Find the answers to these questions, write them down, and review them repeatedly until you know them! You can do it! HANDWRITTEN ANSWERS DUE MON. MORNING. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.
History of Psychology
1. What 2 fields merged together to create Psychology?
2. What is free will? What is determinism?
3. Who was Wilhelm Wundt, what school of psychology did he belong to, and how did he conduct psychological research (what was the name of his method of research? Starts with I...)?
4. What did the behaviorists think about the ability of humans to make choices? What did the behaviorists think controlled human behavior?
5. Whose name is associated with the psychodynamic school of psychology? What did psychodynamic theory think about the ability of humans to make choices? What did they think controlled human behavior?
6. What did the humanists think about the ability of humans to make choices?
Scientific Research & Thinking
1. What is the purpose of conducting research studies? What is the main difference between philosophers and psychologists?
2. What does it mean to "operationally define" your variables? Why is it important to measure your variables in the form of numbers (think about one of the last steps of the scientific method as covered in class: data analysis)?
3. Give an example of one pair of variables that you expect to be positively correlated with each other and explain their relationship. Do the same for two negatively correlated variables.
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses/limitations of correlational research? Be sure to state what it is that you CANNOT say about the results of correlational research.
5. Name and define the three types of variables in experimental research.
6. Identify the independent and dependent variables and possible extraneous variables when given a sample hypothesis, such as: Talking in front of the class kills college students.
7. Given an example of why you would use random assignment. What type of variable does it help control for?
Neurons & Neural Communication
1. Draw and label the parts of a neuron.
2. Draw a graph of the electrical charge of a neuron (in millivolts). Begin with the neuron at rest, and then show what happens to the charge of the neuron when an excitatory neurotransmitter causes the neuron's charge to increase to -50 millivolts. What is -50 millivolts called? Draw the rest of the action potential and label what is happening to sodium and potassium to cause this change in charge. Be sure that label your graph's axes with the appropriate numbers.
3. Why is the action potential called an "electrochemical" process? What are the three main chemicals involved (Hint: one of them is neurotransmitters)? How do these chemicals cause a change in the electrical charge of the neuron?
4. Why is the action potential said to be "all or none?" Do strong stimuli (like something pressing very hard on your hand) cause a very large action potential and weak stimuli create small action potentials? If not, how is stimulus size communicated by neurons?
5. How do neurons send information to each other if they do not touch?
The Brain
1. What is one way that we have learned about how different parts of the brain work? Specifically, what did we learn from the case of Phineas Gage?
2. What are the main functions of each hemisphere? Be sure to include motor (or movement) functions.
3. Draw one hemisphere of the brain. Mark off and label where the four lobes are. What are the main functions of each lobe?
4. Damage to what two specific parts of the left hemisphere causes an aphasia, or language disorder? What do these two parts of the left hemisphere allow us to do?
5. If you had a patient with difficulty speaking and moving her right side of the body, which hemisphere would be affected? Which lobe? Which other parts?
6. If you had a patient with an intense fear of snakes, which part of his brain would be overactive?
7. If you had a patient with shaky movements (like difficulty smoothly bringing a glass of water to his lips), what part of his brain would be affected?
Sensation (Visual System only)
7. What is the difference between sensation and perception?
8. What are the 2 photoreceptors in the eye? What are their functions? Which do you use in the dark? Which is for color? Which is for movement? Which is for fine detail?
9. What do amplitude, wavelength, and purity determine regarding color vision?
10. What creates the blind spot? The axons of what cells are involved?
11. What causes nearsightedness? Farsightedness?
12. What is the opponent-process theory? Be sure to know what colors work in opposite ways with each other. Where in the body do cells behave this way?
13. What is the trichromatic theory of color? Which cells in the retina does it describe? What are the colors involved.
Perception (Visual System only)
1. What are the 4 parts of the brain involved with vision? Which is the crisscross point? Where does the information from the left half of your visual world end up in your brain (which hemisphere)?
2. Draw a Muller-Lyer optical illusion. What does research from Zulu villagers tell us about whether perception is learned (based on experience) or innate (determined at birth by genes)?
3. Name, draw, and describe the 3 Gestalt principles that we went over in class.
4. Describe how retinal disparity is a binocular depth cue. Explain how the muscles involved with lens accommodation are a monocular depth cue.
5. Name and describe two ways artists can create the perception of depth (pictorial depth cues).