PSYC2360 Quizzes for final (ch 8)

Paying attention to your professor and purposefully ignoring the bit of juicy gossip two classmates beside you are whispering about requires:

NOT functional fixedness

In a study examining whether restrictions on cell phone use result in differences in performance on a memory test, participants who couldn't check their phones scored approximately a letter grade lower than participants who could. This is essentially a measure of:

NOT statistical significance; reliability

By first manipulating an independent variable and then measuring a dependent variable, experimental designs can establish the _____ that correlational designs often cannot.

NOT strength of covariation

A factor other than the intended treatment that may change the outcome variable is known as:

an extraneous variable

Imagine that you are studying the effect of sour tastes on the human salivation response. In designing this study, what are you likely to ask participants in your experimental condition to do?

taste something sour

Relative to random assignment, the major problem associated with assigning participants to groups using the matched-pair design is that:

groups cannot be matched on all possible variables

A probabilistic indication of how confident we are that the observed differences between groups is not due to chance is shown by the:

t-score

Which research finding about texting in college students is true?

NOT students prefer receiving frequent text messages from their tutors; the use of textese (ex. LOL and IMO) in e-mails to professors is not associated with deficits in reading accuracy

Manufacturers of LEANZ, an over-the-counter weight loss supplement, want to determine if adding a new ingredient "X" to the product will make it more effective. Within the context of a two-group experimental design in which the experimental group receives LEANZ+X, a research strategy employing the little more versus a little less approach should use a control group that receives:

LEANZ

Perhaps the best way to measure distraction in college students sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture is to:

NOT code behaviours such as looking off into space

A measure that helps determine whether changing or altering the independent variable was actually effective is termed a(n):

NOT control group

In a study helping behaviour, participants watch a confederate drop their books. The confederate either is or is not on crutches. The latency to render assistance is recorded. After the experiment, participants are asked to rate on a scale how much in need of help the person who dropped books was. This question is an example of a:

NOT debriefing

Manipulating sleep deprivation in a sleep laboratory offers more ________ than asking participants to sleep different amounts of time at home

NOT ecological validity

Wilson and Stimpson (2010) examined cases of automobile fatalities cue to distracted driving from 1999 to 2008. Which statement accurately summarizes how the frequency of distracted driving fatalities has changed over this period of time?

NOT fatalities increased from 1999 to 2005 and then decreased from 2005 to 2008

In a study examining whether restrictions on cell phone use result in differences in performance on a memory test, participants who couldn't check their vibrating phones scored approximately a letter grade lower than participants who could check their vibrating phones. It was not assessed, however, if participants who could check their phones would score lower on the test than students who could check their phones but never actually received messages. Moreover, it is unknown how the level of difficulty of the memory test affected the results. These types of research questions are often answered by the use of:

NOT t-tests for independent samples

Middle school students who play violent video games tend to be more aggressive at school than those who do not. Which specific criterion necessary to establish causality between two variables has been established?

NOT temporal precedence; strong internal validity

Smith et al. (2011) assessed if cellular phone distraction impaired performance on a memory task in college students. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: no distraction, answering ringing phone vocally, or replying via text. Smith et al. (2011) found that:

NOT the no distraction group scored the highest, followed by the group who answered vocally, followed by the texting group

For a researcher to have confidence in his/her results, the level of internal validity should:

be high

Temporal precedence is established by showing that changes in the suspected cause occur _____ changes in the outcome.

before

If you were conducting an experiment examining the impact of sleep deprivation on physical ability, which of the following would be an appropriate operational definition of sleep deprivation?

being without sleep for more than 24 hours

A major advantage of experimental designs is their ability to determine:

cause and effect between two variables

In a two-group experimental design, the group that functions as a comparison is termed the _____ group.

control

Brain scans of patients currently reporting severe depression reveal underactivity in certain areas of the prefrontal cortex. Which specific criterion necessary to establish causality between two variables has been established?

covariation

Which symbol is a measure of effect size?

