NEUR 2001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Dependent And Independent Variables, Internal Validity, Mental Rotation

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Neuroscience
• Course: NEUR 2001
• Professor: melissa chee

Document Summary

Lecture 10 experimental research strategy (missed class) between subject design. Establish cause-and effect relationship between two variables. Simplest form changing one variable causes change in second variable. You take a population, split them into two groups randomly (control and experimental: 2 treatment groups, each with a different treatment. Advantages: each measured score is independent of the other scores, only exposed to one treatment, results not influenced by other factors, ex. Practice from exposure of other treatments: can be applied to wide range of research questions. Disadvantages: you need a larger population, larger difference between individuals in each group will obscure differences between groups, ex. Individual differences: within-group variability vs between group variability, within-group variability is unavoidable but important for this to be equal across groups. Statistical tests assume that there is an equal variability within groups: between group variability is what you are hoping to see, the goal is to minimize the within-group variability and maximize between-group variability.