Here I've tried to write down everything I would ever tell someone who wanted advice about studying or how to do better in class. It's pretty long (maybe nine pages) but I think it's all good advice that would apply to any class in college. Browse at your leisure and see if it's worthwhile. Let me know if you think of any questions I didn't address, or any suggestions you think would be better than mine.
CONTENTS:
GENERAL STRATEGIES
1) Don't bother highlighting the text (unless it really
works for you)...
In my experience, highlighting passages in a textbook
is almost always a waste. Every other sentence ends up
yellow, or underlined, or with an asterisk next to it.
Even if you're conservative with the highlighter, you
still have to later figure out why you chose one
sentence over another as the key point to know. If you
think the reason will be obvious, try reading a used
copy of a textbook that someone else has highlighted.
Bet it doesn't help you much! In fact, it's mainly
distracting, which should make you resolve not to do it
to your books if you plan on selling them back at the
end of the course. (Although you definitely pay enough
for them to do whatever you want with them before you
sell them back!)
2) Instead of highlighting... (my personal strategy)
When I read a text or a journal article or anything I'm
trying to learn from, I write in the margin, lightly in
pencil and in tiny print, a brief "headline" of a couple
of words or a short phrase every paragraph or two
(depending on the density of the information presented).
If a paragraph is really long, I may also draw a bracket
next to an important couple of lines, so I know which
part the headline refers to. What I end up with is a
running index alongside each page telling me where to find
the bits I thought were important, and possibly the
headline will give me a summary in a couple of words of
what the accompanying text says. Looking back at those
pages later I can immediately see what's covered there,
and know if I have to read it again (if it's not
familiar yet). The headline will also tell me what to
expect when I read that paragraph, even without reading
the preceding paragraphs again for context.
3) The advantages of this "headlining" strategy, as I
see them:
First, just as with a newspaper headline, generating a
headline for a paragraph margin takes active effort to
recognize what's important in the text and come up with
a brief description that indicates the substance of it.
That kind of active consideration of the material will
help you remember it. Highlighting, on the other hand,
is usually pretty passive; the evaluation of the
material goes no deeper than thinking "this sentence
looks important, guess I'll make it yellow".
Second, even if you try to be as active a highlighter as
possible, thinking hard about what's important, you
still end up reducing the whole (the paragraph) to a few
of its elements (phrases or definitions that you try to
make into proxies for the full text). But those
sentences within a paragraph weren't meant to summarize
it; they all contribute to the whole. Headlining gets
you to synthesize (put together) information, rather
than reduce it (strip it down to less than it was).
Third, writing headlines in light pencil instead of
highlighting in garish yellow marker allows you to erase
and revise your headlines if you go back later and can't
figure out what you meant, or if you decide the point is
something other than what you first thought. If you
used highlighting marker, your only option for revision
would be to highlight even more text, or start in with a
new color, or use asterisks for emphasis, until you have
a well illustrated but nearly unreadable page of text
left.
The reason I write "in tiny print" is because
I just like to write really tiny
... but it does keep the margins
from overwhelming the text, too.
4) If you plan on taking notes on the assigned reading
rather than highlighting...
Try to follow a similar strategy to the above. Don't
just copy phrases from the text; instead, read the text, then
write down what it's about (headlines) in an organized way,
paragraph by paragraph, followed by details from those
paragraphs. And definitely do not neglect the text in
favor of your notes after that. On the contrary, you
might be better off TAKING A NEW SET OF NOTES each time
you look at the text, and NEVER EVEN READING THE NOTES
YOU WRITE! If you digest and paraphrase the material
several times, you'll probably have done the hard part
already; your notes will just remind you of what you've
learned. (It's good to have that reminder, of course.)
In an ideal world, this is how everyone would read their
texts; but given that people take 4 or 5 classes each
semester, it's a little unlikely. Something to aim for,
anyway.
5) Timing of the reading with the lecture...
You have to do the reading before the exam; whatever
else you do is up to you. I STRONGLY recommend that
you read about a topic just before or just after we
cover that topic in class -- whichever works better for
you. If you don't understand the text easily, listen
to the lecture first and then go read. If you'd
rather have some familiarity with the topic before
class, have the chapter read ahead of time. It's up
to you. Doing them close together, in either order,
will be best.
