Assignment: Psychology Research In Context

Assignment: Psychology Research In Context

Assignment: Psychology Research In Context

Goal of the present study? How are the present results considered valid? Explain what these results mean to someone who has not taken this ccourse

Statistical Analysis (02:49)

From Title: Psychology Research in Context

Using memory tests, psychologists must choose an appropriate statistical test to determine if their data results have statistical significance.

Item Number: 40117

Date Added: 01/07/2010

©  2008

Online Classroom Ltd.

Filed Under:Introduction to Psychology

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– “Science” literally means “knowledge.” But it’s come to be associated with subjects like physics, chemistry, and biology. So what do we mean by science? How does science work? And is it true? Science is the systematic and logical pursuit of knowledge through specific methods. One of these is the hypothetical deductive method.

– The hypothetical deductive model is the way that we study science. So we start with observations about the world and develop theories about the way that the world might work. We test those theories, and we use the findings from our data to draw conclusions about our theories, modify those theories, and then start again.

– We’re going to illustrate how this approach works in psychology by looking at one of Piaget’s experiments. As a young man working with children, Piaget noticed that very young ones consistently gave wrong answers to certain questions.

– Piaget was looking at the way that children developed, and he believe that children, as they got older, changed the way that they thought. So their cognitive processes changed with age.

– One of the ways Piaget assessed children’s thinking was to present them with what he called conservation tasks. That is the ability to recognize that quantity doesn’t change even when display is altered. Children were shown counters arranged in the same way. The experimenter then spread one of the rows out. Most young children thought there were now more bricks in the longer row. For Piaget, this showed that young children didn’t yet have the ability to conserve number.

And this was consistent with his theory that children’s cognitive abilities developed over time. So are Piaget’s findings true? Well, yes and no. Yes, because he showed objectively that children’s thought patterns develop in distinct stages. But no, because all scientific findings are temporary. They’re always open to question, evaluation, and criticism. And this is just what happened in Piaget’s conservation experiment. It was challenged by McGarrigle and Donaldson.

– McGarrigle and Donaldson felt that children actually learned these cognitive skills much earlier than Piaget thought from his experiments. They’d watched real children and felt that they could solve problems at a much younger age. McGarrigle and Donaldson took Piaget’s experiments, but instead of carrying them out in a very abstract way, they tried to set a context for the children that would help them to understand the experiment and to understand why they were having to estimate the numbers of counters. McGarrigle and Donaldson introduced a character called Naughty Teddy. Naughty Teddy came and knocked the counters across the table, and the experimenters then rearranged them and asked the children whether or not there were still the same number of counters.

In this experiment with the context provided, children as young as three or four could conserve number. This tells us that Piaget probably underestimated children’s cognitive development when they’re given a real-life context. Piaget wasn’t technically wrong. There was just still more to learn about children’s cognitive development.

– So Naughty Teddy showed us something about child development. But since then, research has moved on, and McGarrigle and Donaldson’s research is now being questioned and criticized. And the process will go on.

– Naughty Teddy taught us something about child development, but since then, our understanding has moved on even further. Each time we find something out, it generates new questions.

– The children we’ve looked at today won’t always be like this.

– And what do you want to be when you’re a big girl?

– A hairdresser.

– A hairdresser?