PSY 1

SAMPLE MIDTERM QUESTIONS

INSTRUCTIONS: For each question, find the letter of the best answer. The Answer Key is below; scroll down to see it.

1. A depressed patient treated with ECT:

a. shows major deficiencies in semantic clustering.

b. can't form new memories.

c. cannot recall events immediately before treatment.

d. tends to turn into a Gray Davis supporter.

2. Social intelligence and planning:

a. depends mostly on areas in the frontal lobe.

b. is largely a function of the white matter in the brain.

c. can best be measured using positron emission tomography (PET scans).

d. is absent in most politicians.

3. Developmental psychologists are most likely to study:

a. children’s aggression.

b. glandular functions.

c. trends in brain evolution.

d. learning in rats vs. humans.

4. A person who laughs at a cartoon but cannot describe what he’s laughing at may have:

a. Gerstmann syndrome.

b. had split-brain surgery.

c. dyslexia.

d. multiple sclerosis.

5. Associationists assumed that:

a. knowledge is inherited.

b. ideas, because they are mental states, must all come from God.

c. all knowledge results from experience.

d. humans can fulfill their potential only through interaction with others.

6. Measuring brain activity with PET scans can:

a. diagnose early emotional deprivation.

b. crudely predict political affiliation, because Independent brains use more blood.

c. allow calculating the amount of white matter in the brain.

d. reveal what parts of the brain relate to a specific behavior.

7. The sleep researcher obtains most diagnostic information from:

a. physiological measures like the EEG, EKG and EMG.

b. MRI- or fMRI-scans of the brain and spinal cord.

c. autopsies of sleeping brains.

d. the best guesses of the patient and his/her family members.

8. Homeostasis can be considered to reflect the operation of:

a. early, pre-Hippocratic medicine.

b. positive reinforcement.

c. negative feedback.

d. the corpus callosum.

9. An organism must first consolidate information before placing it in:

a. long term memory.

b. short term memory.

c. iconic memory (sensory registers).

d. cold storage.

10. The “brain in the vat” problem illustrates the:

a. difficulty of maintaining live brains outside the body.

b. complexities of the mind-body problem.

c. wisdom of the slogan, “no brain before its time.”

d. Heavy glucose neds of the living nervous system.

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ANSWER KEY:

1. c

2. a

3. a

4. b

5. c

6. d

7. a

8. c

9. a

10. b