Scientific Literacy in Psychology Exam Preparation Guide
Course Introduction
Scientific Literacy in Psychology explores the foundational skills required to critically evaluate psychological research and apply scientific thinking in real-world contexts. Students will learn how to interpret data, assess the credibility of sources, understand experimental design, and distinguish between evidence-based conclusions and pseudoscience. The course emphasizes the development of analytical abilities necessary to navigate contemporary issues in psychology, fostering an informed and skeptical approach to information encountered both within and outside academic settings.
Recommended Textbook
Psychological Science Modeling Scientific Literacy 1st Edition by Mark Krause
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17 Chapters
4332 Verified Questions
4332 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Introducing Psychological Science
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248 Verified Questions
248 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Dr.Fernwood is a research psychologist.The main focus of her research is the use of psychological knowledge to find ways to reduce bullying in schools.Dr.Fernwood's research could be described as _____ psychology.
A)Basic
B)forensic
C)applied
D)I/O
Answer: C
Q2) Professor Ashmore approaches questions about human behavior from a perspective which emphasizes how people reason,remember,and understand language.It is most likely that she accepts the _____________ perspective.
A)biological
B)behavioral
C)cognitive
D)sociocultural
Answer: C
Q3) In order to be scientific,it must be possible to _________________ a hypotheses. Answer: test (falsify and reject are also acceptable answers)
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Chapter 2: Reading and Evaluating Scientific Research
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270 Verified Questions
270 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) In research,the object,concept,or event being measured is called a
A)data unit
B)population
C)variable
D)sample
Answer: C
Q2) Claiming that something is true because "it should be obvious" is really just _____.
A)anecdotal evidence
B)an appeal to common sense
C)an appeal to authority
D)generalizability
Answer: B
Q3) Which of the following correlation coefficients shows the strongest relationship between two variables?
A)+.54
B)_.72
C)+1.1
D)+.10
Answer: B
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Chapter 3: Biological Psychology
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339 Verified Questions
339 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The part of the brain that receives sensations of touch,balance,and bodily position is the __________.
A)occipital lobe
B)temporal lobe
C)parietal lobe
D)frontal lobe
Answer: C
Q2) Luisa is diagnosed with a medical disorder caused by too much dopamine activity in certain brain regions.Her doctor is likely to prescribe a dopamine ________________ to treat her.
A)reuptake inhibitor.
B)stimulator
C)agonist.
D)antagonist.
Answer: D
Q3) Lasting only a few milliseconds,the ____________________ is a brief period after an action potential when a neuron cannot fire again.
Answer: refractory period
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Chapter 4: Sensation and Perception
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320 Verified Questions
320 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) A blind spot is a part of the visual field we can't see,where the _____________ connects to the_____________.
A)retina; pupil
B)cornea; iris
C)optic nerve; retina
D)optic nerve; sclera
Q2) Which of the following is NOT a perceptual constancy?
A)size
B)shape
C)brightness
D)linear perspective
Q3) At which structure does the transduction of light into a neural signal occur in the visual system?
A)Retina
B)Cornea
C)LGN
D)Lens
Q4) Special devices called _________________ consist of a microphone,speech processor,and electrodes,which can restore some hearing by artificially stimulating intact nerve endings in the ear.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Consciousness
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232 Verified Questions
232 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Marsha is a participant in a sleep study.After about 30 minutes of sleep,she enters Stage 4.What are the researchers most likely to observe when studying Marsha during this period?
A)slow,rolling eye movements
B)reports of vivid,unrealistic dreams if Marsha is awakened
C)slow brain waves called delta waves
D)fast,brain waves called alpha waves
Q2) The synthesis part of the activation-synthesis hypothesis suggests that:
A)the brain interprets the meaning of symbolic images.
B)the brain stem activates the cortex to produce random images.
C)the cortex stimulates the brain stem to produce interpretations of dreams.
D)the brain tries to "synthesize," or make sense of,randomly activated images.
Q3) Emilio is currently in Stage 2 sleep.This means his EEG is showing __________ waves.
A)only delta
B)occasional delta
C)occasional bursts of rapid,high-peaking
D)only small,irregular
Q4) The _________________releases a hormone called melatonin,which is critical to maintaining the sleep-wake cycle.
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Chapter 6: Learning
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365 Verified Questions
365 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Thorndike's main apparatus in his operant conditioning research was:
A)a wire monkey.
B)a cognitive map.
C)a puzzle box.
D)a buzzer.
Q2) Which of the following is a secondary reinforcer?
A)water
B)food
C)shelter
D)a gold star on a test
Q3) Anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will increase is called a(n)_______.
