PSY 3120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: External Validity, Mental Chronometry, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: Vanderbilt University
• Department: Psychology (A&S)
• Course: PSY 3120
• Professor: Seiffert Adriane

Document Summary

Independent variable thing manipulated standard, experimental, control: experimental manipulations. Time between study and task: quasi-experimental manipulations. Dependent variable measured data: behavioral measures. External validity: the degree to which the results of the experiment are true in the real world. Concepts: the meaning of objects, events and abstract ideas, the answer to the question, what is _____? , the fundamental building block of knowledge. Categories: the group of all possible examples of a concept, the pointers to knowledge that tell you where to start with understanding the object, event or idea. Definitions work well for man-made objects that are specified to the theoretical limit: definition for a square. Most objects, events or ideas cannot be completely defined with a sentence: not all examples can be represented, definitions are ambiguous, sometimes miss aspects, objects have family resemblance . Prototype approach idea that concepts are represented with a single representation of the typical, average, or iconic member of the category (prototype average)