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?