mmmu - Psychology evaluations

<image 1> Which part of the brain represented above is indicated by the blue region?

(A) pons

(B) medulla oblongata

(C) spinal cord

(D) reticular formation

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

<image 1> Which part of the brain represented above is indicated by the blue region?

(A) pons

(B) medulla oblongata

(C) spinal cord

(D) reticular formation

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

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Which of the following graphs best displays the relationship between a person's level of arousal and his or her performance on a challenging task?

(A) <image 1>

(B) <image 2>

(C) <image 3>

(D) <image 4>

(E) <image 5>

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

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Which of the following graphs best represents the relationship between arousal and performance?

(A) <image 1>

(B) <image 2>

(C) <image 3>

(D) <image 4>

(E) <image 5>

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

The interference resulting from the performance of two simultaneous cognitive tasks can be categorized as either domain-general or domain-specific. Domain-general interference results from a lack of overall cognitive resources to attend to both tasks. A domain-specific interference is related to a lack of resources in a specific system, such as the visual or motor system. Recent research has suggested that language regarding visual and motoric content may engage some of the same systems through mental simulation, rather than engaging separate systems for language and perceptual systems. Studies have shown following distance increases with increased distraction or weather related stress. Other researchers wanted to understand the implications of this research on driving ability. They set up an experiment to test the effects of content specific language involving visual, motor, or abstract content on reaction times and following distance. All participants spoke English fluently and underwent training to ensure competence in the driving simulator did not affect their performance of the task. Participants were required to keep both hands on the wheel during the experiment. After the driving simulation began, the participants had to respond to a battery of true and false questions in each language condition. A possible visual language condition sentence is 'A stop sign is green'; a correct response is speaking the word 'false'. Sentences in the motor condition included fine motor details and differed from required movements for driving (e.g. 'It is possible to crush a remote between the thumb and first finger'; similarly, this would require speaking 'false'). Abstract sentences were taken from the U.S. citizenship exam (e.g. 'The American Civil War took place before WWII'; 'true'). The mean following distance from the pace car for each of the three language conditions and a control group (asked to repeat the word 'true' or 'false') is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: The mean following distance between the participant's vehicle and the vehicle in front of the participant in the simulation. There were significant differences between pairwise comparisons in all conditions. <image 1> The term 'LBFS (Look But Failed to See) accident' has crept into the nomenclature to describe an accident where the driver looked in a direction, only to be hit by an oncoming vehicle that should have been highly visible from that same direction. Which of these would NOT account for this problem?

Epidemiologically speaking, it is crucial to understand the contact structure through which disease travels. In studies of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in particular, the structure of sexual networks is critical for understanding STD diffusion. Generally, the network structures of disease diffusion and infection can be categorized into four types: the core infection model, the inverse core infection model, the bridging model, and the spanning tree model (see below). Figure 1. The network structure of four models of infection. For Panels A, B, and C, black circles denote actors that are high-activity or high-risk, and white circles indicate low-activity or low-risk actors. Panel D circles represent randomly selected individuals. Lines represent the relationship between two actors. The dotted lines in Panel A and B delineate the "core". <image 1> Disease diffusion is widespread among adolescent populations. A study mapped the romantic and sexual relationships of an entire high school population of over 800 adolescents in a midsized town in the Midwestern US for a period of 18 months. Students were asked to identify their sexual (not dating) and romantic partners (dating) in the past 18 months from a roster of other students attending their school. The study found that adolescent sexual networks are structured very differently from adult ones. In an adult sexual network, there is normally a core group of very sexually active people that links out to others. This can be envisioned as a transportation hub system where many points are connected to a small number of hubs. At the high school, on the contrary, there was no core group. Instead, the romantic and sexual network at the school created long chains of connections that spread out through the community, with few places where students directly shared the same partners with each other. This can be comparable to rural phone lines that run from a long main line to individual houses. One single component of the network was found to have 288 linked students, in one long chain. This chain featured 52% (288) of the romantically involved students at the high school, but most students had only one partner and they had little idea of their connections to the long network chain. Which of the following statements best explains Panel C?

