Big and Research Questions Flashcards
Belief Bias
The strength of an argument altered by how believable the conclusion is, e.g.:
All professors are mortal
All sadists are mortal
Therefore, all professors are sadists
Confirmation Bias
Tendency to search for/remember information that confirms your preconceptions
Experimental Bias
Tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict
Conjunction Fallacy
When it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.
Availability Heuristic
Tendency to overestimate the probability of events that are more available in memory (e.g., recent, unusual, emotionally charged)
◦ Accidents
◦ Lottery winning
Gambler’s fallacy
The mistaken belief that, if something happens more frequently than normal during some period, it will happen less frequently in the future, or that, if something happens less frequently than normal during some period it will happen more
Introspection Illusion
A cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others’ introspections as unreliable.
Data driven research
Reasoning from the data to the general theory
Theory driven research
Reasoning from general theory to the data
Good theory criteria:
- Comprehensiveness
- Precision and testability
- Parsimony
- Heuristic value
Comprehensiveness
Broad enough to account for as much data as possible
•If there are data relevant to a theory that it cannot account for:
• Either adapt the theory to account for the new data
• Develop a new theory that incorporates the new data
•Example: Can the auditory theory account for perceptual phenomena, such as categorical perception, phonemic restoration?
Precision and Testability
A good theory should have concepts that are clearly and explicitly defined:
• Contains rational, logically related statements
• Empirically testable hypotheses
•Some ESP believers argue that the presence of a disbeliever can prevent someone with ESP from being able to perform.
•We aim to disprove theories (not prove them)
Omnipotent theory
So powerful, general, or flexible that they can account for everything
• Not testable/falsifiable
Parismony
Occam’s razor: The explanation of any phenomena should make as few assumptions as possible.
àAll things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the best
Heuristic Value
Makes (basic or applied) predictions, generates new knowledge, stimulates future research
Empirical research
Gather new information through observation/measurements
Non-empirical research
use existing information
Quantitative
Numerical data or data to which statistics can be applied
Quantify attitudes, opinions, behaviors, etc.
Generalize results from a sample to a population
Methods include surveys, structured interviews/observations, systematic experiments
Qualitative
Primarily exploratory: Aim to reveal underlying reasons,
opinions, motives, trends
Often used to generate hypotheses to be tested in
subsequent quantitative research
Methods include unstructured/semi-structured
techniques, verbal measures
Focusgroups,individualinterviews,observations,field-work
Sample size is typically small
Validity
how accurately a test or measure represents the knowledge, skill, or
trait you set out to assess
Reliability
the extent to which the measure yields consistent or repeatable results
Concept of Validity vs Reliability
a measure can be
reliable even if it is not valid, but a measure cannot be valid if it is not reliable
Face Validity
validity based on a person’s judgment of how well a test appears to
accomplish its purpose (customers)
Content Validity
How valid is a test judged by experts in the field?
Concurrent Validity
Compare results with an old test to see if the test measures are similar
Predictive Validity
administer the new test to a group of
participants and determine how they perform on a criterion measure in the future (grad school performance, reading achievement)
Construct validity
patterns or relationships among test
items, or relationships between test items and external standards of comparison
Convergence (Validity)
When a person performs in a similar way on test items
Divergence (validity)
A person could have very good cognitive abilities and relatively poorer motor skills, and, thus, scores from items that tap cognitive abilities could be quite different from scores on items that tap motor skills.
Interobserver reliability
the procedure is one that yields
consistent results when two different examiners or observers use the procedure to test the same
persons
Parallel-forms reliability
The researchers or test developers construct two different, but hopefully equivalent, forms of a measure
split half reliability
Following test administration, you split the test items into two equivalent forms and then compare the participants’ scores for each form. One common way to divide a test into equivalent halves is to split it into odd-numbered and evennumbered
items.
Operationalize
process of defining the variables in a study
Null hypothesis
Strategy for maintaining researcher’s objectivity (REJECT, not disprove)
Alternative
(directional or non directional) what the researchers expect to find.
Evidence basked practice (EBP)
an approach in which clinicians use the
best available scientific evidence to guide their decisions about how to evaluate and treat persons with communication disorders
PICO
Patient Intervention Comparison Outcome
often used with EBP
Quasi-experimental research
Experimental research that lacks random assignment to groups is sometimes referred to as…
Examples of nonexperimental research
case studies, surveys, studies of relationships or correlations between measures, as well as comparison or
case-control studies
True experiment (2)
experimental manipulation and random assignment