The syllabus lists all the pages you must read from
each chapter, but it doesn't say in what order
the lectures will treat that material. For instance,
you probably noticed right away that the neuron came
before the brain in lecture, but in the text the brain
is treated first, then the neuron. When trying to
locate a topic from class, you can flip through the
chapter (which will help you find your way around it)
or just go to the index, or table of contents.
6) To read the text...
Don't think you can read a textbook like you read a
novel, or even a general nonfiction book. It's not a
narrative, and is not meant to be read one time through
from beginning to end, at which point everything will be
clear to you. Rather, a great deal of information has
been brought together, summarized, and organized as well
as possible -- which still demands that you read slowly
and carefully. You should always keep in mind what
you're being told, and why, and how it relates to the
preceding and following material. In other words, since
the text has to impose organization on a wider range of
topics than other types of reading usually cover, you
have to make the effort to be a more organized reader
and keep the author's organization in mind all the
time.
If you want to be really explicit about the organization
(which can only help you), look at the hierarchy of
topics and headings first, before you even read the
chapter. The first page of each chapter in the Gleitman
et al text lists all the sections you'll come across
(e.g., on p. 14 of chapter 2
[sorry, I'm referring to an earlier editon of the text - I'll update
this! The organization is very similar though]
you see listed "THE CORTEX,
p. 28") and one level of headings under that (e.g.,
Localization Of Function In The Cortex; Projection
Areas). Looking in the chapter you find there are
sub-headings under Projection Areas (primary motor area,...
disorders of perception and attention,... etc.) and
still another level under disorders (you find agnosias,
neglect syndrome, Gerstmann syndrome in italics). It would
be useful to write out an entire outline based on these
headings, perhaps including any vocabulary terms in bold
print at the lowest level, BEFORE you read the chapter.
(There's a new heading every three paragraphs or so
throughout!) With this outline in hand, you will have a
much better feel for where you are, why you're reading
what you're reading, and what it's connected to.
Obviously, reading 50 pages of text like this is a lot
more work than reading 50 pages of, say, a magazine.
It's like the difference between watching an hour-long
college lecture and watching an hour-long show on the
Discovery channel.
When you're done reading, it couldn't hurt to
immediately flip to the last pages of the chapter and
read the summary points covering what you've just read.
If you've lost track of the point of it all, that should
help remind you again.
7) Read at the level of the page / paragraph /
sentence...
You can't really read textbooks by the chapter, as I
said, or often even by the section; you have to read,
roughly, by the page. This means concentrating hard on
what's right in front of you, rather than having your
goal be to cover a certain number of pages in a night.
(That's also why you need to be very aware of the
overarching organization as you study each particular
topic closely.) One key to understanding the reading is
not to move on to the next thing till you understand
what you're reading at the moment. Lots of people are
actually unaware of whether they understand something as
they read it -- they just read it and move on. Be
aware!
Since a page of a book isn't inherently organized --
it's just the way a given number of words and pictures
came out in the type-setting, after all -- the units you
should really focus on for comprehension are the
headings on the page, and more specifically, the content
of those headings: paragraphs. Paragraphs aren't random
bunches of sentences. It takes a certain number of
sentences to make a point; paragraphs are the chunks of
discourse, the points that are being made. In other
kinds of reading you may browse through them, maybe
checking the first sentence or sampling a couple of
words to judge whether you feel like paying attention to
what's inside them. In reading a textbook, you have to
know what every one is about. That's why when I write
my headlines in the margin (see above) I emphasize
paragraphs, not whole sections and not individual
sentences.
