Introductory Psychology (PSY301, 3:30-5:00pm) – Test 2

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

1. A mother wants her 5 year old son to learn how to be a good boy by watching Sesame Street every morning. Each morning before school, the son will turn on the TV. If he turns it to Sesame Street, the mother gives her son a bowl of his favorite cereal, Count Chocula. The mother is utilizing what type of learning technique?

a.	Classical
b.	Biological
c.	Observational
d.	Long delay
e.	Operant

2. One lonely Saturday evening, you find yourself reading the personal ads in your local paper. You spill ice cream on one particular entry, but you can make out the following: “25 years of age, looking for someone ages 26-40. Requirements: daily dose of humor/sarcastic, intelligence/ common sense, ambitious, optimistic, confidence, and balance between personal and professional life.” According to evolutionary theories, all of the following clues point toward the conclusion that the poster was a woman, EXCEPT:

a.	Catch words like “ambitious,” “confidence,” and “intelligence.”
b.	The ability to balance a family and career.
c.	No mention of physical attributes.
d.	Needing someone with a sense of humor.
e.	The desired age range of the partner.

3. If you trained a rat to fear a blue light by pairing it with a painful electric shock, what would be your conditioned stimulus?

a.	fear
b.	blue light
c.	electric shock
d.	extinction
e.	pain

4. You are a squirrel who stores nuts for the winter. What structure will allow you to find them when it snows?

a.	your excellent declarative memory skills
b.	your enlarged hippocampus
c.	your excellent semantic memory
d.	your enlarged eyes
e.	your enlarged parietal neurons

5. A group of Skinnerians and Pavlovians, called the Skinlovians, boast that they can teach children to do anything with their conditioning techniques. Piaget would argue that they are wrong because:

a.	Their conditioning would work just for children in the concrete operational stage.
b.	Development occurs in a linear fashion.
c.	Once children hit puberty they lose almost all of their conditioned behaviors.
d.	Extinction would occur frequently for the learned behaviors.
e.	Schemas provide the frame for learning.

6. Imagine that your best friend poked one of your eyes out. A few weeks later, you find a picture of you and your (former) friend building a sandcastle on the beach. How would that picture appear to you?

a.	It would appear normal because of your binocular disparity.
b.	It would appear normal because of your use of pictorial cues.
c.	It would appear blurry because of overlap.
d.	It would appear normal because of your lack of linear perspective.
e.	It would appear distorted because of your lack of binocular disparity.

7. Imagine that you are a historian in the year 2050 who is about to write a book about how significant some recent events will prove to be in the future for your generation. Which of the following events would you say will be MOST historically significant?

a.	The invention of the Ultra Mobile 9000 because it fundamentally changes the way people use transit systems and communication systems.
b.	The invention of Mega Cheese Whiz because who doesn’t love eating cheese from a can.
c.	The “Super War” against the British because it actually didn’t have an effect on anybody.
d.	The Olympics because it happens every four years.
e.	The 2049 “Great Debate” because it solidified the stances of the two major political parties.

8. If you created a robot to have sensation but not perception then the robot could

a.	construct useful information but be unable to remember it.
b.	process external energy information but be unable to send it.
c.	detect external energy sources but be unable to process them.
d.	understand what things were but be unable to respond to them.
e.	react to light but not to taste, smell, or touch.

9. A neurosurgeon is working on the brain of a person who is under anesthesia. If she pokes two adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex, which pair of body parts will most likely react?

a.	arm and leg
b.	arm and hand
c.	fingers and toes
d.	elbow and knee
e.	left elbow and right elbow

10. A year ago you participated in a soccer tournament with 50 other teams. You are trying to remember the names of the 10 teams in your league. According to the lecture, in which situation would you remember the most names?

a.	Hitting your head with your fist.
b.	Verbally reciting as many team names as you can remember in a span of 1 minute.
c.	Flipping through pictures from the tournament.
d.	Writing down as many team names as you can remember on a blank piece of paper.
e.	Obtaining a list of all 50 teams from the tournament and circling the teams from your league.

11. From what was discussed in lecture, all of the following show how biology contributes to homosexuality EXCEPT?

a.	Cerebral cortex studies
b.	2D-4D ratio studies
c.	Genetic studies
d.	Otoacoustic emissions studies
e.	Prenatal hormone studies

12. A kindergarten teacher is trying to teach her students the alphabet. She recites the alphabet slowly and evenly, then asks her students to recite the alphabet back to her. Out of the following, which letter are the students as a whole most likely to remember?

a.	P
b.	Z
c.	M
d.	R
e.	J

13. You just witnessed a robbery. According to research by Elizabeth Loftus on eyewitness memory, your memories of the robbery will stay intact best if:

a.	You and your friend, who also witnessed the robbery, recall the story to the police together.
b.	You watch a news story of the events before speaking to the police in order to jog your memory.
c.	You and other witnesses discuss what happened together to the police.
d.	You tell the police what you remember without being asked anything
e.	You answer a series of questions that the police developed based on other witnesses’ accounts.

