Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is science motivated by?
a natural curiosity about the world
What are the first three steps in the process of conducting research?
- generating an idea
- finding relevant research
- shaping your question into a testable hypothesis
What are 5 broad sources of ideas for research?
- common assumptions
- observations of the world
- practical problems
- scientific theories
- past research
What are examples of something researchers may test related to common assumptions?
whether the common sense or folk wisdom help within a culture are actually true. (do opposites attract? do birds of a feather flock together?)
What questions might lead to research on interpersonal relationships interpersonal relationships, child development, and the role of visual images in learning and memory?
- do friends or parents have the greatest influence on how a child will end up?
- is a picture worth a thousand words?
Why can testing widely held assumptions be valuable?
because these notions don’t always turn out to be correct and research might also show that the real world is much more complicated than our assumptions would have us believe.
often forces us to go beyond a common sense theory of behaviour and examine more closely what actually occurs in the real world.
Does research support that opposites attract is true? Is there any research that contradicts the findings of most research? If so what is different?
decades of research has shown that people actually tend to be attracted to others who are similar to themselves.
A group of researchers led by Steven Heine wondered if these findings would replicate in non-Western cultures. They found that Japanese participants idd not show the same preference for people similar to them over those who are different.
What can lead us to make intuitions about the world?
simply making careful observations of what happens around us.
What do we do in science instead of accepting intuitions based off of observation?
we take on a scientifically skeptical mindset, pushing those intuitions to fuel research ideas.
how did noting the experience of projects taking longer than the time set aside to complete them lead to research? What did the research show? What is the suggestion resulting from this research?
Roger Buhler and Wilfred Laurier conducted a series of experiments on why and how people underestimate the time it takes to complete tasks.
Their studies showed that people are particularly likely to underestimate how long a project takes when it involves many steps (and therefore can be interrupted easily), rather than when the task can be completed in one sitting.
Studying for exams and writing papers are good examples of these multistep tasks
adding a few extra hours or days to your first estimate might help you correct for this bias. (applied research?)
What is an example of how part-time jobs or volunteer positions can provide a rich source of material for scientific investigation? What did he find? What does this example show us?
When psychologist michael Lynn was a University student, he was working as a server and relied on tips for income. he decided to study tipping behaviour in restaurants and hotels in different countries
he found that posture, touching, and phrases written on a cheque increase tips. his research had a major impact on the restaurant and hotel industry.
shows us that taking a scientific approach to an everyday problem can lead to new discoveries with useful applications.
What is Ivan Pavlov most known for? Did he set out to discover this? What does this show about accidental approaches?
discovering what is called “classical conditioning”
he did not set out to discover this. he was actually studying the digestive system in dogs. One of his students noticed that the dogs had been salivating before the actual feeding began which led pavlov to study the ways in which stimulus preceeding food could produce a salivation response.
This shows accidental approaches aren’t purely accidental and they are far more likely to happen when approaching the world with a curious and inquisitive eye.
How does classical conditioning work?
pairing a neutral stimulus (such as a tone) repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus (such as food) to produce a reflex response (salvation) so that eventually the neutral stimulus presented alone will produce the response.
Is drawing inspiration from real problems in the world limited to applied researchers? Example?
Those who tend to conduct basic research may also draw inspiration from societal problems.
Basic research on memory was inspired by observation on the memory difficulties faced by people who had experienced some form of brain injury, such as a stroke.
Most famously, the research on HM who had brain surgery to relieve epilepsy memory difficulties led to great advances in our understanding of the basic memory process
What is an example of applied research in public health policy?
including graphic warnings on cigarette packages to reduce smoking.
What is a theory?
a framework that organizes and explains various findings related to a particular phenomenon, and in doing so generates new, testable hypotheses about that phenomenon
What scientific word is most similar to the colloquial use of theory?
hypothesis
What is a scientific theory grounded in and helps tp explain?
actual data from prior research
in explaining past observations what do theories also do?
specify predictions about possible future observations , known as hypotheses
What can specific hypotheses help us evaluate?
whether the broader theory is likely to be true
What 2 important functions do theories provide?
- organize and explain a large number of previous observations
- Generate new knowledge by pointing us in a direction where we can look to discover new aspects of behaviour.
How do theories make the world more comprehensible?
by providing just a few abstract concepts around which many different observations can be organized.
What is an example of a famous theory that helped us organize lots of information?
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection organized and explained a large number of observations concerning the characteristics of animal species. This one theory helped to explain the appearance of so many different animals
What is one theory of memory that helps us organize many different observations about memory, including the different types of memory deficits that result from damage to different areas of the brain, and the rate at which a person forgets material they just read?
a theory of memory that asserts that there are separate systems for working with information in the moment (working memory) and storing information for later (long term memory)
How are theories supported? Which of the 2 characteristics of theories does this fall into?
theories help us generate new hypotheses about behaviour which are then evaluated in future studies. if the studies support the hypothesis, then by extension, the theory is supported.
generating new knowledge
What happens if research reveals weaknesses in a theory?
the theory can be modified to account for new data or a researcher may develop an entirely new theory that a past study or past studies couldn’t explain
What is the memory theory example of how theories need to be modified as new information is discovered?
originally, a theory on memory thought that the long term memory system was a storehouse of permanent , fixed memories but research now shows that memories are easily reconstructed and reinterpreted
What is parsimony? Why?
the scientific principle stating that if 2 theories are equally effective at explaining a phenomenon, the simpler of the 2 theories is preferred
We follow this principle because the least complex theory will be easier to falsify (fewer variables = easier to prove the whole theory wrong)
Is past research a good source of ideas? Why? What are some examples of what kind of questions may come up?
yes. becoming familiar on a body of research already published on a topic is perhaps the best way to generate new ideas for research. Virtually every study raises question that can be addressed in subsequent research.
do the findings replicate in a different setting, a different population, a different culture?
What is facilitated communication?
a technic that purportedly allows a child to communicate with others by pressing keys on a key board, to show letters and other symbols. a facilitator hold the child’s hand to enable the child to determine which key to press. This technique seemingly allowed children with ASD to communicate their thoughts and feelings and answer questions
What did researchers (applying scientific skepticism) find out about the original study design of facilitated communication?
noted that the original study design failed to rule out a crucial alternative explanation: the facilitator may be unintentionally guiding the child’s fingers to type meaningful sentences. in other words, the facilitator, not the child with autism was controlling the communication.
