Ошибаться; приходить к заключению; без вмешательства; подобным образом; учитывать (принимать во внимание); период времени; в конце концов; тяготеть к (иметь склонность к); широко использоваться; поддерживать другие методы; страдать от; хорошо определенная группа; случайная выборка; в целом; сводить к минимуму; средний балл; случайно.

Exercise 5. Match the verbs on the left with their definitions on the right.

Exercise 6. Fill in the gaps with the appropriate verb from exercise 5.

1. She has spent the last five years_____ her people's history.

2. The new ramp______ the entry of wheelchairs.

3. The role of scientists is_______ and describe the world, not to try to control it.

4. The under-18s______ nearly 25% of the town's population.

5. Your rights and responsibilities_____ in the citizens' charter.

6. It's impossible______ these results without knowing more about the research methods employed.

7. He_______ to escape through a window.

8. The author ________  no documentary references to support her

assertions.

9. This machine______ your heart rate.

10. He_______ the firm in 1978.

Exercise 7.  Do the following test

1. The point of view that knowledge is acquired by using the senses is called

a. rationalism

b. voluntarism

c. behaviorism

d. empiricism

2. Which one of the following is not a step associated with the scientific method?

a. Reject all operational definitions

b. Form a hypothesis

c. Gather data

d. Accept or reject the hypothesis

3. Sometimes a hypothesis is rejected that should be accepted. This is called

a. a Type I error

b. an alpha error

c. a Type II error

d. an intrinsic error

4. Naturalistic observation requires a researcher to study behavior

a. in animals only

b. as it is happening in its own setting

c. using two independent variables

d. by making sure the subjects know they are being observed

5. The behavior of Anna O. was studied with the assistance of what method?

a. The clinical method

b. Naturalistic observation
c.      The experimental method

d. The correlational method

6. A population is

a. a very large sample

b. defined by its bias

c. a subset of a sample

d. a well-defined group

7. The research of Lewis Terman on gifted children is an example of

a. the experimental method

b. the clinical method

c. the testing method

d. the validity method

8. The size of the right foot can usually be used to predict the size of the left foot.

This is an example of a

a. zero correlation

b. negative correlation

c. positive correlation

d. lack of covariance

9. In an experiment, the control group

a. receives no treatment

b. receives a novel treatment

c. is expected to provide particularly interesting data

d. is the error variance group

10. The variable that is assigned to the subjects by the experimenter is called

a. the dependent variable

b. the independent variable

c. the organismic variable

d. the congruent variable

Unit 6.  MEMORY

Oral topic

MEMORY

Over the years memory researchers have wrestled endlessly with one major question relating to memory storage: How is knowledge represented and organized in memory? In other words, what forms do our mental representations of information take? Most theorists seem to agree that our mental representations probably take a variety of forms, depending on the nature of the material that needs to be tucked away in memory. For example, memories of visual scenes, of how to perform actions (such as typing or hitting a backhand stroke in tennis), and of factual information (such as definitions or dates in history) are probably represented and organized in very different ways. Many psychologists believe that there are three main kinds of memory: sensory, short-term and long-term. What makes up each of them?

Imagine that a friend who collects facts informs you about brain weight: a human brain weighs about 3 pounds, an elephant brain — approximately 13 pounds, a whale brain -roughly 20 pounds. How may this information make its way into memory? When you simply hear your friend cite the facts, some remembering that you are aware of is going on.

Information that strikes our sense organs is stored on the basis of the so-called sensory memory (SM). Materials held by sensory memory resemble afterimages. Typically, they disappear in less than a second unless they are transferred immediately to a second memory system, short-term memory (STM). How do you transfer sensory data to the short-term store? All you have to do is to attend to the material for a moment. If you listen as your friend talks, you will pass into your short-term memory.

The STM is pictured as the center of consciousness. The STM holds everything we are aware of - thoughts, information, experiences, - at any point in time. The «store» part of STM houses a limited amount of data for some time (usually for about fifteen minutes). We can keep information in SM system longer by repeating it. In addition, the short-term memory «works» as a central executive. It inserts materials into, and removes it from, a third, more or less permanent system, the long-term memory (LTM).

A schema is an organized cluster of knowledge about a particular object or sequence of events. People are more likely to remember things that are consistent with their schemas than things that are not. Information stored in memory is often organized around schemas. Thus, recall of an object or event will be influenced by both the actual details observed and the person's schemas for these objects and events.

Entering information into long-term memory is a worthy goal, but an insufficient one if you can't get the information back out again when you need it. Fortunately, recall often occurs without much effort. But occasionally a planned search of LTM is necessary. For instance, imagine that you were asked to recall the names of all 50 states in the United States. You would probably conduct your memory search systematically, recalling states in alphabetical order or by geographical location. Although this example is rather simple, retrieval is a complex process.

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is the temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it's just out of reach. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is a common experience that occurs to the average person about once a week. It clearly represents a failure in retrieval. Fortunately, memories can often be jogged with retrieval cues — stimuli that help gain access to memories. This was apparent when Roger Brown and David McNeill studied the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. They gave participants definitions of obscure words and asked them to think of the words. Brown and McNeill found that subjects groping for obscure words were correct in guessing the first letter of the missing word 57% of the time. This figure far exceeds chance and shows that partial recollections are often headed in the right direction.