A Free-Recall Demonstration Versus a Lecture-Only Control

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Balch
Keyword(s):  
Free Recall ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
Recall Method ◽  
The Third ◽  
To Come

On their first class day, introductory psychology students took a 14-question multiple-choice pretest on several principles of memory including primacy, recency, storage, retrieval, counterbalancing, and the free-recall method. I randomly preassigned students to come at one of two different times to the second class, 2 days later, when they either participated in a free-recall demonstration/debriefing or heard a lecture on comparable material. In the third class, five days later, they took a posttest identical to the pretest. On the posttest but not the pretest, students participating in the demonstration/debriefing significantly outperformed those hearing only the lecture.

THE EFFECT OF ATTITUDE AND STATEMENT FAVORABILITY UPON THE JUDGMENT OF ATTITUDE STATEMENTS

1976 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Corenblum ◽  
Vera K. Corfield
Keyword(s):  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Rating Scale ◽  
Social Judgment ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
Adaptation Level ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Social Judgment Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
Adaptation Level Theory

Male and female introductory psychology students who held extreme attitudes toward legalized abortion judged the favorability of attitude statements on that issue. Both Sherif's social judgment theory and Helson's adaptation-level theory suggest an inverse relationship between judgment and subject attitude. Accentuation theory predicts that statement ratings reflect the congruency between attitude, value connotations of the rating scale, and the extremity of the attitude statements. To test these predictions, subjects judged an initial triad consisting of either two pro or two con abortion statements plus a moderate abortion statement. The pro or con contexts were alternated over the nine trials with the moderate statement appearing in the third position. Subjects with favorable attitudes evidenced favorable judgments of the moderate and pro statements and unfavorable judgments of the con statements. By comparison, subjects with unfavorable attitudes were less extreme in their evaluations of the attitude statements. Judgments of the statements were shown to be largely inconsistent with predictions from social judgment theory and adaptation-level theory, but consistent with accentuation theory.

Psychology: A Closed System of Self-Evident Information?

1983 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. Houston
Keyword(s):  
Closed System ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Professional Psychologists

To estimate the self-evidence of basic principles of psychology, 50 UCLA introductory psychology students answered 21 multiple-choice questions each embodying one learning or memory phenomenon. 71% of the items were answered correctly more often than chance. The probability of an item being answered correctly was unrelated to the subjects' familiarity with the names of the phenomena and unrelated to professional psychologists' ratings of the importance of the phenomena. The possibility that we may spend an inordinate amount of item dealing with self-evident principles, because we do not seek outside evaluation of our work, is discussed.

Practice versus Review Exams and Final Exam Performance

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Balch
Keyword(s):  
Objective Assessment ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
Academic Ability ◽  
Exam Performance ◽  
Control Task ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
Class Standing ◽  
Questions And Answers

Two randomly assigned groups of introductory psychology students received different but comparable presentations of the same sample multiple-choice fined exam. The practice-exam group took a test on the questions and immediately afterward scored their tests according to the key (i.e., questions and answers), whereas the review-exam group saw only the key and performed a control task concurrently. On a final exam given I week later, the practice-exam students scored significantly higher than the review-exam group. In addition, they rated their task as more helpful in preparing them for the final. These effects did not interact with students' class standing. Apparently, students at all levels of academic ability benefit from an objective assessment of their preparation for a final exam.

Multiple-Choice Questions with an Option to Comment: Student Attitudes and Use

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 196-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony F. Nield ◽  
Maxine Gallander Wintre
Keyword(s):  
Student Attitudes ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
Large Classes ◽  
Short Answer ◽  
True False

Introductory Psychology students were graded on four tests using multiple-choice questions with an explicit option to explain their answers (E-option), and were later asked how they would compare this format with short answer, essay, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and regular multiple-choice. Students rated the E-option and short-answer formats as most preferred, and less frustrating and anxiety producing than other formats (p < .05). Of 416 students, 173 used the E-option, averaging less than one explanation per test over the four tests. During the course, only 30 points were gained and 5 points lost due to E-option use. The E-option seems to be an efficient and humane technique for testing large classes.

Item Order Affects Performance on Multiple-Choice Exams

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Balch
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
General Psychology ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
Sequential Order ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
The Third ◽  
Item Order ◽  
Supporting Material ◽  
Completion Times

A total of 404 General Psychology students were assigned to one of three different item orders (sequential, chapter contiguity, and random) of the same final exam consisting of 75 multiple- choice questions. In the sequential (S) order exam, items appeared in the same sequence in which their supporting material was presented in the textbook and lectures. For the chapter contiguity (CC) order exam, items based on the same chapter appeared together, but were not sequentially arranged within or between chapters. The order of the third exam was random (R). Scores for the sequential order exam were higher than for the other two. There were no significant differences in the completion times for any of the exams.

