Practice Exam 1 – Fall 2003
Choose the correct answer:
1) Behavior that is not sensitive to its consequences is called
a) kinesis
b) conditioned
c) voluntary
d) involuntary
2) If you shine a flashlight into a man's eyes, you can notice that his pupils
immediately become smaller. This is an example of
a) an orienting response
b) a reflex
c) a tropism
d) a vacuum activity
3) To Pavlov the basic unit of psychology was:
a) Schema
b) Reflex
c) Response
d) Stimulus
4) "Instinctive behavior", in most cases, is:
a) involuntary and conditioned
b) voluntary and unconditioned
c) involuntary and unconditioned
d) voluntary and conditioned
5) An orienting response, in which rate of movement rather than direction of
movement is controlled by a feature of the environment, is called:
a) a reflex
b) a tropism
c) a taxis
d) a kinesis
6) A wood louse is more likely to be found in a humid area than a dry area. If
the wood louse is demonstrating orthokinesis with regard to humidity, how
can the behavior of the wood louse be explained?
a) The wood louse feels more comfortable in humid areas and less
comfortable in dry areas
b) The wood louse avoids dry areas because they are aversive, and by
default the wood louse finds its way to a humid area.
c) The wood louse’s habitat is generally humid, and so the wood louse is
unlikely to find dry areas despite its chaotic movements.
d) The wood louse moves at faster rates when the humidity is low, but
moves at slower rates when the humidity is high. The wood louse is
therefore likely to have stopped moving once a sufficiently humid area has
been found.
7) Which of the following would provide the best example of vacuum activity?
a) A raccoon washing its food prior to eating it.
b) A dog salivating during the presentation of food.
c) A cat engaging in predatory behavior in the absence of prey.
d) A female ring dove incubating eggs for 18 hours per day.
8) The stimulus which is responsible for eliciting a series of fixed
action patterns is referred to as a(n):
a) Learned stimulus
b) Indicator
c) Sign stimulus
d) Trigger mechanism
9) The result of the extinction of a classically conditioned response is that,
eventually
a) when the US is presented, the response will not occur
b) the response will occur only if the CS and US are presented together
c) the response will be transferred to another similar stimulus
d) when the CS is presented, the response does not occur
10) The threshold of a reflex is:
a) the amount of stimulation required to elicit a response 50% of the time
b) the average delay between the stimulus and the response
c) the average absolute level of the response
d) the average amount of time after a reflex before another response can
occur
11) Establishing a conditional reflex to a tone of 1000 Hz and responding in a
similar manner to a tone of 1100 Hz is an example of:
a) discrimination
b) higher-order conditioning
c) generalization
d) tone deafness
12) The selective reinforcement of response to CS1 and extinction of resonance
to CS2 results in
a) stimulus generalization
b) stimulus discrimination
c) spontaneous recovery
d) experimental neurosis
13) The defense mechanism in which instinctual energies are repressed in a way
that is valued by society is called
a) reaction formation
b) sublimation
c) projection
d) regression
14) According to Freud, neurosis
a) is due to a neurological defect
b) is not qualitatively different from the everyday conflicts all people face
c) arises from cathexis
d) is a disturbance of the womb
15) The ceiling leaks over John's bed and he dreams of walking in the rain. This
can be explained by the concept that Freud referred to as
a) stimulus-response
b) static dreams
c) dynamic dream
d) parapraxis
16) Freud was influenced by
a) positivistic and deterministic philosophies
b) the principles of conservation of energy
c) Charcot's theory of hysteria
d) all of the above
17) According to Freud, perception, memory and learning are functions of:
a) the superego, which is entirely conscious
b) the id, which operates on the pleasure principle
c) the ego, which does reality testing
d) consciousness
18) Freud's Oedipal complex refers to a young boy's fear of castration
a) due to his unconscious desire for self-mutilation
b) as punishment for masturbation
c) by the father for his over identification with the mother
d) by the father for his wish to possess the mother
19) According to Freud, the proper sequence of psychosexual stages is:
a) anal, oral, genital, latent, phallic
b) oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital
c) anal, oral, phallic, latent, genital
d) oral, anal, latent, genital, phallic
20) The purpose of dreams, according to Freud, is to
a)
b)
c)
d)
fulfill unconscious wishes
regress to previous stages
provide insight into practical daily problems
both a and b
21) Which of the following is descriptive of the id?
a) it follows the reality principle
b) it engages in secondary processes
c) it cathects onto both real and imaginary objects of desire
d) it develops when the Oedipus complex is resolved
22) Which of Freud’s “Legacies” suggested that consciousness was “the tip of the
iceberg.”
a) Theory of Psychosexual Development
b) Medical Model of Mental Disease
c) Theory of the Unconscious
d) All of the above
23) In Freud’s “Dream Interpretation” theory, _______________ content referred
to the initial report of the dream, while the _________________ content
referred to the hidden meaning which emerges.
