Exam 2: Studying Behaviour Scientifically

A museum is interested in determining which particular pieces of art are the most popular but does not want to directly ask its patrons. Instead, the head of the museum decides to keep track of the wear on the carpet in front of each of the pieces, assuming that the more popular pieces will have more worn carpet in front of them. This particular way of measuring art popularity is making use of a(n)

A hypothesis is best considered as

A researcher interested in applied work in the field of education wonders if the possible benefits of using computers during lectures outweighs the possible drawbacks. Anecdotally, they've noticed that students who use computers often look distracted while they're teaching. What would be the most suitable method to determine whether a causal relationship exists between computer use and performance in a course?

The experimental group is to the control group as

A major disadvantage of correlational research is that the correlation coefficient tells you the direction of a correlation (i.e., whether X and Y are negatively or positively correlated) but not how strongly the two variables are related.

A researcher concluded a study that looked at the effect of meditation on attention span improvement on 50 participants. If this researcher intends to transfer this knowledge to the entire country then this would be a concept of?

How does the research done by Darley and Latané illustrate the basic steps of the scientific process?

Which of the following research methods is likely to have the WORST external validity?

Dr. White wants to look at the impact of failure on self-esteem. He designs an experiment where half of the participants are led to believe that they have failed on an ambiguous task, while the other half of the participants are told that they have succeeded. Dr. White then has the people in his study complete a questionnaire measuring self-esteem and he looks to see if there are any differences in self-esteem between the success and failure groups. In this example, self-esteem would be considered the

Why does some research involve deception? What ethical principle does deception violate?

An fMRI study confirmed that the ventral and dorsal streams of the visual cortex independently processes object perception and object ____.

Dr. Williams is conducting an experiment and decides to use a design in which each participant will be exposed to all of the conditions in her study. In designing her study, Dr. Williams is

Typically, when psychologists conduct an experiment, they are willing to a ___ percent chance that the results are random and are due to chance.

Stephanie conducts an experiment to test whether dramas or comedies are more popular amongst the general population. She surveys a sample of 100 people who walk past the student union building that evening between 5 and 8 pm. Just before finishing her data collection, she overhears someone talk about the comedy improve show that just happened in the student union building. She realizes that her results may be invalid due to

Shireen thinks that people learn better when they enjoy the course in which they are studying. In order to test her prediction, she must operationalize her variables. Which of the following best represents valid operational definitions of the variables contained within her prediction?

The concept of interaction

Dr. Sussman conducts a study on the effect of various motivational factors on job performance. In her study, she does an excellent job of controlling extraneous factors and as a result, we can have high confidence in the causal conclusions she draws. However, the participants in her study were from a select group of the population and, therefore, Dr. Sussman will be rather limited in terms of her ability to apply her results to other people and situations. Taken as a whole, this study would be said to have ___________ internal validity and __________ external validity.

Professor Hoffman was interested in the effects of vitamin B12 deprivation on maze learning in rats. One group is given a vitamin B12 injection. The comparison group is given a placebo injection. He finds that the vitamin group learns the maze faster. In this study, the independent variable is _______ and the dependent variable is _______.

Of the following correlation coefficients, which one is not possible?

If there is a strong correlation suggesting that more parental involvement is associated with fewer behaviour problems for children, which would be the most likely correlation coefficient?