Psych lab exam 1

  • Psychology: scientific study of mind and behavior

  • Scientific method: a process in which scientists have an observation, create a hypothesis, collect data and find conclusions/trends

  • Theory: explaining a process 

  • Hypothesis: a prediction of what will happen

  • Alternative hypothesis: a statement that proposes a significant relationship or difference between variables in a study

  • Variable: something that varies from person to person, and from situation to situation

  • Iv: what the scientist controls 

  • Dv: how the thing being controlled reacts 

  • Control variable: A variable that is not allowed to vary but rather held constant during the experiment

  • Extraneous variable: something that may or may not interfere with an experiment

  • Confounding variable: if the extraneous variable causes different results 

  • Between subjects design: each participant is only exposed to one experimental condition

  • Within subjects design: a research method where all participants experience every condition of an experiment

  • Correlation coefficient: r

  • Positive correlation: positive, upward direction

  • Negative correlation: negative, downward direction

  • Scatter plot: allows us to visualize the correlation between two variables

  • Subjective happiness: a person's perception of their own happiness and life satisfaction

  • Perceived stress: an individual's subjective experience of stress, or their perception of how demanding and overwhelming their life is

  • Satisfaction with life scale: a person's perception of their own life satisfaction 

  • Multi store- model of memory: Attention, encoding, storage, retrieval

  • Sensory store: a temporary holding place for incoming sensory information from the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. 

  • Short term store: a psychological process that stores and retrieves information for a short period of time

  • Long term store: the brain's ability to store and retrieve information over a long period of time

  • Coding: taking in information

  • Capacity: the max amount of information being taken in 

  • Trace duration: the length of time a memory is retained before it is forgotten

  • Level of processing: Attention, encoding, storage, retrieval 

  • Encoding time: taking in information

  • Depth of processing: can affect retention of information

  • Alternative hypothesis: due to confounds (alternative explanation) 

  • Brian lateralization theory: the left side is controlled by the right brain, vice versa. 

  • Manual dexterity: the ability to use your hands and fingers to skillfully grasp and manipulate objects

  • Hand dominance: division of brain hemispheres

  • Brocas area: language production

  • Wernickes area: language processing 

  • Inferential statistics: make inferences and predictions about a population based on a sample of data taken from the population in question

  • T test: type of inferential test of mean difference.

  • Probability theory: the study of the likelihood of an event happening

  • P value: indicator of statistical significance 

  • Decision criterion: a standard used to measure a person's or program's success

  • Statistically significant: 

  • High p-value = there is a high chance that the two groups are same (p= 0.90 = 90%) 

  • Low p-value = there is a low chance that the two groups are same (more confident)

  • Effect size: measure of the magnitude of strength of the result

    • No effect: 0

    • Small effect: .2

    • Medium effect: .5

    • Large effect: >.8


  •  Measure validity and reliability

    • Construct validity: when measure what it's supposed to be measuring

    • Convergent validity: does the measure predict scores of other measurements that are also theoretically related  

    • Different kinds of reliability: test retest reliability, split half reliability, equivalent form validity 

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