a psychologist wants to know if exposure to music as an infant improves later music abilities.?

Question

a. hypothesis
b.independent variable
c. dependent variable
e.describe experimental and control conditions.

Answer 1

The difficulty with your question is that it is extremely general. No serious psychologist would define their research in such terms - so I'm guessing that this is a topic for junior school? in any such case I'll see if I can help you out.

1) Exposure to classical music as an infant males between the ages of X and Y improves musical ability in adolescents
2) Exposure to classical music or lack of exposure to classical music
3) Musical achievement (i.e. measured through pursuit of musical fields e.g. do some describe themselves as musicians? which ones intend to pursue music as a profession? what are levels of achievement in music in high school?
4) control condition: a group of infants who are not exposed to classical music
experimental condition: a group of infants are brought in wtih their mothers on a weekly basis to a clinic and exposed to classical music OR the mother is a musician and will necessarily expose their children to classical music (in this case the experient is more of a 'multiple case study' rather than an empirical study.

Hope that helps! BTW, this has been proved in multiple instances... check any education journal

Answer 2

The problem is that there's no way to evaluate this theory. If you expose your infant to music there's no way to evaluate what the child's abilitites would have been had you not exposed them to music.

Parents who are interested in music most often have children who are also interested in music, just as parents who are doctors, lawyers, etc. also have children with higher interests in these areas.

I guess the conclusion is that all children have higher abilities in areas they are exposed to as infants than other areas.

Answer 3

I don't know that a), b), c) and e) present, or why there is no d), but I say it just makes them more interested, because ability comes from genes. Of course, interest might make them practice, and practice makes better as well.