Lab 1-5

Lab 1: Terms and Concepts

• Validity: The strength of a conclusion, often measured by consistency.
• Reliability: Consistency of a measurement, or whether it can be repeated.
• Test Generalizability: The boundaries of a test's validity, often confined to a specific population.
• Three Fundamental Psychological Needs: Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness.
• Competence: Feeling effective in interactions within one's environment. Achieved by appropriate tasks, challenges, and outcomes.
• Autonomy: Having control and choices, making decisions and taking responsibility.
• Relatedness: Feeling connected to others, with a sense of care and belonging.
• Flow: A feeling of exhilaration coming from a well-suited and engaging task. Characterized by concentration, ego suspension and heightened awareness.
• Correlation vs. Causation: Distinguish between two variables that are related and those that are dependent. Key points are leaning left (negative), right (positive), and thinner ovals denoting stronger correlations.

Lab 1: Experiment

• IV (Independent Variable): Feedback (factors affecting feedback).
• DV (Dependent Variable): Speed and accuracy in a task.
• CV (Controlled Variable): Number of trials for all subjects (consistent).
• Task 1: Validating a new measure of self-esteem by correlating it with a well-established measure.
• Approach 1 (Validation using new survey): Testing the new measure on a sample, validating through a therapist, then correlating both surveys.
• Approach 2 (Validation using existing survey): Administering the new survey and an established survey to everyone, calculating the correlation, ideally above 0.8 or -0.8. Ensuring each question in the new survey measures the same quality.
• Split-Half Correlation: Assessing the reliability of a test by dividing it into two halves and determining the correlation.

Lab 2: Terms and Concepts

• Creativity: A combination of uniqueness and usefulness, often a process of discovery.
• Divergent Thinking: Outside-the-box thinking.
• Convergent Thinking: Thinking that follows a straightforward path, using conventional patterns to get a single solution.
• Alternative Uses Test: A test that evaluates divergent thinking by asking how many different uses a certain thing can have.
• Remote Associates Test (RAT): A test in which participants find a connection between three unrelated words.
• Maximizing: Seeking the best possible choice, often through a lengthy search.
• Satisficing: Choosing a satisfactory option when a perfect choice is time-consuming or elusive.
• Latent Inhibition: The ability to block out non-essential information and stimuli.

Lab 2: Experiment

• IV (Independent Variable): Feedback, Difficulty of task given.
• DV (Dependent Variable): Speed (reaction time) and accuracy of task completion.
• CV (Controlled Variable): Number of trials; all subjects having constant multiple trials across the experiment, random order viewing.

Lab 3: Terms and Concepts

• Positive Psychology: A field focused on strengths, life fulfillment, and well-being, alongside conventional psychology.
• Social Readjustment Scale: A list of common life events that gauge the stress of certain life transitions.
• Relaxation Response: A relaxation technique that lowers the body's stress response.
• Happiness (Sonja Lyubomirsky): 50% set point (biology), 40% intentional activity, and 10% circumstances.
• Psychophysics: The study of how physical stimuli translate into experience.
• Sensation: Stimulation of sensory organs.
• Transduction: Conversion of external stimuli into electrical signals (neurons).
• Perception: How we interpret select, organize, and interpret sensory input.
• Absolute Threshold: The point at which a stimulus is detected 50% of the time
• Weber's Law: Stimulus intensity and noticeable difference.

Lab 3: Experiment

• IV (Independent Variable): Meditation, difficulty of task.
• DV (Dependent Variable): Speed (reaction time) and accuracy.
• CV (Controlled Variable): Consistent trials for all, random order viewing.

Lab 4: Terms and Concepts

• Illusions: A distortion of sensory perception, revealing how the brain organizes sensory input.
• Perceptual Set Theory: Perception influenced by expectations and prior experiences.
• Signal Detection Theory: Sensory processes and decision processes involved in perception.

Lab 4: Experiment

• IV (Independent Variable): Physical size of lines
• DV (Dependent Variable): Probability of choosing the longer line, time to choose (reaction).
• CV (Controlled Variable): Size of reference lines, progression and random error to ensure consistency.

Lab 5: Terms and Concepts

• Magazine Training: Turning stimuli into secondary reinforcers in order to condition a response.
• Cumulative Record: Tracking responses on a printer style device to record and analyze the pattern, and learning behaviours.
• Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance of a response after an extinction period.

Lab 5: Experiment

• IV (Independent Variable): Shaping procedures.
• DV (Dependent Variable): Frequency of bar pressing or other behaviours.
• CV (Controlled Variable): Consistent hungry animal, every response rewards behaviour.