It's also important, eventually, to read at the level of
the individual sentence, since quite a lot of
information may be packed into even one sentence, and
fine distinctions can hinge on the interpretation of a
particular turn of phrase. The more advanced your level
of reading becomes (upper division courses, graduate
school, professional journals, etc.), the more you'll
want to respond to the implications of nearly every
sentence. This is usually not an issue with
introductory texts, which are written to be as
unambiguous and straightforward as possible. Still,
here's an example from an intro psych textbook I have
(Kassin, Psychology (2E), 1998, p. 546) which
makes the following statement:
"[S]tudies reveal that women are more sensitive than men
to how others are feeling -- a skill often referred to
as 'female intuition.' Some researchers speculate that
this advantage is rooted in the left-dominant female
brain."
Does this say that the female brain IS left-dominant
(implying perhaps that men are right-dominant) and that the
skill may be rooted there? Or does it say that some
SPECULATE that the female brain is left-dominant, and
furthermore, if it is, the skill may be rooted there?
If you're planning on accepting that text as the
authority, you'll want to be sure of what the author
intends to tell you. (Most researchers in the field
actually find it misleading to speak of a "dominant"
hemisphere; if anything, males are thought to have more
brain functions focused in one or the other hemisphere,
while females have more functions spread between both.
But how are you supposed to know that, if you're just
reading an intro text?)
8) Take notes in class...
Note-taking (not just note-reading) helps remembering.
It requires an active effort to extract the important
points being made and then organize them on paper,
whereas just reading the notes is basically a poor
substitute for reading the fuller coverage in the
textbook. (The obvious exception is material covered in
class but not in the book.) As I implied above, given a
choice between being allowed to TAKE notes but not read
them later, or NOT taking notes but getting to read
someone else's, I would definitely choose the
note-TAKING option. Luckily, in real life you get to do
both.
It's hard to decide what to write down; if it was easy,
everyone would have perfect transcripts of the lectures
in their notebooks. It's also hard to extract important
points while writing what the instructor said a moment
ago AND paying attention to what the instructor is
currently saying, guessing at spellings you don't know,
trying to write legibly enough that you can decode your
notes later, and so on. But it's an important skill,
hard as it is, and you get better at it by doing it.
Most people try to copy everything on the overhead
slides, and their classroom task becomes one of frantic
mechanical copying with little attention paid to the
talking. No instructor wants that -- otherwise they
could just post the overheads and skip teaching. Do
your best to write down EVERYTHING that's said, in an
organized manner, and if you can't copy all of the
overheads too, just use them to guide you in deciding
which are the key things the instructor is saying. A
practice that helps is to take notes on one page of your
notebook and leave the facing page blank, to be filled
in later with information and elaborations from the
text, from the web page, or from discussion with the
instructor. Then all that information will be indexed
to what was presented in lecture.
9) Learning isn't just memorizing facts...
Knowing the vocabulary of your subject area is a key
goal -- the one that must be met before much else can be
accomplished. But it's not an end in itself. If all
you know is definitions, you won't know much about brain
function, or learning theory, or whatever. (Plus,
you'll undoubtedly confuse terms with one another:
"dendrite / terminal ending", "temporal / parietal",
etc.) Most people go
beyond that and learn facts, or propositions, involving
those new terms ("the hypothalamus is involved in
motivation; the amygdala is involved in emotion").
That's better but still doesn't go far enough.
Understanding the structure that relates all those
pieces of information is the ultimate goal (e.g., how
the very old cerebellum and the very new frontal cortex
are both involved in producing smooth skilled
movements). The different concepts should feel
different to you, based on the roles they play in the
grander scheme. They're not just neutral marks on a
page of text, which you just have to match up with the
correct set of other marks. Students think that's what
multiple choice tests are all about, but they're wrong
for two reasons: 1) even very subtle relationships can
be addressed in multiple choice questions, if the test
writer is good at it, and 2) even if the test does only
ask about isolated bits of information, the student who
has studied the structure and relations among all the
concepts will probably remember them more easily and
accurately and thus perform better anyway. (Essay exams
are almost always preferable to multiple choice exams
when practical, because they test directly the more
important aspects of learning. In the real world after
college, there's nothing like a multiple choice test,
but there are lots of things like essay tests -- even if
they don't involve any writing at all!)
