Free Response Review Questions

Question 1. (8 marks)
Outline the nature-nurture debate in psychology.
How has this debate helped in understanding the following:

Gender roles
· Schizophrenia
· Language development
· Phobias
· Brain development
· Intelligence
· Diathesis stress model

Questions 2 (8 marks)
How have stage theorists explained the following?
· Moral development
· Physical maturation
· Cognitive development
· Personality development

Question 3 (10 marks)
Much of human processing is below the level of conscious awareness:
Explain with reference to the following:
· Insight
· Use of heuristics
· Dreams
· Perception
· Motivated forgetting


Question 4 (10 marks)
Psychology aims to provide practical advice on a range of human issues
What advice does psychology offer on the following issues?
· Using Punishment to reduce unwanted behaviors
· Reducing Stress
· Maintaining Mental health
· Improving your memory
· Encouraging pro-social behavior

Question 5 (8 marks)
What insights have been provided by evolutionary psychology on the following?
· Attraction
· Eating and obesity
· Phobias
· In-group and Out-group


Question 6 (8 marks)
Culture has an important influence on human behavior producing both similarities and differences. Explain with reference to the following:
· Parenting styles
· Gestures
· Emotional expressions
· Depression
· Facial expressions

Question 7 (9 marks)
Humans like to think that they are logical and rational beings:
With reference to the following, how has this belief being challenged?
· FAE
· Optical illusions
· Proactive and Retroactive interference
· Belief perseverance
· Overconfidence
· Heuristics
· Groupthink
· Just-world phenomenon
· Learned helplessness


Questions 8 (12 marks)
Humans need to interact with the environment to develop:
Explain with reference to the following:
· Language development
· Critical periods
· Brain plasticity
· Bottom-up and top-down processing
· Intellectual development
· Unconditional positive regard


Question 9 (10 marks)
How would the different psychological perspectives help someone suffering from a psychological disorder?
· Psychodynamic
· Cognitive
· Humanistic
· Learning
· Biological

Question 10 (12 marks)
As social animals, we need to be with others. However being with other can have both positive and negative outcomes. Explain with reference to the following:

· Deindividuation
· Bystander affect
· Social loafing
· Social facilitation
· Conformity
· Obedience

Quesiton 11 (12 marks)
We are well suited to survive in a highly complex environment? Discuss with reference to the following
· Selective attention
· General adaptation syndrome
· Automatic and effortful processing
· Parallel processing
· Fight or flight response
· Schemas

Question 12 (9 marks)
Design an experiment to determine whether listening to different types of music improves academic performance. Identify and explain the importance of each of the following:
· Hypothesis
· Target Population
· Random Sample
· Random Assignment
· IV and DV
· Controls
· Biases
· Use of Statistics

Question 13 (7 marks)
Psychology has developed a range of data gathering instruments other than the experiment. Briefly explain how each of the following collects data for investigation:
· Case study
· Survey
· Interview
· Observation
· Longitudinal study
· Cross sectional study
· Correlation study

Questions 14 (14 marks)
Psychology has a number of challenges to face in that there are competing theories about important aspects of human behavior. Briefly outline the ongoing debate concerning the following issues:
· The benefits of labeling
· The role of cognition and arousal in emotions
· The person-situation controversy
· The usefulness of therapy
· Perceptions of sounds
· Perception of color
· Absolute thresholds and signal detection theory