Psychology 101:  Introductory Psychology

 

 

About the Final Examination

 

The final examination will be held on Saturday, December 16, 7:30-10 p.m. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LOCATION IS STILL BEING WORKED OUT. UPDATE: the final will be held in 6 rooms. See the Final Exam Home Page or the Psych 101 Home Page for the listing of the rooms.

 

The final examination will be closed-book, of course, and will consist of multiple choice questions (from the textbook) and short answer questions (from the material covered in the lectures). 

 

I have changed the nature of the final examination so that it is only partially cumulative (originally, as indicated in the course outline, the final was to be fully cumulative). The final examination will now consist of three parts:

 

1. Midterm #3—everyone will take this REQUIRED section, which will consist of:

 

Ä     Multiple choice from Chapters 14, 16, 17, 18 (remember that for MT2 we had skipped Ch 14 and included Ch 15).  In other words, the multiple choice section will cover the remaining chapters of the Myers textbook.  There will be 7 multiple choice questions from each of the 4 chapters, for a total of 28 questions. [Note—the fact that there are 7 MC questions for each chapter does NOT mean that the MC section is proportionately any greater than it has been for MT1 or MT2, because the point totals for MT3 will still be approximately 50% MC and 50% short answer. I just had to include more MC questions so that the point totals work out. You don't have to study any more to answer 7 questions per chapter than you would to answer 5 questions.]

 

Ä     Short answer questions from:  (1) the material covered since Midterm #2 (starting with the lecture material on learning (Questions 206-223) as well as the material on memory. Please note that, although this MT3/Final is NOT fully comprehensive, there will be the possibility of short answer questions on the material from my lectures on research methodology (Questions #11 to 40 on the Midterm 1 Review Questions). These questions are repeated below.

     

2.  OPTIONAL second chance questions from Midterm #1 material (short answer questions from my lectures only; no multiple choice!)

 

Ä     If you would like to improve your original Midterm 1 score, you can answer these questions.  You can look over the questions, and even answer some or all of them. There will be a place on the cover sheet where you can indicate that you want us to grade these second chance Midterm 1 questions.  If you do so, your Revised Midterm 1 score will be the simple average of your original Midterm 1 score and your Second Change Midterm 1 score:

      Revised Midterm 1 % = (Transformed % of entire original MT1 + % on Second Chance MT1) / 2

* this is the transformed percentage, not the raw percentage

 

      If you decide that you don't want us to grade this section, even if you have answered the questions, there will be a place to indicate that you don't want us to (and thus, you would let your original Midterm 1 score stand).

 

      If you choose to have us grade this section, the above formula will be used, even if you do worse on these second chance questions than you did on Midterm 1.  Please note that even though the original Midterm #1 had a multiple choice and a short answer section, and this second chance Midterm #1 has only a short answer section, that second chance Midterm #1 will be averaged with your total original Midterm #1 score (in other words, we are not simply replacing or averaging just your short answer score).

 

3.  OPTIONAL second chance questions from Midterm 2 material (short answer questions from my lectures only; no multiple choice)

 

Ä  Same procedure as for Midterm 1 second chance questions, and same averaging procedure.

 

Weighting the Components of the Course

 

Please note that because the final examination is now equal to Midterm 3, I need to change the weights:

 

 

Answers to the Review Questions and Psych 101 Hot Line

 

1.      I will be audio-recording the answers to the review sessions below, and will be converting it to MP3. Those MP3 files will be available on the Psych 101 final website by Tuesday, December 12, early afternoon. You can download the file(s), which you can then play on your iPod or other MP3 player, right next to songs from our niece: http://www.mozellamusic.com/ and http://www.myspace.com/mozella

 

2.      Final call for the Psych 101 Hot Line: Friday, December 15, from 9:30 to 10:30 p.m.

         Phone number: 519-886-4732.

 

Experimental Summaries and Article Summaries

 

The deadline has been extended to Monday, December 11. You MUST submit them by NOON in the mailboxes of one of the TAs (preferably Ada Law's mailbox, because she is the administrative TA for the course). The mailboxes for the Psych Dept are on the 3rd floor of the PAS building. Just ask if you can't find them. And PLEASE make a photocopy or disk copy of anything you turn in: just common sense. We cannot tell you yet how many summaries you have submitted. But of course if there are any DOCUMENTED changes required (documented only from evidence), we will make the changes. After the final, there will be a spreadsheet posted in a public location, and you can check the number of credits you were given based on your submissions.

 

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Review Questions

 

As with the review questions I have passed out before each of the midterms, I have developed these questions to help you frame the important ideas in the course.  The actual questions may be similar or even identical to these, but I want you to use the questions as a starting point.  If you can answer the questions below you should do well on the short answer portion of the final examination. 

 

Again--some of the questions that are listed below reflect the topics I planned to cover at the time that I wrote up these review questions, but of course they may not reflect what I actually talked about during lecture.

