Psychology 2040A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Developmental Psychology, Naturalistic Observation, Operant Conditioning

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2040A/B
• Professor: hessels

Document Summary

Proof is impossible, therefore we are set up to disprove that hypothesis, and if it isn"t disproven then it supports the theory but does not prove anything. Critical thinking: being wary of the certain techniques that are used to distort the truth (statistics are used to trick people) Issues to consider in collecting data: operational de nition translates something abstract into something concrete to be measured, sampling a group of individuals of a whole population that you want to study. Want the sample to be representative of the population: reliability how consistent something is, validity how well does it measure the thing you actually want to measure. Valid if you"re measuring what you"re saying you"re measuring. Methods of data collation: two con icting goals: Naturalistic (ecological validity) want to study how things go on in the real. Monday, september 18, 2017 world: how they act in the real world not how they act in a lab.