Research Methods and Design
A psychologist wants to know whether caffeine improves memory. She randomly assigns participants to drink either regular coffee or decaf before taking a recall test. What is the independent variable?
What type of coffee (caffeine vs. decaf)?
This part of the neuron sends messages away from the cell body.
What is the axon?
The minimum amount of stimulation needed for a person to detect a stimulus 50% of the time is called this.
What is the absolute threshold?
Using simple rules or mental shortcuts to make quick decisions, like guessing that a person wearing a lab coat is a doctor, is an example of what?
What is a heuristic?
This is the process of getting information into the memory system.
What is encoding?
A scatterplot shows that as hours of sleep decrease, anxiety scores increase. What type of correlation is this, and what can you not conclude?
What is a negative correlation; you cannot conclude causation.
This neurotransmitter is most associated with movement, learning, and reward, and low levels are linked to Parkinson’s disease.
What is dopamine?
After 10 minutes in a swimming pool, the water no longer feels cold. This phenomenon is known as what?
What is sensory adaptation?
When you search for information that supports what you already believe (and ignore evidence that contradicts it), you’re showing which cognitive bias?
What is confirmation bias?
Remembering how to ride a bike even after years of not practicing relies on this type of long-term memory.
What is procedural memory?
A researcher reports that her results are “statistically significant at p < .05.” What does this mean about the likelihood that her findings are due to chance?
What are the results are significant, and there is less than a 5% probability that the results occurred by chance?
The brain’s left hemisphere controls the right side of the body. This is known as what?
What is contralateral organization?
The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye lacks rods or cones, which creates this phenomenon.
What is the blind spot?
Solving a problem the same way you always have, even when a better solution exists, demonstrates what obstacle to problem-solving?
What is a mental set?
According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin (The Richard's) 3-stage multi-store model, this stage of memory holds information for only a few seconds unless it is rehearsed.
What is short-term (or working) memory?
In an experiment on attention, both groups watch the same video, but only one group is given a distracting task while watching. Later, the researcher realizes one group was tested in a quieter room than the other.
What is this problem called?
What is a confounding variable?
A person can hear and understand language, but can’t form words clearly. Damage to which brain area is likely responsible?
What is Broca’s area?
This phenomenon occurs when the brain uses existing knowledge, expectations, or context to interpret sensory information.
What is top-down processing?
Thinking of many possible uses for a paper clip, such as a lock pick, tiny screwdriver, or bookmark, shows what type of thinking?
What is divergent thinking?
Memories of personally experienced events, like your first day of school, are part of this type of long-term memory.
What is episodic memory?
A memory researcher finds the following:
Group A mean = 85
Group B mean = 90
Both groups have a standard deviation of 20
The p-value is .18
What can the researcher conclude about the difference between groups?
What is the p-value (.18) shows the results are not statistically significant and the high standard deviation means the scores vary a lot, so we can’t say the groups are truly different?
During an action potential, this process occurs when positively charged ions rush into the neuron, making the inside of the neuron more positive.
What is depolarization?
This theory states that color vision results from three types of cones, each sensitive to red, green, or blue wavelengths.
What is the trichromatic theory?
When making decisions under uncertainty, people often judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily they can think of examples. Like fearing plane crashes more after seeing one on the news. This describes which heuristic?
What is the availability heuristic?
This type of amnesia involves difficulty forming new memories after a brain injury.
What is anterograde amnesia?