Approaches to Research
What are the 3 elements of the scientific attitude?
Curiosity, humility, skepticism
True or false: Temperament is a relatively stable trait.
True
What 2 parts of the brain are most involved with implicit memory?
Cerebellum and basal ganglia
Difference between a phoneme and a morpheme?
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can change meaning, like the “b” in “bat.” A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning, which can be a word or a meaningful part of a word, like “un-” in “undo.”
True or False: We can determine how "spread out" data are by examining the variability of a dataset.
True
What's the difference between a population and a sample?
A population includes all individuals the researcher wants to understand, while a sample is the smaller group selected from that population to actually study. .
Give 2 physical changes you'd expect to find in late adulthood.
Declines in strength, balance, vision, hearing, and immune function. Bones become fragile; muscle mass decreases.
Name 3 causes of forgetting
Motivated forgetting, retrieval failure, encoding failure, storage decay
What is confirmation bias?
How do you find the median in a data set?
To find the median, you first put all the numbers in order from smallest to largest, then identify the middle value. If there are two middle numbers, you average them to get the median.
What is the purpose of having a representative sample?
A representative sample is used so that the group being studied accurately reflects the larger population researchers want to draw conclusions about. This allows findings to be generalized more confidently beyond the specific individuals who were sampled.
Give 2 "life tasks" you'd expect to be completed in emerging adulthood.
Achieving Independence
Launching a Career
Forming Intimate Relationships
Describe the role of the amygdala in memory processing
It enhances the storage of emotional memories, making them more vivid and long-lasting, but can also contribute to "tunnel vision," where attention and memory focus narrowly on central emotional details while peripheral information is less accurately remembered.
What is the framing effect? Give an example.
The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people’s decisions are influenced by how information is presented rather than just the facts. For example, people may react differently to a choice described as a “90% success rate” versus a “10% failure rate,” even though they mean the same thing.
What do we mean by "conservation" (in human development)?
Conservation is the understanding that certain properties of an object—like number, mass, or volume—remain the same even when the object’s appearance changes.
What's the difference between an hypothesis and a theory?
A hypothesis is a specific, testable prediction about how variables are related, while a theory is a broader explanation that organizes and predicts a wide range of observations.
What term fits the following definition: Teens believe everyone is constantly watching and judging them.
Imaginary audience
False memories are memories that feel real but are actually distorted, inaccurate, or entirely made up (e.g., Elizabeth Loftus and the "lost in the mall" experiment). They show that memory is not a perfect recording of events but a reconstructive process, meaning it can be influenced by suggestion, expectations, and new information (so our memories are not always completely reliable)
Describe 3 problem solving strategies we discussed in class
Trial and error (trying different things until they something works), algorithms (following a set of directions to get a guaranteed solution), heuristics (using a rule of thumb)
What is a retrieval cue?
A retrieval cue is a stimulus—like a sound, smell, word, or context—that helps trigger the recall of a memory.
Define the following: beneficence and nomaleficence, integrity, and justice (in a research ethics context)
B & N: Doing good and avoiding doing harm
Integrity: Accuracy, honesty, truthfulness
Justice: Promoting fairness and equality rather than their opposites
Erikson's Stage: Competence vs. Inferiority refers to what?
Erikson's stage of Competence vs. Inferiority occurs in middle childhood and focuses on children developing a sense of skill and achievement. Success leads to feelings of competence, while repeated failure can result in feelings of inferiority.
What's the difference between effortful and automatic processing?
Effortful processing requires conscious attention and deliberate effort to encode information, like studying for an exam. Automatic processing happens without conscious effort, such as remembering familiar routes or recognizing faces.
What is the representativeness heuristic?
The representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut where people judge the likelihood of something based on how closely it matches a typical example or stereotype. While it can make quick judgments easier, it can also lead to errors by ignoring actual probabilities or relevant information.
What do we mean by "mental set"?
A mental set is the tendency to approach a problem using a method or strategy that has worked in the past, even when a new or simpler solution might be more effective.