An experimental psychologist wants to study the effects of depth of processing controlling for the effects of other study strategies that the participants might use spontaneously if they know they are going to be tested on their memory. To do this, the experimenter tells the participants that they are going to be participating in a reaction time test to see how quickly they can make different kinds of judgments about each of a series of words that will be presented to them, and they are not told that they will be tested for memory of the words. These instructions to the subjects are called
A) a pilot test.
B) an orienting task.
C) intentional learning instructions.
D) priming.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The instructions given to the participants to focus their attention on a task unrelated to the actual objective of the study (in this case, memory recall) without informing them of the true purpose, is known as an orienting task. This method is used to control for variables by directing participants' attention away from the true study aim.

An Experimental Psychologist Wants to Study the Effects of Depth