Psych Lectures #6-8: Culture and Perception, What is it Like to be a Baby?, Quality Control

Voluntary vs Involuntary Attention

Voluntary attention requires effort. It is when you choose to pay attention to something.

Involuntary attention is effortless. It is when you automatically pay attention to something even without meaning to.

Who is WEIRD?

Western - Educated - Industrialized - Rich - Democratic

WEIRD people may be skewing psychology research studies.

Compare Empricism and Nativism

Both example how humans acquired knowledge and cognitive traits.

Empiricism claims that humans are born a blank state and learn through experiences.

Nativism suggests that humans have an innate framework and are born with certain knowledge

Empricism vs Nativism, which is right?

Neither are completely right, human learning is a mix of both.

What was the result of the Visual Cliff experiment?

Humans naturally have the ability to perceive depth.

Follow-up studies show that babies don’t have an instinctual fear of heights but rather learn through experience what is safe or dangerous.

Why is it difficult to study babies? How do psychologists study babies?

It is difficult to test babies’ capabilities because they cannot speak or perform most simple physical tasks.

Babies tend to look longer at things they find surprising than things that are expected. Using this, psychologists can conduct “change detection” experiments; if babies look longer at a certain stimulus, then they likely find it surprising.

What are two ways to reduce randomness in experiment results?

A large sample size and good experimental design

What is a good sample size?

A good sample size will reduce the effects of patterns due to randomness. There is no standard sample size.

Between subject vs Within subject

These are two types of experimental designs.

Within subject designs tend to be better at reducing the effect of randomness.