Biological Bases of Behavior unit test
A test on this unit alone, marked as a percentage and a letter grade — for the test your class is actually sitting, rather than for May. Answer everything, then submit once: seeing the answer to question 3 before attempting question 4 makes the final percentage meaningless.
Myelin sheath
Neuroplasticity
GABA and glutamate
Absolute vs difference threshold
Refractory period
Dopamine
Cerebellum
Neuron structure
Endorphins
Hippocampus
Broca's vs Wernicke's area
Hypothalamus
Short answer 1. Define or explain: Excitatory vs inhibitory signals
3 ptsShort answer 2. Define or explain: Action potential
3 ptsShort answer 3. Define or explain: Frontal lobe
3 ptsShort answer 4. Define or explain: Adrenal glands
3 ptsFree response
7 ptsThis course has no free-response prompt tagged to this unit, so one from elsewhere in the course is used. It is still worth writing — the skill transfers.
ARTICLE ANALYSIS QUESTION (AAQ). Using the source provided, respond to all parts of the question. Write the response to each part in complete sentences, using appropriate psychological terminology. THE SOURCE (summarized from Seligman & Maier, 1967, Journal of Experimental Psychology, and the program of research that followed it): Introduction. The research examined how prior experience with uncontrollable aversive events affects an organism's later attempts to escape an aversive event that is in fact controllable. Participants. Twenty-four mongrel dogs, assigned to three groups of eight. Method. In the first phase, dogs in the escapable group received electric shocks that they could terminate by pressing a panel with the nose. Dogs in the inescapable group received shocks identical in number, duration and pattern, but their panel-pressing had no effect — each of these animals was yoked to an escapable-group animal so that the two received exactly the same shocks, differing only in whether the shock could be controlled. Dogs in the third group received no shocks in the first phase. In the second phase, twenty-four hours later, every dog was placed in a shuttlebox: a two-compartment chamber in which a shock delivered on one side could be terminated by jumping over a low barrier to the other side. A signal preceded each shock. Researchers recorded the latency to escape on each of ten trials and the number of trials on which the animal failed to escape at all within sixty seconds. Results. Dogs from the escapable and no-shock groups learned to jump the barrier quickly. Dogs from the inescapable group were markedly slower, and a majority of them failed to escape on most trials, remaining in the shocked compartment until the trial ended. The authors interpreted the result as learned helplessness: having learned in the first phase that their responses did not affect outcomes, the animals did not attempt the response that would have worked in the second.
A. Identify the research method used in the study.
B. State the operational definition of learned helplessness as measured in the second phase of the study.
C. Describe the purpose of including the yoked inescapable group rather than simply comparing shocked and unshocked animals.
D. Identify at least one ethical concern raised by this study.
E. Explain the extent to which the research findings may or may not be generalizable, using specific and relevant evidence from the study.
F. Explain how at least one of the research findings supports or refutes the claim that a perceived lack of control contributes to the development of depression.