PSYC 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Naturalistic Observation, Longitudinal Study, Troubled Families

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 250
• Professor: Tyler Wereha

Document Summary

Some children and adults believe that intelligence is ixed and cannot be changed by experience: give up when they fail. Other children and adults believe that intelligence is changeable and increases with learning: people who believe this react to failure in efective ways, persistence. Children who were taught about how learning afects the brain, improved their performance in school. Children who were taught about memory, did not improve. Scientiic method: an approach to testing beliefs that involves choosing a question, formulating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis and drawing a conclusion. Hypothesis must be abandoned if evidence repeatedly does not support it: choose question, form hypothesis, develop method for testing, use data to draw a conclusion regarding the hypothesis. Research found that kindergartners who are more aware of component sounds within words read better: true regardless of what language. Measures must be directly relevant to the hypothesis. Reliability: the degree to which independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent.