Week 5: Scientific Thinking & Assessment Flashcards
What is the Medical Model?
Views problems as resulting from within person, biologically or psychologically
What are some issues with the Medical Model?
- Analogizes psychological problems to medical illnesses
- Focuses on internal pathologies while ignoring external environment
What are some advantages of the Ecological Model?
- Provides more accurate picture of “reality”
- Focus is on most malleable/modifiable intervention targets
- Focus on both prevention and intervention
What is the “paradox of school psychology”?
- To serve children effectively, school psychs must focus on helping adults, who then translate help to kids
- Training a teacher effectively will help much larger group of kids over longer periods of time
What are the implications of the Ecological Model?
- Reframes metaphor from medicine (internal) to education/ecological modification (external)
- Shifts from diagnosis and classification to prevention and intervention
- Focus on data-based decision making and progress monitoring
- Moving toward public health approach to prevention through RTI, MTSS framework
What are some examples of public health services?
Masking, vaccines, garbage disposal
What concepts underlie the Scientist-Practitioner Model?
- Use of problem-solving model
- Be active and discerning consumers of research
- Ground practice in best available research
What is the difference between skepticism and cynicism?
- Skepticism: willingness to consider new claims but insistence on evidence to back them
- Cynicism: dismissiveness towards new and untested claims
Scientific way of thinking is a balance between doubt and open-mindedness. (T/F)
True
What are some techniques that underscore skeptical thinking?
- Occam’s Razor: simplest explanation possible usually most correct
- Quantify: if issue in question can be measured, much better chances at discriminating amongst hypotheses
- Propositions that are unfalsifiable lack value (“can’t prove a negative”)
What is confirmation bias?
- Tendency to seek out evidence consistent with our beliefs and dismiss evidence that is not
What is illusory correlation?
- Tendency to perceive statistical associations that are objectively absent
What is hindsight bias?
- Error of perceiving events as more predictable after they have occurred
What is groupthink?
- Preoccupation with group unanimity that impedes critical evaluation of an issue
What are some warning signs of pseudoscience?
- Lack of falsifiability
- Lack of self-correction
- Emphasis on confirmation
- Evasion of peer review
- Over-reliance on testimonial and anecdotal evidence
