Biopsychology: Answers to Quiz 1

1. Dr. Jones is a biopsychologist who studies the relation between emotion and facial expression by recording the muscle tension of various facial muscles of human subjects. He would be classified as a ________________.

Answer: psychophysiologist

2. Dr. Ramer is a biopsychologist. She studies the neural mechanisms of memory by destroying various brain structures in rats and assessing their ability to remember objects. Dr. Ramer would be classified as a ____________________.

Answer: physiological phychologist

3. Dr. Graystone is a biopsychologist who tries to understand the neural mechanisms of aggression by studying the aggressive behaviour of neurosurgical patients. Dr. Graystone would be classified as a _______________________.

Answer: neuropsychologist

4. Dr. Smilie is a biopsychologist who tries to understand human obesity by studying the foraging behaviour of gorillas. She would be classified as a ______________.

Answer: comparative psychologist

5. Not all biopsychologists are neuroscientists. Explain.

Answer: Comparative psychologists study the biology of behaviour rather than its neural mechanisms; they compare the behaviour of different species in order to understand the evolution, genetics, and adaptiveness of behaviour. These specifications do not fall under the description of neuroscience, which is the study of nervous system.

6. Mr. Samson made a lesion in the globus pallidus of severalrats. He found that these rats could not learn a maze task. He concluded that the globus pallidus is involved in learning. In so doing, he violated ___________________.

Answer: Morgan's canon

7. Like PKU, most neuropsychological disorders with a major genetic component are linked to recessive genes. Why are they rarely linked to dominant genes?

Answer:
Most dominant genes carrying a major neuropsychological disturbance would probably be phased out from reproductive pool. A specimen showing signs of a neuropsychological disorder would be an unlikely choice as a mate.
Huntington's Disease is an exception because it does not develop visible signs until after the majority of its carriers have had children.

8. The incidence of a particular neurological disorder was found to be twice as a high in females as in males. This told the investigators two things about the genetics of the disorder. What were they?

Answer:
The disorder gene is carried in a sex chromosome X
The disorder trait in the chromosome is dominant

9. A recent experiment showed that acupuncture reduced pain in a group of injured football players more than it did in a group of untreated football players. In this experiment, the placebo effect was a ____________variable.

Answer: confounded

10. Jimmie G.'s amnesia was a symptom of a common neuropsychological disorder. This disorder is called ______________________.

Answer: Korsakoff's syndrome

11. If an object is moving to the left at 1 meter per second and the eyes are rotating to the right at half that speed, the object is perceived to be moving to the __________ at ________________ per second.

Answer: left, 1 meter per second. We percieve the objects speed independent of our eyes motion.

12. All behaviour is the product of interactions among three factors:

Answer:
1. genes
2. experience
3. peception of the current situation

13. Which of the following groups do humans belong to? (no part marks)
1. chordates
2. vertebrates
3. hominids
4. mammals

Answer: All four of them.

14. The fossils of Australopithecus have been carefully studied by ________________.

Answer: paleontologists

15. A bat's wing and a human arm are __________________ structures. Are they the product of convergent evolution?

Answer:
homologous
no

16. The training of a biopsychologist often does not end with a Ph.D. The next stage is often informally referred to as doing a ________________.

Answer: post-doctoral fellowship

17. If a study of the heritability of intelligence were conducted on a sample of subjects that were particularly homogeneous in their upbringing, the heritability estimate would likely be particularly _______ (high or low?).

Answer: High