Free practice final
Intro Psychology practice final (free, with answers)
A typical intro psychology final covers research methods, the brain and behavior, sensation and perception, learning, memory, development, social psychology, and psychological disorders and their treatment. These 15 questions ask you to apply the ideas to new situations, not just recall definitions. Try each one on your own before opening the answer, and read the explanation even when you got it right.
Topics
- Research Methods
- Biological Bases of Behavior
- Sensation and Perception
- Learning
- Memory
- Development
- Social Psychology
- Disorders and Treatment
15 questions
Try each one before you open its answer.
1. A survey of 500 college students finds a correlation of r = −0.45 between daily hours on social media and GPA. Which conclusion is best supported?
- A Spending time on social media causes GPAs to drop.
- B There is no real relationship, because the correlation is negative.
- C Students who spend more time on social media tend to have lower GPAs, but the survey cannot show why.
- D About 45% of students who use social media have low GPAs.
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Answer: C. Students who spend more time on social media tend to have lower GPAs, but the survey cannot show why.
A negative correlation means higher values of one variable go with lower values of the other. Because the study is correlational, a third variable (such as hours worked) or reverse causation could explain the link, so it cannot show that social media lowers grades.
2. A researcher randomly assigns participants to drink either a caffeinated or a decaffeinated beverage, then measures how quickly each person presses a button when a light flashes. What is the dependent variable?
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Answer: Reaction time (how quickly participants press the button)
The dependent variable is the outcome the researcher measures. The independent variable is what the researcher manipulates, here the caffeinated versus decaffeinated drink.
3. Damage to the hippocampus would most likely impair a person's ability to:
- A Keep their balance while walking
- B Form new long-term memories of facts and events
- C Regulate body temperature and hunger
- D Produce fluent speech
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Answer: B. Form new long-term memories of facts and events
The hippocampus is essential for forming new explicit (declarative) memories. Balance depends heavily on the cerebellum, temperature and hunger on the hypothalamus, and speech production on Broca's area in the frontal lobe.
4. Which depth cue depends on having two eyes?
- A Linear perspective
- B Interposition (overlap)
- C Relative size
- D Retinal disparity
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Answer: D. Retinal disparity
Each eye sees a slightly different image, and the brain uses the difference between them, retinal disparity, to judge distance. Linear perspective, interposition, and relative size are monocular cues that work with one eye, which is why artists can use them on a flat canvas.
5. Parkinson's disease, which causes tremor and difficulty starting movements, involves the death of neurons in the substantia nigra that release which neurotransmitter?
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Answer: Dopamine
Dopamine from the substantia nigra helps the basal ganglia control movement. Treatments such as L-dopa work by raising dopamine levels in the brain.
6. After getting food poisoning from shrimp, Jordan now feels nauseated just smelling shrimp. In classical conditioning terms, the smell of shrimp is now the:
- A Unconditioned stimulus
- B Unconditioned response
- C Conditioned response
- D Conditioned stimulus
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Answer: D. Conditioned stimulus
The smell was once neutral, but after being paired with the illness (the unconditioned stimulus) it now triggers nausea on its own, which makes it a conditioned stimulus. The nausea it triggers is the conditioned response.
7. Taylor's parents nag her every evening until she cleans her room. Once she cleans it, the nagging stops, and over time she starts cleaning her room sooner. Which process explains the change in her behavior?
- A Negative reinforcement
- B Positive reinforcement
- C Positive punishment
- D Negative punishment
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Answer: A. Negative reinforcement
Reinforcement increases a behavior, and "negative" means something is taken away: cleaning removes the unpleasant nagging, so cleaning becomes more likely. Punishment of either kind would make the behavior less likely.
8. Participants hear a list of 15 unrelated words and immediately recall as many as they can. Recall is especially good for the last few words on the list. What is this called?
- A Recency effect
- B Primacy effect
- C Proactive interference
- D Spacing effect
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Answer: A. Recency effect
The last few items are still in short-term (working) memory at the moment of recall, so they are easy to report. Better recall of the first items is the primacy effect, usually explained by extra rehearsal that moves them into long-term memory.
9. After you memorize your new locker combination, you find you can no longer recall your old one. Is this proactive or retroactive interference?
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Answer: Retroactive interference
In retroactive interference, new learning disrupts recall of older information. Proactive interference is the reverse: older information gets in the way of learning or recalling something new.
10. A child watches juice poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin glass and insists the tall glass now has more juice. According to Piaget, this child is most likely in which stage?
- A Sensorimotor
- B Preoperational
- C Concrete operational
- D Formal operational
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Answer: B. Preoperational
Preoperational children (roughly ages 2 to 7) have not yet mastered conservation, the understanding that an amount stays the same when its shape changes. Conservation is a hallmark of the concrete operational stage.
11. In Ainsworth's Strange Situation, an infant is upset when the caregiver leaves, greets the caregiver warmly on return, and is soon comforted and goes back to playing. Which attachment style does this show?
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Answer: Secure attachment
Securely attached infants use the caregiver as a safe base for exploring and are readily soothed when the caregiver returns. Avoidant infants tend to ignore the returning caregiver, and resistant (ambivalent) infants are hard to comfort.
12. In Milgram's classic obedience studies, an experimenter told participants to give increasingly strong shocks to a "learner" who was not actually being shocked. What was the key finding of the baseline version?
- A Most participants refused to continue once the learner began to protest.
- B Only participants who scored high on measures of aggression obeyed.
- C About two-thirds of participants obeyed all the way to the highest shock level.
- D Obedience increased when the experimenter gave orders by phone instead of in person.
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Answer: C. About two-thirds of participants obeyed all the way to the highest shock level.
In the baseline study about 65% of participants continued to the maximum 450-volt level, showing how strongly ordinary people obey an authority figure. In later variations, obedience dropped when the experimenter gave orders by phone or the learner was closer.
13. A driver cuts you off, and you immediately decide he is a rude, careless person, without considering that he might be rushing someone to the hospital. This tendency is called:
- A Fundamental attribution error
- B Cognitive dissonance
- C Groupthink
- D Social facilitation
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Answer: A. Fundamental attribution error
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to explain other people's behavior by their personality while underestimating the situation they are in. Cognitive dissonance, by contrast, is the discomfort of holding beliefs and actions that conflict.
14. A therapist treats a client's fear of dogs by first teaching relaxation, then having the client work up a list of steps, from looking at photos of dogs to petting a calm dog, while staying relaxed. This approach is called:
- A Free association
- B Aversive conditioning
- C Token economy
- D Systematic desensitization
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Answer: D. Systematic desensitization
Systematic desensitization pairs relaxation with gradual exposure along a fear hierarchy, so calm replaces anxiety as the response to the feared object. It is a behavioral therapy based on counterconditioning; free association is a psychoanalytic technique.
15. Are the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia classified as positive or negative symptoms?
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Answer: Positive symptoms
Positive symptoms are experiences added to normal functioning, such as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech. Negative symptoms are losses of normal functioning, such as flat affect, social withdrawal, and lack of motivation.