The graph below best illustrates which of the following? <image 1>

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Which of the following best depicts the relation between performance and arousal?

(A) <image 1>

(B) <image 2>

(C) <image 3>

(D) <image 4>

(E) <image 5>

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

Researchers have long studied human memory. In a classic series of studies, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus investigated the storage and recall of information in memory. Based on his findings, he developed the so-called forgetting curve, a way of illustrating the rate at which people forget the information they have learned. The forgetting curve has been studied in a variety of different environments and for a variety of different stimuli. On day 1 of the memory research study, participants were asked to learn a list of items. Researchers then tracked the proportion of the list that the participants remembered as time passed. On day 2, some participants were asked to relearn the list. Again, the proportion remembered was tracked over time. On day 3, some participants were asked to relearn the list a second time, and the proportion they remembered was tracked over time. On day 4, some participants were asked to relearn the list a third time, and the proportion they remembered was tracked over time. The data from this study produced the following set of forgetting curves. Each line represents the memory of the learned or relearned list. The proportion of the list remembered is shown on the y-axis (memory), and the time interval for forgetting is shown on the x-axis (time remembered in days). <image 1> Suppose that one summer you take a training course on the maintenance and service of a certain piece of complex machinery. At the end of the course, you take a qualifying test. If you retake the test every summer for the next few years, based on the graph, how would you expect to perform on the test?

(A) Test performance would decline sharply at first but decline less and less in later years.

(B) Test performance would decline gradually over the years and then stabilize.

(C) Test performance would decline sharply at first and continue to decline rapidly until eventually, you were unable to remember anything at all.

(D) Test performance would decline only slightly from year to year until eventually, you were unable to remember anything at all.

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

<image 1> The graph above depicts the extent to which individuals in groups of various sizes exerted themselves while they performed a certain task. What does the information illustrate?

(A) Social loafing

(B) Social facilitation

(C) Group polarization

(D) Groupthink

(E) Minority influence

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

In an experiment, researchers randomly assigned college students in an introductory calculus class into four groups. All groups were given the same set of questions in an exam, but the exam began with a brief introductory statement that differed for each group, establishing differing expectations for student performance, as follows: Group A: The introduction stated that most students are expected to pass the exam. Group B: The introduction stated that most students are expected to fail the exam. Group C: The introduction included statistics that showed female students performing worse than male students on similar exams. Group D: The introduction contained no information on expected performance. The results of the experiment are given in the bar graph below: <image 1> What phenomenon best explains the performance differences between Groups A and B?

(A) Social facilitation

(B) Group polarization

(C) Self-serving bias

(D) Unstable attribution

(E) The Pygmalion effect

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

As you sleep, your brain and body cycle through varying levels of brain wave activity and eye movement; even muscle tone and core body temperature change throughout the night. These levels can be broken down into four major stages: N1, N2, N3, and REM. REM refers to rapid eye movement, a major characteristic of this stage. REM is the stage where your most vivid dreams occur and is required to feel fully rested. It is also characterized by atonia caused by inhibition of the motor neurons. N1, N2, and N3 are all non-rapid-eye-movement sleep stages, also called synchronized sleep, due to the nature of electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings during these periods. N1 is the onset of sleep, and when you experience "hypnic jerks" - often associated with the feeling of falling. N2, light sleep, is where you spend about 50% of your night. N3, known as deep sleep, is characterized by very slow brain waves. Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, occurs chiefly during this sleep stage. As you fall asleep, you pass through N1, N2, N3, and back to N2 before achieving REM sleep. This typically occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep, and the first REM will last about 20 minutes. As the night progresses, one spends more time in REM sleep, and less in N3. The average night of sleep includes five of these cycles. <image 1> How many complete sleep cycles can be seen in Figure 1?

