Week 5: Scientific Thinking & Assessment

Question 1

What is the Medical Model?

Answer 1

Views problems as resulting from within person, biologically or psychologically

Question 2

What are some issues with the Medical Model?

Answer 2

• Analogizes psychological problems to medical illnesses
• Focuses on internal pathologies while ignoring external environment

Question 3

What are some advantages of the Ecological Model?

Answer 3

• Provides more accurate picture of “reality”
• Focus is on most malleable/modifiable intervention targets
• Focus on both prevention and intervention

Question 4

What is the “paradox of school psychology”?

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

What are the implications of the Ecological Model?

Answer 5

• 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

Question 6

What are some examples of public health services?

Answer 6

Masking, vaccines, garbage disposal

Question 7

What concepts underlie the Scientist-Practitioner Model?

Answer 7

• Use of problem-solving model
• Be active and discerning consumers of research
• Ground practice in best available research

Question 8

What is the difference between skepticism and cynicism?

Answer 8

• Skepticism: willingness to consider new claims but insistence on evidence to back them
• Cynicism: dismissiveness towards new and untested claims

Question 9

Scientific way of thinking is a balance between doubt and open-mindedness. (T/F)

Answer 9

True

Question 10

What are some techniques that underscore skeptical thinking?

Answer 10

• 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”)

Question 11

What is confirmation bias?

Answer 11

• Tendency to seek out evidence consistent with our beliefs and dismiss evidence that is not

Question 12

What is illusory correlation?

Answer 12

• Tendency to perceive statistical associations that are objectively absent

Question 13

What is hindsight bias?

Answer 13

• Error of perceiving events as more predictable after they have occurred

Question 14

What is groupthink?

Answer 14

• Preoccupation with group unanimity that impedes critical evaluation of an issue

Question 15

What are some warning signs of pseudoscience?

Answer 15

• Lack of falsifiability
• Lack of self-correction
• Emphasis on confirmation
• Evasion of peer review
• Over-reliance on testimonial and anecdotal evidence