PSY 4130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Cognitive Map, Operational Definition, Psy

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 4130
• Professor: Danielle Impey

Document Summary

Be familiar with tolman"s purposive behaviorism, description, concepts, and impact. Be acquainted with hull"s hypothetico-deductive theory of learning and its influence on psychology. Be familiar with guthrie"s theoretical views on learning and psychology. Understand skinner"s analysis of behavior and its implication. In various forms had been active for centuries. Argues that what constitutes appropriate data are observations that are public domain. Important to avoid, or at least minimize, theoretical speculation from the data. Logical positivism (developed by the vienna circle) Divided science into empirical and the theoretical. Accepting theory as a part of empirical science, however, did not reduce the importance of empirical observation. Abstract theoretical terms were allowed only if such terms could be logically tied to empirical observations. The insistence that all abstract scientific terms be operationally defined. An operational definition is the defining of an abstract, theoretical concept by the procedures used to measure it. Operational definitions tie theoretical terms to observable phenomena.