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Problems and Exercises III
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The following description of psychological research contains a major confounding that threatens the internal validity of the study.

A developmental psychologist wishes to test the implications of a theory of cognitive development that states that children at an early stage of development are not capable of certain kinds of mental operations. The psychologist believes that young children's mental capacities have been underestimated because of the manner in which various cognitive tasks have been presented to them. The psychologist hypothesizes that children are able to perform certain cognitive operations much earlier than predicted by the theory if tasks used to measure these processes are presented in a manner that is "developmentally sensitive." The psychologist compares performance of children using both traditional tasks and the new developmentally sensitive tasks. Both the traditional and new tasks measure the same cognitive operations and differ only in terms of the method of presentation. The psychologist locates two nursery schools, one associated with the college where he teaches (School A) and one in a nearby city (School B). Both nursery schools enroll children of approximately the same age. The two methods are assigned randomly to the different nursery schools. Children at School A use the new method while children enrolled at School B are tested using the traditional method. Results reveal that children tested with the new method do better than the children tested with the traditional method. The psychologist concludes that children are able to carry out certain cognitive operations earlier than expected on the basis of the theory if developmentally sensitive tasks are used.



1

Identify the confounding that is present.





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