Which one of the following is the most accurate statement about group differences among students?
Multiple Choice Questions (Enter your answers on the enclosed answer sheet)
- Which one of the following is the most accurate statement about group differences among
students?
a. When we have knowledge about typical group differences, we have a very good idea of
how individual students are likely to perform in the classroom.
b. We can make fairly accurate predictions about individual students when we know their
gender, but not when we know their ethnic background.
c. We can make fairly accurate predictions about individual students when we know their
ethnic background, but not when we know their gender.
d. The average for two groups may be different, but variability within each group keeps us
from predicting individual performance. - Ten-year-old Svana has recently immigrated from Iceland to the United States. If we say that
Svana is undergoing acculturation, we mean that she is:
a. refusing to speak any English at school.
b. afraid to engage in social activities with her American peers.
c. adopting some American behaviors and attitudes.
d. maintaining all of the customs of her homeland. - Three of the following are likely to give you reasonable clues about a student’s cultural
background and/or ethnic group membership. Which one is probably least dependable as an
indicator of a student’s cultural background and ethnicity?
a. the color of a student’s skin
b. what language is most often spoken at home
c. the ethnicity of the student’s parents
d. the cultural and religious activities in which a student regularly participates - Which one of the following is the best example of playing the dozens?
a. Jameel says to Ronald, “Your momma’s so fat her picture takes two frames.” Ronald
responds, “Yeah? Well, your momma’s so fat it took three cows to make her a pair of
shoes.”
b. Helena tells her friend Mary that Wendy has been saying unkind things behind Mary’s
back. She then goes to Wendy and tells her that Mary has been saying unkind things
behind her back.
c. Tariq devoutly follows Muslim practices (e.g., praying five times a day, fasting during
Ramadan) on weekends and school holidays, but he tries to behave as his American
classmates do on days when he attends school.
d. When Alegria finishes her own classwork, she goes to the assistance of classmates who
appear to be struggling with theirs.
Unit 2 Examination
84
PSY 430 Educational Psychology - A student says to you, “My momma, she be singin’ all da time.” This student appears to:
a. have a speech disorder that sometimes results from environmental toxins (e.g.,
lead-based paint).
b. have had little exposure to language during a critical period in her language
development.
c. be using African American English, a dialect with some grammatical constructions
different from those of Standard English.
d. have grown up in Northern Ireland and so is using idioms typical of that country. - Three of the following alternatives describe reasons why, for cultural reasons, children may be
relatively quiet in class. Which alternative is false?
a. In some cultures, children rarely hear spoken language until age 3 or 4.
b. Children from some cultural backgrounds may have been taught that it’s rude to initiate
a conversation with an adult.
c. In some cultures, attentive listening is valued more highly than speaking.
d. In some cultural groups, children are accustomed to learning more from quiet
observation than from asking questions. - Psychologists believe that intelligence is culture-specific—that “intelligent” behavior in one
culture is not necessarily intelligent behavior in a different culture. Three of the following are
aspects of intelligence, regardless of the culture in which it is found. Which one is probably
related to intelligence in some cultures but not in others?
a. learning how to perform a new task quickly
b. doing well in academic classroom activities
c. adapting readily to new situations
d. applying prior knowledge to new situations - Robert is a 15-year-old boy who has attended U.S. schools since he began kindergarten at age
- With this fact in mind, identify the task that is most likely to require Robert’s fluid
intelligence rather than his crystallized intelligence.
a. applying algebra to a mathematical word problem
b. solving a new kind of puzzle
c. writing a persuasive essay on a current issue in the news
d. finding Egypt on a map - Sam is a very talented dancer; he also shows considerable creativity in art class. He finds math
and science classes very difficult, but he loves to read and tell stories to his many friends.
Which view of intelligence is best reflected in Sam’s abilities?
a. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
b. Gardner’s multiple intelligences
c. Sternberg’s triarchic theory
d. distributed intelligence
Unit 2 Examination
85
PSY 430 Educational Psychology - Which one of the following statements best reflects Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence?
a. Intelligent behavior is a function of how well people draw on their prior experiences
and cognitively process information in order to adapt to their particular environmental
situation.
b. Intelligent behavior evolves in three stages: preoperational thought, concrete thought
and abstract thought.
c. To be truly intelligent, one must show competence in critical thinking and appropriate
classroom behavior, as well as in traditional academic tasks.
d. Intelligence is due to heredity, environment, and a complex interaction between the
two; ultimately, researchers will probably never be able to separate the relative effects
of heredity and environment. - Which one of the following statements most accurately reflects the concept of distributed
intelligence?
a. How intelligent students are is, to some extent, a function of class size; students
achieve at lower levels when they are in larger classes.
b. Students almost invariably perform at higher levels in some academic subject areas
than they do in others.
c. How intelligent children become is, to some extent, a function of the number of siblings
they have; children from larger families tend to have slightly lower IQ scores.
d. Students can behave more intelligently when they can use outside resources as well as
their minds. - “A child’s ability to behave intelligently may vary considerably, depending on the particular
context, skills, and cognitive processes required by a given task.” This statement is consistent
with three of the following conceptualizations of intelligence. With which one is it least
consistent?
a. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences
b. Sternberg’s triarchic theory
c. the concept of distributed intelligence
d. Cattell’s concept of fluid intelligence - Three of the following are examples of learned behavior. Given the textbook’s definition of
learning, which behavior probably does not reflect learning?
a. After many hours of heated debate, Brian begins to modify his religious beliefs.
b. Cara suddenly recognizes how the division fact “24 ÷ 4 = 6” is related to the
multiplication fact “6 × 4 = 24.”
c. David has been running away from German shepherds ever since he was bitten by a
German shepherd two years ago.
d. Abigail cries when she feels sad.