A)aversive control
B)punishment
C)antecedent
D)reinforcer
Q4) The four processes involved in ______________________ include attention to the act or behavior,memory for it,the ability to reproduce it,and the motivation to do so.
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Chapter 7: Memory
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275 Verified Questions
275 Flashcards
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Sample
Questions
Q1) Many people think of memory as an accurate "recording" of past events.However,researchers have been able to demonstrate that it is fairly easy to make subjects misremember events,or even remember events that did not occur.Explain three different techniques that researchers have used to create these false memories.Provide examples of each.
Q2) After Tanya has practiced a dance for her ballet class for a while,she feels as if her muscles know exactly what to do at each point in the piece.This is an example of a _____________ memory
A)episodic
B)semantic
C)declarative
D)nondeclarative
Q3) Memories that can be verbalized,whether they are about your own experiences or your knowledge about the world,are called _____.
A)nondeclarative memories
B)procedural memories
C)conditioned memories
D)declarative memories
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Chapter 8: Thought and Language
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195 Verified Questions
195 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Concepts and categories are important because they allow us to:
A)classify objects or ideas as belonging to one single group and no others.
B)avoid using prototypes in most situations.
C)develop mental sets which help us solve new problems.
D)organize and manage tremendous amounts of information.
Q2) According to a study discussed in your textbook,participants performing a lexical decision task were able to identify strings of letters such as "nutcracker" and "reindeer" as being real words faster in December than other times of the year.This indicates that the holiday season creates a ____________ effect for related certain words.
A)sentence verification
B)linguistic relativity
C)priming
D)categorization
Q3) Belief perseverance seems to function by
A)Maximizing positive feelings.
B)Minimizing negative feelings.
C)Maximizing negative feelings while minimizing positive feelings.
D)Minimizing negative feelings while maximizing positive feelings.
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Chapter 9: Intelligence, aptitude, and Cognitive Abilities
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209 Verified Questions
209 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is true regarding the study of the heritability of intelligence?
A)The study of intelligence and its heritability is only a few decades old.
B)The study of heritability has not changed very much over the last 50 years.
C)The study of intelligence and its heritability is over a hundred years old.
D)Modern research on the heredity focuses almost exclusively on ethnicity.
Q2) According to Gardner there are ________ types of intelligence.
A)two
B)four
C)six
D)eight
Q3) According to your textbook,how should teachers tailor their instruction styles to maximize learning?
A)Teachers should tailor their teaching to fit the material.
B)Teachers should tailor their teaching to match each individual student's learning style.
C)Teachers should tailor their teaching to match the modal (i.e.,most frequent)learning style found in their classroom.
D)Teachers should tailor their teaching primarily towards reading/writing learners.
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11
Chapter 10: Life Span Development
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288 Verified Questions
288 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) How are proximity to others and the establishment of friendships related?
A)not related
B)inversely correlated
C)negatively related
D)positively related
Q2) The ongoing development of the _____ may explain why adolescents are known to make risky or poor decisions.
A)hippocampus
B)temporal lobe
C)prefrontal cortex
D)parietal lobe
Q3) ___________ marks the transition from childhood to adolescence.
A)Marriage
B)Entering the formal operational stage
C)Puberty
D)Becoming 13 years old
Q4) Although newborn infants can be very difficult to study,researchers have learned a lot about how they perceive the world soon after birth.Describe some of what is known about newborns' ability to hear,see,and smell.
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Chapter 11: Motivation and Emotion
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207 Verified Questions
207 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Most people have a preference for foods with a high fat content (e.g.,red meat,cheese,cream).From an evolutionary perspective,what does this suggest?
A)Modern humans should eat a diet rich in high fat food.
B)All animals prefer a diet high fat diet.
C)At some point in our evolutionary history,seeking out high fat foods was adaptive.
D)Early humans were mostly vegetarians.
Q2) Children who are born both deaf and blind show the same facial expressions and emotions as people who see and hear.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following statements is true about how humans display emotions?
A)While some basic emotions are universally recognized,different cultures have unique ways of displaying some emotions.
B)All emotional displays are understood across all cultures.
C)There are no emotional displays that are universally understood across all cultures.
D)Emotional displays are determined by context,but not by culture.
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13
Chapter 12: Personality
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241 Verified Questions
241 Flashcards
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Sample
Questions
Q1) What do twin studies indicate about the role of genes in personality?
A)Heredity plays an important role in personality.
B)Dizygotic twins are more likely than monozygotic twins to share personality traits.
C)Personality is almost entirely determined by parenting and other environmental factors.
