PSYC212 - applied psychology module

Which 2 study techniques are considered to have high utility - i.e., highly effective across a range of contexts - based on Dunlosky et al.'s (2013) review?

Distributed practice sessions, Practice testing

What does JOL stand for in educational psychology research?

judgement of learning

an applied psychology research question

How does sleep quality influence the performance of healthcare workers?

The final exam is 7.5 weeks away (53 days to be precise)! If you want to retain this week's material for the final exam, how frequently should you schedule your study sessions? - use midpoint

8

Thinking about Geissler's (1917) discussion of pure vs applied psychology, a commonality between the two is:

both can involve observation, measurement, comparison and experimentation

In Karpicke, Butler and Roediger's (2009) research on metacognitive strategies in student learning, which of the following strategies was most preferred by students who had to read a textbook chapter for an upcoming exam?

Go back and restudy either the entire chapter or certain parts of the chapter

In reviewing historical developments in educational psychology, McInerney (2005) outlined four basic emphases. Match these emphases with the types of research that would be conducted:

How many items can individuals simultaneously hold in working memory? (i.e., the 7 ± 2 rule)

Cognitive psychology

In reviewing historical developments in educational psychology, McInerney (2005) outlined four basic emphases. Match these emphases with the types of research that would be conducted:

How does immediate feedback about accuracy influence test performance?

Behavioural psychology

In reviewing historical developments in educational psychology, McInerney (2005) outlined four basic emphases. Match these emphases with the types of research that would be conducted:

Does seeing others being punished for cheating promote academic honesty?

Social cognitive theory

In reviewing historical developments in educational psychology, McInerney (2005) outlined four basic emphases. Match these emphases with the types of research that would be conducted:

How does teacher empathy influence student creativity and feelings of success?

Humanism

a perspective that emphasizes looking at the whole individual and stresses concepts such as free will, self-efficacy, and self-actualization. Rather than concentrating on dysfunction, humanistic psychology strives to help people fulfill their potential and maximize their well-being.

Humanism

A theory that holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences.

Social cognitive theory

a theory suggesting that environment shapes human behavior. In a most basic sense, the study and analysis of observable behavior. This field of psychology influenced thought heavily throughout the middle of the 20th century.

Behavioural psychology

an area that focuses on the science of how people think. This branch of psychology explores a wide variety of mental processes including how people think, use language, attend to information, and perceive their environments.

Cognitive Psychology

In which branch of applied psychology would you be most likely to find someone who evaluates the mental health status of people involved in legal proceedings?

forensic psychology

Which Division of the International Association of Applied Psychology would likely be most relevant to an educator wanting to teach at a primary school ?

Education, Instructional & School Psychology

The most effective way to study for your PSYC212 final exam would be to:

Make flashcards after watching each lecture and test yourself throughout the semester.

Which Division of the International Association of Applied Psychology would likely be most relevant to a researcher who is interested in how the built environment influences poverty and crime?

Environmental Psychology

How many divisions are in the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP)?

18

research question using a 2x2 factorial design?

How does alcohol consumption affect driving performance, at daytime and night-time?

considered an applied psychology research question

Does listening to music interfere with studying?

In Simon and Chabris' (2011) study assessing common beliefs about the properties of memory, which statement were members of the general public most likely to agree with?

People suffering from amnesia typically cannot recall their own name or identity.

Calling research participants as WEIRD is referring to the fact that they are from countries that are [W], [E], [I], [R] and [D].

Western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic

The "open-and-obvious" doctrine applies in US court cases where an individual has been injured slipping or falling because of a hazard that was present in the environment. The open-and-obvious doctrine asks whether a person of "average intelligence" would have noticed the hazard. What is the most obvious problem with applying this doctrine?

Many people do not realise that the phenomenon of inattentional blindness exists.

Experimental research involves testing whether changes to [A] variable(s) result in (presumably causal) changes in one of more [B] variable(s).

independent, dependent

What can we conclude based on the results reported in Gregersen's 1997 evaluation of changing the age limit for driver training?

Learner drivers are likely to spend more time practicing if they are given a longer period in which to practice.
Young drivers are likely to be safer if they spend more time practicing. (despite the experiments confounds /limitations)

Researchers are investigating if giving night shift workers melatonin medication before sleep enhances work performance. Peter is assigned to a condition where he does not take any new medication. Which condition has Peter been assigned to?

