Memory

Can you imagine a world without your memory? Memory is one of those things people don't usually think about, and we take it for granted far too much.

Sensory Memory

Sensory memory holds information just long enough for us to use them. We are bombarded with all the senses usin our ears, eyes, nose and mouth, and sometimes, there's too much!

SHORT TERM MEMORY!!!!

Now you know what sensory memory is. Let me tell you the next stage of memory which is the short term memory (STM). For your information, if an incoming sensory message is important enough to enter consciousness, that message will move from sensory memory to the next stage of memory, short term memory. So, what is short term memory? Short term memory is the memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used.

Our friend Dory suffers from short term memory loss. It runs in the family.

So, how the information enters into the STM? The information can enter by selective attention. Selective attention is the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input (focusing on specific stimuli). With selective attention, it determines what is moved to the next level of memory. For example, when you are talking with your friends, do you really think that you remember everything what they said? Nope, right? This is because you are only paying attention at certain things of what they said. When this happened, you are using selective attention to enter your information into the STM. You get it? If you are still blurr, let me tell you other example. If you are in a party where there is a lot of noise and several conversations going on in the background, why would you still able to notice when someone says your name? This is because of selective attention too. In that situation, you are paying attention to those who are calling your names (Let say that at that party you know nobody and you need someone to talk). You may ask why you not aware when someone is calling your name. There is no other explanation. This is because at that time, you are focusing on something else. That is why you are not aware of people calling your name. Ok?

In the short term memory, there is a test to know how much information humans can hold in short term memory at any one time. This test was conducted by George Miller (1956). The test is known as digit-span test which is the memory test in which a series of numbers is read to subjects in the experiment who are then asked to recall the numbers in order. Each series gets longer and longer, until the subjects cannot recall any of the numbers in order. From this test, Miller concluded that the capacity of short term memory is about seven items or pieces of information, plus or minus two items, or from five to nine bits of information. Miller called this the magical number seven, plus or minus two. You can try doing this test too. This is exciting!   

When you are trying to remember a series a number, do you remember it all at one time? Nope, right? You must be separate the numbers into parts, right? This is what we call chunking in psychology. Chunking is bits of information are combined into meaningful units, or chunks, so that more information can be held in STM. For example, when you are trying to remember your phone number, you will use chunking so that you can remember easily. In order to remember your phone number, you must be always repeating the numbers, right? This is called as maintenance rehearsal. 

Maintenance rehearsal is a practice of saying some information to be remembered over and over in one’s head in order to maintain it in short-term memory (STMs tend to be encoded in auditory form). With this type of rehearsal, information will stay in short-term memory until rehearsal stops. When rehearsal stops, the memory rapidly decays and is forgotten. It is said that memory only lasts from about 12 to 30 seconds without rehearsal. For example, when you are revising your study, you will always repeat what you have read in order for you to remember. If you are not repeating it, you may easily forget it. But, if anything interferes with maintenance rehearsal, memories are also likely to be lost.  For example, when you are counting something, then there is someone else interrupts you, you will probably forget what the last number was and have to start all over again. Interference in STM can also happen if the amount of information to be held in STM exceeds its capacity. Information already in STM may be “pushed out” to make room for newer information. This is why you may easily remember the first few names of people you meet, but you may have problem remembering the others. When you are facing this kind of problems, you can try to remember the names according to their appearance. Or you can create a song about their names. I am sure when you are doing this, you will easily remember the names.

From this lesson, I can learn how to remember something easily. Now I know that if I am no longer focusing on something, I will hardly remember it. This is why it is really important for us to pay attention in the class and in whatever we do. Try to focus as much as we can!

Short Term Memory

The Long or Short Lost of Knowledge

Ali, a bright young man, is about to face the test of his lifetime: SPM. Knowing that it would be totally hard to score for the History subject, Ali went through History book thoroughly hoping that he would not forget anything.

However, during his studies, he had always listen to music. Bruno Mars, Linkin Park and Maroon 5 are his favourite celebrities.  What Ali don’t realise is that his attention was more to his music than his studies. In other words, he has more attention to his echoic memory instead of his iconic memory.

In that the exam, it includes question about dates which includes days, months and years. He thought that it was like a digit-span test because he had to memorise all of this numbers. So, he studied these dates at the last 5 minutes before entering the examination hall so he could really remember it. He practiced saying it over and over and over and over again so that he could so he could store it in his short term memory which is basically called maintenance rehearsal. He also chunks the numbers so that he could remember easily.

He was confident as he sit down on his desk when suddenly everything that he had just learned was lost. He could not remember any of this dates. Should Ali know that his STM just last about 12 to 0 seconds he would have never done that. Other questions was hard even though he had studied for them. Poor Ali. Nonetheless, he managed to get an A.

Long Term Memory

Long term memories (LTM) - the system of memory into which all the information is placed to                                                     be kept more or less permanently.

Elaborative rehearsal  - a method of transferring information from STM into LTM by making                                            that information meaningful in some way.

Retrieval of Long Term Memory: Cues to Help Remember

Retrieval cues are stimulus’ for that help you remember a certain memory. As students, we see retrieval cues when we answer multiple answer questions in tests. You will first see the question and then you see the answers right? Hopefully, one of those answers would be a retrieval cue to help you choose the correct answer!

Encoding specifity is the tendency for memory of information to be improved if related information when the memory is first formed is available is also available when the memory is being retrieved. I think that this information is golden and eye-opening because it means we will do better in tests taken in class rather than tests taken in the exam hall (which is ALWAYS FREEZING so maybe ADFP students should learn in freezing classes?). 