(A) 7

(B) 5

(C) 4

(D) 6

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

Researchers have long studied human memory. In a classic series of studies, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus investigated the storage and recall of information in memory. Based on his findings, he developed the so-called forgetting curve, a way of illustrating the rate at which people forget the information they have learned. The forgetting curve has been studied in a variety of different environments and for a variety of different stimuli. On day 1 of the memory research study, participants were asked to learn a list of items. Researchers then tracked the proportion of the list that the participants remembered as time passed. On day 2, some participants were asked to relearn the list. Again, the proportion remembered was tracked over time. On day 3, some participants were asked to relearn the list a second time, and the proportion they remembered was tracked over time. On day 4, some participants were asked to relearn the list a third time, and the proportion they remembered was tracked over time. The data from this study produced the following set of forgetting curves. Each line represents the memory of the learned or relearned list. The proportion of the list remembered is shown on the y-axis (memory), and the time interval for forgetting is shown on the x-axis (time remembered in days). <image 1> Based on the graph, which of the following statements BEST characterizes forgetting?

(A) Most forgetting occurs gradually over a long period of time.

(B) Most forgetting occurs after only a few days.

(C) Most forgetting occurs soon after information is learned.

(D) Most forgetting occurs at a constant rate over time.

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

<image 1> Which part of the brain represented above is indicated by the blue region?

(A) pons

(B) medulla oblongata

(C) spinal cord

(D) reticular formation

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

An underlying belief in the theory of embodied cognition is that the understanding of cognition must include the interaction of the environment with the body. Proponents argue that human cognition evolved from primary sensorimotor processing and this necessitates understanding cognitive mechanisms as an interaction between the mind and body. An example of embodied cognition can be seen in mental imagery. There is strong evidence in favor of the visual imagery of an action conflicting with the performance of that action, such as visualizing an 'X' while writing an 'O'. Memory is also believed to be embodied. Proponents of theories of embodied cognition view memory as a representation of the event or object, linked to the sensorimotor information, which defines the possibilities of that event or object. To test whether sensorimotor experience aids decision making, researchers asked professional hockey players and people unfamiliar with hockey to read aloud either sentences that described hockey-specific situations or situations encountered in a normal day. An example of a hockey specific situation was reading the sentence "the player knocked over the net" and a picture of a hockey net tipped over (match) or right side up (mismatch) was displayed. An example of a situation encountered in a normal day was "an umbrella was put into the closet", with a closed (match) or open (mismatch) umbrella pictured. The subject pressed a button to indicate the sentence had been read; a fixation point was shown for 500 msec before a picture was displayed. The time was recorded between the picture presentation and the response of match or mismatch. Figure 1 shows the data from this experiment. Figure 1: The mean accuracy for matched and mismatched sentence/picture combinations for expert hockey players and people unfamiliar with hockey. Results for both hockey and nonhockey related scenarios are displayed. <image 1> How does the model for embodied cognition differ from the information-processing model?

(A) The information-processing model is often characterized by a metaphor of mind like a computer; however, the embodied cognition model views cognition as a product of represented actions, environment, and past experience.

(B) Both models are characterized by a metaphor of mind like a computer, rule based and logic driven; however, the embodied cognition model views cognition as passive and problem solving as being based on the computation of inputs and outputs.

(C) They are essentially the same.

(D) The embodied cognition model is characterized by a metaphor of mind like a computer; however, the information-processing model views cognition as a product of represented actions, environment, and past experience.

