S1 Wk 1 - Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Psychology

Question 1

behaviour analysis 4 points

Answer 1

• dominant in the early part of the 20th century
• carefully controlled experimental environments and the quantifying of behavioural observations
• key argument - response - reinforcement relationships and learned associations that shape their behaviour
• replaced in terms of the popularity by cognitive psychology in mid-20th century

Question 2

cognitive psychology and 4 types

Answer 2

focus is on internal mental processing
- thinking
- reading
- memory
- analogous to IT and computing

Question 3

inference

Answer 3

carefully designed experiments explore process models, e.g. working memory thought to involve several components.

Question 4

biological psychology

Answer 4

aims to bridge the gap between the thought processes of cognitive psychology and the physical responses in the brain

Electrical activity EEG
Chemical changes
Blood flow
Physical size

Question 5

what is methodology

Answer 5

how we answer the questions

careful design, implementation and analysis of our research should be rigorous

Question 6

bad methodology can lead to 4 points

Answer 6

Unreliable knowledge
poor experimental design
poor statistical results
questionable ethical practices

Question 7

What do inferential statistics tell us

Answer 7

How meaningful the difference or Association might be or not be based on our data