375: Research Methods

1. Methods
1. Recollection & Familiarity
1. Recognizing who someone is vs knowing you know them but not being able to remember who they are specifically
2. Controlled Laboratory Experiments
1. Internal Validity = good
2. Ecological Validity = depends but usually not quite as good
3. Reliability = depends
3. Self-Reports
1. Internal Validity = probably poor but tough to really say
2. Ecological Validity = okay, gave example of camera on the neck experiment which had really good ecological validity
3. Reliability = poor
4. Case Studies
1. Internal Validity = good
2. Ecological Validity = very good
3. Reliability = in theory it would be good if you could produce the same damage but often, as is the case with phineus gage, you wouldn't find the exact condition
5. Naturalistic Observations
1. Internal Validity = poor, too many confounding factors
2. Ecological Validity = great
3. Reliability = poor
6. Computer Simulations & Artificial Intelligence (AI)
1. Internal Validity = poor
2. Ecological Validity = 
3. Reliability =
7. Psychobiological Approaches
1. Electroencephalogram (EEG)
1. Measures electrical activity on the scalp (brain waves)
2. Great for its temporal resolution which means it is good at timing
3. Horrible for figuring out where these changes are occuring, poor spacial resolution
2. Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
1. Measurement of Blood Flow
1. As neurons become active, metabolism increases which increases blood flow so they put a radioactive tracer into the blood and track it.
1. As the tracer decays it emits a positron and they can image the positron
2. Problems
1. The tracer is radioactive: can't do this to the same person very often (once or twice a year)
2. Decays rapidly so you have to generate these positrons on site
1. Means it is very expensive
3. Better spacial resolution than EEG but it has poor temporal resolution
3. Functional Magnetic Radiance Imaging (fMRI)
1. Expensive
2. Becoming very popular as people recognize the many advantages