Psy. 450

Schuetze

1. A psychologist tests the hypothesis that early toilet training leads to a personality of excessive compulsivity about cleanliness, and conversely, that late toilet training leads to sloppiness. Previous studies have shown that middle-class children receive their toilet training earlier than do lower-class children so one group is formed of middle-class children and another of lower-class children. Both groups are provided with a finger painting task. Such data are recorded as the extent to which children smear their hands and arms with paints, whether they clean up after the session, and how many times they wash the paints from their hands. Comparisons of the two groups on these criteria indicate that the middle-class children are reliably more concerned about cleanliness than are those of the lower class. It is thus concluded that early toilet training leads to compulsive cleanliness, whereas later toilet training results in less concern about personal cleanliness.

a. Identify the independent and dependent variable(s). Are they operationally defined?

b. Are there any extraneous or confounding variable (s)?

c. What inferential statistical test should be used to analyze these data?

d. What are the alternative and null hypotheses?

2. In studying the function of a region of they hypothalamus within the brain, a physiological psychologists randomly assigns some cats to two groups. The region is removed from the cats in one group, and the second (control) group is not operated on. On a certain behavior test it is found that the group operated on is reliably deficient, compared with the control group. The psychologist concludes that the hypothalamus is responsible for the type of behavior that is missing in the group that was operated on.

a. Identify the independent and dependent variable(s).

b. Is there an alternative explanation for these findings?

c. What inferential statistical test should be used to analyze these data?

3. In one study, the question concerned the effect of slight electrical shock and gender on the learning of verbal materials. Males and females were randomly assigned to one of two groups so that each group had an equal number of males and females. One group received shock each time they were presented with a syllable, the other group did not receive any shocks. Participants learned a list of 15 nonsense syllables. The list of nonsense syllables was presented until each subject satisfied a performance criterion that showed that they had adequately learned the list. In the analysis of the results, it was found that the syllables followed by shock were learned more rapidly than those that were not shocked. In addition, females learned syllables faster than males.

a. Identify the independent and dependent variable(s).

b. What inferential statistical test should be used to analyze these data?

Ethics

Nuremburg Code

Belmont Report - three principles

APA Principles of Ethical Conduct

Components of an Informed Consent Form

Deception/Debriefing

Confederates

Statistics Review

Descriptive vs. Inferential statistics

Scales of measurement - nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio

Parametric vs. nonparametric statistics

Be able to use the flow chart (provided with exam) to determine appropriate inferential statistic