Many people try to use flash cards in studying. That
doesn't hurt for the definitions and facts, but unless
you're pretty creative with them, it also leads to the
biggest mistake students make in their studying:
focusing on isolated definitions and propositions, and
neglecting the structure of the subject. Instead (or in
addition) try something like making a list of
comparisons between classical and operant conditioning,
or reproducing from memory (hopefully not just rote
memory!) the handout on the components of the nervous
system.
10) What psychology tells you about studying...
I'll mention a few terms from the study of human memory:
massed vs. distributed practice, expanding rehearsal,
elaborative rehearsal, and organization."Massed
practice" in the case of studying means doing all the
studying at once -- for hours at a time say, and for
several days in a row. I'm not gonna tell you you won't
learn that way, but it's the least efficient way. It
corresponds to cramming the night before the exam, or
two nights before, or three (even though it becomes less
like cramming as you add more nights of studying). Many
students who do poorly on exams after putting in a lot
of time wonder what they could have done differently ("I
started studying five days before the exam..."). They
could try distributing the same amount of study time
over a longer period. (Note that another reason to
avoid cramming is that cramming is just hard! If you
pinch all the required textbook pages between your
fingers it may not look very thick, but don't be fooled
-- there's way too much stuff to even look at it all if
you wait till the last minute.)
"Distributed practice" means taking the same amount of
study time but spreading it out, so there are periods
(probably days) of non-studying interspersed. Study
psychology for a couple of hours one night, then
something else the next night, then something else a
third night, then back to psychology. The time spent
away from the subject actually contributes to the
consolidation of your knowledge of it, in some
mysterious way, and you can learn it better with the
same amount of studying. The problem students in the
real world face with this strategy, of course, is that
an impending exam is strong motivation for lots of
intense studying, while a distant exam is hardly the
spur people need to get on a regular studying schedule.
Bottom line, you just have to recognize what's best for
you and motivate yourself to pursue it. When the exam
is a week away and you haven't studied yet (which
happens frequently, unfortunately), you can distribute
practice a little, but it's not as important as getting
through all the material a bunch of times. I've
actually said to students in that situation that one
week of consistent, concentrated studying should work
out okay, but I always recommend long-term studying.
Either way, you should treat studying for exams as you
would a full-time job -- it takes a lot of time, but (at
least in the narrowest sense) it's why you're here.
"Expanding rehearsal" is a form of distributed practice
which seems to work especially well, and supposedly
there is research support specifically for its
effectiveness in the classroom, not just the lab. The
idea is, successful remembering of information makes
that information easier to remember in the future. The
act of retrieving information from memory works like
exercise that makes you better at it next time; or
perhaps it's like tramping down a path through your brain
that will be easier to follow in the future. Of course,
if you're also using distributed practice, the space
between your study sessions makes it less likely that
you'll successfully recall what you studied last time.
So expanding rehearsal goes like this: make each
interval between sessions as long as it can be
(distributed) while you can still recall the information
from the previous session. Maybe consecutive days the
first time, then two days later the next time, then
three... Each time you sucessfully recall the studied
information, you know it that much better: you can go
longer and longer without seeing it and still recall it
accurately. Your practice is distributed in time, but
in such a way that you always are able to remember the
stuff from the last time -- no forgetting what you read
and doing it all over again from scratch (at least
ideally). To read more about these strategies look at
pp. 409-414 in Alan Baddeley's (1998) Human Memory:
Theory and Practice, Revised Edition (Boston, MA:
Allyn and Bacon).
"Elaborative rehearsal" is an old term in memory
research, but it refers essentially to what I've tried
to emphasize above: rather than just repeatedly viewing
isolated bits of information, you should elaborate the
material. Add to your knowledge of each concept by
trying to place it in the context of experiences you've
had, if possible, and in the context of other concepts
in psychology. Try to see how the topics within a
chapter are related to each other, and why Henry
Gleitman and I would consider it important that you
understand these particular topics. The more you can
organize and link together various initially isolated
concepts, the better you'll understand and remember
them. And of course, the notion of "organization" is
also what I've been pushing a lot here. If you can
build up a network of interrelated concepts with a
definite structure or organization for each of the
subject areas we study, you'll have as firm a grasp as
possible of the course content, and that will support
your performance on the exams. Baddeley's book has lots
on these principles, but your own text also describes
elaborative rehearsal and organization in memory (see
Gleitman et al pp. 270-271, 275), which we'll get to in
class soon enough.
