E-mail Instructor

U of A Web Site

Dept. of Psychology

1. Structuralism

2. Median

3. Reuptake

Definitions:

1. An endocrine gland attached to the hypothalamus at the base of the brain.

2. A female that takes two or more males as mates.

3. Comparison group used in an experiment, the members of which are exposed to the naturally occurring value of the independent variable.

Short Answer:

1. Answer: Case studies are low constraint research, experiments are high contstraint research. Case studies use one or a few subjects; the researcher is primarily an observer. Experimental studies involve independent and dependent variables (and usually various controls).

2. Mutations are errors in replication of the DNA; they can either involve small errors, at the level of the gene or large errors, at the level of the chromosome. Despite their often lethal effects, mutations put variability into a species; this variability means that when environmental conditions change, there is a greater chance that some members of the species (i.e., the mutants) will be better able to cope with the changes; while most members of the species might die, some might survive.

3. Materialists argue that the brain is the mind. In essence, this extends Descartes idea of animal behaviour being controlled by physical processes to include humans. Therefore, animals can be used to model human behaviour, because the underlying physical structures that make of human and animal brains are similar (well, within reason...).

Mid-length Answers:

1. Altruism involves sacrificing some resource so that someone else can have that resource. Altruism can evolve if, although an individual (say, A) makes a sacrifice the sacrifice results in greater reproductive fitness for another member of the species (say, B) that shares some genetic material. Thus, at least some of the genes that A possesses are passed onto the next generation by B. Therefore, because the person shares, on average, half their genetic material with a sibling, and none with a complete stranger, then being altruistic towards your sister increases the chances of at least some of your shared genes being maintained in the population. In this case, kin recognition would be very important. You would want to be able to recognize the more closely related members of your species and distinguish the distantly related ones.

Back to sample questions.