a) Latent/Manifest
b) Manifest/Latent
c) Ego/Super-Ego
d) Super-Ego/Ego
24) The essential feature of Brucke’s mechanistic physiology that separated it
from the prevailing wisdom in the 1800s was
a) that biology could not explain the “life force” but depended on psychology
to do so
b) that it described how a reflex arc could work
c) that it postulated that humans are machines with souls
d) that physiology was all that was essential for psychology to proceed
25) "Zeitgeist" refers to
a) Heraclitus's principle that one can never step into the same river twice
b) the scientific/intellectual pool of ideas in existence at any one time
c) Freud's term for the fantasy images of the id
d) the term for a group of thinkers who oppose the established intellectual
viewpoint
26) Descartes' model for the body was based on principles of:
a) hydraulics
b) magnetism
c) electricity
d) chemistry
27) The theory that man's mind begins as a tabula rasa was first developed by
and explained by
.
a) Plato - Kant
b) Descartes - Hume
c) Aristotle – Locke
d) Locke - Berkeley
28) A psychologist tells you that your knowledge of grammar comes completely
from experience. This psychologist could be said to subscribe to a
____________ theory of language
a) nativist
b) empiricist
c) idealist
d) materialist
29) The emergence of psychophysics was important to the development of
psychology because it showed that
a) nerve impulses are actually electrical in nature
b) a psychological entity such as a "sensation" could be subject to
measurement
c) specific sensory qualities are due to the enervation of specific nerve fibers
d) free will was an illusion, in that behavior could be explained using the laws
of physics
30) Continuity in Darwin's theory of evolution refers to the observation of
a) the crucial role of reproduction in the transmission of genetic traits
b) the similarity of ontogeny and phylogeny
c) similarity of structure within a single species
d) similarity of structure in different species
31) According to Weber, if it takes one ounce to produce a noticeable increment
of heaviness when a subject is holding a 10-ounce weight, the smallest
increment we would notice when it is added to 100 ounces would be:
a) 1 ounce
b) 2 ounces
c) 5 ounces
d) 10 ounces
32) What is a jnd?
a) Psychology’s equivalent of the business concept Just In Time
b) The smallest stimulus difference that a person can notice.
c) A sensory-modality dependent ratio between the physical stimulus and the
psychological sensation
d) The building block of mental chemistry according to the British
associationists.
33) The biological antecedents of psychology included:
a) Sensory Physiology.
b) Evolutionary Theory.
c) Reflexology.
d) All of the above.
34) Which of the following is NOT a basic assumption of all natural sciences
a) restraint
b) verification
c) reproducibility
d) observable variables
35) The doctrine of association is attributable to
a) Hume
b) Rene Descartes
c) Plato
d) John Stuart Mill
36) Locke didn't believe in:
a) nativism
b) tabula rasa
c) primary qualities of ideas
d) secondary qualities of ideas
True or False
1. Discrimination widens the range of stimuli to which the organism will
respond.
2. Going to Mama Joy's for corned beef on a roll is an example of
consummatory behavior.
3. Research findings show that mating behavior in ring doves is mediated by
both internal factors and the external environment.
4. The bee waggle dance is easily modifiable and therefore can be described
as voluntary.
5. A bee dances the waggle dance because in order to communicate the
direction and richness of a particular food source.
6. "Vacuum activity" refers to instinctual behavior that occurs in the absence
of sign stimuli.
7. Instincts are integrated sequences of movements consisting of
stereotyped consummatory behavior followed by a more flexible portion of
appetitive behavior.
8. Pavlov believed that the activities of the brain could be described as
reflexes.
9. Discrimination widens the range of stimuli to which the organism will
respond.
10. During the relative refractory period, a reflex response cannot be elicited
no matter how intense the eliciting stimulus.
11. A schema is a functional unit that characterizes the relationship between a
class of stimuli and a class of responses.
12. Piaget was more concerned with demonstrating the invariance of the
sequence of stages that he posited than with demonstrating the age at
which a given stage is achieved.
13. According to Piaget the infant must learn to integrate information from
different sense modalities.
14. Piaget's methode clinique was based on asking the child careful questions
rather than measuring the child's test performance.
15. In Piaget’s “Sensory-Motor” period, the most important ability that is
acquired is the ability to form representations.
16. Piaget’s research could be described as the study of connections between
functional units known as “psychosexual stages”.
17. Cathexis is the process by which the id invests energy in seeking an
object.
18. The main function of the superego is reality testing.
19. Defense mechanisms serve to protect the ego from being functionally
impaired by anxiety.
20. While Freud attributed hysterical symptoms to traumatic sexual
experiences of childhood, he later realized that many of these events were
actually fantasies about childhood sexual experiences.
21. According to Freud, children are more likely than adults to have their
wishes directly expressed in the manifest content of their dreams.
22. Epistemology tries to answer the question: “What is the essence of
reality?”
23. Descartes was a "dualist".
24. Fechner’s Law calculates the just noticeable difference.
25. Sophists believe that our knowledge of the world is perfect.
26. Helmholtz’ theory of specific nerve energies taught that hydraulic
processes controlled action.
27. Determinists believe that behavior obeys natural laws.
GRAPH QUESTION (30 PTS)
Draw a function on the co-ordinates shown below that depicts a generalization
gradient (14 pts). Be sure to label the axes (5 pts each) and to indicate units of
measurement on each axis (3 pts each).