Psychology Exam Paper
To help you prepare for Exam 1:
The exam consists of 50 multiple choice items based on the lectures given from the start of the semester and readings from chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4. Each student will see a somewhat different set of items, but everyone will see similar concepts and items of equal difficulty. Some items will be taken from the Lilienfeld chapter quizzes, but the majority will be original items based on the lectures. The following ideas, concepts, terms and such could appear on the exam. NOTE: If it isn’t on this list it won’t be on the exam. Be sure to use the practice exam to prepare. All items on the practice exam correspond to items on the actual exam.
Lectures & readings on History and scientific thinking
1 …show more content…
What are four different ways of knowing and which kind is used in psychology? 2 What kinds of knowledge are represented in “data-land and theoryland’? What is a psychological construct (or more simply, a construct)? An operational definition? What is a theory and what is it good for? A hypothesis? 3 What are the three-traditions that have characterized the field of psychology? What methodology is associated with each? Where do behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience fit? Which kinds of assumptions characterize each? 4 Who is Wilhelm Wundt? William James? What approach to psychology is associated with Wundt? with James? How are structuralism and functionalism different? 5 Who are JB Watson and BF Skinner and what kind of psychology is associated with them? What were the core assumptions of this kind of psychology? 6 Who is Jean Piaget and what kind of psychology is associated with him? What was the core assumption of this kind of psychology? 7 Who is Francis Galton? Alfred Binet? What are the core assumptions of the kind of psychology associated with these individuals? 8 Who is Sigmund Freud and what kind of psychology is associated with him? What are the core assumptions of this kind of psychology? 9 What is critical thinking? What is the confirmation bias? Belief perseverance? 10 What are the six principles of scientific thinking? To what do they refer? 11 What is the nature-nurture debate? Free will versus determinism?
Lectures and readings on Research methods
12 What are the goals of science? 13 What is the Descriptive approach to studying human behavior? What are the different types of descriptive methods? What are examples of each? What are the strengths and limitations of these methods? 14 What are correlational methods? What is the strength of this method? What are its limitations? What is the correlational coefficient? What is a strong correlation? a weak one? What does the direction of a correlation (positive, negative) refer to? What is an illusory correlations? The problem of the 3rd variable? 15 What are the components of experiments? Why is the experiment considered the “gold standard” in psychology? What are the limitations of experiments? What is generalizability? 16 In research, what are confounds? What is experimenter expectancy effect? What is a double-blind research design? 17 What are measures of central tendency? What kind of information does each provide? Which is most vulnerable to extreme values? What is the standard deviation? 18 What is the normal curve? 19 What are descriptive statistics? What are inferential statistics? What is statistical significance? 20 What is measurement? What is reliability? What is validity? 21 What are ethical principles used in psychology? 22 What are heuristics? Availability heuristic? Representative heuristic? What is a base rate and how can it help you avoid reasoning errors? Hindsight bias? Overconfidence?
Lectures and readings of biological psychology
23 What is biological psychology?
What is a key assumption of Biological psychology? What does homologous mean? 24 How are human brains and animal brains & behavior similar? How are human brains different from animal brains? Why use animals in research?
NEURONS AND THE NERVE IMPULSE 25 Describe the neuron: dendrites, soma, axons, terminal fields, myelin sheath. 26 What is the resting potential of a neuron? What are the steps involved in a neural impulse (also called the action potential)? What is an excitatory signal? What is an Inhibitory signal? 27 What are the similarities between neurons with other cells? What makes a neuron different from other cells? What is plasticity?
The NERVOUS SYSTEM 28 What are the Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System? What are the autonomic and somatic branches of the peripheral nervous system? What are the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system? What bodily functions are associated with each? 29 What is a simple reflex pathway? Sensory neurons? Motor neurons? Interneurons?
The BRAIN 30 How are the functions of the brain organized? What are the four lobes of the cerebral cortex? What functions are associated with each? What is the Corpus callosum? the prefrontal cortex? Who was Phineas
Gage? 31 Why is the “dorsal pathway” from the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe called the WHERE pathway? Why is the “ventral pathway” from the occipital lobe to the temporal lobe called the WHAT pathway? 32 What functions are associated with the following: the primary visual cortex? pre-frontal cortex? Broca’s area? Wernicke’s area? Motor cortex? The adrenal glands? The limbic system? The thalamus?? The hypothalamus? The amygdala? Hippocampus? The somatosensory cortex? Basil ganglia?What is neglect syndrome? Prosopagnosia? Phantom limb syndrome? Agnosia? With which areas of the brain is each of these associated? What is spatial attention? 33 What is the Stroop test, and what does it demonstrate about the human brain? At what age does the human brain mature? Why are life insurance rates higher for teen-aged drivers? 34 What is the brain stem? the hindbrain? What are the functions of the cerebellum, pons and medulla? What is the midbrain? 35 What is the endocrine system? The pituitary gland? adrenal glands? cortisol?
