Psychology - True or False

1. Psychology - True or False Answer True or False to Each of the Following Statements… … Once completed, review over the answers, correcting what you put down. Then use the detailed explanations to write a statement of fact for each.

2. One • New born babies are color blind.

3. Two • Rewarding a behavior on every occurrence makes it stronger than if it is rewarded unpredictably.

4. Three • Most people would refuse to deliver a painful electric shock to an innocent victim.

5. Four • In our skin there are temperature sensors that explicitly detect heat.

6. Five • We only use a small proportion of our brains.

7. Six • Infants learn to talk at a younger age if their parents refrain from baby talk.

8. Seven • The more witnesses there are to an accident, the greater the probability that someone will call the appropriate authorities.

9. Eight • Diets high in sugar tend to increase a child’s level of activity.

10. Nine • Most children who are abused become abusive parents.

11. Ten • The most effective technique for dealing with a chronically disobedient child is punishment.

12. Eleven • High achievers tend to go to bed earlier and/or rise later than their less achievement oriented colleagues.

13. Twelve • The earlier one is in their family’s birth order (i.e., closer to first born), on the average the higher their IQ.

14. Thirteen • Apples and potatoes taste almost the same.

15. One – True • New born babies are color blind. • The keyword here is newborn. Until about four months of age, a baby’s ability to distinguish between colors is largely limited. They need brighter colors (absolute thresholds) and relatively large differences (difference thresholds), and they have some trouble with a blue-green discrimination… and of course, everything is REALLY blurry for them.

16. Two - False • Rewarding a behavior on every occurrence makes it stronger than if it is rewarded unpredictably. • Schedules of reinforcement are more resistant to extinction than continuous schedules, and the more unpredictable, the more resistant.

17. Three - False • Most people would refuse to deliver a painful electric shock to an innocent victim. • Milgrim’s experiment showed that, unfortunately, once we accept someone as an authority, we tend to obey, regardless the situation, even against our own morals. Milgrim found that 2 of every 3 people went so far as to shock at levels they thought were killing the other person. Everyone shocked the other person, and went to what they thought were painful levels.

18. Four - False • In our skin there are temperature sensors that explicitly detect heat. • Actually, no. We have “cold” receptors and “warm” (i.e., room temperature) receptors… and when something is hot, both of these respond. Thus, “heat” is a conclusion made in the brain based on the combination of input!

19. Five - False • We only use a small proportion of our brains. • This one has been around for years and years… and is virtually impossible to eliminate… but, no, we use all of our brains. There is no area that is not used; no area “waiting” for us to evolve new capacities. Now, are we using it to our full capacity? How would you measure that? Are we using all of our minds? I have no idea, because I don’t know what a “mind” is!

20. Six - False • Infants learn to talk at a younger age if their parents refrain from baby talk. • Baby talk is using soft sounds, high pitched voices… and babies prefer that… so they are paying attention. If we avoid this, they listen less… and take longer to learn. No real problem, we aren’t causing learning deficits…

21. Seven - False • The more witnesses there are to an accident, the greater the probability that someone will call the appropriate authorities. • The more witnesses, the more division of responsibility and the assumption that someone else will call.

22. Eight - False • Diets high in sugar tend to increase a child’s level of activity. • A new myth! Sugar does NOT increase activity! There is no relationship with hyperactivity and sugar. There is a strong belief, so a strong tendency to have self-fulfilling prophesies, selected perceptions, etc. But if children are given artificially sweetened drinks and parents believe that it is high in sugar, they score their children as over-active; if they were given high sugar drinks, but parents think they are artificially sweetened, they give low activity scores… and all other experimental combinations… The myth is partially caused by prejudice and seeing what is expected… but there is also a confounding variable: high sugar snacks are correlated with parties, play time, etc., and it is the social aspects that increase the activity levels.

23. Nine - False • Most children who are abused become abusive parents. • It is true that the probability is higher than if the parents were not abusive, but it is a far cry from “most.” Depending on how you define abuse, abusive parents make up somewhere between 5 and 15%... And it may be 2 or 3 times more likely if they were abused… so it is still more likely that they will NOT be abusive. They certainly will have their problems, emotional, social, psychological, etc. I certainly do not want to minimize the horrors of child abuse.

24. Ten - False • The most effective technique for dealing with a chronically disobedient child is punishment. • Key word: chronic. If the child is chronically disobedient, there is something wrong, and punishment (which means more than spankings, of course) will only increase stress levels, likely increasing the rate of disobedience.

25. Eleven - True • High achievers tend to go to bed earlier and/or rise later than their less achievement oriented colleagues. • In spite of the cliché’s of early birds and of burning midnight oil… people who are more successful in any line of work (artists, musicians, scientists, accountants, etc.) tend to get more sleep than their less successful colleagues.

26. Twelve - True • The earlier one is in their family’s birth order (i.e., closer to first born), on the average the higher their IQ. • Though the difference is very small, it is statistically significant. The size of family is important, too. The fewer the number of children, ON THE AVERAGE, the higher the IQ. Now… it is real important to realize that IQ is not a measure of intelligence; it is a measure of academic skill (a kind of intelligence), and that later born children have numerous statistical advantages, too.

27. Thirteen - True • Apples and potatoes taste almost the same. • Since there are only 4 common tastes (salt, sweet, bitter and sour) and a newly discovered 5th taste (some liken it to a “beefy” protein, taste capacity), and apples and potatoes are remarkably similar in these combinations. Apples are slightly sweeter, but unless a piece is put right on a sweet detector, it is hard to notice this. What is really different is their smells! Most of what we call taste is really smell. For example, cinnamon is really bitter; no one likes the taste of cinnamon, that’s why we cover it up with sugar! There is no cinnamon taste!