PSYC Final

Which of the following is not one of the telltale signs that a researcher has used multiple regression in their research?

a. "controlled for"

b. "as caused by"

c. "correcting for"

d. "taking into account"

B

2. What are the values in a regression table that show the relationship between the predictor variables and the dependent variable?

a. beta, β

b. the correlation coefficient, r

c. Cronbach's alpha, α

d. phi coefficient, φ

A

3. "Conscientious people live longer because they engage in healthy behaviors." The underlined variable addresses the "why" of a relationship; it is called a

a. moderator.

b. mediator.

c. third variable problem

d. directionality problem

B

4. Martins et al. (2010) studied factors relating to the retrieval of names of famous people based on pictures. Famous faces tests are used in studies of memory. They were interested in understanding the factors that influence successful recall. Five groups of stimuli were formed based on reason for celebrity and time of peak fame. Multiple regressions for age, gender, and education were performed for each of the groups. Which of the following is NOT a predictor variable?

a. education

b. recall of names

c. gender

d. age

B

In this same study - Martins et al. (2010) where multiple regressions for age, gender, and education were performed for each of the groups. For "Past National Entertainers and Politicians," β =0.39 for age and β = 0.29 for education. What does this mean?

a. Younger people are better than older people at recalling names for "Past National Entertainers and Politicians."

b. Less educated people are better than the more educated at recalling names for "Past National Entertainers and Politicians."

c. Age has a bigger effect than education does on recall of names for "Past National Entertainers and Politicians."

d. Education has a bigger effect than age does on recall of names for "Past National Entertainers and Politicians."

C

Dr. McCall is a developmental psychologist who is interested in the relationship between social skills and peer rejection. Prior research has established that these two variables are significantly and negatively correlated, but she would like to determine the direction of effects. In order to do so, she designs a cross-lag panel study in which she gathers data in both first and third grade. Below is what she finds.

*p < .05

Explain what the cross-lag correlations tell you about the relationship between social skills and peer rejection.

Figure it out

An effect size of d = 0.53 would be considered

a. weak.

b. moderate.

c. strong.

d. meaningless.

B

The simplest experiment has

a. at least two manipulated variables.

b. at least two measured variables.

c. one manipulated variable and one measured variable.

d. one control condition and one placebo condition.

C

__________ controls for order effects in within-groups designs.

a. manipulation checks

b. counterbalancing

c. conducting a pilot study

d. there are no order effects in within-groups designs, only in independent-groups designs.

B

In a word list-learning experiment, participants are given a list of words to study for 3 minutes and then, following a delay, are asked to recall the list. The length of time between the study period and the recall is being manipulated: it is 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes. Since different groups need different amounts of time, the first 25 participants who arrive are assigned to the 10-minute group, the next 25 are assigned to the 5-minute group, and the final 25 are assigned to the 2-minute group. What confound does this create?

a. demand characteristic

b. carryover effect

c. experimenter bias

d. selection effect

D

In the same word list-learning experiment, participants are given a list of words to study for 3 minutes and then, following a delay, are asked to recall the list. The length of time between the study period and the recall is being manipulated: it is 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes. Which of the following is a confounding variable?

a. All participants in the 2-minute condition are tested at 8:00a.m., those in the 5-minute condition are tested at noon, and those in the 10-minute condition are tested at 4:00 p.m.

b. The same list is used for each condition and is randomized for each participant.

c. The three groups are run simultaneously in three different rooms, and the room for each condition is randomly chosen before each group arrives.

d. Three different experimenters administer the task and rotate which condition they are administering.

A

The students in 50-student introductory psychology class were randomly assigned to one of two review sessions, each being taught with a different technique. The next day, every student got all 10 of the test questions correct. What problem does Professor Zhao have in determining the better teaching technique for review sessions?

a. ceiling effect

b. confound acting in reverse

c. attrition

d. instrumentation

A

If some outside event (such as a change in weather) influences most of the people in a study between pretest and posttest, this would be

a. a selection threat.

b. an order effect.

c. a history threat.

d. a regression threat

C

An attrition threat is problematic

a. because participants who dropped

b. out of the study are different than those who stayed in the study

c. it will result in making a Type 2 error

it will result in a floor effect.

d. only if you lose more than 10% of your sample

A

Which of the following is not a source of unsystematic variance (also called error variance)?

a. measurement error

b. design confounds

c. situation noise

d. individual differences

B

Which of the following is a potential reason for why a study obtained a null effect?

a. too much unsystematic variability within each group

b. not enough variability between the different groups

c. the independent variable does not actually make a difference

d. ALL of the options are correct.

D

Emma is planning an experiment on the effects of being read to on vocabulary size in toddlers. She plans to measure the vocabulary size of a group of 18-month-olds, read to them three times a week for a month, then measure the vocabulary size again. What threat to internal validity should she be concerned about?

a. regression

b. maturation

c. attrition

d. testing

B

As part of an experiment on the effects of behavior modeling, a set of raters are evaluating the prosocial behavior in a series of videotapes of a class of preschoolers. Initially, the raters were quite strict in their ratings, but after three hours of rating, their criteria had changed. What type of threat to internal validity has occurred?

a. instrumentation

b. testing

c. history

d. regression to the mean

A

What should be added to a double-blind placebo control study to demonstrate that the placebo had an effect?

a. a second group with a different placebo

b. a researcher who evaluates the participants without knowing which group they are in

c. a no-treatment/no-placebo group

d. a subject group who were unaware of which group they were in

C

Which of the following is NOT one of the three most common threats to internal validity?

a. floor effects

b. order effects

c. selection effects

d. design confounds

A

Which of these is NOT one of the problems with study design that may cause the study to return a null hypothesis when the independent variable actually does cause a change in the dependent variable?

a. reverse confounds

b. weak manipulations

c. insensitive measures

d. large sample size

D

How many independent variables and how many conditions are there in a 2 × 3 × 4 study?

a. 2 independent variables, 4 conditions

b. 2 independent variables, 9 conditions

c. 3 independent variables, 9 conditions

d. 3 independent variables, 24 conditions

D

What are the two main reasons to use factorial designs?

a. to find statistical significance and to test theories

b. to increase construct validity and to increase internal validity

c. to test limits and to test theories

d. to use fewer participants and to test limits

C

In a factorial experiment, which is typically the most important effect?

a. a main effect of the first variable

b. an interaction

c. a main effect of the second variable

d. an overall effect

B

When authors of a research article are describing just the results of a factorial study, which of these terms would you NOT expect to see?

a. correlation

b. main effect

c. interaction effect

d. significant

A

After reading a report by Rockoff (2010), Yingying is studying the effects of others' presence and their roles on the rate of gambling bets using a simulated slot machine. Her levels of others present are one, two, or three people present. Her levels of roles are gamblers and observers. She constructs a 2 × 3 table of her results of average time between bets. There are two rows for the roles and three columns for the others present. The values in the first row are 10, 20, and 20 and in the second row are 20, 10, and 10. Describe her results assuming a difference of more than 2 values is meaningful.

a. no effect of role, no effect of others present, and an interaction

b. main effect of role, no effect of others present, and an interaction

c. no effect of role, main effect of others present, and no interaction

d. main effect of role, main effect of others present, and no interaction

B