PSYCH 1X03 Exam Review: Research Design, Learning, Cognition and Social Psychology

Terms in this set (28)

1. What is the third-variable problem?An unmeasured variable may cause both measured variables to change, creating a correlation without a direct causal link (e.g. heat raising both ice cream sales and drownings).
2. Between-subjects vs within-subjects designBetween-subjects: each participant experiences only one condition. Within-subjects: each participant experiences all conditions, which needs fewer people but risks order effects.
3. What is counterbalancing?Varying the order of conditions across participants in a within-subjects design so that practice, fatigue and other order effects are spread evenly across conditions.
4. Internal vs external validityInternal validity is confidence that the IV caused the change in the DV. External validity is how well results generalize to other people, settings and times.
5. What is a confound?A variable other than the IV that differs systematically between conditions, so it offers an alternative explanation for the results.
6. Demand characteristicsCues in a study that hint at the hypothesis, which may lead participants to change their behaviour to fit what they think is expected.
7. What is a statistically significant result, conventionally?A result with p < .05, meaning that if the null hypothesis were true, a result at least this extreme would occur less than 5% of the time.
8. Mean, median and mode: which is least affected by outliers?The median (middle score). The mean is pulled toward extreme values, which is why income is often reported as a median.
9. Habituation vs sensitizationHabituation is a decrease in response to a repeated harmless stimulus. Sensitization is an increased response to a stimulus after exposure to an intense or noxious one.
10. What is stimulus generalization in classical conditioning?Responding to stimuli similar to the CS, e.g. Little Albert fearing other furry objects after being conditioned to fear a white rat.
11. Why is taste aversion learning a challenge for traditional conditioning theory?It can form after one pairing with a long delay between taste and illness, and it forms more readily with tastes than sounds, showing biological preparedness.
12. Thorndike's law of effectBehaviours followed by satisfying consequences become more likely to recur, and those followed by unpleasant consequences become less likely.
13. What is shaping in operant conditioning?Reinforcing successive approximations of a target behaviour until the full behaviour is produced.
14. Fixed-interval schedule: what response pattern does it produce?A scalloped pattern: responding slows right after reinforcement and speeds up as the time for the next available reinforcer approaches.
15. What is latent learning (Tolman)?Learning that occurs without obvious reinforcement and is not shown until there is an incentive, e.g. rats that explored a maze quickly ran it once food was introduced, suggesting a cognitive map.
16. Working memory components in Baddeley's modelThe central executive (controls attention), phonological loop (verbal/auditory info), visuospatial sketchpad (visual and spatial info) and episodic buffer (integrates information).
17. Levels of processing theoryDeeper, meaning-based (semantic) processing produces better long-term retention than shallow processing of physical or sound features.
18. Serial position effectItems at the start (primacy, from transfer to long-term memory) and end (recency, still in short-term memory) of a list are recalled better than items in the middle.
19. Encoding specificity principleMemory retrieval is best when cues present at retrieval match those present at encoding, including context (context-dependent memory) and internal state (state-dependent memory).
20. Availability heuristic vs representativeness heuristicAvailability: judging likelihood by how easily examples come to mind. Representativeness: judging likelihood by how well something matches a prototype, often ignoring base rates.
21. What is confirmation bias?The tendency to seek, notice and remember information that supports one's existing beliefs while overlooking contradicting evidence.
22. What is functional fixedness?A barrier to problem solving where a person can only see an object in its usual function, e.g. not thinking to use a coin as a screwdriver.
23. Fundamental attribution errorThe tendency to overemphasize personality (dispositional) explanations and underestimate situational influences when explaining other people's behaviour.
24. Main finding of Asch's line-judgment studiesMany participants conformed at least once to a group's obviously wrong answer, showing the power of normative social pressure; conformity dropped sharply when one other person dissented.
25. Main finding of Milgram's obedience studyAbout 65% of participants obeyed an authority figure's instructions to give what they believed were maximum-voltage shocks, showing strong situational pressure to obey.
26. What is cognitive dissonance?Discomfort from holding inconsistent beliefs or acting against one's attitudes, which people reduce by changing attitudes or justifying the behaviour (Festinger and Carlsmith's $1 vs $20 study).
27. Bystander effect and diffusion of responsibilityPeople are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present, partly because each person feels less personal responsibility to act.
28. Social facilitation vs social loafingSocial facilitation: the presence of others improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks (and worsens it on hard ones). Social loafing: people exert less effort when individual effort is pooled in a group.