Dr.

Shaw, Introductory Psychology (PSY 1010)

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EXAM 2 - REVIEW SHEET

Note: Test questions tap your factual understanding (i.e., your ability to correctly define concepts) and your
conceptual understanding (i.e., your ability to apply concepts to novel examples).
Study tip: Imagine you are writing the test questions!
THE BIOLOGY OF BEHAVIOR (CH. 2 ONLY PP. 35-61 AND NOTES)
Neuron: What are its components (e.g., cell body, dendrites, axon, myelin sheath, node of Ranvier, synaptic
gap, terminal button) and their functions?

Action potential: How is it an electrochemical process? What is resting potential? What is polarization? What
happens when the neuron becomes activated? How is the electrical charge changed? What is this change
called? What is the threshold? What is the refractory period? What is the all-or-none principle? What does a
strong stimulus do does it affect the action potentials speed?

Neurotransmitters: Understand the effects of acetylcholine, endorphins, GABA, dopamine, norepinephrine,

and serotonin. What happens when levels of each NT are too low or too high?

Nervous System: How is it organized or subdivided? What are the basic functions of each division? What are
the dual functions of the autonomic NS?

Spinal cord: Of which division of the NS is it part? What is its role in spinal reflexes?

Brain: Why was the pseudoscience of phrenology important to modern neuropsychology? Understand the
functions of each of these structures, as well as observed behavior if damaged.
o Brainstem: medulla, reticular formation, pons, thalamus
o Cerebellum
o Basal Ganglia
o Limbic System: amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus
o Cerebral Cortex: frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe, primary motor cortex, primary
somatosensory cortex, association cortex
What happened to Phinneas Gage when he sustained damage to his frontal lobe?

Principle of topographic organization? Why does the map show a distorted view of the human body? What
does this mean in the motor cortex? In the sensory cortex?

Language processing: What are the functions of Brocas area and Wernickes area? What behavioral
symptoms are evident in Brocas aphasia and Wernickes aphasia?

What is plasticity?

What is the corpus callosum? Why is it severed in humans? What do we know from split-brain research? What
are the specialties of each hemisphere? Are there left-brained and right brained people/tasks? Why?

Generally understand these neuroimaging techniques: EEG, PET scan, MRI, and fMRI.

Dr. Shaw, Introductory Psychology (PSY 1010)

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SENSATION AND PERCEPTION (CH. 6 ONLY PP. 191-215 AND NOTES)

What are sensation, perception, sensory receptors, transduction, top-down and bottom-up processing? What
does psychophysics examine?

Absolute threshold: What is it? Examples? What does it depend on? What is noise?

Can subliminal messages control our behavior: Understand subliminal sensation vs. persuasion.

Difference threshold: What is it? Examples? What is Webers law?

Signal detection theory: What is it? Why was this theory developed? What are hits, misses, false alarms, and
correct rejections? How do those correspond to liberal and conservative response biases?

Sensory adaptation: What is it? How is it sometimes useful and at other times a hazard? Examples?

Vision and the Eye: How does the eye transform light energy into neural messages? Understand each structure
of the eye (e.g., cornea, pupil, iris, lens, retina, rods, cones, fovea, optic nerve, optic chiasm) and its function.
What is the blind spot? What is accommodation? What happens when one is nearsighted? Farsighted?

Visual information processing: Where is visual information first processed in the brain? What are feature
detectors? What is parallel processing?

Color vision: What are the trichromatic & opponent-process theories? What is colorblindness?

Visual organization: What is a gestalt? What does it mean to say that the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts?
o Gestalt principles of form perception: Understand figure-ground, proximity, similarity, continuity,
connectedness, and closure. Examples?
o Depth perception: Understand binocular (convergence, retinal disparity) and monocular depth cues
(relative size, interposition, relative clarity, texture gradient, relative height, relative motion, linear
perspective, light and shadow). Examples?
o Perceptual constancy: What is it? Understand shape and size constancy as examples.

Perceptual set: What is it? Examples? How does context influence perception?