Unit II Review

Which of the following best explains correlation?

• Describing how likely variable A is to cause variable B
• Describing how well variable A can be used to explain variable B
• Describing how closely variable A is related to variable B, and thus how likely it is variable A predicts variable B
• Describing how likely it is that variable B causes variable A 

Which of the following correlation coefficients (r) represents the strongest correlation?

• .7
• -.8
• .5
• -.4

True or False: Correlations can be positive or negative.

• True
• False

Which of the following is an example of a positive correlation?

• The more hours of sleep students get per night, the higher their overall GPA.
• The more hours of sleep students get, the less time they spend on their phones during the day.
• The more time students spend on their phone each day, the lower their overall GPA
• The more hours of sleep students get, the lower their overall GPA

Which of the following is an example of a negative correlation? 

• The more nachos I eat, the more I will weigh.
• The fewer nachos I eat, the less I will weigh.
• The more vegetables I eat, the less I will weigh.
• The more vegetables I eat, the more I will weigh.

When a distribution of scores is skewed, which of the following is the most representative measure of central tendency?

• Inference
• Standard deviation
• Mean
• Median 

A researcher wants to conduct an experiment to determine if eating a cookie before class each day improves student grades. He uses two psychology classes for the experiment, providing daily cookies to one and nothing to the other. At the end of the semester, the researcher compares the final grades of students in the two classes. What is the independent variable for this experiment?

• The students in the class that received cookies
• The presence or absence of cookies
• Semester grades
• The period of the day the two classes meet

Which of the following represents naturalistic observation?

• Researchers watch and record how elementary school children interact on the playground.
• Researchers bring participants into a laboratory to see how they respond to a puzzle with no solution.
• A social worker visits a family home and gives feedback on family interactions.
• A principal looks at the relationship between the number of student absences and their grades.

“Monday morning quarterbacks” rarely act surprised about the outcome of weekend football games. This tendency to believe they knew how the game would turn out is best explained by which psychological principle?

• Overconfidence
• Hindsight Bias
• Intuition
• Illusory correlation 

A journalism student is writing an article about her school’s new cell-phone policy, and she’d like to interview a random sample of students. Which of the following is the best example of a random sample?

• The writer arrives at school early and interviews the first five students who come through the main entrance.
• The writer pulls the names of five students from a hat that contains all students’ names. She interviews the five selected students.
• The writer asks her teacher if she can distribute a brief survey to the students in her AP^® Psychology class.
• The writer passes out brief surveys to 50 students in the hall and uses the 18 surveys returned to her as the basis of her article.