D)Personality appears to be related to two different copies of a serotonin transporter gene.
Q2) Justin has struggled to pass his mathematics courses and decides to pursue a degree in creative writing,an area in which he has a long history of succeeding.According to Carl Rogers,in this instance Justin is showing a(n)_____.
A)positive self-concept
B)negative self-concept
C)inferiority complex
D)Oedipal complex
Q3) Describe two different techniques researchers use to investigate the relationship between genes and personality.
Q4) Freud believed the id was fueled by an energy called _____________.
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Chapter 13: Psychological Disorders
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273 Verified Questions
273 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Experiencing extremes in motor behavior is one symptom associated with A)catatonic schizophrenia.
B)disorganized schizophrenia.
C)paranoid schizophrenia.
D)undifferentiated schizophrenia.
Q2) Which of the following is an accurate statement regarding the intersection of the mental health and legal industries?
A)The insanity defense is raised in less than 1% of all criminal trials,and is only successful about 20% of the time.
B)"Insanity" is a psychological/psychiatric term.
C)The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was famously found not guilty by reason of insanity.
D)The precedent for the insanity defense is a trial that occurred in the 1970s.
Q3) One of the most controversial diagnoses in psychology today is dissociative identity disorder (DID).Provide two pieces of evidence for DID and four pieces of evidence citied by skeptics of the disorder.
Q4) Suicide rates are higher among the elderly than they are for adolescents.
A)True
B)False
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Page 15
Chapter 14: Therapies
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236 Verified Questions
236 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which therapeutic technique uses punishment and other strategies to create a negative response to a stimulus?
A)flooding
B)aversive conditioning
C)systematic desensitization
D)electroconvulsive therapy
Q2) Empirically supported treatments refer to:
A)treatments for which only anecdotal evidence of effectiveness are available.
B)treatments that are effective for all psychological disorders and this effectiveness has been established through rigorous scientific testing.
C)treatments that are effective for specific disorders and this effectiveness has been established through the use of sound research designs.
D)treatments which have been shown to be effective for 100% of people receiving therapy.
Q3) Because it can be used to stimulate specific brain regions without surgery or anesthesia,______________ may prove to be a valuable technological tool for treating depression,and potentially,other psychological disorders.
Q4) Describe four key differences between humanistic therapies and psychoanalysis.
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Page 16
Chapter 15: Social Psychology
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249 Verified Questions
249 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) ________ occurs when people use stereotypes to misplace and exaggerate blame on others.
A)Obedience
B)Conformity
C)Prejudice
D)Scapegoating
Q2) Not belching at the dinner table is an example of a(n)_______________,an unwritten rule about how to behave in a certain social context.
Q3) Asch (1951)used __________ to study informational conformity.
A)the "autokinetic effect"
B)the latency of response
C)social loafing in a tug of war group
D)line lengths
Q4) Whenever a person has two contradictory cognitions at the same time,a state of _______ exists.
A)cognitive congruence
B)nonreciprocity
C)cognitive dissonance
D)identity diffusion
Q5) ______________ attribution is also known as situational attribution.
Page 17
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Chapter 16: Krause and Corts
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199 Verified Questions
199 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Patrice decided to lose weight by dieting.He found that it was relatively easy to lose the first 18 or so pounds,but after that,he felt his body was fighting his effort to lose more weight.Patrice's experience is consistent with the concept of _______________.
A)positive energy balance
B)the general adaptation syndrome
C)extinction
D)a set point
Q2) Children who grow up in ____________ families have higher rates of overweight and obesity than children on average.
A)low-income
B)high-income
C)small
D)large
Q3) Researchers have concluded that the actual cause of ulcers is _____.
A)stress
B)bacterial infection
C)genetics
D)poor diet
Q4) The bacterium Helicobacter pylori is now known to be the cause of
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Chapter 17: Krause and Corts
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186 Verified Questions
186 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) When performing a job analysis,psychologists typically interview all of the following EXCEPT
A)subject-matter experts.
B)incumbents.
C)potential candidates.
D)supervisors.
Q2) For companies,turnover refers to the rate at which
A)employees are promoted.
B)product lines are replaced.
C)employees work.
D)employees leave the company.
Q3) KSAOs stands for
A)knowledge,skills,abilities,and other traits.
B)knowledge-based situational aptitude objective.
C)knowing,speaking,auditing,and other skills.
D)the Kentucky Survey of Assessment Organizations.
Q4) I/O pioneers Frank and Lillian Gilbreth began their research without any formal scientific training.
A)True
B)False
Page 19
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