Mixed Practice Questions (all units)

1. People who are warned that they are about to taste something bad rate what they do taste
more negatively than people who are told that the taste won't be so bad (Nitschke et al.,
2006), and people perceive a child and adult pair as looking more alike when they are
told that they are parent and child (Bressan & Dal Martello, 2002). Examples of research
such as these support the assertion that:

Our expectations affect our perception

2. When reading a textbook, most people skip unnecessary words to increase reading speed.
Imagine you are at a party and are having a conversation with someone. Mid-sentence,
you clearly hear your name in a conversation happening across the room. This is known
as the Cocktail Party Effect. It occurs as a result of:

Selective Attention

3. What was a general concern with Broadbent's Filter Model, Treisman's Attenuation
Model, and Late Selection Models?

They didn’t account for all data

4. A fundamental principle of statistics is that:

5. A researcher puts the names of all possible subjects in a hat and draws out 10 for the
study so she has a

Random Sample

6. The electrostatic charge within a neuron must reach the Threshold of Exitation before the
neuron will fire.
7. The crevices/fissures in the brain (where the brain "dips down") are called:Sulci/Sulcus
8. Seroquel is a drug that decreases the effect of the neurotransmitters serotonin and
dopamine at synapses. For that reason, this drug could be considered a(n) Antagonist.
9. The most common route by which a drug is ingested into the body is oral administration,
while one of the most rapid ways of getting the effects of a drug is Inhalation/IV.
10. When hormones activate a target cell, proteins deactivate or activate other genes.
11. What insulating substance allows for an electrical signal to travel much faster down an
axon? The Myelin Sheathe

(Lesson 5 &6 Questions):

1. The central nervous system consists of the Brain and Spinal Cord
2. The CNS is made up of two general classes of cells: Glia and Neurons

3. Neurons are made up of:

4. Grace was out on a crowded dance floor when the person dancing next to her accidentally
kicked her in the leg. Which type of neuron carried the pain information from her leg to her
central nervous system? Nocireceptors

5. The spinal reflex arc is:

6. Neurons communicate: Chemically?

7. The following is FALSE about action potentials “Action potentials in a neuron can be smaller
or larger, depending on the number of presynaptic cells synapsing on the dendrites of that
neuron, and the strength of the signal from those presynaptic cells”

8. If a drug increases the rate of reuptake this will: Provide high risk for addiction

9. Dendrites on neurons do Pick up signals from presynaptic neurons they do not Transmit action
potentials
10. Suppose a single postsynaptic neuron receives input from many fast synapses. What will
determine its response to this input?

12. Which of the following is NOT true? “All sensory information is relayed to the brain via the
Hypothalamus”

13. Due to a minor stroke, Kerry has a tiny lesion in the left primary visual cortex, the most
likely result will be: Blindness in the right eye?

14. A structure in the limbic system that plays an important role in the formation of memories is
the: Hippocampus

15. Which of the following structures, located in the middle of the brain, is often described as
being the relay station connecting various parts of the brain? Central sulcus?

16. After being in a car accident, Geoff began having problems concentrating, and paying
attention to things. His wife noticed that this normally tidy man was messy and disorganized, and
a colleague at work recently complained that Geoff behaved inappropriately towards her. Which
of the following lobes of the brain was most likely damaged? The frontal lobes.
17. Broca and Wernicke's aphasia can be distinguished because Broca's involves the “Frontal”
area of the brain and results in difficulty with speech “Production” whereas Wernicke's involves
the temporal area and results in difficulty with speech comprehension

18. In split-brain studies, when a picture of a common object was flashed to the left visual field,
the patient typically would be unable to ____, but would be able to ___

19. the following is TRUE about hemispheric specialization? “the left hemisphere is
______, while the right hemisphere seems to be _______”

20. Which of the following is FALSE about brain plasticity? “After childhood, the functional
organization of the human brain is unchangeable”

(Lesson 7&8 Questions):

1. As sleep cycles progress over the course of an average night, the amount of time spent in REM
sleep: 20%

2. Distinguishing a severely brain-damaged individual as being in a vegetative state, compared to

a minimally conscious state, or locked-in state, is:

6. Which of the following is TRUE about visual search tasks? “Search is serial for conjunctions
of features, but parallel for single features”

7. As you fall asleep, how do your EEG wave patterns change as you go from being alert, to
being …

9. Evidence for the theory that sleep helps us to consolidate memories comes from research
indicating that: “a. cells in the hippocampus are activated during learning and again during
sleep”
10. In signal detection theory, the “Satisfaction of search” phenomenon may explain

11. Suppose that you have just finished working out and decide to take a shower. You are also
expecting an important phone call and so decide that you will listen extra carefully for the
ringing of the phone. Two or three times you pop your head out of the shower thinking that you
hear the phone (but it really didn't ring). Your experience of listening for the phone has to do
with:
12. Generally speaking, the value of sensory adaptation is that it:
13. The Gestalt law of similarity predicts that:

14. When we look at a musician on stage holding a guitar, the guitar typically hides the
musician's midsection and part of the left arm. But we ignore the gaps in the contour of the
musician's body and perceive it as a complete form anyway. This illustrates:

15. A white shirt is seen as being equally bright outside on a sunny day and in a dimly lit room.
This is because:

16. Skweeky-Kleen is one of the largest manufacturers of dish soap. They'd like to increase their
market share by giving consumers more products, in a bigger bottle, for the same price they
charge now, but without being wastefully extravagant with their 'giveaway'. You're a consultant
psychologist for the company. What is the first thing to do/try?

