Research Methods
A researcher randomly assigns participants to a caffeine group or a sugar pill group to test memory. This type of study is known as this.
What is an Experiment?
This structure at the back of the brainstem coordinates movement and balance.
What is the Cerebellum?
The central nervous system consists of the spinal cord and this.
What is the Brain?
These receptor cells in the retina detect black, white, and gray, and are necessary for peripheral and twilight vision.
What are Rods?
This sleep stage is associated with vivid dreaming.
What is REM (Rapid Eye Movement)?
In a study testing if caffeine improves memory, the type of pill given (caffeine vs. sugar) is this variable.
What is the Independent Variable?
Phineas Gage’s famous accident resulted in a personality change because of damage to these lobes.
What are the Frontal Lobes?
This bushy, branching extension of a neuron receives messages and conducts impulses toward the cell body.
What is a Dendrite?
Transduction in the ear occurs when fluid moves over hair cells inside this coiled, snail-shaped structure.
What is the Cochlea?
This biological clock regulates roughly 24-hour patterns of alertness and body temperature.
What is the Circadian Rhythm?
This technique is used to minimize preexisting differences between the control and experimental groups by giving everyone an equal chance of being in either.
What is Random Assignment?
Known as the "master gland," this endocrine gland regulates growth and controls other glands.
What is the Pituitary Gland?
Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that involves the degeneration of this insulating layer around the axon.
What is the Myelin Sheath?
This is the process of changing physical energy, like light or sound, into neural impulses that the brain can read.
What is Transduction?
If identical twins reared apart are more similar than fraternal twins reared together, it suggests a strong influence of this.
What is Genetics (or Nature)?
To measure "memory," a researcher decides to count "the number of words recalled from a list of 20." This specific, measurable description is called this.
What is an Operational Definition?
The somatosensory cortex, which processes touch and movement sensations, is located in these lobes.
What are the Parietal Lobes?
This division of the autonomic nervous system arouses the body and mobilizes energy in stressful "fight-or-flight" situations.
What is the Sympathetic Nervous System?
This phenomenon explains why you stop noticing a strong smell in a room after about 15 minutes.
What is Sensory Adaptation?
REM sleep is often called "Paradoxical Sleep" because the brain is active, but the body is essentially in this state.
What is Paralyzed?
To avoid the placebo effect and researcher bias, studies are often designed so neither the participants nor the researchers know who is receiving the treatment.
What is a Double-Blind Procedure?
This area is often called the "executive center" or "CEO" of the brain because it handles judgment and planning; it is the last to fully develop in adolescents.
What is the Prefrontal Cortex?
Because SSRIs block the reabsorption of serotonin, enhancing its effects, they are classified as this type of drug molecule
What is an Agonist?
This specific sense allows us to know the position and movement of our individual body parts.
What is Kinesthesis?
Scientists who study the relative power of heredity and environment on behavior are known by this title.
Who are Behavior Geneticists?