WEB PAGE
My web page for PSYC 132:72 is at
http://web9.uits.uconn.edu/lundquis/psyc132.html
From there you can get to the text of the overheads used
in class, as well as to Prof. Turvey's old exams (see
below). The overheads are by no means an exhaustive
account of all the course material, and they don't
contain all the detail you will need, but they do serve
as an outline of the material and a reminder of some key
concepts to know.
Though putting the following information on the web
is a bit paradoxical, here goes anyway:
For those who don't know how to view a web page: in
brief, you get to a computer with an internet connection
(in a dorm room, or in one of the computer labs on campus
that are available for undergraduate use, or in the
library)
(NOTE: on the Hartford Campus, try the School of Social Work!)
; you open a web browser program like Netscape
or Microsoft Internet Explorer, and in a box near the
top of the screen you type in the address printed above
and hit Enter (or Return). For more details, you can ask
almost anyone who happens to be nearby at the moment. I
have been told that most campus computer labs do not allow
printing from most web pages, which means you can only
look at the posted info, not take it home with you
(unless you know how to download it and save it as a
text file, which isn't hard -- see below). So, I have
also linked my page to UConn's Virtual Classroom, a set
of web pages that you can definitely print from. You can
reach the Virtual Classroom at:
http://virtual.class.uconn.edu/ and if you ever forget
that, you can reach it and the library course reserve
page and lots of other useful stuff by going to
www.uconn.edu, clicking "Information for UConn
Students", and then browsing through the choices that
appear.
Downloading web pages:
To download a web page from Netscape (or Explorer, which
must be pretty much the same) to the computer you're
working on (its hard drive or your own disk), go to the
File menu (top left of screen), and choose
"save as... text". Save it
to the desktop if you have a choice, so it's easy to
find. The file will appear on the desktop (or wherever
you sent it); you can then open a word-processing
program like Microsoft Word or whatever, again go to its
File menu and choose "open", find your text file and
open it up. Edit it so you cut out what you already
have or don't want, and only print what you currently
need. This is important to do with the overheads,
because you'll probably print a ton of stuff multiple
times otherwise.
PROBLEMS?: If you're doing this from a Windows machine (rather than Mac)
you may see your saved overhead file as "overhead.html" even if you
said "save as... text" above - and when you open it with Word it may be
all scrunched together without any line breaks. I think the way to
fix that is to simply change the suffix ".html" to ".txt" (just type
right over it!) and try to open it again. The reason is that HTML doesn't
recognize carriage returns, so separate lines get run together; text
files, on the other hand, DO recognize carriage returns, so as long as
the .txt suffix is there, Micrososft Word or whatever you're using should
have no difficulty setting up the text file correctly.
OVERHEADS FOR THE CLASS SO FAR
You can get to this web page from the class web page.
It's being updated (from the overheads I prepared for
Fall '99) as we progress through the material. Kind of a
problem: If you print the whole thing after every class,
as it gets bigger by the day, you'll print the beginning
eight or ten times by the time the first exam rolls
around. Instead, either wait till just before the exam
to print it, or download it (see above) and only print
what you currently need. Better yet (for you as well as
for the trees), don't print it, just copy what you need
into your notes!
These are not "notes" on class! They don't provide a
"summary" of the class; all these are are the overheads
I display. That means they may depend crucially on
things I said in class for explanation (which, with any
luck, you recorded in your notebook). Some topics
don't appear here at all (for example, the stuff about
Parkinson's disease). Be sure you use this as intended
- to fill in gaps in your notes and to remind you of what
was covered in class. In some cases I've made slight
changes to make the overheads a bit more comprehensible
out of context, or to adapt them for posting on the web
page. But you should definitely consider your notes and
textbook readings to be your primary source of
information about these topics. Note: any dates listed
are approximate; better check them against your
notes.
