At Folger U., Drs. Chase and Sanborn are conducting an experiment on the effects of caffeine on memory. Participants are randomly assigned to a caffeine or a no-caffeine group; their recall of items on a word list is later assessed. Which pair below correctly identifies a variable in this experiment?
A) caffeine - dependent variable
B) caffeine - independent variable
C) word recall - independent variable
D) word recall - experimental variable

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The independent variable in this experiment is caffeine, as it is the variable being manipulated by the researchers. The dependent variable is the memory recall of the participants, as it is the variable being measured to see if it is affected by the independent variable.