 

You will be responsible for the following material on Midterm 3:

 

      Ä     Midterm 1 review questions on research methodology (correlational vs. experimental research; material on television violence and behavior) (Questions 11-40).  This is really the only material that is repeated for Midterm 3—because those topics are so important.  I have included them below.

      Ä     Lecture material since Midterm 2.  This includes the material on errors and biases in reasoning

 

Questions from Midterm 1 review questions on research methodology (Questions #11-40):

 

11.    What is an operational definition?  What are the two criteria that scientists use to evaluate operational

                  definitions?

12.    Know the distinction between validity and reliability.

13.    How does the story of Broca's brains (he used brain size as a measure of intelligence) illustrate the difference between validity and reliability?

14.    Contrast correlational research with experimental research:  what are the benefits and pitfalls of both?

15.    What feature of a good survey allows us to generalize the results of the survey to the population?

16.    What is a representative sample?  Why is it important in survey research?

17.    How did the Literary Digest poll of 1936 demonstrate the importance of random sampling (obviously, you don't have to know the numbers--just the principle!)

18.    How did the Literary Digest poll of 1936 demonstrate problems with biased samples?

19.    What were the biases that led to the problems with the Literary Digest poll of 1936?

20.    How does the Literary Digest poll of 1936 illustrate the difference between reliability and validity (hint:  sampling error is related to reliability and accuracy is related to validity)?

21.    What is sampling error?

22.    What is the law of large numbers?  (You don't have to know the numbers--just the principle!)

23.    What is the relationship between sample size of a survey and sampling error (and precision)?  What is the relationship between proportion of the population sampled and sampling error/precision (i.e., the sample-to-population ratio)?

24.    What does it mean for two variables to be positively correlated?  Negatively correlated?  Uncorrelated?

25.    What are the three causal possibilities when there is a correlation between two variables?

26.    What is a spurious correlation?  What does the "third variable" refer to?

27.    Know how to identify the parts of an experiment:  conditions, independent variable, dependent variable.

28.    Why is random assignment to conditions so important in an experiment?  What does it eliminate?

29.    Know the distinction between random sampling (in survey research) and random assignment

                  (in experimental research)

30.    What are the benefits of experimental research?  What does it not tell us?

31.    Define external validity and internal validity.  Define discriminant validity.

32.    What is reliability?  Why do we care about it?

33.    Describe the modeling hypothesis and catharsis hypothesis concerning the effects of violent television on behavior.

34.    What is the conclusion of the correlational studies of Eron (1963) regarding the effects of television on behavior?

35.    What is the conclusion of the experimental studies of Bandura et al. (1961)?

36.    How would you critique the Bandura et al. bobo doll study on the basis of external validity?

37.    How would you critique the Bandura et al. bobo doll study on the basis of internal validity?

38.    How did the Liebert and Baron study do better than the Bandura et al. study in external validity?

39.    How did the Liebert and Baron study do better than the Bandura et al. study in internal validity?

 

New review questions on material since Midterm 2:

 

206.     What is the definition of learning?

207.     Why do we have to be careful in concluding that animal behavior that seems intelligent/learned really is due to learning?  Give some examples of animal behaviors that we could be misinterpreting.

208.     Describe Pavlov's experiments.

209.     Know how to identify the various components in classical conditioning.

210.     Know the stages of classical conditioning.

211.     How can classical conditioning be used to cure enuresis (bedwetting)?

212.     What are the differences between classical conditioning and instrumental (operant) conditioning?

213.     Describe what you would do to train an animal to perform complex behaviors.

214.     What is shaping?  What are successive approximations?

215.     Know the characteristics of the various schedules of reinforcement.

216.     What is the partial reinforcement effect?  What are some examples in everyday life?

217.     How can the principles of reinforcement explain how well-meaning parents attempting to help their child get to sleep can inadvertently create a situation where the child actually stays up for longer.

218.     What happens when you provide pigeons with fixed interval reinforcement?

219.     How does superstitious behavior emerge in pigeons and in people?

220.     What did Watson claim about the possibility of conditioning any stimulus to any response?

221.     How did Garcia's studies concerning biological constraints in learning argue against Watson's

                  broad claims about learning?

222.     Does punishment work?  Describe the Freedman (1965) forbidden toy experiment.

223.     What is the overjustification effect (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973)?  What does it tell us about the costs of reward?

224.     What do the forbidden toy experiment and the overjustification effect experiment suggest about using extrinsic rewards and punishments in raising children?

225.     What was Ebbinghaus's approach to the study of memory?  Why did he use nonsense syllables?

226.     What was Bartlett's criticism of Ebbinghaus's approach?  What was Bartlett's own approach?  What kind of stimuli did he employ in his research? 

227.     Which approach has been more influential in the modern studies of memory?

228.     How is information processing in a computer analogous to information processing in a human?  Describe the stages of human information processing (encoding, storage, and retrieval).

