Exam 1: Introduction to Psychology

Two early humans go hunting for food. They have comparable intelligence. Brawn is strong and fast; Timorous is scrawny and easily tired by vigorous exercise. The men are attacked by a panther. They both run, but Timorous lags behind and is killed by the panther. The panther then chases and overcomes Brawn, who manages to fight off the panther and escape. Brawn passes his strength and speed on to many children; Timorous had only one child before he died. What process is responsible for Brawn's having more offspring than Timorous?

Identical twins share the same genotype, (i.e. their genomes are identical); but they never have the same phenotype. This is apparent in the fact that their mothers and close friends can always tell them apart, even though others might not be able to see the subtle differences. Which way of thinking about Psychology best describes the issue with twins' different phenotypes?

It has been said that no two people have the same parents, since parents respond to and treat each child differently. Watson and Skinner would probably ___________ with this statement because __________________.

Alex helps individuals who are in early stages of dementia build coping strategies and reduce distress through psychotherapy and psychoeducational support groups. He uses memory training strategies help to optimize remaining cognitive abilities. Which subdiscipline of Psychology does Alex work in?

Current findings on parental influences provide less deterministic explanations than did earlier theory and research on parenting. Contemporary research approaches include (a) behaviour-genetic designs, augmented with direct measures of potential environmental influences; (b) studies distinguishing among children with different genetically influenced predispositions in terms of their responses to different environmental conditions; and (c) experimental and quasi-experimental studies of change in children's behaviour as a result of their exposure to parents' behaviour, after controlling for children's initial characteristics. Indicate that parental influences on child development are neither as unambiguous as earlier researchers suggested nor as insubstantial as current critics claim. This supports the

A mother alligator lays a clutch, or group, of eggs. When the babies hatch, one has a white hide, rather than the normal green. The white alligator grows normally and is as healthy as its siblings, but it's definitely easier to see against the green lake area in which the alligators live. What caused the white alligator's hide to be different from those of its siblings and parents?

Rafael recently saw a movie in which a man killed his entire family because the ghosts that supposedly haunted his house told him to. The moviemakers claim that the story is based on real events and that the house in which the man lived is haunted. Rafael's psychology professor, however, says that people who hear voices usually have schizophrenia. To decide which "facts" to believe, the best question Rafael could ask himself is:

Kalinda has been having trouble with her college classes. Each time a professor announces an assignment, she worries that she won't do it right. Every time she takes a test, she worries that she hasn't studied the right things. When her friends notice that she's been acting depressed and ask if she's all right, she tells them she can't do anything right. To help her, a cognitive therapist would probably suggest that Kalinda

Skye has been having problems with depression. She doesn't have health insurance to see a doctor, but she sees an advertisement for a study being done at the local university. When she meets with one of the scientists, he tells her that the study will require her to have several PET scans. The first one will be done before she takes any medication for her depression, and the rest will be done at regular intervals both while she is taking an antidepressant and after she no longer needs to take an antidepressant. The researchers doing this study are probably

Dr. Mateo believes that every child is born a blank slate. Children's early environments shape their personalities, though the children may be continually affected by their environments as they grow. Everything comes down to a simple principle in Dr. Mateo's mind: If our behaviours are followed by satisfying consequences, we will repeat them, and if the consequences are unsatisfying, we won't repeat them. Dr. Mateo is probably a ___________________ therapist.

Every year, the dubious posthumous honour of the Darwin Award is bestowed on people who "[improve] the human genome by . . . accidentally kill[ing] themselves in really stupid ways." In Kenya, on 24 April 2014, two men taking selfies with a wild elephant were trampled to death by the irate pachyderm. To which of Darwin's principles are the Darwin Awards in homage?

The human visual system is adept at nearly instantaneously interpreting a rich 3D environment filled with varied surfaces and textures. This feat of perceptual inference is astonishing in light of the massive amount of information entering the eye at any one instant and its inherent ambiguity. The Bethe Lab studies the human visual system's solution to this problem. The Bethe Lab is using _________.

Dewayne is taking a psychology class. He isn't really interested in discussions about the unconscious, childhood influences, or the way different structures in the brain work. Instead, he is interested in the purpose of certain psychological mechanisms. For example, he wonders why we feel disgusted by a food that made us sick or why some emotions are the same all over the world but others aren't. Dewayne is thinking most like a

Gary is depressed and unenthusiastic about his classes and worries that he has chosen the wrong major. At the suggestion of a friend, he goes to see a therapist. To his surprise, Dr. Takeri is not interested in Gary's relationship with his mother, his family history, or anything else about Gary's past. Instead, Dr. Takeri focuses on what Gary is currently thinking and how he interprets those thoughts. Dr. Takeri conducts therapy from a _________________ perspective.

Chloe is interested in better understanding how her mental processes work. To do so, she often reflects on her day-to-day experiences of the world in journals about her internal processes. Chloe is ______, the same approach the ______ used.

Sally believes that her children's environment interacts with their genetics shaping them into who they are and what they will do. Sally clearly agrees with the

David has studied cell-phone impact using driving high-fidelity simulators while controlling for driving difficulty and time on task. He obtained unambiguous scientific evidence that cell-phone conversations disrupt driving performance. Human attention has a limited capacity, and studies suggest that talking on the phone causes a kind of "inattention blindness" to the driving scene. David is most likely a

Ramesh has come to Canada from India to seek his college degree. When he is a senior, his parents tell him that they have arranged his marriage to a young woman named Nalini. They provide him with a detailed description of her personality and goals in life, and she seems to have all the qualities Ramesh would like in a wife. Ramesh tells his parents he will marry her. Ramesh's Canadian friends tell him he is crazy to consider marrying someone he has never met, but Ramesh says that he is from a/an _____________ culture and that ___________________

Psychologist David Buss studies the dating and mating behaviours of human beings. The facial features we associate with female beauty-big eyes, clear skin, full lips-are strongly correlated with health and fertility. Therefore, Buss says, early men who chose beautiful women who met these criteria were more likely to have healthy children and pass on this appreciation of beauty. Based on this information, we can say that Buss is a/an ____________________ psychologist.

Carol's parents live in southern Florida, where anoles (small lizards) are common. Every time she visits, Carol removes more anoles from inside her parents' pool cage. There is no way for new anoles to get into the cage, so all the anoles there now are either the original interlopers or their offspring that have inherited the qualities that allowed the original anoles to escape capture. As a result, the anoles that are still inside the cage, including the babies, are very difficult to catch and remove. On a microcosmic level, the increasingly clever anoles in the pool cage are the result of