I. Neuroscience
A. Neural Communication. a) Describe the sequence of events involved in transmission of information from the presynaptic axon hillock to the dendrites of the postsynaptic neuron. b) given that the brain also possesses “electrical” synapses, explain a advantage and a limitation of an “electrical” synapse over a “chemical” synapse.
B. Drug Action. a) Explain 3 presynaptic mechanisms and 3 postsynaptic mechanisms by which drugs may affect neural communication. For each mechanism, provide an example of drug, how they do it, and which neurotransmitter they affect. b) If you were to design a drug to treat a particular disease, what step would you take to make sure it reaches the brain.
C. The Brain Appetite Center. a) Give an overview of the different signals received by the appetite center to trigger food intake or stop food intake. b) Several of those signals seems to duplicate themselves. Explain why this is useful or wasteful.
D. Learning and Memory. a) Explain why LTP is a good model for learning using two specific examples of cellular changes. b) LTD, the converse of LTP, not only use the same neurotransmitter but also the same receptor subtype as LTP. How is it possible?
II. Social Psychology or Personality
Group 1-Social
If you completed your Social/Personality requirement with the Social readings course, you will receive one of the questions from group 1.
A. Social psychologists often (a) employ undergraduate psychology majors as participants, (b) use introspection-based/self-report measures, and (c) conduct their research in laboratory settings. Describe the benefits and weaknesses of each of these practices and the degree to which each affects the generalizability of research findings. To what extent is each practice unique to social psychology (e.g., compared to areas such as developmental, cognitive, etc.)?
B. Describe, provide examples, and cite empirical support for the following social influence processes: informational conformity (aka informational social influence), cognitive dissonance, and obedience to authority.
C. Rely on current research in person perception to answer the following questions: When forming first impressions of others, what types of information do we use, how deliberate versus automatic is the process, and how accurate (or socially agreed upon) are such impressions? How, and to what extent, do our first impressions of others influence our emotional and behavioral reactions to them?
D. Some say that humans are primarily “social animals.” Describe supporting evidence for this contention. In doing so, cite evidence from research on (a) the effects of social exclusion, (b) humans’ responses loneliness, (c) ingroup favoritism, and (d) the role others play in our happiness/subjective well-being.
Group 2-Personality
If you completed your Social/Personality requirement with the Personality course (Psy 6020), you will receive one of the questions from Group 2.
A. Freud’s theory was the first major, comprehensive effort at explaining the structure, development and nature of personality. Briefly review the main aspects of Freud’s theory. Then, illustrate how later theorists or theoretical approaches responded to Freud’s ideas, by keeping certain key concepts, rejecting major aspects, or addressing areas that Freud downplayed. Discuss at least 3 other approaches/theories/theorists who came after Freud.
B. Albert Bandura’s and Henry Murray’s theories both focused on Interactional concepts. Using their theories and contrasting with less Interactional theories, describe Interactionism as an approach to understanding personality. Be sure to discuss the role of cognition in Interactional theory.
C. What is the status of (1) Extraversion-Introversion and (2) Neuroticism/Stability (or Anxiety) in the study of personality traits? Discuss the meaning of one of the two, including typical differences between individuals at either extreme, other related concepts or variables, and the types of environments where their characteristics are most clearly seen.
III. Developmental Psychology
A. Describe at least four theoretical perspectives on child development. Then, identify the stance taken by each major theory on at least three basic issues of child development.
B. Describe Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory, noting key concepts of this approach, including the proposed mechanisms of cognitive change. Describe the major cognitive achievements and characteristics of each of the 4 stages of development, drawing also on the limitations of children’s thinking at each stage. How do more recent findings by others contradict some of Piaget’s findings, and why?
C. Note the three periods of prenatal development, and describe the timing and major milestones of each. List at least 4-5 agents known to be or suspected of being teratogens, and discuss evidence supporting the harmful impact of each (you must include tobacco and alcohol). Then, cite factors that influence the impact of teratogens on the developing organism. Describe how maternal exercise, nutrition, emotional well-being, and age affect the developing organism.
D. Cognitive and social/emotional development are usually treated as very separate topics, but they clearly depend on another. Provide two examples of ways in which cognitive development plays an important role in social development and two examples of ways in which social/emotional development influences cognitive development.
E. One of the most long-standing debates in developmental psychology concerns the relative importance of heredity vs. environment. We know that they must interact with one another. Using one of the examples below, describe how nature and nurture may have interacted in specific ways, over time, to produce the “finished product” that you see.
1) A 6-year-old girl rescues her baby doll from her 8-year-old brother, who is trying to throw it out the window.
2) A three-year-old and a seven-year-old are at day care. The three-year-old says, “You a doody-head!” The seven-year-old says, “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!” The three-year-old looks confused.
3) A five-year-old is building a tower. She carefully chooses her blocks, first placing the large ones as a foundation and continuing to select smaller and smaller blocks until she has successfully placed all the blocks. She smiles and claps her hands.
4) A four-year-old boy is lost at the store. He was playing with a computer game and turned to see that his mother was no longer there. He begins screaming and crying hysterically and frantically running up and down crowded aisles. His mother spots him, sighs in exasperation, and says, “Will you calm down?! You’re too big to be acting like that!”
IV. Cognitive Psychology
A. Advanced Cognitive Psychology started by discussing the human information processing paradigm (the components were: pretheoretical ideas, intellectual antecedents, analogies, concepts and language, method, subject matter). Outline briefly three aspects of the paradigm that you feel are particularly relevant to defining cognitive psychology, and then describe how three of the readings embodied those aspects (one aspect per article). What is one thing that we read that seemed to contradict some aspect of the paradigm?
B. In Advanced Cognitive Psychology, we looked at the effects of working memory limitations in a number of areas. Explain the role of working memory in cognition, and describe how lower working memory capacity will harm performance. Choose an applied area relevant to your work and discuss how working memory limitations particularly impact this area.
C. From Advanced Cognitive Psychology, pick a finding that appears to be primarily lab-based. Identify a potential real-world application for this finding, and then design a study to evaluate whether this finding can be extended to the real world. Your study should involve strong inference or a double dissociation.
D. Choose any source from Advanced Cognitive Psychology that described an empirical study.
a. Work out two possibilities to explain the effect that go beyond those chosen by the original authors (e.g., priming competence affects the link between test anxiety and exam performance by… or it could be…). Alternatively, you could pick an application of a finding and work out different possibilities for what might happen if you tried to apply that finding (e.g., if I prime competence in a math class, this might happen… or this might happen…).
b. Design a strong inference type study to test between your two possibilities.
Research Methods and Statistics. The methods/statistics question is designed to test your understanding of research methodology and associated statistical analyses appropriate for various methods. Sample questions from a past exam are listed below.
1. Dr. Jones believes that stress increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
A. Describe how Dr. Jones might manipulate stress and measure cardiovascular disease (i.e., create an operational definition for each variable). Then, express his idea in the form of a testable hypothesis.
B. Describe a single factor between-subjects experiment he could conduct to test his hypothesis. Specify how the manipulation of the independent variable is strong, realistic, and confound-free. Also, indicate why your measure of the dependent variable is sensitive.
C. List one advantage and one disadvantage of using a between-subjects design rather than a within-subjects design to test his hypothesis.
D. He would like to generalize his findings to TDOT (Tennessee Dept. of Transportation) employees. Describe how he might obtain a representative sample of this population for participation in his study.
E. Briefly describe a 2 factor study he could conduct to test whether stress affects women’s cardiovascular disease risk more than it does men’s.