Control

Thinking about Simon and Chabris' (2011) research assessing common beliefs about the properties of memory, which statement would experts be most likely to agree with?

People generally notice when something unexpected enters their field of view, even when they're paying attention to something else.

One limitation with the Human Error Template method is that:

It is hard to objectively quantify event criticality.

Which of the following tasks would NOT be considered a vigilance task?

A health practitioner conducting swabs to screen patients for COVID-19.

Which of the following is NOT a potential problem with adaptive automation?

Inaccurate or unreliable automation at the information acquisition stage can improve diagnostic performance above unaided human performance, if the human's own perceptual capabilities remain available.

During World War II, psychologist Alphonse Chapanis noticed that pilots of B-17 bombers sometimes crash landed on the runway. This occurred because:

The cockpit was designed so that the switches for landing gear and flaps were identical and located next to each other.

Why does the vigilance decrement occur?

Because vigilance tasks are stressful and cognitively demanding.

The quote 'errors are not so much causes as consequences' implies that:

errors are the last and often least manageable link in a chain of events.

"As we shall see below, errors are not so much causes as consequences. The contributing errors, just as much as their bad outcomes, require an explanation. Errors are the product of a chain of causes in which the individual psychological factors (momentary inattention, forgetting, haste, etc) are the last and often the least manageable link."

It is most appropriate to use automation:

adaptively, depending on the task and current circumstances.

What would be the most effective way of reducing prevalence-related misses in security screening?

Artificially increasing target prevalence by inserting fake targets.

What causes a HET analysis to fail

BOTH likelihood and criticality are high

Max has enrolled in a Zumba class and intends to attend regularly to meet his weekly exercise requirements. His boyfriend loves Zumba and really wanted Max to come along too so they could do it together.
According to Theory of Planned Behaviour, this would be described as (a/an):

injunctive norm

What is the minimum number of minutes that people should spend engaged in exercise each week, if they are to be considered to have entered the "action" stage of exercising regularly according to the stages of change model?

60

According to recent meta-analyses (as reported in Terry, 2011), which of the following sports psychology phenomena has the largest effect?

The effect of exercise on depression.

Brodie goes to CrossFit daily and does her WOD (workout of the day) even when she is tired, because she enjoys burpees and double unders. According to self-determination theory, Brodie has:

Intrinsic motivation

What type of person is counselling aimed at

normative/typical people

What type of person would most benefit from clinical psychology (as opposed to counselling)

People with mental issues

Health Psychology

the subfield of psychology concerned with ways psychological factors influence the causes and treatment of physical illness and the maintenance of health

Forensic psychology

area of psychology that applies the science and practice of psychology to issues within and related to the justice system

Environmental psychology

considers the relationship between people and their physical environment

Educational psychology

- Improve educational systems and outcomes
AKA school psychology

- Can be researchers or practioners (sometimes need to be registered)

- Understanding the context around the child causing certain behaviours

Cue utilisation hypothesis

A theory that predicts that, as an athlete's arousal increases, his or her attention focus narrows and the narrowing process tends to gate out irrelevant environmental cues first and then, if arousal is high enough, the relevant ones.

Are jols higher or recall of easier or harder task difficulty

Easier task difficulty

JOLS are effected by

Intrinsic and extrinsic factors

Test/re test reliability

(how consistent are the results if we repeat). If we expect something to be constant the test results should be the same. Some we expect to vary over time.

inter-rater reliability

(important in research with a qualitative component). Consistency between two reviewers of data.

absolute validity

does it accurately reflect the exact concept it is intended to

relative validity

do you see the same patterns of behaviors in a sim for example as in a car on the road.

face validity example

does the sim have characteristics of a real car to participants. Some researchers think face validity is not as important as it can still have relative validity, so can still help answer questions about driving a car.

Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010

A randomly selected undergrad student is more than 4000x more likely to be a research participant than a randomly selected person. They used the term ' weird' to define a participant being used in most research. Lived in western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. They do not represent how most people in the world behave.

Do undergrads act as the majority in studies?

Yes, 67% of US studies and 80% of other countries used entirely undergrad samples. Has implications for what we know about human behavior. (2008)

Worldwide, road crashes kill approximately \__________ people (World Health Organization, 2020).