229.     Describe the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory.

230.     What is a chunk?

231.     How many chunks can you retain in short-term memory?

232.     When do chess experts differ from chess novices in their memory for chess positions, according to deGroot (1965)?

233.     In studies of free recall, what is the shape of the serial position curve?

234.     What is the primacy effect?  What is the recency effect?  What accounts for each of these effects?

235.     What kind of coding is used in STM?  What kind of coding is used in LTM?

236.     What experimental evidence is there that STM is acoustic?

237.     What is working memory?

238.*   Describe how damage to the hippocampus (remember Clive Wearing and H.M.) provides physiological evidence for the STM-LTM distinction (covered on MT1 so you don't need to know this again)

239.*   What is the distinction between declarative and procedural memory?  How do studies of hippocampal damage support this distinction? (covered on MT1 so you don't need to know this again)

240.     What is the difference between anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia?

241.     How does a head injury cause retrograde amnesia?

242.     Why don't you fully recover your memory after a head injury has caused retrograde amnesia?  What will you be least likely to remember?

243.     What is trace consolidation?  What are the two possible explanations for this (encoding/storage and retrieval--remember the cement vs. library catalog card analogies)?

244.*   Which memory (declarative or procedural) seems to be disrupted by damage to the hippocampus?

                  (covered on MT1 so you don't need to know this again)

245.*   Can amnesic patients learn?  What is the experimental evidence for this?  How does this evidence support a distinction between declarative and procedural memory? (covered on MT1 so you don't need to know this again)

246.     What is depth of processing?  How is it related to memory?

247.     What is a mnemonic device?

248.     How is imagery important in mnemonic devices?

249.     Describe Luria's patient, S., who had extraordinary memory.

250.     What is synesthesia?

251.     How was S. able to remember virtually everything he was ever exposed to?  What was the down-side of this wonderful memory?

252.*   What is photographic memory (eidetic memory)?  Is there any evidence for it?

253.     What do memory experts excel in?

254.     What is the relationship between accuracy in memory and confidence in memory?

255.     What does the research by Loftus on leading questions suggest about how easy it is to change people's memory and even to create false memories?

256.     What does it mean to say that memory is a reconstructive process?

257.     Describe the study by Loftus and Palmer on the effects of a leading question on perceptions of the speed of a car that caused an accident. 

258.     Describe the study by Loftus, Miller, and Burns on the effects of a leading question on creating a memory of an object that was never there (the stop vs. yield sign).

259.     How does the research by Loftus and others demonstrate the problem with leading questions in a crime investigation?

260.     How does the research by Loftus and others on creating false memories in university students demonstrate that there is a strong possibility of creating false memories among clients whose therapists are encouraging them to remember instances when they were sexually abused as a child, even though they currently have no such memories?

261.     What does the research (by Ceci and others) suggest about the accuracy of children's memory?

262.     How can well-meaning therapists actually create false memories in their clients?

263.     How do the studies of memory distortion and suggestibility contradict our intuitions about memory?

264.     What is a more accurate model of memory?

265.     When people make claims about events during childhood that they have suddenly remembered as adults, what is the dilemma of the justice system? (and of psychologists who testify on the basis of research?)  How is the signal detection model helpful in understanding this dilemma?

 

These questions are from the Lecture Notes on Errors and Biases in Reasoning (see the Psych 101 Website)

 

266.     What is epistemology?

267.     What is the distinction between descriptive theories and prescriptive (normative) theories?

268.     How good do people think they are at making judgments and decisions (Fong and Klein)?

269.     Describe Nisbett and Wilson's (1977) research on awareness of mental processes.  Are people good at recognizing what influences their judgments and behavior?

270.     What is the traditional/philosophical explanation for errors in reasoning?  What is the cognitive explanation for errors?

271.     What is a cognitive heuristic?

272.     What is the availability heuristic (Kahneman and Tversky)?  How do vividness effects demonstrate the existence of the availability heuristic?

273.     How do vividness effects account for people's estimates of the prevalence of various causes of death?

274.     Describe the Reyes, Thompson, and Bower (1981) study that used a mock jury trial to demonstrate the effects of vividness.

275.     What is the representativeness heuristic (Kahneman and Tversky)? 

276.     Describe the lawyer-engineer problem that demonstrates that people are using similarity judgments and fail to use base-rate information.

277.     Do people believe in the validity of interviews?  What do the studies of interviews conclude about their validity?  Why do people continue to believe in interviews?

278.     What are framing effects?  Review the handout that I passed out on Kahneman and Tversky's experiment on framing effects.

279.     What is the perseverance effect?  Describe the Ross et al. (1975) study (suicide notes).

280.     What happens when a theory you hold is completely disconfirmed?  Do you still believe it?

281.     What is the effect of mixed evidence on the belief in a strongly-held theory? (Lord, Ross, and Lepper, 1979)

 

283.     Are you ready for the final now?