Psychology 2800E Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Random Assignment, Caffeine, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2800E
• Professor: Patrick Brown

Document Summary

Sometimes we get that judgement wrong, but science should be self-correcting: alternative: means any theory other than the explanation you are advocating, how do we eliminate every plausible alternative, statistical control, experimental control, replication. Statistical control: statistical control means equating participants on paper when they cannot be equated in fact, any behaviour has many characteristics, like: Is it fast: accurate, kind, absent-minded, these characteristics are produced by a variety of influences: In our example, we: measure how gpa and performance are associated and, remove variability in performance that appears to be connected to variability in. Gpa: any remaining variability in performance scores now has nothing to do with gpa. Experimental control: experiments give us control in two sense, they establish the equivalence of groups of participants before testing, they constrain and guide sources of variability. In assigning participants to groups, we make groups equivalent before treatment by random assignment and matching.