NEURAL COMMUNICATION 36 What are the steps that summarize neural communication at the synapse? 37 What are neurotransmitters? How can drugs increase the effect of neurotransmitters in the synapse? How can drugs increase the effect of neurotransmitters in the synapse? What is an agonist? An antagonist? 38 What neurotransmitters are associated with depression? Schizophrenia? Pain reduction? Parkinson’s disease? Brain arousal? Muscle contractions? On what system do the following drugs act: Nicotine, Botox, amphetamines, SSRIs, Narcotics (codeine, morphine, heroine)?
LONG-TERM POTENTIATION AND THE NEURAL BASIS OF MEMORY 39 Who is Donald Hebb and what is the brief form of his rule? What is Long-term potentiation (LTP)? How is LTP induced? What is a tetanus? 40 What biological changes are involved in long-term maintenance of LTP? 41 What is the relationship between LTP and long-term memory? 42 Who is HM and what did he contribute to science? What is the role of the hippocampus in memory, especially spatial memory? What evidence supports this? What are place cells? 43 What is the split-brain effect (that is, you see something in your left visual field, where in the brain will it be processed?) (aka contralateral projection) What is the corpus collosum?
BEHAVIOR GENETICS 44 What is a gene? a phenotype? a genotype? dominant gene? recessive gene? 45 What is heritability? What are three things to remember about heritability? 46 What are monzygotic (MZ) twins? What are dizygotic (DZ) twins? 47 What are Family studies, adoption studies, twin studies? What do these designs allow researchers to study? 48 What is heritability?
Lectures and readings on Sensation & Perception
SENSATION & PERCEPTION 49 What are our five senses? What sensory systems are associated with each and where in the brain is the information processed? What is sensation? What is the process of transduction? What is perception? What are bi-stable figures? What is the Necker cube and how does it illustrate the difference between sensation and perception? 50 What is synesthesia?
PSYCHOPHYSICS 51 What is the absolute threshold? The just noticeable difference (JND)? What is Weber’s Law? 52 What is signal detection theory, especially “hits, misses, correct rejection and false alarms”? What pattern of response would produce many false alarms? Many misses?
The EYE/VISION 53 What are the cornea, pupil lens, retina, fovea, optic nerve? What is the blind spot? 54 What are rods and cones? With which is each of the following associated: visual acuity? Color vision? Daylight vision? Movement? Vision in dim light? 55 What are photopigments? Rhodopsin? 56 What is dark adaptation? What causes aftereffects? What causes the illusion of color or motion after-images? 57 Here is the path that visual information travels. Could you recall this? Information travels from the retina to the visual thalamus to the primary visual cortex (V1) then along two visual pathways to the secondary visual cortex (V2). What kind of information is processed along the dorsal pathway leading to the parietal lobe? What kind of information is processed on the ventral pathway to the temporal lobe? (Hint from Biological Psychology: What, Where?) Which lobe processes information about location? Which processes information about orientation? color? motion? 58 What are feature detectors? Who are Hubel and Wiesel? At what level of visual processing is more simple information processed? More complex information?
ATTENTION/PERCEPTION 59 What is the role of attention? What is inattentional blindness? Selective attention? 60 What is parallel processing? Top-down processing? Bottom-up processing? 61 What is a perceptual set? 62 What is perceptual constancy (size, color, shape)?
PERCEIVING FORM. COLOR AND DEPTH 63 How do we perceive faces? How do we perceive motion? What is the phi effect? 64 What features of light waves are associated with hue? What is the trichromatic theory of color perception? What is opponent color theory? 65 What are the monocular depth cues? Binocular cues? 66 What are Gestalt principles?
ILLUSIONS/SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION 67 What produces the moon illusion? The Ames room illusion? The Ponzo illusion? the Müller-Lyer illusion? The Ponzo illusion? The Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion? 68 What is subliminal perception? What is the current thinking about subliminal perception? Subliminal persuasion?