17. How does perception differ from sensation?

19. Why does sugar taste sweet and vinegar taste sour?

20. The quantitative dimension of a stimulus (such as the brightness of a light, or loudness of a
sound) is coded at the level of sensory neurons by:
1. You want to examine whether same-sex learning groups are more or less effective

than different-sex learning groups at helping students prepare for tests. Would you

design a study or an experiment? Briefly describe what your independent and

dependent variables might be, and how you might use the data you collect to answer

the question.

You would ideally design an experiment, meaning that you assign the subjects

randomly to groups (with the constraint that the random assignment has to take

account of sex), and then manipulate the independent variable (sex ratio).

You would assign half your subjects to same-sex groups, and half to different sex

groups. Your independent variable would be whether each participant was assigned to

a same sex or diff-sex study group. Your dependent variable would be some measure of

outcome (course final mark; or assignment marks, or exam mark). You would take the

marks from all your same sex study group participants, and the marks from all your

different-sex study group participants, and compare them to see which has a

significantly higher mean.

TA Feedback: This is good answer, but a gold-standard answer would also note possible
confounds that might affect the dependent variable – i.e., subject characteristics other than the
type of study group to which they are assigned that might influence marks (e.g., those who are
majoring in the subject vs those who just need it for another degree program; upper-year students
vs first-year students, etc).

2. Describe how genetics and the environment interact to produce behaviour or

mental processes.

Genes provide a loose range of the abilities one has, and the environment determines

where in the range you fall / which genes are expressed.

PROVIDE EXAMPLES (e.g., twin studies)

3. Discuss the concept of contingency in the context of both learning and also in

diagnosing disorders of consciousness.

Contingency implies a predictive and causal relationship, such that one stimulus predicts another
stimulus, or a stimulus predicts a response, or a response predicts an outcome.This means that
the stimulus reliably (over and over again) precedes the other stimulus or the response, or the
outcome reliably follows the stimulus. Predictive also means that the relationship is specific --
the response reliably followsthe stimulus (and doesn’t happen a lot when the stimulus has not
been presented) – the outcome reliably follows the behaviour (and doesn’t happen a lot when the
behaviour has not been performed)

Classical conditioning – requires not only contiguity but contingency (Rescorla’s dogs) To
discriminate between Locked in (complete awareness) vs. Minimally Conscious State (minimal
awareness) vs Vegetative state (no voluntary interaction with environment),thus whether a
patient is minimally conscious (able to respond to an external stimulus), we need to demonstrate
contingency.

4. Explain how sensation differs from perception. Provide at least TWO examples where what
you sense, and what you perceive, are different.

Sensation is the process by which physical energy in the environment is transduced by

peripheral receptors into electrical signals, and conveyed to the brain, the raw data.
Perception is the selection, organization and interpretation of this information, often
using previous knowledge and experience as a guide. (Data analysis). Examples might
include a variety of illusions, such as the size-weight illusion, explored in one of the
learning-labs this term (the tomato cans, which were actually the same mass, but
which you perceived as different weights because of your prior knowledge). Other
examples, would be perceptual contrast effects (where objects conveying the same
sensory information – e.g., two objects that are the same retinal size are perceived as
being different sizes (eg Muller-Lyer illusion; see
http://www.purveslab.net/seeforyourself/) or patches that reflect exactly the same
wavelengths to the eye are seen as different colors (eg Color contrast effect; see
http://www.purveslab.net/seeforyourself/) or perceptual constancy effects, such as
size constancy and color constancy, where the sensory information conveyed by two
objects is different, but they are perceived as the same. Illusory contours would be
another example, since your brain is ‘putting in’ contours that aren’t physically
present.

5. You are in a small seminar class with 20 other students. You want your professor
to tell more anecdotes in class, and spend less time lecturing on abstract concepts.
What can you do to change her behaviour? Provide examples of how you could use:
(1) positive pubishment, (2) negative punishment, (3) positive reinforcement, and (4)
negative reinforcement to alter behaviour.

You could use operant conditioning to guide her behaviour so that she exhibits more
anecdote-telling behaviour and less lecturing behaviour. You would reinforce anecdote
telling, and punish lecturing on abstract topics. Whenever the instructor starts to
lecture, deliver something aversive (that would be positive punishment). Get out your
phone and start texting, talk to your friends. Also use negative punishment – the
removal of something good – If you were making eye contact before, avert your gaze.
Stop smiling and nodding. Stop looking interested. You could also reinforce anecdote
telling (by making eye contact with the instructor, nodding and smiling at her
whenever she relates an anecdote – that would be positive reinforcement – giving the
instructor something good). You could also stop talking, stop checking your phone, stop
looking bored – all things that the instructor finds aversive (so this would be negative
reinforcement – the removal of something bad).