How do we do cognitive science? - Questions

What are some ways to measure cognitive processes?

1. Reaction time

2. Eye gaze

3. Reading time

4. Recall

5. Neuroimaging

What is reaction time?

the time it takes from input to output might tell us something about the number of steps that the brain must take in order to reach an answer to a problem

What is eye gaze?

time spent looking at a particular location, which in turn is thought to reflect engagement of attention and the time needed to process the stimulus at that location

Reading time

time it takes to read may reflect linguistic processing

Recall

what can people remember

Neuroimaging

What do processes look like in the brain itself

What is the independent variable?

• The variable the experimenter changes or controls

• have a direct effect on the dependent variable

• could also include other confounding factors (e.g. sex, SES)

What is the dependent variable?

• The variable being tested and measured in an experiment

• Dependent on the independent variable

What are conditions?

A level of the independent variable that is manipulated

What is a null hypothesis?

Assumes that what you want to find isn’t there

What is an alternative hypothesis?

What we want to prove is true

Hypothesis testing

• Assuming the null hypothesis is true, how likely are our results?

• we cannot test every single individual so we measure a random sample of people

• we want to find that what we measured from our sample is unlikely to be measured through chance alone.

What are the seven steps to test cognitive processes?

1. identify an unanswered question

2. develop a hypothesis

3. Develop a research question

4. design an experiment

5. identify what data might prove or disprove that hypothesis a. make a SPECIFIC prediction

6. analyze your data

7. make sense of it