1.3 million per year

The personality trait of hosility is likely to be positively correlated with:

DBQ ordinary AND aggresive violations

Mike occasionally drives home from the pub even though he suspects he might be over the legal blood alcohol limit. According to the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ), this behaviour would be classified as a(n):

Ordinary Violation.

Which of the following strategies would be an effective and cost-effective (i.e. relatively cheap) method for improving road safety, with no major disbenefits?

Paint additional road markings that make the road appear narrower, so people will instinctively slow down.

Personality is not a good predictor of aberrant driving behaviour. True or False

False

Encouraging drivers to improve their interactions with others is an example of \_________ training, whereas encouraging drivers to better evaluate their skills is an example of \________ training.

resilience, insight

Which measure would have the highest face validity as a measure of everyday driving? (from traffic psyc lecs)

Instrumented vehicle study

The New Zealand government allows young drivers to reduce the amount of time spent on their restricted licence from 18 months to 12 months if they complete an approved course, such as a defensive driving course. Is this policy appropriate, based on research evidence, and why?

No, because accelerating licensure ("time discounts") has been consistently associated with increased violations and crash risk.

Individuals who rate highly on the personality trait of conscientiousness would be most likely would be most likely to engage in which type of aberrant driving behaviour, as classified by the Manchester Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ)?

None, they would likely score low on all subscales.

Which of the following is NOT a limitation of research exploring the relationship between age and driving anger?

Research examining on-road anger has focused almost exclusively on car drivers, ignoring other road users.

Sam works as an organisational psychologist for a large multinational company that conducts pre-employment testing with all of their employees. They have pre-employment test scores for a sample of 1,000 candidates who made it through to the final interview stage for their graduate program two years ago, most of whom were subsequently employed by the company. Currently, just over 400 of the initial grads are still employed at the company, now in permanent roles. Sam has looked at the data and compared their current job performance with their pre-employment test scores. Based on the results below, which test appears to have the best predictive validity for Sam's company?
(Job performance is measured quantitatively on a scale where higher scores represent better job performance.)

Structured interview scores, where the correlation with job performance is .58 (higher scores are better)

Teams are likely to be more effective if they:

Engage in appropriate mission analysis. Note - most models of teamwork use some variant of IPO, so make sure you read the question properly and do not assume the correct answer is IPO

Who is most likely to report high levels of Zoom fatigue?

A junior female worker with her webcam on during all Zoom meetings. Note - key role is not in literature.

Future-oriented job analyses would be considered more worker-oriented than job-oriented. True or False

True. Future-oriented job analyses focus on knowledge, skills and abilities and would therefore be considered more worker-oriented (person-oriented), rather than being job-oriented or task-oriented.

Rachel has requested to work from home, arguing that research has shown employees who spend some of their time engaged in remote work have higher supervisor-rated job performance. How should you respond to Rachel's request, if you want to follow evidence-based workplace policies?

Remind Rachel that previous research did not involve random assignment.

An organisational psychologist has asked you for advice on which test(s) to use for screening NZ Police applicants. In particular, they want a test that can identify individuals who show abnormal functioning. Which test would you recommend for them?

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

When considering teamwork processes in the abstract, forward mission analysis is likely to be more important (valuable) than backward mission analysis.

True

What is the fundamental difference between organisational psychology and human factors?

Organisational psychologists focus more on personal and interpersonal issues, whereas human factors professionals focus more on technology, design and systemic issues.

Ethan arranged a session for his work team, to workshop communication strategies and roleplay how they would deal with interpersonal disagreements. This is an example of:

Pre-emptive conflict management

You are an organisational psychologist and have been commissioned to develop/select a new test to screen applicants for the New Zealand Police. Think about the different types of validity that a selection test can have, and rank them in order from most important (1) to least important (4):

Criterion, Content, Face, Faith

statistical significance vs practical significance

Just because a p value is low does not mean it is necessarily statistically significant. depends on the concept of the study and the sample size, particularly in applied, think about real world significance.

replication crisis

a systematic problem in which a large proportion of studies are not reproducible. 39/100 studies were replicated and they were supposed to show basic principles of human cognitive and behavior. The replication crisis does not have as much of an effect on applied research as it is expected when you change the context you change the results.

Heck et al 2018

found that 65% of people believed they were more intelligent than the average person

people with (more or less) education are more likely to underestimate their intelligence. (more,less) educated people had the opposite effect

more, less

Simons & Chabris 2011

Amnesia - people suffering from amnesia typically cannot recall their own name or identity (83% of general public believe this.)

