Training zoo animals. Refer to Exercise 2.65 (p. 59) and the Teaching of Psychology (May 1998) study in which students assisted in the training of zoo animals. A sample of 15 psychology students rated “The Training Game” as a “great” method of understanding the animal’s perspective during training on a 7–1 point scale (where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree ).The mean response was 5.87, with a standard deviation of 1.51.

a. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the true mean response of the students.

b. Suppose you want to reduce the width of the 95% confidence interval to half the size obtained in part a. How many students are required in the sample in order to obtain the desired confidence interval width?

Exercise 2.65

Training zoo animals. “The Training Game” is an activity used in psychology in which one person shapes an arbitrary behavior by selectively reinforcing the movements of another person. A group of 15 psychology students at the Georgia Institute of Technology played the game at Zoo Atlanta while participating in an experimental psychology laboratory in which they assisted in the training of animals ( Teaching of Psychology , May 1998). At the end of the session, each student was asked to rate the statement: “‘The Training Game is a great way for students to understand the animal’s perspective during training.” Responses were recorded on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The 15 responses were summarized as follows:

mean = 5.87, mode = 6.

a. Interpret the measures of central tendency in the words of the problem.

b. What type of skewness (if any) is likely to be present in the distribution of student responses? Explain.