A Level Psychology OCR Practice Exam

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Prepare effectively for the A Level Psychology OCR Exam with our comprehensive quiz featuring interactive questions, formative feedback, and more. Boost your confidence and knowledge in key psychological concepts and theories to excel on test day.

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In Baron-Cohen's study, which task served as a control for testing emotional recognition?

Memory recall task
Gender recognition of eyes task and basic emotional recognition of faces
Visual-spatial reasoning task
Word association task

The correct answer is: Gender recognition of eyes task and basic emotional recognition of faces

The correct response highlights the importance of ensuring validity in experiments aimed at measuring specific cognitive abilities, such as emotional recognition. In Baron-Cohen's study, using the gender recognition of eyes task and basic emotional recognition of faces served as a control was crucial for establishing whether the participants were accurately performing the tasks related to emotional recognition, without their performance being influenced by unrelated cognitive processes. By comparing results from this control task to the primary experimental tasks, researchers could effectively isolate the variables they were interested in, such as theory of mind deficiencies often associated with autism. This choice also ensures that any significant differences observed in emotional recognition tasks are truly indicative of the abilities being measured, rather than being confounded by other factors like general intelligence or memory unrelated to emotional processing.