Labs n stuff

Question 1

Categorical vs continuous variables

Answer 1

Categorical: 2+ categories
- Gender, ethnicity, multilingual vs monolingual, etc
- Can also include numerical RANGES (e.g. 1-3 hrs, 4-8 hrs, etc – but not indivi numbers)

Continuous: “infinite” # of values
- Must have 7+ numerical values to be considered continuous enough
- Age, height, GPA, test scores
- # of hrs you spend doing “X” per wk

Question 2

What’s wrong with this survey question: “On a scale from 1 to 7, how well do you sleep?”

Answer 2

Need to define the endpoints of the scale (e.g. 1 = not well, 7 = well)

Question 3

What’s wrong with this survey question: “How often do you party?”

Answer 3

Vague – must define what constitutes “partying” + time interval (e.g. how many days a week do you drink more than 1-2 alcoholic beverages?)
- Also need to clarify to round to nearest whole #

Question 4

What’s wrong with this survey question: “How much do you disagree with the statement: I hate bananas”?

Answer 4

Has a double negative

Question 5

What’s wrong with this survey question: “Rate the quality of your sleep and study schedules”?

Answer 5

Double-barreled question – should break into 2 questions, one for each var

Question 6

In the Muller-Lyer illusion – Point of Subjective Equality vs Point of Objective Equality

Answer 6

Point of Subjective Equality (PSE): where the lines APPEAR equal (50% of the time I see it as longer, 50% of the time I see it as shorter)

Point of Objective Equality (POE): the lines are ACTUALLY equal

Question 7

Muller-Lyer illusion – how is the size of your illusion calculated?

Answer 7

PSE-POE = size of illusion

Ex: if a person’s PSE is 182 pixels and their POE is 160 pixels,
182-160 = 22 pixels = size of their illusion

Question 8

How does size of illusion relate to the Carpentered World Hypothesis

Answer 8

Carpentered World Hypothesis: your experience/exposure to corners plays a role in how strongly you see the illusion

–> if you see a lot of corners, you’ll have a BIGGER illusion size
–> if you’ve never seen corners, you’ll have a SMALLER illusion size

Question 9

Limitations

Answer 9

• Characteristics of the study that may limit ability to draw conclusions
• Specific for WHY it’s a limitation and HOW it might impact results – not generic (see below)
• There will always be limitations – not necessarily an indicator of inaccurate results

IMPORTANT: Good limitations are not generic
- Correlation can’t infer causation, lab tasks may not reflect real world
- Small sample size, convenience sampling, demand characteristics or experimenter bias

Question 10

What are the 3 parts of a good limitation

Answer 10

1) Parameters: WHAT the researchers did that might be limiting
2) Justification: WHY it’s an issue
3) Prediction: HOW it might impact the study’s results

Question 11

Ramirez & Beilock 2011 findings

Answer 11

Found that writing about testing worries right before a test boosts exam performance in classroom

Question 12

Richland et al. (2009) findings

Answer 12

Found that pretesting (attempting to recall info before actually learning it) improved learning (as indicated by better test score)

Question 13

Counterbalancing – progressive error/order effects

Answer 13

Practice effects (improved performance after repeated exposure), fatigue

Ex: if I’m asked to eat a shitload of cupcakes and rate them, the last ones prob won’t taste as good as the first ones bc I’ll just be tired of eating cupcakes at the end

Question 14

Counterbalancing – item effects

Answer 14

Certain items may be more memorable than others

Ex: I’m asked to memorize words from 2 lists, but one list has words abt baseball while the other is just random words – obv I’d remember more words from the list w baseball words in it