14. Leptin is a hormone that suppresses feelings of hunger. Leptin has been marketed in diet pills to encourage weight loss and weight management. You are conducting an experiment to study whether Leptin is more effective for men or women. What do you predict the results may be?

a.	Leptin would be equally effective in both groups because hunger is determined more by biological cues than environmental cues for both groups.
b.	Leptin would not be effective in either group because hunger is determined by environmental cues rather than biological cues for both groups.
c.	The study would not work because the men would refuse to take diet pills.
d.	Leptin would be more effective in weight-loss for men because men determine their hunger levels from their biological cues rather than environmental cues.
e.	Leptin would be more effective in weight-loss for women because women determine their hunger levels from their biological cues rather than environmental cues.

15. If your mother was emotionally or behaviorally inconsistent with you, you are most likely to have a/an _____ attachment style.

a.	anxious-ambivalent
b.	secure
c.	disorganized
d.	cooperative
e.	avoidant

16. Angela dropped her sleeping bag on the way to her tent one night. Although the sleeping bag is bright red, she can’t spot it in the dark. Which of the following most likely contributes to Angela’s lack of vision?

a.	Rods and cones have different sensitivities to light.
b.	Angela is wearing glasses.
c.	The optic nerves form a blind spot on the retina.
d.	Rods and cones are not distributed evenly on the retina.
e.	Rods are better at distinguishing shapes than cones.

17. The second writing assignment was about a hot topic in psychology called interpersonal perception. Based on the feedback after completing the assignment, which of the following is NOT a question that interpersonal perception is concerned with?

a.	Do we project our own personalities onto others?
b.	Are some judges better than others?
c.	How do we form accurate impressions?
d.	Should people form bad impressions of others?
e.	Do stereotypes help or hinder our impressions of others?

18. A new graduate student in child development seeks to replicate some of the original reflex experiments. He tests a group of twelve month olds, and finds that very few show the stepping and rooting reflexes. This is because:

a.	Many reflexes disappear when the infant is a few months old.
b.	Reflex strength depends on attachment style.
c.	These behaviors need to be conditioned to be consistently exhibited.
d.	Stepping and rooting aren’t actually reflexes.
e.	The tested children must come from an abnormal population.

19. A painting depicts the morning horizon with a blue ocean with a sandy shore beneath it. On the shore appear 2 objects. You conclude that the sandcastle is much closer than the pile of seashells. All of the following clues lead toward this conclusion except:

a.	The sandcastle is painted closer to the ocean than the pile of seashells.
b.	The pile of seashells is much smaller in the painting than the sandcastle.
c.	The colors of the seashells is less robust than the color of the sandcastle.
d.	The sandcastle slightly overlaps the pile of seashells.
e.	The pile of seashells is blurrier than the sandcastle.

20. Archie and Betty are in a relationship. Archie enjoys closeness in a relationship, but fears that Betty doesn’t value the relationship as much as he does. To ensure Betty doesn’t forget about him, Archie calls often and tries to see Betty every single day. According to Attachment Theory, what kind of attachment style would characterize Archie?

a.	Secure
b.	Preoccupied
c.	Fearful
d.	Avoidant
e.	Detached

21. Dr. Gosling just finished building a machine that can record images of what your visual system detects. However, his machine images don’t look exactly like what you say you are seeing. Why is this?

a.	The machine records images before perceptual rejection occurs.
b.	The machine records images before top down processing occurs.
c.	The machine records images after perceptual rejection occurs.
d.	The machine records images before the brain’s Seideman system kicks in.
e.	The machine is a Mac.

22. You wish to classically condition your dog to fear skunks so he doesn’t get sprayed again. This task should be much easier than teaching him to fear a houseplant because

a.	the dog has high intelligence.
b.	the dog is biologically conditioned to fear houseplants.
c.	the dog is biologically conditioned to fear skunks.
d.	the dog’s mind cannot physically be trained to fear plants.
e.	the dog is biologically prepared to fear certain types of objects.

23. The brain region most important to human sexual behavior is the

a.	hypothalamus.
b.	cerebellum.
c.	cortex.
d.	amygdala.
e.	basal ganglia.

24. University of Texas Professor, David Buss studied 37 cultures in regard to mate choice and found that:

a.	the characteristics preferred in mates show no common trends across cultures.
b.	men play a larger role in mate choice than do women.
c.	the characteristics preferred in mates show no differences between cultures
d.	independent of the culture they are born into, women tend to marry older men.
e.	in Western cultures women place attractiveness ahead of the financial resources of a mate while just the reverse is the case in Asian cultures.

25. Evidence for observational learning in nonhumans is present in all of the following except:

a.	monkeys learning to wash the dirt off potatoes in the ocean to remove sand.
b.	dogs learning helplessness when they have no control over electric shocks administered to their cages.
c.	sea gulls learning how to open a box of crackers after seeing humans open them.
d.	lab-raised monkeys becoming fearful of a snake after watching a wild monkey’s reactions.
e.	animals who injure rather than kill their prey in order to teach their young how to hunt.

26. Sally brought a ball of Silly Putty to school. At school, one of her classmates rolled the Silly Putty into a long, thin strand. Sally brought the strand of Silly Putty home, delighted that she came home with more Silly Putty than she left for school with. According to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, which stage is Sally currently in?

a.	Concrete operational
b.	Preoperational
c.	Postconventional
d.	Formal operations
e.	Postoperational

27. Following a miraculous surgery, the use of Jim’s eyes was restored after a lifetime of being blind. What can you expect to happen?