Exam 1: Practice Questions

Design a naturalistic observation investigating how young children seek playmates at public parks. Briefly describe your research question, hypothesis, how you would operationalize your variable(s) of interest, your participants, and your method
Click the card to flip 👆
1 / 17
Terms in this set (17)
Design a naturalistic observation investigating how young children seek playmates at public parks. Briefly describe your research question, hypothesis, how you would operationalize your variable(s) of interest, your participants, and your method
...
Using the dynamic systems framework, propose one "purpose" explanation and one "process" explanation for why leopards have spots.
...
Describe three things that may increase the risk of negative effects from exposure to teratogens on fetal development.
...
Kesha wants to investigate how participating in "empowering" summer camps may increase hope in at-risk youth. She decides to measure hope by using the State Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1996), a 6-point survey capturing the extent to which people believe they have the ability to pursue and achieve their goals. The State Hope Scale is an example of:

A) Operationalizing hope
B) a problematic measurement tool given it's survey design
C) a natural experiment of hope
D) none of these
A) Operationalizing hope
Dr. Crick is interested in how relational aggression victimization changes from childhood to adolescence. She recruits 100 14-year-old participants and asks them to report every instance they remember their relationships or social status being intentionally damaged by peers during elementary and middle school. She concludes from this work that relational aggression increases from childhood to adolescence. This study design would be

A) longitudinal
B) retrospective
C) cross-sectional
D) sequential
B) retrospective
Dr. Gunnar is interested in how early adverse experiences impact children's ability to deal with stress as they age. She recruits children who were adopted from under-staffed orphanages and measures their responses to stressful laboratory tasks at 2 years, 4 years, and 6 years of age. This study is an example of

A) a cross-sectional design
B) a longitudinal design
C) a retrospective design
D) a sequential design
B) a longitudinal design
A ten-year child from a working-class White family, John lived in Georgia in 1745. John likely

A) worked in a factory for low ages
B) was considered an adolescent by the developmental standards of the time
C) was viewed as a miniature adult
D) was not mandated to attend school
D) was not mandated to attend school
An example of a process answer for why puberty begins in early adolescence would be

A) puberty is an important component of how the human species survives through reproduction
B) all of these
C) the hypothalamus begins producing gonadotropin-releasing hormones
D) in early humans, adolescence marked the period in which people would begin searching for mates
C) the hypothalamus begins producing gonadotropin-releasing hormones
Dr. Burkholder is searching for current research on adolescent risk-taking behaviors. She finds the following sources:A popular press news article detailing recent research on this topic

- A chapter in a psychology textbook that outlines adolescent risk-taking

- A blog with first-person examples of risk-taking written by a teenager

- A peer-reviewed empirical article on how risk-taking behaviors change during adolescence

Which of these sources is the strongest evidence?

A) popular press news article
B) teenager's blog
C) peer-reviewed empirical article
D) psychology textbook
C) peer-reviewed empirical article
We should consider how psychologists' own contexts might influence their research because

A) all of these
B) a researcher's personal beliefs may bias their research questions and methodology
C) the sociobiological context in which the research is conducted may limit it's generalizability to other contexts
D) our own sociohistorical context as observers may bias our interpretation of the researcher's claims
A) all of these
A nativist would likely be interested in studying A) how an infant's early life stress influences the way their genes are expressed B) whether the building blocks to morality inherently exist in newborns C) whether a pregnant person's eating habits impact fetal development D) the process by which infants learn to walkB) whether the building blocks to morality inherently exist in newbornsA central goal of developmental science is to study how individuals A) develop only prior to adulthood B) change and grow as they age C) have behaviors that can be attributed to innate capacities D) can be explained by their early experiencesB) change and grow as they ageResults from studies with WEIRD samples A) may not generalize to populations living in other cultural contexts B) are no longer a problem after psychologists agreed to consistently report participant demographic information C) should be disregarded because studies using WEIRD samples are not very meaningful D) typically are published in less respected psychology journalsA) may not generalize to populations living in other cultural contextsPeter wants to study what motivates middle school students to volunteer in their communities. He most likely would need to collect A) neither parental or adolescent consent because his study is low risk B) parental written consent and adolescent verbal assent prior to participation C) parental written consent and adolescent written assent prior to participation D) only parental written consent as his participants will be under 18C) parental written consent and adolescent written assent prior to participationMeredith reads the results of a recently published research article, which claims children tend to choose friends who are similar to themselves. Meredith considers her own best friend to be her complete opposite, so she dismisses the research as inaccurate. Meredith is A) representative of the average childhood friendship experience B) inaccurately applying general developmental science conclusions to her own anecdotal experience C) demonstrating critical thinking by weighing multiple pieces of evidence and challenging assumptions D) considering how cultural and historical context impacts the generalizability of research resultsB) inaccurately applying general developmental science conclusions to her own anecdotal experiencePlötner and colleagues (2015) investigated whether children demonstrated the bystander effect. They found A) social referencing led to an increase of helping behaviors when peers were present. B) five-year-old children were too young to reliably help adults in laboratory contexts. C) confederates influenced bystander behavior only when they directly interacted with the participant. D) there was a diffusion of responsibility only when bystanders were present and able to help.D) there was a diffusion of responsibility only when bystanders were present and able to help.As a behaviorist, John B. Watson dismissed the value of A) introspection B) empiricism C) applied research D) environmental influencesA) introspection