Practice Quiz #1
mean
The arithmetic average of a distribution of scores is the
random assignment
A psychologist wants to be sure that her research findings do not result from age or personality differences between participants in the experimental and control groups. She should use
due to chance variation within and between the sample groups
A statistically significant difference between two sample groups is NOT likely to be
biopsychosocial approach
A unified understanding of explanations provided by the neuroscience, cognitive, social-cultural, and other psychological perspectives is most clearly provided by:
100
Approximately what percentage of the cases represented by the normal curve fall between -3 and +3 deviations from the mean?
correlational research; experimental research
Assessing how well one variable predicts another variable is to as detecting cause-effect relationships between different variables is to .
personality
Basic research on persistent human traits, such as optimism and pessimism, is most characteristic of the specialty known as ____________ psychology.
regression toward the mean
Colette received an unusually high grade of A on her first biology test and a B+ on the second, even though she studied equally for both tests. Which of the following best explains Colette's deteriorating pattern of performance?
thinking
Compared with the structuralists, early behaviorists were much LESS likely to focus on the study of:
exam scores
Dr. Branch would like to study the relationship between room lighting and college students' test performance. He randomly assigns college students to two groups. The first group takes an exam in a dimly lit room and the second group takes the same exam in a regularly lit room. What is the dependent variable?
room lighting
Dr. Branch would like to study the relationship between room lighting and college students' test performance. He randomly assigns college students to two groups. The first group takes an exam in a dimly lit room and the second group takes the same exam in a regularly lit room. What is the independent variable?
developmental
Dr. Hillburton has received approval for his research grant to study the effects of divorce on children aged 5 to12 in terms of maturational milestones. Dr. Hillburton is most likely a _________________ psychologist.
cognitive neuroscience
Dr. Jasper specializes in the interdisciplinary study of brain activity linked with cognition. Dr. Jasper's area of study is called:
clinical
Dr. Stevens provides psychotherapy to people who suffer from excessive anxiety. Dr. Stevens is most likely a______________ psychologist.
introspection
Edward Titchener used the research method known as:
psychosocial influences
If a researcher focuses primarily on emotional responses, learned fears, and other learned expectations, he or she is focusing on:
negatively correlated
If the points on a scatterplot are clustered in a pattern that extends from the upper left to the lower right, this would suggest that the two variables depicted are
naturalistic observation
Psychologists who carefully watch the behavior of chimpanzee societies in the jungle are using a research method known as
mental life
If you were taking psychology prior to 1920, psychology was defined as "the science of __________________."
Wundt
In December of 1879, he created the very first psychology laboratory in Germany.
operational definition
In a published report of a research study on social anxiety, psychologists included a 30-item questionnaire, which they had used to assess levels of social anxiety. The psychologists have thus provided their readers with a(n)
placebo effects
In drug-treatment studies, double-blind procedures minimize outcome differences between experimental and control conditions that could be attributed to
scientific methods
In exploring human behavior, contemporary psychologists rely most heavily on
evolutionary; behavioral
Inherited traits are to learned habits as the _____________ perspective is to the _____________ perspective.
Which of the following students is less likely to see an improvement on his or her exam scores?
Lee waits to study for the exam until the night before and then uses mass practice to study.
William James; Sigmund Freud
Psychology developed from the more established fields of philosophy and biology. For example, ________ was an American philosopher and ________ was an Austrian physician.
behavior and mental processes
Psychology is the scientific study of:
summarizing data
Measures of central tendency are most useful for
normal curve
Mrs. Smith is measuring the height of all the children in her class and notices that the scores form a symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution. This is also known as the
is a random and coincidental occurrence.
On a series of coin tosses, Oleg has correctly predicted heads or tails seven times in a row. In this instance, we can reasonably conclude that Oleg's predictive accuracy
theory
Professor Shalet contends that parents and children have similar levels of intelligence largely because they share common genes. His idea is best described as a(n)
students' scores tended to be very similar to one another
Professor Woo noticed that the distribution of her students' scores on the last biology test had an extremely small standard deviation. This indicates that the
retrieve
SQ3R is a study method incorporating five steps: survey, question, read, ________, and review.
range
The difference between the highest and lowest scores in a distribution is the
humanistic psychology
The influence of the current environment on one's growth potential is emphasized by:
most frequently occurring score
The mode of a distribution of scores is the
Liska; fox
The name of this dog is _____. This name means _____ in the Czech language.
hindsight bias
The perception that psychological research findings merely verify our commonsense understanding is most clearly facilitated by
variation
The standard deviation is a measure of
positive psychology
To balance historic psychology's focus on human problems and negative emotions, Martin Seligman called for the development of
control group
To provide a comparison for evaluating the effects of a specific treatment, experimenters make use of a(n)
behaviorism; humanistic psychology
Watson is to _______________ as Rogers is to ___________________.
consider whether it is distorted by a few extreme cases
When an arithmetic average is reported in the news, it is most important for readers to
a correlation coefficient
Which of the following is a statistical measure of both the direction and the strength of a relationship between two variables?
random sampling
Which of the following is most useful for helping survey researchers avoid false generalizations?
cognitive
Which perspective would be most relevant to understanding the role of spaced practice on long-term memory of information?
social-cultural
Which psychological perspective is most likely to examine how group membership influences individual attitudes and behaviors?
functionalism
Which school of psychology was most clearly concerned with the adaptive value of complex mental processes?
James
Who was the functionalist who authored the textbook Principles of Psychology for the emerging discipline of psychology?
Washburn
Who was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in psychology?