The exam consists of 50 multiple choice items based on the lectures given from the start of the semester and readings from chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4. Each student will see a somewhat different set of items, but everyone will see similar concepts and items of equal difficulty. Some items will be taken from the Lilienfeld chapter quizzes, but the majority will be original items based on the lectures. The following ideas, concepts, terms and such could appear on the exam. NOTE: If it isn’t on this list it won’t be on the exam. Be sure to use the practice exam to prepare. All items on the practice exam correspond to items on the actual exam.
Lectures & readings on History and scientific thinking
1 …show more content…
What are four different ways of knowing and which kind is used in psychology? 2 What kinds of knowledge are represented in “data-land and theoryland’? What is a psychological construct (or more simply, a construct)? An operational definition? What is a theory and what is it good for? A hypothesis? 3 What are the three-traditions that have characterized the field of psychology? What methodology is associated with each? Where do behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience fit? Which kinds of assumptions characterize each? 4 Who is Wilhelm Wundt? William James? What approach to psychology is associated with Wundt? with James? How are structuralism and functionalism different? 5 Who are JB Watson and BF Skinner and what kind of psychology is associated with them? What were the core assumptions of this kind of psychology? 6 Who is Jean Piaget and what kind of psychology is associated with him? What was the core assumption of this kind of psychology? 7 Who is Francis Galton? Alfred Binet? What are the core assumptions of the kind of psychology associated with these individuals? 8 Who is Sigmund Freud and what kind of psychology is associated with him? What are the core assumptions of this kind of psychology? 9 What is critical thinking? What is the confirmation bias? Belief perseverance? 10 What are the six principles of scientific thinking? To what do they refer? 11 What is the nature-nurture debate? Free will versus determinism?
Lectures and readings on Research methods
12 What are the goals of science? 13 What is the Descriptive approach to studying human behavior? What are the different types of descriptive methods? What are examples of each? What are the strengths and limitations of these methods? 14 What are correlational methods? What is the strength of this method? What are its limitations? What is the correlational coefficient? What is a strong correlation? a weak one? What does the direction of a correlation (positive, negative) refer to? What is an illusory correlations? The problem of the 3rd variable? 15 What are the components of experiments? Why is the experiment considered the “gold standard” in psychology? What are the limitations of experiments? What is generalizability? 16 In research, what are confounds? What is experimenter expectancy effect? What is a double-blind research design? 17 What are measures of central tendency? What kind of information does each provide? Which is most vulnerable to extreme values? What is the standard deviation? 18 What is the normal curve? 19 What are descriptive statistics? What are inferential statistics? What is statistical significance? 20 What is measurement? What is reliability? What is validity? 21 What are ethical principles used in psychology? 22 What are heuristics? Availability heuristic? Representative heuristic? What is a base rate and how can it help you avoid reasoning errors? Hindsight bias? Overconfidence?
Lectures and readings of biological psychology
23 What is biological psychology?
What is a key assumption of Biological psychology? What does homologous mean? 24 How are human brains and animal brains & behavior similar? How are human brains different from animal brains? Why use animals in research?
NEURONS AND THE NERVE IMPULSE 25 Describe the neuron: dendrites, soma, axons, terminal fields, myelin sheath. 26 What is the resting potential of a neuron? What are the steps involved in a neural impulse (also called the action potential)? What is an excitatory signal? What is an Inhibitory signal? 27 What are the similarities between neurons with other cells? What makes a neuron different from other cells? What is plasticity?
The NERVOUS SYSTEM 28 What are the Central Nervous System and the Peripheral Nervous System? What are the autonomic and somatic branches of the peripheral nervous system? What are the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system? What bodily functions are associated with each? 29 What is a simple reflex pathway? Sensory neurons? Motor neurons? Interneurons?
The BRAIN 30 How are the functions of the brain organized? What are the four lobes of the cerebral cortex? What functions are associated with each? What is the Corpus callosum? the prefrontal cortex? Who was Phineas
Gage? 31 Why is the “dorsal pathway” from the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe called the WHERE pathway? Why is the “ventral pathway” from the occipital lobe to the temporal lobe called the WHAT pathway? 32 What functions are associated with the following: the primary visual cortex? pre-frontal cortex? Broca’s area? Wernicke’s area? Motor cortex? The adrenal glands? The limbic system? The thalamus?? The hypothalamus? The amygdala? Hippocampus? The somatosensory cortex? Basil ganglia?What is neglect syndrome? Prosopagnosia? Phantom limb syndrome? Agnosia? With which areas of the brain is each of these associated? What is spatial attention? 33 What is the Stroop test, and what does it demonstrate about the human brain? At what age does the human brain mature? Why are life insurance rates higher for teen-aged drivers? 34 What is the brain stem? the hindbrain? What are the functions of the cerebellum, pons and medulla? What is the midbrain? 35 What is the endocrine system? The pituitary gland? adrenal glands? cortisol?
