AP Psych Unit 1 Progress Check

Julie is interested in developing a test to measure achievement levels of middle school students. Which of the following domains of psychology is most applicable to Julie's interest?

A. Personality

B. Counseling

C. Biological

D. Industrial-Organizational

E. Psychometric

E

Audra is working on a puzzle book and comes across the following figure. The Gestalt law that would affect Audra's perception of the picture above is influenced by the law of

A. Closure

B. Similarity

C. Proximity

D. Continuity

E. Transference

A

Dr. Sampson follows the structuralist school of thought. Her techniques would most likely include

A. presenting a participant with an ambiguous stimuli, such as a picture of an older woman looking over the shoulder of a younger woman, and then asking the participant to make up a story about what is going on in the picture

B. asking a participant to describe whatever thoughts come to mind, without censorship

C. presenting a participant with an object, such as a can of soda, and having the subject report his or her perceptions or experience of the can

D. encouraging a client to reevaluate distorted or unhelpful thoughts and work on coping strategies

E. rewarding a student with a sticker for every day that the student does not talk in class and with an extra ten minutes of recess after the student accumulates ten stickers

C

Samantha experienced a traumatic brain injury and afterward began to exhibit bizarre symptoms that no one had ever documented before. The best research method to study Samantha would be

A. An experiment

B. A correlation study

C. A case study

D. A survey

E. Naturalistic observation

C

Dr. Rodriguez is interested in finding out if stress levels throughout the year have a relationship with students' grades. The research method she most likely used is

A. A case study

B. A cross-sectional study

C. Naturalistic observation

D. An experiment

E. Correlation Study

E

What is the primary advantage of conducting a survey rather than using other types of research methods?

A. Surveys can gather information from a diverse representation of and a large number of people.

B. Surveys can demonstrate cause and effect.

C. Surveys can provide an in-depth analysis of a unique individual or group.

D. Surveys collect more descriptive data than other research methods do.

E. Surveys allow the researcher to control the variables in a study.

A

A researcher was interested in studying the effects of a new medication on depression. One group received the new medication and another group received a standard medication for depression. The researcher asked participants to answer a series of questions rating their mood levels before and after six weeks of taking the medications. Which of the following is the control condition in this study?

A. The group receiving the new medication

B. The group receiving the standard medication

C. The rating of the participant's mood levels

D. The series of questions

E. The participants

B

The advantage of an experiment is that it allows a researcher to

A. Infer cause and effect

B. Test a large number of people

C. See how people behave in their natural

environment

D. Gain an in-depth knowledge of a person or a small group of people

E. Find the relationship between two variables

A

Dr. Wilson, who teaches engineering classes, is interested in learning about how lack of sleep affects performance. What would be the best way to ensure that her findings are generalizable to all the students at her university?

A. Randomly assigning half the students in one of her classes she teaches at into a condition where they are told to sleep four hours a night and other half a condition in which they are told to sleep eight hours a night.

B. Surveying every tenth student listed in the university directory about their sleep habits

C. Surveying all students in the classes she teaches.

D. Studying 40 students over time, from their freshman year through their senior year, to see differences as the students mature.

E. Asking friends who teach at other universities to collect and share data on their students.

B

Mr. Gregg wants to help his second-grade students improve their reading skills. He tests the students with 20 reading comprehension questions at the beginning of the year. Every week throughout the year he gives the students 30 minutes of reading comprehension tips. He tests the students at the end of the year with 20 reading comprehension questions that are similar in difficulty to those on the original test. He finds that the students' reading comprehension has increased and concludes that his tips worked. Which of the following describes the most significant problem with Mr. Gregg's study?

A. Mr. Gregg should have had someone else test the children in case he was showing experimenter bias.

B. Mr. Gregg should have tested his students every month so he could more accurately track their progress.

C. It was unethical of Mr. Gregg to test the children without their parents' consent.

D. Mr. Gregg should have used the same test to ensure reliability.

E. Mr. Gregg failed to account for changes in the students' maturity.

E

Ms. Li, a principal, is interested in the differences in student behavior between two of the third-grade classrooms at her school. She asks the teachers, Mr. Williams, whose class meets at 9:00, and Ms. Walsh, whose class meets at 1:00, to record over a week the number of times students in their classrooms act out. Mr. Williams' class has 31 students, and Ms. Walsh's class has 32 students. "Acting out" is defined as students speaking without raising their hand or getting out of their seats without being given permission. At the end of the week, Mr. Williams reports that on average, his students acted out 73 times a day, and Ms. Walsh reports that, on average, her students acted out 27 times a day. Ms. Li decides that the students in Ms. Walsh's classroom act out more often than those in Mr. William's class. The results of this study are inconclusive because

A. the sample size is too small to draw valid conclusions

B. the number of students in the classrooms is unequal

C. Ms. Li did not use random assignment

D. Ms. Li did not use random selection

E. the time of day was a confounding variable

E

Kara works as a dog trainer. She reads a new book that describes some unusual training methods, and she wants to test them out on the dogs she works with. She assigns each dog to one of two groups by picking a number out of a hat. Half the dogs are assigned to one group, and half the dogs are assigned to the other group. For a month, she trains one group using her old methods and the other group using the unusual methods. At the end of the month, Kara records that the dogs that were trained with her old methods obey her 80 percent of the time and those that were trained with the unique methods obey her 90 percent of the time. Kara concludes that the unique methods work better. Kara can best improve her experimental design by

A. Using random assignment

B. Using random selection

C. Having someone else test the dogs

D. Using a computer program to pick the

dogs' numbers

E. Trying a third training method as well

C

2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16

What is the range of the numbers above?

A. 2

B. 4.98

C. 7.73

D. 8

E. 14

E

7, 5, 10, 4, 4

What is the median of the numbers above?

A. 4

B. 5

C. 6

D. 7

E. 10

B

The benefit of using inferential statistics is that it allows a researcher to

A. Describe the data

B. Find the measures of central tendency

C. Find the spread of the data

D. Make generalizations about a population

E. Visualize the raw data

D

Deception can be used in research when

A. It is appropriate for what is being studied

B. Participants are debriefed before the experiment

C. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approves it

D. It is more expensive to use other methods

E. The subjects in the experiment are college students

A

When seeking approval to conduct an experiment using participants from her college psychology course, a student researcher should

A. Ask her professor

B. Request permission from the dean of the department

C. Get consent from students' parents

D. Apply to the institutional review board at the university

E. Apply to the IACUC at the university

D

Which of the following is true of the American Psychological Association?

A. It addresses a number of ethical guidelines for the practice of psychology.

B. It determines whether studies that are going to be conducted at an institution are ethical.

C. It regulates animal welfare in research.

D. It regulates laws about psychological issues

A