Psychology Final Chapter Test 1

Which of the following best illustrates the use of an operational definition? "Alcohol affects judgment." "Twelve-year-old children who watch violence on television will demonstrate less aggressive behavior if the characters are cartoons." "Students listening to music during class will have lower grade point averages than students who do not listen to music during class." "Adults are more likely to experience empty nest syndrome later in life." "Happiness in college students is negatively impacted by the number of classes taken during a semester."

"Students listening to music during class will have lower grade point averages than students who do not listen to music during class."

Which of the following coefficients of a correlation indicates the weakest relationship between sleep habits and grades? 0.51 -0.28 -1.00 1.00 0.08

0.08

The mental ages of nine students are: 17, 13, 14, 16, 13, 12, 19, 13, 18 What is the mode?

13

A preschool teacher measured the amount of time students engaged in positive social play. The following is the distribution of scores: 5, 10, 10, 10, 15, 25, 25, 30. What was the mean amount of time students engaged in positive social play?

16.25 minutes

Mrs. Simmons gave a make-up test to her psychology class. Thes test scores were as follows: 40, 42, 44, 50, 62, 70, 70, 84, 90 What is the range of scores of those taking her make-up test?

50

For a normal distribution, approximately what percentage of the data points should fall within two standard deviations above or below the mean?

95%

Marc, a psychology major, collected survey data about the number of hours that college students study for finals and their grades on those finals. His data indicate that students who spend more time studying for finals tend to do better than other students. What can Marc now conclude?

A relationship exists between studying and exam grades

George was worried about his bakery's new cupcakes after two customers disliked them on the first day, but when he surveyed his customers over the next week, more than 90% of the customers said they loved them. By giving too much weight to those two customers before the survey, George almost committed an error known as ___________.

A sampling bias

The Hawthorne effect is best defined as:

The idea that people will alter their behavior because of the researchers' attention and not because of actual treatment

In a statistical study of the effectiveness of two drugs for treating depression, researchers reported treatment A "provided statistically significant better results for depression" than treatment B. Which of the following most likely can be assumed? Drug A is probably more effective than drug B There is a practical significance that is important Effect is large enough to seem unlikely to have occurred solely by chance There is no possibility of bias in the study It is proven that subjects taking drug A will have a clinically significant improvement

Effect is large enough to seem unlikely to have occurred solely by chance

Researchers believe that an over-the-counter supplement may be used in reducing memory impairment in older adults. They randomly assign 40 adults between the ages of 50 and 90 years who had mild memory impairments to receive either a placebo or 90 milligrams of the supplement twice daily for 18 months. At six-month intervals, researchers conduct various memory tests. What type of research method is used to study the impact of the supplement on memory ability?

Experimentation

Which of the following is the only method that allows a researcher to establish a cause-and-effect relationship? Experimentation Naturalistic Observations Surveys Correlational Studies Case Studies

Experimentation

Three friends want to bet on a horse race. One of the friends decides to go against the grain and chooses the horse with the lowest odds of winning the race, saying he "has a good feeling about his horse." Despite the low odds, his horse wins the race. He then claims he was certain his horse would win from the beginning. Which concept is this an example of?

Hindsight bias

In an experiment, Sydney is going to investigate how alcohol affects aggression. The number of alcoholic drinks the subject has is called the:

Independent Variable

Who determines whether the benefits of the research outweigh the risks to the human participants?

Institutional Review Boards

Which of the following is true about correlation? It shows causation. It is the independent variable. It does not show relationships. It is the dependent variable. It does not show causation.

It does not show causation.

Which of the following allows psychologists to generalize research findings to the intended population? Use of a placebo Replication Random Sampling Random Assignment Double-blind technique

Random sampling/assignment

A survey study on the patterns of illicit drug use among teenagers includes participants from high schools across the United States. However, the study fails to include adolescents who have dropped out of high school or are home-schooled. What is this an example of?

Sampling Bias

Which of the following is not a part of the scientific method? Searching for results that confirm the hypothesis Testing a hypothesis using research and observations Creating a hypothesis to test a prediction implied by a theory Forming a theory based on observable facts Revising the initial theory based on the conclusions drawn from research and observations

Searching for results that confirm the hypothesis

founder of the psychodynamic perspective of psychology

Sigmund Freud

One major difference between structuralism and functionalism is:

Structuralists wish to divide the mind into mental elements while functionalists believe behavior helps an organism adapt to the environment

Nimin has volunteered to participate in an experiment evaluating the effectiveness of aspirin. Neither he nor the experimenters know whether the pills he takes during the experiment contain aspirin or are merely placebos. The investigators are apparently making use of ___________.

The Double-Blind Procedure

Many crossing lights at many crosswalks are operated by a timer, yet still feature an inactive button for pedestrians to push in order to cross. These types of buttons are sometimes referred to as 'placebo buttons'. Why does the word placebo apply?

The button has no effect, but people still push it because they believe it does

Serenity wants to see whether students who take classes in the morning perform better on the same written exam than those who take the same class in the afternoon. To conduct her research, she asks several teachers who teach the same course with a similar number of students in both the morning and afternoon to provide data concerning their students' performance on the same unit test. After analyzing her data, she concludes that students who take courses in the morning do better than those that take courses in the afternoon. Which of the following might be a confounding variable affecting Serenity's research? The assessment given by the teacher The number of students in the class The test scores on the assessment The intellectual abilities of the students in the particular class The teacher of the class

The intellectual abilities of the students in the particular class

Researchers were interested in the impact of age on memory recall. Thirty 25-year-olds and 75-year-olds were asked to rehearse a list of 15 unrelated nouns 20 times. Participants were then tested on their recall of the list. What is the dependent variable in this experiment?