Effect of Class Standing on Students' Predictions of Their Final Exam Scores

1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 136-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Balch
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
Class Standing ◽  
Average Students ◽  
Exam Scores

Ninety undergraduate introductory psychology students predicted their numerical scores on a multiple-choice final exam directly before the exam was passed out (pretest prediction) and just after completing the exam (posttest prediction). Based on their all-but-final-exam point totals, students were ranked with respect to class standing and categorized as above average (top third), average (middle third), or below average (bottom third). Below average students significantly overestimated their final exam scores on both pretest (9.47%) and posttest (7.73%) predictions. Average students significantly overestimated their scores on pretest (5.33%) but not posttest (2.13%) predictions. Above average students, however, were fairly accurate for both types of prediction, slightly but not significantly underestimating (about 2%) their exam scores.

The Media Assignment: Enhancing Psychology Students’ Ability to Apply Their Knowledge of Psychology

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Classical Conditioning ◽  
Operant Conditioning ◽  
Real World ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Introductory Psychology ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
The Media ◽  
Better Than

In this study, I explore whether a media assignment, similar to that used by Rider (1992), increased introductory psychology students’ ability to apply their knowledge of psychological concepts to examples of real-world events. Students collected examples from the popular media that illustrated either operant-or classical-conditioning concepts. Afterward, they took a quiz that contained factual and applied multiple-choice questions on these concepts. Students who collected examples of operant-conditioning concepts performed better than other students on quiz questions designed to assess their ability to apply their knowledge of operant conditioning. However, students who collected examples of classical-conditioning concepts did not outperform other students on applied classical-conditioning questions. Media assignments may enhance students’ learning and their ability to apply course knowledge to real-world events.

A Developmental Study of Intonation Recognition

1968 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 825-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn M. Corlew
Keyword(s):  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Choice Test ◽  
Developmental Study ◽  
Multiple Choice Test ◽  
The Third ◽  
Matching Test ◽  
Better Than

Two experiments investigated the information conveyed by intonation from speaker to listener. A multiple-choice test was devised to test the ability of 48 adults to recognize and label intonation when it was separated from all other meaning. Nine intonation contours whose labels were most agreed upon by adults were each matched with two English sentences (one with appropriate and one with inappropriate intonation and semantic content) to make a matching-test for children. The matching-test was tape-recorded and given to children in the first, third, and fifth grades (32 subjects in each grade). The first-grade children matched the intonations with significantly greater agreement than chance; but they agreed upon significantly fewer sentences than either the third or fifth graders. Some intonation contours were matched with significantly greater frequency than others. The performance of the girls was better than that of the boys on an impatient question and a simple command which indicates that there was a significant interaction between sex and intonation.

Doctoral Training of Psychology Students in France

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Roland-Lévy
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Programs ◽  
Psychology Students ◽  
Doctoral Training ◽  
University System ◽  
The Third ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
The University ◽  
Psychology Doctoral ◽  
Phd Programs ◽  
Phd Program

Abstract: The aim of doctoral programs in psychology is to help students become competent psychologists, capable of conducting research and of finding suitable employment. Starting with a brief description of the basic organization of the French university system, this paper presents an overview of how the psychology doctoral training is organized in France. Since October 2000, the requisites and the training of PhD students are the same in all French universities, but what now differs is the openness to other disciplines according to the size and location of the university. Three main groups of doctoral programs are distinguished in this paper. The first group refers to small universities in which the Doctoral Schools are constructed around multidisciplinary seminars that combine various themes, sometimes rather distant from psychology. The second group covers larger universities, with a PhD program that includes psychology as well as other social sciences. The third group contains a few major universities that have doctoral programs that are clearly centered on psychology (clinical, social, and/or cognitive psychology). These descriptions are followed by comments on how PhD programs are presently structured and organized. In the third section, I suggest some concrete ways of improving this doctoral training in order to give French psychologists a more European dimension.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come

The Introduction outlines the various chapters. It then situates the question of ‘body’ in the modern Western philosophical tradition following Descartes, and argues that this leaves subsequent responses to come under one of three options: metaphysical dualism of body and subject; any anti-dualist reductionism; or the overcoming of the divide. Describing the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty as a potent example of the third strategy, the Introduction then suggests his philosophy will function as foil to the ecological phenomenology developed and presented in the book. Moreover, one approach within the Western Phenomenological tradition, of treating phenomenology as a methodology for the clarification of experience (rather than the means to the determination of an ontology of the subject) is compared to the approach in this book. Since classical India, while understanding dualism, did not confront the challenge of Descartes (for better or for worse), its treatment of body follows a different trajectory.

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