NEURAL COMMUNICATION 36 What are the steps that summarize neural communication at the synapse? 37 What are neurotransmitters? How can drugs increase the effect of neurotransmitters in the synapse? How can drugs increase the effect of neurotransmitters in the synapse? What is an agonist? An antagonist? 38 What neurotransmitters are associated with depression? Schizophrenia? Pain reduction? Parkinson’s disease? Brain arousal? Muscle contractions? On what system do the following drugs act: Nicotine, Botox, amphetamines, SSRIs, Narcotics (codeine, morphine, heroine)?
LONG-TERM POTENTIATION AND THE NEURAL BASIS OF MEMORY 39 Who is Donald Hebb and what is the brief form of his rule? What is Long-term potentiation (LTP)? How is LTP induced? What is a tetanus? 40 What biological changes are involved in long-term maintenance of LTP? 41 What is the relationship between LTP and long-term memory? 42 Who is HM and what did he contribute to science? What is the role of the hippocampus in memory, especially spatial memory? What evidence supports this? What are place cells? 43 What is the split-brain effect (that is, you see something in your left visual field, where in the brain will it be processed?) (aka contralateral projection) What is the corpus collosum?
BEHAVIOR GENETICS 44 What is a gene? a phenotype? a genotype? dominant gene? recessive gene? 45 What is heritability? What are three things to remember about heritability? 46 What are monzygotic (MZ) twins? What are dizygotic (DZ) twins? 47 What are Family studies, adoption studies, twin studies? What do these designs allow researchers to study? 48 What is heritability?
Lectures and readings on Sensation & Perception
SENSATION & PERCEPTION 49 What are our five senses? What sensory systems are associated with each and where in the brain is the information processed? What is sensation? What is the process of transduction? What is perception? What are bi-stable figures? What is the Necker cube and how does it illustrate the difference between sensation and perception? 50 What is synesthesia?
PSYCHOPHYSICS 51 What is the absolute threshold? The just noticeable difference (JND)? What is Weber’s Law? 52 What is signal detection theory, especially “hits, misses, correct rejection and false alarms”? What pattern of response would produce many false alarms? Many misses?
The EYE/VISION 53 What are the cornea, pupil lens, retina, fovea, optic nerve? What is the blind spot? 54 What are rods and cones? With which is each of the following associated: visual acuity? Color vision? Daylight vision? Movement? Vision in dim light? 55 What are photopigments? Rhodopsin? 56 What is dark adaptation? What causes aftereffects? What causes the illusion of color or motion after-images? 57 Here is the path that visual information travels. Could you recall this? Information travels from the retina to the visual thalamus to the primary visual cortex (V1) then along two visual pathways to the secondary visual cortex (V2). What kind of information is processed along the dorsal pathway leading to the parietal lobe? What kind of information is processed on the ventral pathway to the temporal lobe? (Hint from Biological Psychology: What, Where?) Which lobe processes information about location? Which processes information about orientation? color? motion? 58 What are feature detectors? Who are Hubel and Wiesel? At what level of visual processing is more simple information processed? More complex information?
ATTENTION/PERCEPTION 59 What is the role of attention? What is inattentional blindness? Selective attention? 60 What is parallel processing? Top-down processing? Bottom-up processing? 61 What is a perceptual set? 62 What is perceptual constancy (size, color, shape)?
PERCEIVING FORM. COLOR AND DEPTH 63 How do we perceive faces? How do we perceive motion? What is the phi effect? 64 What features of light waves are associated with hue? What is the trichromatic theory of color perception? What is opponent color theory? 65 What are the monocular depth cues? Binocular cues? 66 What are Gestalt principles?
ILLUSIONS/SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION 67 What produces the moon illusion? The Ames room illusion? The Ponzo illusion? the Müller-Lyer illusion? The Ponzo illusion? The Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion? 68 What is subliminal perception? What is the current thinking about subliminal perception? Subliminal persuasion?