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.

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.

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.

Effects of Student-Written Questions on Student Test Performance

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul W. Foos
Keyword(s):  
Test Performance ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Introductory Psychology Class ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
Student Test ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Written Test ◽  
Written Questions ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Student Test Performance

Effects of student-written test questions on student test performance were examined in an Introductory Psychology class. Before each of three tests, randomly assigned students wrote essay questions, multiple-choice questions, or no questions. All tests contained essay and multiple-choice items but no questions written by students. Question writers performed significantly better than nonwriters on the first two tests; the difference on the third test was marginally significant. No differences were found between students who wrote essay and those who wrote multiple-choice questions. Question writing appears to be an effective study technique.

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.

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.

scholarly journals A Study on the Validity of the Grammar Fill-in-the-blank Questions of the National English Paper for College Entrance Examination in 2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Shasha Li
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Choice Test ◽  
Entrance Examination ◽  
Multiple Choice Questions ◽  
College Entrance Examination ◽  
College Entrance ◽  
Discourse Function ◽  
Test Points ◽  
National College Entrance Examination ◽  
Better Than

Grammar fill-in-the-blank is different from previous single-choice questions. It uses text as a carrier to test students’ English ability, instead of traditional multiple-choice questions. However, is it better than the single-choice test? Is it effective? Taking the grammar filling-in-the-blank questions of the 2020 National College Entrance Examination Papers 1, 2 and 3 as the research object, starting from the grammar filling-in-the-blank, combined with the students’ expected answers, this article conducts an analysis and investigation. The results show that grammar fill-in-the-blank questions are highly effective, which can examine students’ grammatical ability.. However, some test points are still limited to the level of words or phrases, so the discourse function is not fully utilized. In this regard, the author puts forward specific suggestions for improvement.

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.

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.

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