PSYC 2450 Chapter Notes -Developmental Psychology, Psychosexual Development, Cognitive Psychology

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2450
• Professor: Anneke Olthof

Document Summary

Scientific theory is nothing more than a set of concepts and propositions that describe, organize, and explain a set of observations. Theories are of critical importance to the developmental sciences, each of them provides us w/ lens through which we can interpret any number of specific observations about developing individuals. Should be concise, or parsimonious, yet be able to explain broad range of phenomena. Theory w/ few principles that accounts for large number of empirical observations far more useful than one which requires many more principles and assumptions to explain the same number of observations be supported or disconfirmed. Good theories are falsifiable : capable of making explicit predictions about future events so that the theory can. They are heuristic- build on existing knowledge by continuing to generate testable hypotheses that, if confirmed by future research, will lead to a much richer understanding of the phenomena of interest.