PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Blind Experiment, Dependent And Independent Variables, Scientific Method

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jill L Atkinson

Document Summary

Explain the five principal steps of the scientific method. Changes an abstract process such as memory and defines it in a objective, observable and measurable way. Can change how the outcome is seen, i. e if you are looking at memory and individuals cannot recall a word as well as they can recognize a word, then you would say they have poor memory. But if you are doing a study on recognition then they would have good memory. In this case memory is either operationally defined as the ability to recall things. Or as the ability to recognize things animals. Motor skills such as mazes can be a memory test as well --> used for simplistic. Dependent variable depends on independent i. e dependent: test outcome independent: amount of sleep. Must have clear connection between topic studied, observations and conclusions.