Psychology
101: Introductory Psychology
Fall
2006--Professor Fong
Short Answer Questions from Midterm 3, Fall 2005
[7] 1. Let's say that you read about a new
study involving 875 fourth-year university students.
[+1] The
author examined the relationship between number of psychology courses each
student had taken and their intelligence, as measured by an IQ test. He found
that students who had taken a lot of psychology courses scored higher on the
intelligence test than did students who had taken only a few psychology
courses.
a)
This is an example of a correlation between psychology courses and
intelligence
[1] that is:
POSITIVE
NEGATIVE ZERO
(circle one)
b) What are the three causal
possibilities for this correlation between number of
[3] psychology courses taken (X) and intelligence
(Y)? Draw the diagram or explain each in a few words so that we know that you
know this:
1.
2.
3.
c) What kind of study/research would
be the best in examining whether taking
[1] psychology courses causes intelligence
to increase?
_________________________________________ (one word only)
d) If you were to actually conduct
this best kind of study...
[2]
What
is the independent variable? ____________________________________
What
is the dependent variable?
____________________________________
e) BONUS: What kind of assignment to conditions is necessary for
this best study?
[+1]
_____________________________________________
(one word only)
[3] 2. Skinner gave pigeons a food pellet
every 5 seconds no matter what they did.
a) Name this reinforcement schedule:
____________________________ (2 words)
[1]
b) What kind of behavior did the
pigeons do? Name it and give an example.
[2]
Name
it: ________________________________ (1 or 2 words)
Give
an example of what a pigeon would do:
[3] 3. What is the capacity of
short-term memory? _______
± _______ ___________
(number) (number) (word)
[2] 4. In deGroot's study of memory for chess positions,
he showed chess experts and novices two kinds of positions on a chess board:
random positions and positions that could actually occur in chess (real
positions).
a)
Random—memory was better for:
EXPERTS
NOVICES SAME (circle one)
b)
Real—memory was better for: EXPERTS NOVICES SAME (circle one)
[2] 5. If a hockey player suffers a concussion, he is
likely to experience
___________________________
amnesia, which means loss of memory for
______________________________________________________________.
[2] 6. a) Define
synesthesia (one sentence)
[+1]
b) BONUS: what was the negative aspect of S's wonderful
memory? What was
[+1] he missing? (one sentence)
[6] 7. In studies of free recall, a list of words (let's
say it's 20 words long) is presented to a participant. Then immediately after
all of the words are presented, the participant is asked to recall as many of
the words as he/she can.
a)
The curve that you get is the ____________________________curve (2 words)
[1]
b)
Draw the typical serial position curve below:
[1]
Likelihood of
remembering
1 2
3 4 5
6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20
c)
Label the primacy and recency portions of the curve (with arrows)
[2]
d)
What is responsible for the primacy effect? _____________________ (one word)
[1]
e)
What is responsible for the recency effect? _____________________
[1]
[4] 8. From the Notes on Errors and
Biases in Reasoning:
a) What is the traditional
explanation for errors in reasoning? (1 sentence)
b) What is the cognitive
explanation for errors in reasoning? (1 sentence)
[1] 9. a) According to the work on memory by Loftus
and others, is it easy or hard
to
create false memories in university students?
EASY HARD (circle
one)