5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (75 page)

43. D—
(
Chapter 6
) The survey technique is being utilized here. It is a research method that obtains large samples of responses through questionnaire or interview. No variables have been manipulated as in an experiment.

44. C—
(
Chapter 8
) Sensory adaptation is the lessening of perception of a stimulus with repeated stimulation, like the temperature of the pool water. You perceive the pool water as cold when you first jump in, but the neural firing decreases over time with repeated stimulation and you no longer notice it.

45. E—
(
Chapter 16
) DSM-IV is a diagnostic guide used by mental health professionals to diagnose patients. It lists symptoms of these disorders, but does not list the causes of mental disorders.

46. C—
(
Chapter 12
) According to set point theory, an individual’s regulated weight is balanced by adjusting food intake and metabolic rate.

47. C—
(
Chapter 7
) Only the PET scan images function of the brain. The CAT and MRI both show the structures of the brain in good detail. The fMRI, like the PET, can show both structure and function.

48. A—
(
Chapter 16
) To have been diagnosed with disorganized schizophrenia, Aaron would have had to have a break with reality and probably been unable to tell the difference between right and wrong. A person who is legally insane during the commission of acts constituting an offense is unable to appreciate the nature and quality, or the wrongfulness, of his acts. According to law, “Mental disease or defect does not otherwise constitute a defense.”

49. C—
(
Chapter 18
) Group A is likely to become more entrenched. This is an example of group polarization.

50. C—
(
Chapter 11
) Penfield’s studies suggest that the old memories are still present and probably have not been stimulated or needed to be retrieved recently.

51. B—
(
Chapter 14
) Displacement, a Freudian defense mechanism, allows us to express feelings toward a group or individual perceived to be less threatening to us, rather than the direct target or ourselves.

52. D—
(
Chapter 13
) Longitudinal studies follow the same group of people for a longer period of time. They are tested at several points, thus providing reliable data about age effects. Cross-sectional studies may be confounded by the cohort effect and are not as valid for measuring age effects.

53. B—
(
Chapter 12
) Their goal seems more related to successful completion of the course with a passing grade than learning the material. Grades represent extrinsic rewards, while learning for pleasure and internal satisfaction represent intrinsic rewards.

54. B—
(
Chapter 10
) Repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus brings about extinction in classical conditioning. The conditioned response will disappear.

55. B—
(
Chapter 6
) The median is a measure of central tendency achieved by ordering the numbers consecutively and determining the middle number. Here there are nine numbers, so the 5th number, 8, is the median of the scores.

56. C—
(
Chapter 15
) Because the AP exam in Psychology is supposed to measure what you have learned in a course already taken, it is an achievement test.

57. C—
(
Chapter 8
) Transduction is the conversion of physical stimuli into changes in the activity of
receptor cells of sensory organs. The rods and cones are stimulated by photons of light while the hair cells in the cochlea are stimulated by sound waves.

58. C—
(
Chapter 9
) When our interest decreases, we often daydream about seemingly irrelevant ideas.

59. E—
(
Chapter 11
) The availability heuristic is a tendency to estimate the probability of certain events in terms of how readily they come to mind. Each time any of these events do occur, the media publicizes the information very thoroughly.

60. D—
(
Chapter 11
) Although largely discredited, Whorf believed that language determines the way we think. He cited studies of bilingual people who said that they experienced a different sense of self when thinking in two different languages.

61. C—
(
Chapter 12
) A lesion in the ventromedial hypothalamus would cause a rat to continue to eat. It is theorized to be the “satiety” center, or off button, for hunger sensation, so if it were lesioned, the rat would continue to eat as long as the food supply was available.

62. C—
(
Chapter 12
) Matina Horner’s studies concluded that bright women fear success because it is correlated with masculinity in our culture. Maria would attend a community college rather than a very competitive college. Those with fear of success tend to select easy or noncompetitive goals.

63. A—
(
Chapter 14
) David McClelland and others used the TAT to assess achievement motivation in their subjects. The stories that subjects told interpreting the pictures displayed were rated for achievement themes.

64. D—
(
Chapter 6
) In data sets that have a few outliers like the 42 and 38 here, the median is a better measure of central tendency than the arithmetic mean.

65. E—
(
Chapter 16
) The medical model attributes mental illness to faulty processes in neurochemistry, brain structures, and genetics. Social circumstances would not be considered causative factors.

66. B—
(
Chapter 13
) According to Kohlberg, most teens follow a conventional level of morality. Stage IV, or the law and order stage, says that you understand the need for laws and, thus, conform to them for the good of the community.

67. B—
(
Chapter 18
) Irving Janis described the dangerous implications of groupthink during the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. The top executives may want to preserve group harmony, so they would tend to self-censor opposing viewpoints to the president’s. Bringing in outside consultants to play devil’s advocate will increase the likelihood that more possibilities will be explored and the pros and cons will be discussed before the decision is made.

68. C—
(
Chapter 6
) Although Javier found someone who teaches the same subject at both time periods, confounding variables, such as the mean GPA of both groups, if left uncontrolled, are likely to give him faulty results.

69. A—
(
Chapter 7
) Heritability is the percentage of variation among individuals that is caused by genes. Since clones have exactly the same genes, none of their differences can be attributed to heredity.

70. D—
(
Chapter 11
) Telegraphic speech, or shortened two-word sentences, are characteristic of children’s language development, at around age 2.