The number of words recalled

Dr. Bisell conducts an experiment to see whether hunger makes mice run faster through a maze. He randomly selects 25 lab rats and randomly assigns them to a control group or an experimental group. Which cannot be a confounding variable?

The population from which he selected the mice

Researchers believe that an over-the-counter supplement may be used in reducing memory impairment in older adults. They randomly assign 40 adults between the ages of 50 and 90 years who had mild memory impairments to receive either a placebo or 90 milligrams of the supplement twice daily for 18 months. At six-month intervals, researchers conduct various memory tests. Why is it important that the individuals participating in the study are randomly assigned to either the group that receives the supplement or to the group that receives the placebo?

This increases the likelihood that the two groups are the same so that any differences between the two groups are due to the manipulation

A research group conducted a study investigating the connection between self-reported number of hours slept in a given week and scores on a happiness measure. Based on the scatterplot above, the group can report that there is? Scatterplot shows that as the self-reported sleep increases, so does the happiness score

a positive correlation

scientific study that aims to solve practical problems

applied research

pure science that aims to increase the scientific knowledge base

basic research

A psychologist who diagnoses a person's depression because of low serotonin or dopamine levels in the brain is using the

biological perspective

How do scientists confirm the findings of a study?

by replicating the study

the idea that knowledge comes from experience and that observation and experimentation enable scientific knowledge

empiricism

Dr. Gopnik demonstrated that infants show fear when presented with a toy snake but not when shown a toy bunny. She suggests that fear of objects that can be dangerous to us, like snakes, are biologically predisposed and allowed our ancestors to survive. Dr. Gopnik's view is most consistent with which of the following psychological perspectives?

evolutionary

To investigate the effects of exercise on mathematical problem-solving ability, a researcher assigned subjects to one of the two groups. One group did 50 jumping jacks, the other group did 200 jumping jacks. After exercising, both groups did a set of math problems and their performances were compared. In this experiment the number of jumping jacks is the ______________ variable.

independent

A double-blind study is sometimes needed because researchers

may have expectations that affect their observations.

Which of the following measures of central tendency is most influenced by extreme scores?

mean

A noted psychologist and environmentalist, Dr. Limon, has received a grant to study older persons' bird-feeding behavior in public parks. Dr. Limon has research assistants sit in public parks to collect the data. Dr. Limon has chosen a _________________ research method.

naturalistic observation

The relationship between smoking cigarettes and life expectancy (how long you live) is an example of a(n) _________

negative correlation

In a study of the effects of alcohol consumption, some participants drank a nonalcoholic beverage that actually smelled and tasted like alcohol. This nonalcoholic drink was a ___________.

placebo

A psychologist that explains a person's lack of intimacy in the relationship as a result of a traumatic event in thier childhood is using the

psychodynamic perspective

The scientific study of behavior and mental processes is known as:

psychology

research that is based on unmeasurable qualities like behavior studied through observation or interviews

qualitative research

research that collects and reports data primarily in numerical form

quantitative research

the extent to which a test yields consistent results

reliability

James takes an IQ test when he is in the third grade and receives a score of 112. When he is tested again in sixth grade with an alternate version of the same test, his score is 114. The fact that the two scores are very similar most directly indicates that the IQ test is ___________.

reliable

In a history class, students received their scores from a test. This test was particularly challenging, and the average test score was 70 percent. However, few students received a score close to 70 percent. Many students were well prepared and managed to score above 85 percent, but a significant number of students did not prepare well and received failing grades, grading the class average down. What type of distribution is this?

skewed distribution

Pierce calls people and asks them a specified list of questions concerning their opinions of how irritating telemarketers can be. What kind of research is Pierce conducting?

survey

Researchers believe that an over-the-counter supplement may be used in reducing memory impairment in older adults. They randomly assign 40 adults between the ages of 50 and 90 years who had mild memory impairments to receive either a placebo or 90 milligrams of the supplement twice daily for 18 months. At six-month intervals, researchers conduct various memory tests. In the study described above, which of the following is the independent variable?

the supplement

the extent to which a test or experiment measures or predicts what it's supposed to

validity

Researchers were interested in whether drinking from a colored cup influenced perception of the sweetness of hot chocolate. Participants were divided into groups that received hot chocolate in either an orange-colored cup or a white cup. Researchers found that those who received colored cups from the hot chocolate to be sweeter. Those drinking hot chocolate from the orange cups ___________.

were subjects in the experimental group

Case studies are important because A. You get a lot of in-depth data B. You can study something that would otherwise be unethical to study C. you can apply your finding to other similar situations in the future Both A and B Both B and C

Both A and B

Lisa is testing whether caffeine will influence heart rate. She recruits students with an advertisement. She splits the participants into two groups, one male and one female. Lisa has a friend randomly administer regular coffee or decaf coffee to each group without Lisa knowing which group received which beverage. Lisa then measures their heart rates. Which factor represents a weakness in Lisa's experimental design? A. This is descriptive study, not an experiment B. She does not have a random sample of the population C. She does not use a double-blind procedure D. The experimental and control groups were not randomly assigned E. Both B and D

Both B and D

father of modern psychology and the founder of structuralism

Wilhelm Wundt

father of American psychology and the founder of functionalism

William James