Ch. 2 - Behaviour Variability and Research Flashcards
What is a schema?
A cognitive generalization that organizes and guides the processing of information.
What do schemas do?
Influence reactions to stimuli and events, as well as provide a framework for easy processing, organizing, remembering, and acting on the info.
What are the 2 general purposes of statistics?
Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.
What are descriptive statistics?
Statistics used to summarize and describe the behaviour of participants in a study. A way of reducing large numbers of scores into interpretable numbers.
What are inferential statistics?
Statistics used to draw conclusions about reliability and generalizability of one’s findings.
What is statistical variance?
An indication of how tightly or loosely the scores cluster around the mean.
How is the deviation score determined?
By subtracting the mean from each score.
How is the total sum of squares determined?
Summing the squared deviation scores from the mean.
What are the two types of statistical variance?
Systematic and error.
What is systematic variance?
The part of total variability in participants’ behaviour that is related in an orderly, predictable fashion to the variables being investigated.
What is error variance?
Variance that remains unaccounted for. Including error from variables not being investigated or actual errors in the process.
What is systematic variance used to determine?
Whether or not the effect is real.
What is effect size?
A measure of how strongly variables in a study are related.
What is the average effect size in behavioural research?
0.10 - 0.20.
What is meta-analysis?
A procedure used to analyze and integrate the results from a large set of individual studies.