SOME OLD 132 EXAMS ON ELECTRONIC COURSE
RESERVE
Practice exam-taking using old exams! You can view them
on-line through the class web page and on paper at the
Homer Babbidge Library Reserve Desk, next to the
Circulation Desk near the gated entrance. (Reserve Desk
materials can be checked out for 3 hours, I think --
they can't leave the library but you can read them
and/or copy them in that time.) Several of Prof.
Turvey's 132 exams are available on the internet through
the library's Electronic Course Reserve, at
http://www.lib.uconn.edu/ECR/ (look under Psychology,
then under Turvey PSYC 132). If you forget this page
AND the class web page, just remember to go to
www.uconn.edu and click "Information for UConn
Students". Eventually you'll find your way to the
library's course reserve page.
(NOTE: the Babbidge Library is open to Hartford campus
students as well, though obviously the internet provides
easier access from the Hartford campus.)
I don't have a long history of teaching this course so I
don't have exams of my own on file. But Prof. Turvey's
exams are very useful to look at when studying for MY
exams too! Exams for my class will have only
multiple choice questions -- NO essay. But you might
take a look at his essay exams just to see how well you
could answer those questions. (To identify Turvey's
optional essay exams clearly you can click on the
"psyc132turvey.html" link on that page.) The exams may
not be accessible from an off-campus computer address
(e.g., @aol.com instead of @uconn.edu), so if
there's a problem, try a dorm or library computer.
On my class web page, Prof. Turvey's PSYC 132 midterm
AND final exam from Fall 1995 are combined together
and ordered by topic (which explains why the items are
out of numerical order and re-use some numbers).
I have made them more useful
to you by identifying questions according to the topics
they address; this will make it easier for you to pick
out the questions on his exams that you should be able
to answer. I highly recommend that you at least look at
those edited exams so you have some idea of what to
expect. Some material may not have been covered in the
same way. But for the most part, all questions are
answerable from a combination of information presented
in lecture and in the Gleitman textbook. These exam
questions are representative of (1) the material that
will be tested, (2) how the questions will be phrased,
and (3) the level of detail at which you should be
familiar with the course material. On our actual exams
(as with Turvey's unedited exams) they will not be
clearly segregated by topic.
EXAM FORMAT
The midterm exams will each be 50 multiple choice
questions drawn from lecture and textbook material.
They will be do-able in one (busy) class period --
get there on time! The final will also have 50 multiple
choice questions and is scheduled for a two hour
block during finals week.
Don't expect the multiple choice format to mean you'll
just be looking through a list of alternatives trying to
recognize some familiar information! The emphasis
throughout will not be on rote memory for facts and
definitions, but rather on conceptual understanding of
the material. For example, new material related to the
lecture content may be introduced in a question,
requiring an application of the knowledge you have
gained so far. But not in a scary way.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
Some general points:
1) There's a reason the instructions on multiple choice
exams always say "choose the BEST answer", instead of
just "choose the RIGHT answer" or something like that.
In multiple choice questions, you always have to
evaluate at least two things for each of the choices: 1)
the truth of the statement, and 2) its appropriateness
as a response to the particular question. Even if more
than one choice looks plausible, choose the BEST
alternative (one relevant to the question, not just one
that may be a true statement on its own)!
2) Read all the alternatives first -- see if the
familiar ones make sense, then the unfamiliar ones, then
decide which is BEST. Maybe you don't understand all the
choices but you come across one that you absolutely know
is right - then it probably doesn't matter if you
understand the others. (Unless you get an "all of the
above" choice too...)
3) Be logical with "all / none of the above" - for
instance,
If you're SURE two of the choices are correct, choose
"all of the above" even if you're unsure of the
third.
If you're SURE one of the choices is incorrect, DON'T
choose "all of the above" no matter what.
If you're SURE one of the choices is correct, DON'T
choose "none of the above" no matter what.
Well that last one is pretty obvious, but some people
just go to pieces over choices like that, for no good
reason. Don't think of these as rules to memorize --
you already know them! Basically, remember "all" means
ALL and "none" means NONE. If you ever see other more
annoying choices like "at least two of the above", just
pay close attention and use the same kind of logic. (I
don't usually give those more annoying kind of choices
on my exams.)
