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Research methods:
Psychological enquiry
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Experimental method
Dependent, independent, and confounding variables
Choosing participants and settings
Cause and effect, replication
Laboratory vs. field experiments
Quasi-experiments
Williams’ study of Canadian children
Adams and Adams’ Mount St Helens study Correlational studies
Twin studies and the nature/nurture question Issues of causality and ethics
Naturalistic observation
Brown et al.’s study of child language development Bales’ interaction process analysis
Case studies
Allport’s and Skinner’s arguments
Freud’s case study of Dr Schreber
Interviews
Coolican’s types of interview
Piaget’s clinical …show more content…
One reason is to test a current theory. For example,
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) argued that information only enters the long-term memory store via the short-term memory store (see PIP, Chapter 9). As a result, a brain-damaged individual with impaired short-term memory should also have impaired long-term memory. Evidence that seemed to be inconsistent with this theory was reported in a case study on KF, who was involved in a motorcycle accident (Shallice & Warrington, 1970). He had very poor short-term memory for words and digits, but his long-term learning and recall were unaffected.
Case studies can also be used to refine theories. Baddeley and Hitch (1974) argued that people possess an articulatory loop which is used in the rehearsal of verbal information (see PIP, Chapter 9). It used to be assumed that rehearsal within the articulatory loop requires use of the speech muscles. However, Baddeley and Wilson (1985) carried out a case study on a student, GB. He suffered from anarthria, which meant that