20
votes
Is psychology a science?
"Science" refers to a methodology for obtaining knowledge, and often to the knowledge itself as well. Science is often confused with another term "technology", that refers to the application of such ...
- 18k
7
votes
Problems with using personal feedback to motivate participation in an online psychological experiment?
Ethics of Feedback:
The APA's code of ethics (2010) as well as the Advisory Group on Conducting Research on the Internet (AGCRI) report (2004) summarize ethical issues related to conducting offline ...
- 18k
7
votes
Where to find a study on women and selfies?
The Yahoo Lifestyle website gives a popular description of the following study:
Fox & Rooney. The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation ...
- 19.6k
7
votes
How valid are reaction times collected from online studies?
There are a few factors that could contribute to differences between online versus in-lab reaction time measurement.
Hardware variation
Participants in an online experiment will use their own ...
- 5,814
7
votes
Accepted
How to use a QUEST staircase in 2-AFC?
There is a lot going on in your question. QUEST, as well as many other adaptive procedures, is well suited for a task like estimating morph distance in a 2-AFC paradigm. There are, however, a couple ...
- 2,617
6
votes
Accepted
Visual acuity and offset stimuli
Visual acuity is highest in the foveal region, namely around 1/60 of a degree, or 1 minute of arc (1 MAR). At about 30 degrees of eccentricity, visual acuity is reduced to anywhere between 1.5 and 10 ...
- 19.6k
6
votes
Accepted
How to transform data to a frequency spectrum?
In the cited paper their methodology is explained in the Materials and Methods section on p.209, where it says:
Fig. 4 shows the norm of the CoP during the experiment [...] which are represented ...
- 19.6k
6
votes
Accepted
Do people "subvocalize" during thinking or "internal monologue"?
Short answer
Sub-vocalization can also be detected during cognitive demanding tasks other than reading.
Background
As far as I can see, most literature acknowledges sub-vocalizing as being only ...
- 19.6k
6
votes
Accepted
How can items from a general self-esteem/efficacy measure be changed to measure context specific self-esteem/efficacy?
It depends on the types of changes you are looking to make. In general, my experience has been that changes to a response scale can be done with minimal threats to validity (e.g. looking to change the ...
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6
votes
How to know whether a methodological technique is quantitative or qualitative?
ANOVA and t-tests are statistical tests for significance and therefore quantitative.
The other mentioned items are scales (adding numbers to a certain choice) and therefore they can be considered as ...
- 19.6k
6
votes
Accepted
How to know whether a methodological technique is quantitative or qualitative?
It's important to distinguish between measures and analyses, because only analyses can be quantitative or qualitative, not measures.
Measures are, essentially, systematic processes by which we ...
- 6,902
6
votes
Accepted
How do you call a study in which subjects were deceived about the real purpose?
The relevant section 8.03 in the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct does not employ a proper term. In the literature, »deception/deceptive study/experiment/method(s)« are ...
- 745
6
votes
Accepted
What are the advantages of 2AFC in a psychophysical discrimination task?
What makes a task a two alternative forced choice task?
I am beginning my answer with this question because there is a general misconception about what 2AFC really means. Many people believe that ...
- 261
6
votes
In the digit span test, why do some strategies work and others don't?
Chunking leverages long-term memory for the chunks, i.e. we recognize and remember much easier the familiar chunks, sometimes algorithmically. This is much easier explained in the domain of letters/...
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5
votes
Is there an R implementation of the linear ballistic accumulator model or Ratcliff's diffusion model for measuring response time and accuracy?
The R package diffIRT (http://www.dylanmolenaar.nl/jss1265.pdf) estimates both the Q and the D diffusion models (see his website for the van der Maas et al. paper discussing the differences between ...
- 51
5
votes
Are there any rules about masking?
Your question was a loooooong time ago, but I just ran across a couple of good references explaining what backward masking does and how to choose one. This(1) is a great paper examining the neural ...
- 2,903
5
votes
Which is the shortest duration for a pitch difference in audio signals to be perceived by the human auditory system?
It really depends on what you mean by difference in pitch. Subjects can discriminate differences in frequency for very short tones, but it does not mean they are being perceived as pitch differences. ...
- 2,617
5
votes
Accepted
Do repeated measures designs in cognitive research permit causal inference?
If the researcher randomly samples individuals from the population of interest and randomly assigns them to different experimental treatments, then it is a true experiment. Quasi-experimental design ...
- 5,814
5
votes
Is psychology a science?
when it comes to psychology it feels to me a bit like astrology, where there are some things that can work, but mostly because of auto-suggestion, or any other kind of suggestions, and things like the ...
- 512
5
votes
Is psychology a science?
As an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist practicing Human Factors in a large organization, I use scientific method to inform product and service design. Our dependent variables (effectiveness, ...
- 51
5
votes
Accepted
Social loafing vs. Free riding
You are correct in that these terms are very close in definition, but terminology is not just about identifying a concept. Terminology is also about identifying the perspective from which you will ...
- 12.2k
5
votes
Do children inherit intelligence from their mothers and not their fathers?
The psychology-spot article mostly links to researches done on mice. Only three links are about human genetics. One is philosophical in nature, other two deal with mental retardation. This study says ...
- 404
5
votes
Accepted
Where are scientific references for the claims made in "Thinking Fast and Slow"
Just found the book I used to study decision making. It's called Judgement and Decision Making and is written by Daniel and David Hardman. It is a perfect introductory book on the topic with ...
- 3,132
5
votes
Accepted
What variables allow one to empirically and scientifically quantify trends for learning curves?
Short answer
In psychophysical tests, often %correct rates are determined. Hence, training effects are often measured by determining correct rates. The ultimate outcome measures can be wildly variable,...
- 19.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Should I look at the data of an experiment before the dataset is complete?
Short answer
From an ethical standpoint, not including interim evaluations may be bad practice.
Background
I will start off with a more extreme case than in your question example, just for ...
- 19.6k
5
votes
Should I look at the data of an experiment before the dataset is complete?
gjacob is correct that optional stopping is a common research degree of freedom, and one that has a considerable and unfortunate intuitive basis. Yet, depending on the context of your research, AliceD'...
- 286
5
votes
In general, how does one resolve two competing theories in Psychology?
Almost every pair of theories on that list sets up a false dichotomy.
It is not an issue of one theory over another; at issue is how much different explanations apply to different circumstances. ...
- 5,654
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