Just for fun go back and put an asterisk next to the three items where you'd bet your answers on a week's worth of dishwashing--before you read further.
FALSE: In fact, the data on attraction suggest that we are much more likely to fall in love with someone similar to us.
TRUE: The current evidence suggests that everyone dreams. Even people who have been blind since birth have dreams, although these people do not experience the sense of sight in the process. They dream in other senses (touch, hearing, etc.).
FALSE: Even the fastest myelinated fibers transmit information at only about 100 meters per second (225 miles per hour), which is a snail's pace compared to the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).
TRUE: The Milgram study showed that only a small amount of pressure from an experimenter was enough to induce most people to administer what they believed to be 440 volts.
TRUE: Although these people would lack binocular cues to vision, their brains would still construct 3-D views using monocular cues. You can prove this to yourself by closing one eye and observing that the visual world still appears to be three dimensional.
TRUE: The moon only looks larger on the horizon. A number of explanations have been offered for the illusion. One suggests that depth cues in the foreground signal that the object (the moon) is far away, so the brain interprets it as larger.
FALSE: The current edition of the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association does not list homosexuality as a mental disorder. Interestingly, earlier editions of this manual did. In many ways, the varied diagnoses are as much a political as a psychological issue.
FALSE: The best answer would be that it depends on what you mean by "more sensitive." They do not possess greater acuity. However, they do rely more on other sensory systems and have more brain tissue devoted to these senses. They use this to pay attention to aspects and fine distinctions of stimuli in other sensory areas than those of us who are sighted may overlook.
FALSE: In fact, hypnosis is not a reliable way to improve memory. Although people sometimes recall otherwise forgotten information, they also invent a great many details.
TRUE: A large proportion of the brain corresponds to the mouth, presumably because humans need to carefully monitor the input to, and control the output from, their mouths.
TRUE: Research shows that animals process information in ways very similar to those observed in humans.
FALSE: This view is held predominantly by Freudian psychologists, but research on the topic has failed to demonstrate that we can determine a person's hidden thoughts or desires from examining their dreams. A well-trained psychologist who knows the person well may be able to help him or her recognize allusions to already known problems in some dreams. But the raw materials of the dream start off as random garbage signals, onto which the cerebral cortex imposes meaning by telling a story about them. Current research suggests that the brain is in an associative mode during REM sleep; thus, sometimes the stories are about things that are troubling the dreamer.
FALSE: In fact, "split personality" is a dissociative identity disorder and is not a form of schizophrenia. It is also a relatively rare disorder.
TRUE: However, it depends somewhat on the person's definition of stress. Stress may accompany even positive events that force us to adjust our lives. As a result, getting married may be nearly as stressful as getting a divorce. Some positive changes, of course, may result in an overall decrease in stress.
FALSE: In fact, if you want the behavior to persist, you should reward in some less predictable way, using a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule, for example. Gambling is based upon this principle.
FALSE: Some research suggests that women use both hemispheres and men use only one in a variety of cognitive and behavioral tasks. This recent finding fits with previous information indicating that women on average seem to use their brain tissue differently than men do for a variety of cognitive tasks. It does not follow, however, that women are better listeners. Nevertheless, the fact that women are more bilateral may give them an advantage over men in recovery of their faculties after a cerebral accident such as a stroke.
FALSE: There is no direct relationship between playing classical music for young children and a rise in their IQ scores. Parents who invest in classical music CDs for their children may in general be paying more attention to and providing more stimulation for their youngsters, which would have beneficial effects for intellectual development, given the plasticity of the human brain from 0–6 years of age.
So how did you do? Are you headed for the kitchen sink? With or without rubber gloves?