71. A—
(
Chapter 12
) Though Type A individuals tend to have each of these traits, further research showed that the Type A traits of anger, hostility, and cynicism were the ones most correlated with heart disease.

72. A—
(
Chapter 7
) The limbic system is considered to be “emotion central” of the central nervous system. The amygdala is a structure within the limbic system that has been found to be very active in strong emotional responses, such as fear.

73. E—
(
Chapter 12
) The reticular formation arouses our attention, but not specifically our sexual behavior. It keeps us alert to incoming stimuli and filters out stimuli when we are asleep. Each of the other answers is more directly involved in some action of sexual behavior, especially in humans.

74. A—
(
Chapter 6
) The independent variable. How long it takes students to answer questions is the dependent variable.

75. A—
(
Chapter 18
) Hostile aggression is defined as inflicting pain upon an unwilling victim. The man is slapping his wife out of anger and consciously choosing to display it in this fashion.

76. E—
(
Chapter 10
) Upon further investigation of Pavlov’s findings in classical conditioning, Rescorla and others found that conditioning occurs because of the expectation that follows the conditioned stimulus more so than just their pairing in time. This revised cognitive view is called the contingency model of conditioning.

77. B—
(
Chapter 13
) In late adult development, fluid intelligence or abstract, flexible reasoning declines somewhat, but most people’s crystallized intelligence for concrete information continues to increase.

78. C—
(
Chapter 16
) Tommy’s blindness and deafness are the result of a conversion disorder. Excessive anxiety over witnessing the murder has caused these symptoms, which have no organic basis.

79. B—
(
Chapter 7
) The peripheral nervous system is made up of all nervous tissue outside the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord. Each of the other answers includes aspects of the central nervous system.

80. E—
(
Chapter 7
) The inability to understand language suggests damage to Wernicke’s area, located in the left temporal lobe. If the problem had been an inability to speak or find words, damage to Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe would have been the likely cause.

81. C—
(
Chapter 18
) The Japanese culture is a collectivist society, which would blame the group or parents specifically for a child’s behavior. The other countries are individualistic societies, which would tend to blame the behavior on the individual, especially a 17-year-old capable of intelligent thought.

82. D—
(
Chapter 8
) Body awareness and positioning are regulated by the kinesthetic or proprioceptive sense, whose receptors are found in the muscles and joints of the skeleton, as well as in the tendons, ligaments, and skin.

83. E—
(
Chapter 13
) Jen’s egocentrism allows her to see things from only her own point of view; thus, her failure to understand that her mother’s sister is also her aunt’s sister.

84. A—
(
Chapter 11
) Proactive interference is forgetting new information because of prior information that blocks its encoding. In this case then, list 1 interferes with your recall of list 2.

85. E—
(
Chapter 6
) Unfortunately, the newspaper took Dr. Ramchandran’s finding and made correlational data into cause and effect data, which can only be determined by a controlled experiment.

86. B—
(
Chapter 7
) The pituitary gland secretes thyroid-stimulating hormone. The hypothalamus produces releasing factors.

87. E—
(
Chapter 15
) All three of these findings are possible. Though the mean score may be higher for Asian Americans, the range of scores
within
a particular group (African Americans) is always much greater than is the mean score
between
two different groups (African Americans and Asian Americans). Neither of these tells us how any one individual will do.

88. B—
(
Chapter 7
) Each of the other answers involves a genetic disorder that is irreversible. PKU is a recessive trait that results in severe, irreversible brain damage unless the baby is fed a special diet low in phenylalanine.

89. B—
(
Chapter 13
) Harlow’s study showed that contact comfort (touch) was more important than the feeding situation for normal physical and psychological development.

90. B—
(
Chapter 8
) Context is an important stimulus variable in determining what we perceive.

91. A—
(
Chapter 6
) Average ranking would be 50th percentile, so 65th percentile is above that point. Emily scored better than 64 out of every 100 students who took that test.

92. D—
(
Chapter 8
) Accommodation is a change in the shape of the lens that occurs when an object moves closer or further away, and relative size is
a monocular cue for depth. Abdul would use both of these to judge the distance of vehicles when he is driving. Retinal disparity requires binocular vision.

93. D—
(
Chapter 16
) Positive symptoms indicate the presence of symptoms and negative symptoms the absence of symptoms. A flat affect is a lack or absence of an emotional response to stimuli.

94. B—
(
Chapter 12
) Schachter and Singer’s two-factor theory says that when physiologically aroused for no apparent immediate reason, we tend to look to environmental factors for an explanation. Susan’s change in emotional response was caused more by the situation she found herself in.

95. A—
(
Chapter 10
) Although continuous reinforcement is used for the quickest learning, it also is the fastest to extinguish. Variable schedules of reinforcement are the more resistant to extinction.

96. A—
(
Chapter 11
) By gauging the emotional impact of the words, the class was making a connection to them and, thus, ensuring more meaning (semantic), deeper processing, and greater retention in long-term memory.

97. A—
(
Chapter 9
) The hypnagogic state occurs as we are about to fall asleep, when we are very relaxed and alpha waves are present.

98. C—
(
Chapter 5
) The focus of structuralists like Wundt and Titchener was on the units of consciousness and identification of elements of thought using introspection. This led to the present-day cognitive exploration of the thinking process.