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

Individuals diagnosed with cancer often experience significant amounts of stress. Some patients cope with stress by adopting unhealthy habits (like drinking, smoking, or withdrawing from social relationships), which can increase symptom severity and result in poor quality of life both during and after cancer treatment. Conversely, individuals who manage stress with healthy techniques can experience symptom relief and improved quality of life. A group of oncologists hope to promote healthy stress reduction and decide to focus their efforts on deep breathing. They postulate that a deep breathing exercise will induce the relaxation response, a physical state of deep rest that is the physiological opposite of a stress response (or fight or flight). They believe that when patients learn to breathe more slowly and deeply, their muscles will relax, blood pressure will decrease, and heart rates will slow down (all characteristics of the relaxation response). When testing the exercise with two patients they notice significant decreases in blood pressure, muscle tension, and heart rate. They conclude that the exercise could decrease select physical symptoms of stress. The oncologists decide to expand their testing, and develop several deep-breathing exercises to be delivered in a group format. They believe that the combined exercises will help patients cope during times of stress. The program consists of 30-minute guided group breathing classes that occur biweekly for 8 weeks. Patients are also asked to complete home deep breathing practices. To test their theory, they recruit 10 adult cancer patients to participate in their program. The patient group is homogenous in type and stage of cancer. All patients have recently received their cancer diagnosis. The patients are all between 45 and 55 years old (mean age 48.6) and there are equal numbers of men and women in the group. Each patient completes a stress symptom checklist both before and after the intervention. The stress symptoms checklist can be found in Table 1. The symptom checklist is divided into four categories, with six possible symptoms in each category. Patients are instructed to circle any and all symptoms they are currently experiencing. The results from the study can be found in Figure 1 <image 1>. Which coping strategy best describes the deep breathing program?

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Understanding the various causes of psychological disorders is a central focus of research in psychology. Further, clinical psychologists must consider factors that influence the incidence rate and characteristics of clinical populations that they treat. The following graphs depict data from a study by L. R. Snowden and F. K. Cheung, who examined demographic differences in the incidence rate of schizophrenia. The first figure shows the percentage rates for schizophrenia diagnosis among individuals admitted for psychiatric care who classified themselves as"African American," White," "Hispanic American," or "Asian American and other." <image 1> The following graph shows the percentage rates for mood disorder diagnosis among individuals admitted for psychiatric care, by the same ethnicity classifications. <image 2> Based on psychological research investigating the causes of schizophrenia, which of the following is NOT true?

(A) Schizophrenia has a genetic component that can be inherited from biological parents, but genetic factors alone cannot account for the development of the disorder.

(B) The production and activity of specific chemical substances in the brain have been found to be associated with schizophrenia.

(C) Environmental factors contribute to the development of schizophrenia.

(D) A person has a 100% chance of developing schizophrenia if both of his or her parents have schizophrenia.

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

The red arrow in the figure <image 1> belongs to the ______ stage of pregnancy.

A researcher was interested in whether or not jazz vocals and opera influence men and women emotional states. She hypothesized that these types of music influence men and women differently. In a study investigating this hypothesis, 40 men and 40 women heard a jazz piece, and 40 men and 40 women heard an operatic piece. The jazz piece was sung by a man, and the operatic piece was sung by a woman. Afterward, participants rated themselves on an inventory measuring emotional state. Higher scores on the inventory indicate positive mood. Results of this study are represented in the graph below. <image 1> Which of the following is the most serious problem with the methodology of this research?

(A) Men and women did not listen to both types of music

(B) The singers were not the same gender

(C) The sample size was too small to draw a valid conclusion

(D) The participants were not musicians

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.

Drug addiction is often correlated with criminal behavior, and some convicted criminals begin their prison sentence already addicted to drugs. In these cases, treatment is focused on not only helping the person overcome drug addiction, but also reducing criminal behavior upon parole. One prison decided to try to improve their current treatment options by providing additions to traditional addiction psychotherapy. They offered three different types of treatment, and investigated if those treatment types had different long-term outcomes. The first treatment included psychotherapy and medication while the individuals were incarcerated and when they were released on parole. The second treatment included psychotherapy while the individuals were in prison, and medication only once they were released on parole. The third treatment included psychotherapy while the individuals were in prison, and a referral to a clinic where individuals could get medication if they wanted it after they were released. Participants from each group were contacted a year after they were released from prison, and researchers were then able to calculate how many individuals in each treatment condition had returned to drug abuse. Table 1 shows the percentage of people in each condition who were addicted to each drug one year after being released from prison. <image 1> Which group was most susceptible to relapse?

(A) Individuals who were addicted to opiates and received medication both pre and post release.

(B) Individuals who were addicted to cocaine and only received medication referrals.

(C) Individuals who were addicted to opiates and received medication post release only.

(D) Individuals who were addicted to cocaine and received medication both pre and post release.

Answer with the option's letter from the given choices directly. No punctuation.