Term
For your classical conditioning experiment, you have selected a buzzer as your CS. Which of the following would be the LEAST likely UCR?
 Definition
a. whistling
Term
In the first phase of an experiment, pigeons learned to peck an orange key after viewing photographs of people and cars and a red key after viewing a flower or a chair. The second phase included only pictures of cars and chairs. The pigeons learned to peck a green key after seeing cars and a white key after seeing chairs. In the third phase, the pigeons see flowers again. The researcher can conclude that a pigeon has learned a category if it pecks a
 Definition
b. white key when it sees a flower.
Term
Edward Tolman’s research on cognitive maps demonstrated that rats could
 Definition
d. find paths through mazes that had never previously been reinforced.
Term
You are watching a rat in an operant chamber. It presses the bar vigorously for a short period of time and then hardly presses at all for about 5 seconds. That pattern is repeated for as long as you watch. You suspect that the rat is on a ________ schedule.
 Definition
c. FI-5
Term
You are playing the part of John Watson in a classroom debate on different approaches to the study of learning. Someone raises a question about the use of introspection in psychological research. You should take the position that introspection ________ an acceptable means of studying behavior because it is ________.
 Definition
d. is not; subjective
Term
Ms. Crabtree likes to use conditioned reinforcers to help motivate her second graders. If asked why she prefers conditioned reinforcers to primary reinforcers, she is LEAST likely to respond that they
 Definition
a. satisfy biological needs.
Term
Using a puff of air as the UCS, Enid classically conditions her dog to blink whenever she says “blink.” Her parrot overhears the procedure and says “blink” all day long when Enid is out. When she returns, Enid says “blink” to her dog, but he does not blink. It appears as though
 Definition
d. extinction has taken place.
Term
The research of Robert Rescorla challenged Pavlov’s belief that conditioning will occur if the CS and UCS
 Definition
d. are only temporally contiguous.
Term
Pat and Judy both work in clothing assembly, but in two different companies. Pat is paid every two weeks for her work, while Judy is paid after assembling 100 pieces of clothing. Pat is under a ________ schedule of reinforcement, and Judy is under a ________ schedule of reinforcement.
 Definition
d. fixed-interval; fixed-ratio
Term
Shirley notices that a classmate is praised by the teacher for helping another child with her homework. Shirley then decides that she would like to help her classmates with their homework also. Shirley is exhibiting learning through
 Definition
b. vicarious reinforcement.
Term
When the young B. F. Skinner economized on his supply of rat pellets, he found that compared to rats who were reinforced after every response, the animals who were put on a partial reinforcement schedule
 Definition
d. responded more vigorously during extinction.
Term
Reinforcers always are defined in terms of
 Definition
a. the probability of a behavior.
Term
Your friend Teresa doesn’t believe that whether she was physically punished as a teenager has anything to do with her emotional or psychological state now, many years later. Is she correct?
 Definition
d. No, those individuals who were physically punished as adolescents are put at higher risk for negative outcomes such as depression and suicide.
Term
Nellie’s mom thinks that Nellie could be neater. She is constantly nagging Nellie to keep her room tidy. When Nellie increases her room cleaning, her mom stops nagging her. The nagging provides
 Definition
d. negative reinforcement.
Term
The students in the psychology class have decided to get the teacher to lecture from a corner of the classroom. They smile and make eye contact with him only when he moves closer and closer to the corner. If he moves in the wrong direction, they avert their eyes and look bored. The students are using
 Definition
c. shaping.
Term
Professor Boone has a pet raccoon named Danny that he is trying to teach a trick. He wants Danny to put some coins into a toy bank, and is using food as a reinforcer. Danny, however, simply rubs the coins together in his paws, and won’t let go. This sounds like what Keller and Marion Breland referred to as
 Definition
c. instinctual drift.
Term
Karma has rehearsed her speech so many times that she recites it in her sleep. When she gets up in class to give her speech, however, she forgets most of it. Karma’s inability to give her speech reflects problems in
 Definition
b. performance.
Term
Whenever Manfred injects himself with heroin, he is in his bedroom. One day he is asked to go over to his friend’s house for a party. During the party he sneaks away to inject himself with his usual dose of heroin in his friend’s bedroom. What do you predict is likely to happen, if Shepard Siegel’s findings with rats are valid for humans?
 Definition
a. Manfred is more likely to overdose.
Term
When a softball player is late for practice, she loses a day’s pay. When Jamie watches television instead of doing his household chores, he has to turn over the keys to the family car. These examples illustrate the process of
 Definition
d. negative punishment.
Term
Taste-aversion learning demonstrates that animals
 Definition
d. have inborn biases to associate particular stimuli with particular consequences.
Term
The sudden reappearance of the CR to the CS after a period of time following extinction is referred to as
 Definition
c. spontaneous recovery.
Term
Dr. Thunder is a colleague of Pavlov’s who believes he can classically condition anything. You tell him that classical conditioning is not very effective for
 Definition
a. voluntary responses.
Term
As part of a lab exercise on classical conditioning, the students are experimenting with different temporal patterns. In one study, they present the CS, but then turn it off before the UCS is presented. This is known as ________ conditioning.
 Definition
d. trace
Term
Fred is designing an experiment using B. F. Skinner’s approach as a model. When choosing a variable to measure, Fred should focus on
 Definition
c. the probability that a given response will occur.
Term
All of the following are critical for learning to occur EXCEPT :
 Definition
d. the environment must be conducive.
Term
Pavlov won a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on ___________.
 Definition
a. digestion in dogs
Term
In conditioning, the weakening of a conditioned association in the absence of a reinforcer is called:
 Definition
b. extinction
Term
Little Albert was trained to fear a white rat, a stimulus he had initially not feared, by pairing it with an aversive _______.
 Definition
a. CS
Term
You go to Las Vegas to play the slot machines. Now that you have taken psychology you know that the machines are set to pay off on which schedule of reinforcement?
 Definition
c. VR
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