d

A drug abuse researcher predicts that participants tested under the influence of marijuana will perform worse on a memory test than participants not given the drug. This prediction is a:

directional hypothesis

A statistical measure of the magnitude of the difference between groups is termed:

effect size

If you are interested in determining whether fatigue causes negative mood, you would need to conduct a(n):

experiment

When one's research question goes beyond determining if two variables are associated, and asks if one variable leads to the other, one should conduct a(n):

experiment

The ability to keep everything the same between groups in an experiment except the key variable under investigation is termed:

experimental control

Any factor other than the independent variable that could affect the dependent variable is termed a(n) _____ variable.

extraneous

The use of convenience samples reduces the ability to:

generalize results to other populations

The t-test is calculated from:

group means

You are interested in investigating whether blondes really do have more fun. To do so, you ask a group of blondes and a group of brunettes to self-report on their level of fun. In this study, _____ would be considered the independent variable, whereas _____ would be considered the dependent variable.

hair colour; amount of fun

Despite waiting for an important message, Michelle does not check her beeping cell phone because she is driving. This requires:

impulse control

Testing participants one at a time rather than in small groups helps ensure the _____ of the data collected.

independence

A researcher interested in the effects of sleep deprivation on reaction time randomly assigns participants to either a sleep deprivation group or a control group. After a night in the sleep laboratory, reaction times for all participants are obtained. Which inferential statistic should be calculated to determine if differences exist between the groups?

independent samples t-test

Cause is to effect as the _____ is to _____.

independent variable; dependent variable

In an experiment examining whether pet ownership leads to greater life satisfaction, pets would be considered the _____ variable, whereas life satisfaction would be considered the _____ variable.

independent; dependent

In an experiment, _____ validity exists when other possible explanations for the results have been ruled out.

internal

Which statement about the use of convenience samples in experimental designs is FALSE?

it is higher in external validity than probability sampling

The _____ experimental control a study has, the _____ internal validity it has.

more; more

Studying the effects of texting on driving performance in a simulator that mimics the driving experience is associated with more _____ than studying how texting impairs basic cognitive processes, such as attention and complex reaction time, that are needed for safe driving.

mundane realism

In which case is there convincing evidence to suggest that two groups are different?

p = 0.001

The major benefit of random assignment to groups is that:

participant variables affect both groups similarly

Any method of placing participants in groups that is nonsystematic and nonbiased, and that ensures that each participant has an equal chance of being placed in any of the groups, is termed:

random assignment

Sarah flips a coin to determine if a participant should be placed in the experimental or the control group. She is using _____ to create equivalent groups.

random assignment

Experimenters typically try to _____ a null hypothesis.

reject

Rosen et al. (2011) required some students to text while they watched a 30-minute video. Students were randomly assigned to one of three groups: no texting, moderate texting, excessive texting. A memory test based on the video was then conducted. Rosen et al. (2011) found that:

students in the excessive texting group scored the lowest

Covariation tells us:

that two variables are associated with each other

Which of the following requires examination using experimental research?

the effect of practice on performance

For which of the following would using experimental research NOT be appropriate?

the relationship between eye colour and IQ (APPROPRIATE: influence of weight lifting on aggression, impact of snacking on weight gain, impact of alcohol consumption on behavioural inhibition)

Which feature of an experimental design would prohibit the use of an independent samples t-test??

the same participants being studied twice

If Dr. Ryan, a social psychologist, was investigating the relationship between temperature and participants' moods, an example of an extraneous variable would be:

the time of day the study takes place

A researcher interested in the effects of sleep deprivation on reaction time randomly assigns participants to either a sleep deprivation group or a control group. After a night in the sleep laboratory, reaction times for all participants are obtained. What is the null hypothesis?

the two groups will not differ on reaction time

In a study examining whether restrictions on cell phone use result in differences in performance on a memory test, participants who couldn't check their phones scored approximately a letter grade lower than participants who could. The students who couldn't check reported being more distracted by their phones, consistent with the literature on:

thought suppression

Professor Carlson is interested in understanding whether uniform color impacts football players' performances. In his study, _____ is manipulated and _____ is measured.

uniform colour; performance

In a study examining whether restrictions on cell phone use result in differences in performance on a memory test, participants who couldn't check their phones reported feeling more anxious than those who could. These results:

validate the manipulation

An important condition for establishing causation is covariation. This is:

when changes in one variable are associated with changes in another variable