Video memory - human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later (63% of general public believe this)

Hypnosis - hypnosis is useful in helping witnesses accurately recall details of crimes. (55% of general public believe this)

Permanent memory - once you have experienced an event and formed a memory of it, that memory does not change. (48% of general public believe this)

Confident testimony - in my opinion, the testimony of one confident eyewitness should be enough evidence to convict a defendant of a crime. (37% of general public believe this)

NONE OF THESE STATEMENTS ARE TRUE

What percentage of the public believe this statement: people suffering from amnesia typically cannot recall their own name or identity

83%

inattentional blindeness

When you do not notice something completely obvious because you are paying attention to something else

Research vs policy questions

Research does not always tell us everything a policy needs to know, just how things are related, even in applied research. Policy questions are things such as should we legalise cannabis and are based off questions such as "does cannabis impair driver performance?"

Why aren't all policies evidence based

Pragmatic and political/ideological reasons

Pragmatic: dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations

Political/ideological reasons: political, cultural or religious beliefs.

Flay et al. (2005): intervention standards.

There should be at least 2 studies conducted in real world conditions holding these 5 criteria.

Defined samples from relevant populations
Sound measures and procedures
Appropriate analysis with statistical measures and documentation.
Effects of practical significance
At least one of the two interventions should have a successful long-term follow up

Dul et al, 2012, ergonomics

Started around WW2 as psychologists wanted to see how humans performed in military aviation. The focus expanded considerably from not only work practices but now focusing on any context In which people use systems and technology. The principles to guide us are consistent no matter the context.

B-17 "flying fortress", USAF 1940s

The problem was that the switch for the landing gear was next to the landing flaps and were shaped identically. The design of the controls were contributing to plane crashes. This case study is often used when describing design-induced error, where the design is at fault, not the user.

Human error template

Fail to execute
Execution incomplete
Executed in the wrong direction
Wrong task executed
Task repeated
Executed on wrong interface element
Executed too early
Executed too late
Executed too much
Executed too little
Misread information
Other

HET method specifies that an interface will fail based on a criterion/error mode if both criticality and likelihood are high - not just if the error is possible.

Stanton et al, 2010

Stanton et al evaluated the effect HET by recruiting 8 undergraduate students and getting them to complete this task, then comparing it to the events that happened. They also compared it to other methods which identify human errors. This assess the validity of the new method. They found this approach is reliable and valid systematic way of predicting if an error would occur and is more accurate than other methods.

User-centered design

HF would look at technology that is struggled to be used and an error in the design not the user as usability should be simple and easy.

Automation

The use of technology to ease human labor or to extend the mental or physical capabilities of humans.

Findings from Parasuraman et al 4 stages of info processing

It would be reasonable to allow a medium-high level of automation for information acquisition and information analysis. For decision selection it depends on the level of risk. For action implementation they though it was best to have a moderate amount of automation.

Vigilance

The ability to maintain attentional focus and remain alert over prolonged periods (Warm, Parasuraman & Matthews, 2008)

Vigilance tasks can very but fundamental features:

Monitor 1+ info source

Prolonged period

Detect low probability signal

Signal requires response

CPT (continuous performance task)

Involves showing items one at a time on a computer screen where the task is to respond to one of the items. Eg. press the space bar when you see the letter 'x'. The task can be made more complex by adding additional conditions eg. respond only if 'x' follows 'a' adding an additional memory component. CPT is useful in experimental settings as you can compare people and performance under different conditions. It is also sometimes uses to diagnose attentional limitations or difficulties but has questionable clinical reliability.

Vigilance decrement

performance declines with time of task

How can we reduce prevalence effects?

Increase actual prevalence rate of targets but this is neither feasible or desirable in security screening

False feedback as we adjust our search strategies based off feedback, increases how careful people are. This needs to be plausible false feedback and a situation where they don't have the ability to go back and double check. They can not be aware it is false feedback.

Another option is to artificially increase prevalence by inserting fake targets. This is used in security screening. Acts as a quality control - a better system than the ones lifted above.

Wolfe et. al - Vigilance experiments not using undergrads

Trained experts are susceptible to the low prevalence effects by providing short periods of high target prevalence (even with fake targets)