4) Use information in the test itself if possible -
don't let your answers contradict each other (or the
other questions). Often you can go back to a question
you saw earlier and use information in one of the
choices, or even based on the answer you gave, to decide
the answer of some other question you're not sure of.
In a perfect exam that would never be the case, but most
exams aren't perfect.
5) Don't allow a response bias like "it's about time a
'd' came up" to influence your answer. Amazing how
tempting that can be, but it will never help you (unless
the test writer did an amazingly careless job!).
6) A good test, even a multiple choice one, is testing
understanding, not just rote learning of simple facts.
Choices might be phrased in an accurate but unfamiliar
way; you should be able to understand the idea in all
its guises, not just familiar sentences about the
idea.
7) Read carefully -- if a question is comparing or
contrasting two ideas, the answer has to be true of BOTH
ideas, not just one (e.g., if asked something about BOTH
classical conditioning and operant conditioning, don't
choose an answer that applies perfectly to one but not
at all to the other!). If a question asks about the
cause of something, the answer has to be something else
that happens before it and directly brings about that
thing. And so forth. It's not good enough to just pick
a choice that's from the same page of your notes as the
question topic.
Now look at this (hopefully easy) example:
The action potential occurs because
The right answer is (a). Answer (b) is incorrect.
Answer (c) is a true statement which is irrelevant to
the question. A student trying to defend answer (c)
would probably say, look, if the neuron didn't contain
neurotransmitters, it couldn't release them and cause an
action potential in its neighbor across the synapse, so
the action potential happens because of that! To which
the instructor replies, that's true, but it's clearly
not the BEST answer - (a) describes the immediate cause
of the change in voltage which gives rise to the action
potential. Notice that the question uses that word
"because" to ask about the CAUSE; it doesn't just say
"which of the statements below has something or other to
do with an action potential?"
If you were hyper-imaginative (and smart, even), you
might also choose (b) if you thought, hmm, there's
something in my notes about how potassium ions get
pushed OUT of the neuron once the charge inside has
become highly positive... and if they get pushed out,
they must eventually trade places with sodium ions
again, which means potassium goes back in at some point
... must be true then! (This would be a case of what
some people refer to as "thinking too much".) Well that
answer is wrong for the same two reasons: 1) it's not
the BEST -- you have to attach lots of other conditions
to the statement to even see that it might be true, and
2) it's not a CAUSE - it happens AFTER the action
potential.
(It's not that "cause" is the only important thing to
consider; it's just what was asked for in THIS question.
Others ask you to focus on similarities, or differences,
or definitions, etc., and for those questions you have
to be sure you're paying attention to specifically those
aspects of the choices.)
Finally, (d) is wrong since only (a) is right. But
that's no big deal: as long as you know for SURE that
even one of the choices (say (b)) is incorrect, you'd
never put (d) just because you thought maybe (a) and (c)
both looked right. "All" means ALL! No reason to get
freaked out by those "all / none of the above"
answers.
(If there were another choice that read "the voltage
difference decreases from -70 mV to -55 mV", that
wouldn't be very different from (a) in its accuracy and
relevance; in fact, it would be equally good, and the
question would be unfair because not only could you not
decide on a single best answer, but you might also be
tempted to say "all of the above" since there were two
completely correct ones. If I discover a question on an
exam is bad like that, I'll go through all the exams and
give credit to anyone who chose any possibly correct
answer. (If you chose only (b) or (c), you'd still be
out of luck!) Luckily for all of us, that almost never
happens to me!)
Some more suggestions for test taking are posted at
http://www.socialpsychology.org/testtips.htm
, for those who are interested. Personally, I doubt
his advice about "first answers are usually correct",
popular though that notion is. I also doubt the very
last paragraph, which seems to be saying, "Use the Force."
But I suppose those bits of advice are better than
"eeny, meeny, miney, moe," if you're at a total loss!
a. sodium ions enter the neuron
b. potassium ions enter the neuron
c. the neuron contains neurotransmitters in its vesicles
d. all of the above