Unit 2 Examination
86
PSY 430 Educational Psychology - Which one of the following statements most accurately describes behaviorists’ view of how
learning can best be studied?
a. To study learning scientifically, researchers must confine their investigations to animal
research in a laboratory setting.
b. The study of learning will be more objective and scientific if only observable events are
considered.
c. Asking people to describe what they’re thinking as they study is likely to yield the most
accurate results.
d. Psychologists can determine how learning occurs only if they can identify its
physiological basis. - Which one of the following statements best characterizes cognitive psychology’s approach to
learning?
a. Students are most likely to learn the things they think they will be reinforced for
learning.
b. Students learn through a series of either-or decisions similar to how computers operate.
c. Students’ learning is a function of what they do, mentally, with the information they
receive.
d. Students’ learning is a function of how stimuli in the environment are organized and
sequenced. - Which one of the following researchers is drawing an inference about cognitive processes from
her observations of behavior?
a. Dr. Aragon finds that students who listen to an organized lecture remember more
information than students who listen to an unorganized lecture; she concludes that
organized material promotes better learning.
b. Dr. Cooper discovers that students remember more when new concepts are illustrated
by pictures as well as being verbally described; she concludes that visual imagery helps
learning and memory.
c. Dr. Burger finds that students who learn information word for word don’t remember it
for very long; she concludes that requiring students to learn information verbatim isn’t
an effective teaching strategy.
d. Dr. Delgado finds that students who listen to foreign language tapes while sleeping don’t
remember what they’ve heard; she concludes that being awake is necessary for learning
to occur. - As human beings, we encounter a great many stimuli at any one time. Which one of the
following most accurately reflects cognitive psychologists’ perspective about how we respond to
all these stimuli?
a. We cannot remember everything, and we have little control over the things that we do
remember.
b. We must select the things we think are most important to learn and remember, and
ignore the rest.
c. We remember virtually everything we experience, but we have difficulty retrieving most
of it.
d. By learning to use effective long-term memory storage processes, we can eventually
begin to remember almost everything we encounter.
Unit 2 Examination
87
PSY 430 Educational Psychology - When cognitive psychologists talk about the process of “putting” things in memory, they often
use the term:
a. inference-drawing.
b. retrieval.
c. selectivity.
d. storage. - Many cognitive psychologists believe that learning and understanding are often constructive
in nature. Three of the following scenarios illustrate such construction. Which scenario does
not necessarily involve construction in learning?
a. When George reads about the Vietnam War in his history book, he comes to the
conclusion that the United States should never have gotten involved in Southeast Asia.
b. Mr. McFarland asks his third graders to practice their multiplication tables every day.
After a month of such practice, Misty can retrieve all the basic multiplication facts
quickly and easily.
c. Because the word photosynthesis begins with photo, Jeremy guesses that it must have
something to do with taking photographs.
d. Although no one has ever told her so, Peggy thinks that the night sky is a big black
blanket covering the earth and that the blanket has tiny holes through which the stars
shine. - Mr. Janus tells his class, “For tomorrow’s class, read pages 23 to 49 in your geography book.”
Three of the following students are demonstrating the process of construction in their
perceptions of what their teacher has said. Which student is not?
a. Christopher “hears” the teacher say “pages 33 to 39” because the student next to him
is coughing loudly.
b. Anthony thinks the teacher is saying “history book.”
c. Bonita doesn’t hear what the teacher says because she’s thinking about something else.
d. Dena understands the teacher even though the teacher speaks with a slight accent and
mispronounces the word geography. - Michael has just written a short research paper that describes the events surrounding the first
transatlantic telegraph cable. As he rereads his paper before giving it to his teacher, he doesn’t
notice that he has misspelled Atlantic as “Altantic” on one occasion, even though he knows
perfectly well how the word should be spelled. Michael’s proofreading error can best be
explained by considering the role of __ in the construction of meaning.
a. a script
b. expectations
c. assessment
d. ambiguity
Unit 2 Examination
88
PSY 430 Educational Psychology - Morris is trying to remember how to spell the word broccoli. He retrieves the first three letters
(B R O) and the last three (O L I), then assumes that the “kuh” sound in the middle of the
word must be a K. He writes “brokoli” on his paper. Morris’ process of remembering how to
spell the word (in this case, incorrectly) illustrates which one of the following concepts?
a. verbal mediation
b. a script
c. construction in retrieval
d. a retrieval cue - Which one of the following scenarios best reflects the basic idea of social constructivism?
a. Two students discuss possible interpretations of the proverb, “We only know the worth of
water when the well is dry.”
b. When a student borrows a classmate’s marker without asking and then forgets to put
the cap back on, leaving it dried out and useless by the following morning, her teacher
reminds her of one of the class rules: “Respect your classmates’ property.”
c. Four students in a study group divide a reading assignment into four sections. Each
student reads a section and then teaches the material to the other group members.
d. A teacher assigns a laboratory activity using cumbersome equipment that students can
operate successfully only by working in pairs. - Distributed cognition can best be described as a:
a. group of students thinking about a task or problem together.
b. student trying to accomplish several different tasks simultaneously.
c. group of students dividing up the various parts of a task that need to be done.
d. student choosing one problem-solving strategy over other possible strategies. - Which one of the following examples best illustrates the concept of distributed cognition?
a. Rhonda watches her favorite situation comedy while simultaneously eating an apple and
doing her homework.
b. Edie, Linda, and DeWayne discuss various ways they might solve a physics problem.
c. Mark, Jason, and Leanne each solve one-third of their homework problems and then
share their results with the other two.
d. Reginald thinks about the various plots he might use in the short story he is writing and
then eventually chooses one of them.
