PSYC1024 · Anxiety, Mood and Stress
Mid-term Exam Mastery
This chapter consolidates for the 20% mid-term: 20 multiple-choice questions drawn only from Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5 (psychology as a science, the science and theories of emotion, the science of fear and anxiety, and the introduction to anxiety disorders), held online via Moodle in a single Friday-of-Week-5 window. Because it is all MCQ, marks turn on precise recall and clean application, so this chapter drills the technique — reading distractors, spotting definitional traps and qualifiers — with items built to mirror the format, not copied from the paper.
What this chapter covers
- 01Exactly what the mid-term covers: Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5 only — not Week 3 (Science Writing) or the later weeks
- 02The format: 20 MCQs, 20%, online via Moodle, a single timed Friday-of-Week-5 window
- 03MCQ decision process: define the term → eliminate distractors → check qualifiers → commit
- 04Application-style stems: "a researcher does X — which term describes Y?"
- 05High-yield Week 1: professions, protected titles, the scientific-method cycle, IV/DV, operationalisation
- 06High-yield Week 2: emotion vs mood vs affect, components, discrete vs dimensional, the four theories
- 07High-yield Week 4: fear vs anxiety, amygdala low/high road, fight-or-flight
- 08High-yield Week 5: adaptive vs disordered anxiety, the threshold criteria, diathesis–stress
A four-item mid-term mini-drill (Weeks 1, 2, 4, 5)
- +1(1) B — an operational definition. Defining a variable by exactly how it is measured (phone-checks per hour) is operationalisation. Distractor trap: a hypothesis is a prediction, a theory is a broad explanation, and falsifiability is a property of a scientific claim — none names a measurement rule.
- +1(2) B — a mood. It is long-lasting (three weeks), diffuse, and has no identifiable trigger (no aboutness). An emotion would be short and specific; affect is the umbrella term, not a single state; a primary emotion is a named category like fear or disgust.
- +1(3) C — Gable & Harmon-Jones (2008), the chocolate-vs-rocks Navon study, showed that motivational intensity (not valence) drives whether scope narrows or broadens. Ekman's faces and Panksepp's animal work support discrete emotions; Russell's circumplex is a dimensional model — none isolates motivational intensity.
- +1(4) B — sensory thalamus → amygdala, the fast subcortical "low road" that triggers a quick, crude fear response before the cortex has finished processing. Option A reverses the flow, C is a downstream memory link, and D is the slow endocrine HPA route, not the rapid fear pathway.
Key terms
- Stem
- The question part of a multiple-choice item (the scenario plus the actual question). Read it fully and, in an application item, decide your answer before looking at the options so distractors cannot steer you.
- Distractor
- A wrong answer option written to look plausible. In this course distractors are usually the other key terms from the same week, so a shaky definition is what makes you pick one.
- Qualifier
- A small word that changes the truth of an option — "always", "only", "never", a duration or a direction. When two options look right, the qualifier usually decides which is correct.
- Definitional trap
- An MCQ that fails you if you only half-know a term — e.g. mislabelling a long, causeless low state as an "emotion" instead of a mood. The defence is precise definitions rehearsed to application level.
- Mid-term coverage
- The 20% mid-term draws only on Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5 — psychology as a science, the science and theories of emotion, fear and anxiety, and the introduction to anxiety disorders. Week 3 (Science Writing) and the later weeks are not on the mid-term.
- Best-answer strategy
- Single-best-answer MCQs may have more than one partly true option; you choose the most complete/correct one. Eliminate the clearly wrong, then use the qualifier to separate the finalists.
Mid-term Exam Mastery FAQ
What is on the PSYC1024 mid-term?
Twenty multiple-choice questions worth 20% of the course, drawn only from Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5 — psychology as a science, the science and theories of emotion, the science of fear and anxiety, and the introduction to anxiety disorders. It runs online via Moodle in a single timed window on the Friday of Week 5. Week 3 (Science Writing) and the later weeks are not examined on the mid-term.
How should I approach the multiple-choice questions?
Read the whole stem, and in an application item decide your answer before reading the options so the distractors cannot steer you. Then eliminate the clearly wrong options and, if two remain, use the qualifier (a duration, a direction, a word like "only") to separate them. Because distractors are usually the other key terms from the same week, the real preparation is knowing each definition precisely enough to apply it.
Which weeks does the mid-term cover?
Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5 only. Deliberately not Week 3 (Science Writing, which feeds the separate written assessment) and not the Week 7–10 material (which appears on the final). Focus your mid-term revision on the professions and scientific method, the emotion concepts and theories, fear/anxiety and its neurobiology, and the adaptive-vs-disordered anxiety threshold.
Can AI help me practise for the mid-term?
Yes. Sia can generate fresh mirror-format MCQs across Weeks 1, 2, 4 and 5, explain why each distractor is wrong, and drill you on the definitional traps that catch people out. It builds practice items in the exam's style; it does not sit the mid-term for you, and UNSW academic-integrity rules apply.
Exam move
The mid-term rewards precise, application-ready recall of a bounded set of material, so revise by weeks (1, 2, 4, 5) and, for each key term, be able to both define it and recognise it inside a scenario. Practise the decision process until it is habit: read the stem, answer it in your head, eliminate distractors, then check the qualifier. Build a distractor sense by noticing that the wrong options are almost always the other terms from the same week — so shore up the high-confusion pairs (emotion vs mood, theory vs hypothesis, fear vs anxiety, adaptive vs disordered, IV vs DV). Do the Week 1 and Week 2 revision quizzes on Moodle under a timer, review every miss for the exact discriminator you got wrong, and ask Sia to generate more mirror MCQs and explain the wrong options. Confirm the exact date and length of the mid-term window on Moodle before the day.
Working through Mid-term Exam Mastery in PSYC1024? Sia is AskSia’s AI Psychology tutor — ask any PSYC1024 Mid-term Exam Mastery question and get a clear, step-by-step explanation grounded in how PSYC1024 is taught and assessed. Read this chapter free, then take your hardest questions to Sia.
