Certificate In Psychology (CPSY) Practice Exam

If an investigator found a +.50 correlation between parents' vocabularies and their children's vocabularies, what would that indicate?

1. Children know about half as many words as their parents

2. The more words parents know, the more words their children know

3. By talking to them, parents increase their children's vocabularies

4. The relationship between parents' and children's vocabularies is too small to be of significance

The correct answer is: The more words parents know, the more words their children know

A correlation of +0.50 between parents' vocabularies and their children's vocabularies signifies a moderate positive relationship. This means that as one variable increases, the other variable tends to also increase. In this context, this indicates that the more extensive the vocabulary of the parents, the more extensive the vocabulary of their children. The correlation does not imply that children know "half as many" words as their parents; rather, it suggests a trend where increased vocabulary in parents is associated with increased vocabulary in children. Furthermore, while it could be proposed that parental communication might enhance children's vocabulary, the correlation does not establish a causal relationship—it merely shows a pattern of association between the two variables. Lastly, stating that the relationship is too small to be of significance would undermine the meaningfulness of a correlation of +0.50, which is generally considered a moderate correlation in social sciences.