What is temperament and how is it assessed? What are some methodological concerns that
face temperament researchers?
What will be an ideal response?
Temperament concerns individual differences in reactivity and regulation that are due
to heredity, environmental circumstances, and maturation. Temperament can be
assessed using physiological assessments, such as vagal tone, or via parental or expert
rater reports. Perhaps one of the most interesting methodological issues pertains to
interrater reliability; mothers and expert raters typically show modest agreement
regarding ratings. This is probably due to the fact that temperament, to a large degree,
is in the eye of the beholder. What one person judges to be a sign of a difficult
temperament may not be viewed in the same way by another rater.
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Why might negative emotions produce moral behavior, according to both contemporary and psychoanalytic explanations?
A. Acting badly produces a rebound effect, in which people then want to act morally. B. The experience of both morality and contempt are closely linked in nearby brain structures. C. Children may act in moral, prosocial ways to avoid feelings of personal distress or guilt. D. Negative emotions spur the id to "challenge" the superego to enact moral behavior.
Infants learn to control their arms before they learn to control their legs, illustrating the _____ rule.
A) proximodistal B) cephalocaudal C) dorsal striatal D) ventral medial
Which of these is an example of an unconscious inference we make about the world?
A. When we see an image of a cat crossing some railroad tracks, we are uncertain whether the converging lines indicate distance. B. When we see an image of pencils in an opaque jar, the jar and the pencils blend in a single retinal image that is of consistent size. C. When we see an image of pencils in an opaque jar, we understand that parts of the pencils are inside the jar even though we cannot see those parts. D. When we see an image of a cat crossing some railroad tracks, we process the cat and the tracks in one retinal image.
By age 40 years, many individuals in midlife experience sleep problems. What are the consequences? Adults in midlife are ____
a. less likely to experience the deepest type of sleep b. more likely to have nightmares c. more likely to fall asleep on the job d. less likely to have appropriate bone density