And, this also means that if we were to chew gum in class, we would do better in our tests if we were to chew the same flavored gum during a test of the same subject. O.O

State-dependent learning tells us that memories formed during a particular physiological state will be easier to recall while in a similar state. For example when a couple (ahem excuse me) is fighting, then they would only remember the bad things in their relationship where they experience the same state, which is angry. If they were to have a good time, then they'd remember the good times when they were in a happy state!

Recall

Then we have recall, a type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be “pulled” from memory with very few external cues. Students recall when they are trying to write an essay during a test, and when they can’t, they experience retrieval failure. Retrieval failure is when an information is in the long term memory but you can't access it because there isn't any retrieval cues. 

Tip-of -the-tongue phenomenon. It happens all the time!

Huehuehue

During recall, we may experience the serial position effect, which is the tendency to more accurately remember the beginning and end of information, compared to the middle of it. Say you went to out with your friends for a fun day at Sunway Lagoon (wooooo!). It would be easier to remember how the day started and end, compared to what you did at the middle of it.

If you remember how you bought the tickets, booked the lockers, first stepped into the swimming pool, had your first ride, then that is the primacy effect. You remember the things at the beginning.

If you remember the last ride you went on, the changing room full of people, the setting sun, the dinner you had with your friends, then that is the recency effect. You are remembering the end.

Recognition

While recall is retrieving information, recognition is matching the information to a stored fact.

When recognizing something, we may experience a false postitive, the error of recognition in which people think they recognize something, but actually has never experienced it before.

Automatic Encoding and Flashbulb Memory

Automatic encoding is the tendency for certain information to enter long-term memory with no effort of encoding.

You don't try to remember what you ate for breakfast yesterday do you? But, most people could probably remember it without any effort. *amazed

Flashbulb memory is the type of automatic encoding that occurs because an unexpected event has strong emotional associations for the person remembering it.

These animals experience flashbulb memory too.

Being friendzoned by Derpette was unexpected and it has a strong emotional connection. The memory would probably be encoded by flashbulb memory.

Forgetting

In psychology, forgetting means when the information that we once had disappeared or no longer available in our memory. The information might not disappeared, but it can be retrieved.

            Now, let us start with encoding failure. Encoding is a process where new data is stored in the memory. Therefore, encoding failure is a situation where the data is failed to be stored in the memory. To understand more about encoding failure, let us ask the expert, the MEN IN BLACK!

I’m sure that many people have watched this famous movie. A story about 2 secret agent who fight the aliens and save the world! But, why MEN IN BLACK??

Because they are bad guy!

See, that bad device the man holds up there. It’s a forgetting machine! Every time their mission got exposed to the public, the device is used to make all the people forget about what had just happened. To prevent the public from knowing the fact that aliens was there on earth, both the men in black use the encoding failure concepts! So, stay away from MIB!

Different from memory decay and disuse. In decay and disuse of that particular memory, the data is there in the memory, but it might fades away over time, or because it is not used.

Decay is a type of forgetting that occurs when memories fade over time. This does NOT apply to Long Term Memory, but rather sensory storage and Short Term Memory. The main reason this occurs in sensory and/or short term memory is that we don't need to process and store all the information that we encounter in the world, so we simply don't attend to, recognize, or rehearse all the information, and this information just fades away not to be stored in our long term memories.

While disused memory also tend to be forgotten as well. For example, consider Manny Pacquiao,

a very famous boxer.

Right now, he had all the professional boxing moves in his memory, so, he can easily knock down his opponent. But, if Manny leaves boxing for a very long period, he surely will lose because all the skills he didn’t use will disappeared. So, never stop training!

Yeah! That’s an annoyed face when you get interfered. In psychology, interference also affects our memory, which tends to make us lose the information. Basically, there are 2 types of interferences in forgetting:

1.      Proactive interference

-          Inability to remember the new information, interfered by the old information.

2.      Retroactive interferences

-          Inability to remember the old information, interfered by the new information.

PROactive Interference:

For this part, let us consider Manny again.

If we are to put Manny, a boxer who’s attacking skills mainly focus only on the hands into a MMA match against the former MMA champion, Brock Lesnar. Even if Manny trained so hard in MMA, with all the new skills he need to learn-  the kicking, ground grappling, submissions, take down, etc, a situation called proactive interference will definitely occur, where Manny will be distracted by his boxing moves (old memory ) to learn the new MMA moves ( new information )

RETROactive interference :

For this, let’s take a look at a very simple example.

At first, the girl are studying French subject and after few days she studies the Spanish. When she has to take the Spanish mid-term exam, proactive interference occurs where her old knowledge interferes with the Spanish subject.

However, when she have learned Spanish subject thoroughly and suddenly she has to sit for the French mid-term, her new knowledge interferes with the French subject. This is what we call as retroactive interference.

This diagram might help you to understand better about proactive and retroactive interference.

Other than that, there are also some physical aspects of memory when we retrieve informations.

1.      Engram- the physical change that takes place in the brain when a memory is formed.

               When we are retrieving information into our brain, actually there are some
               physical changes in our brain. Just like we work out, there are physical changes    
                in the muscles.

1.      Hippocampus – area of brain responsible for the formation of LTMs.

Amnesia

¨  Retrograde amnesia - loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards, or loss of memory for the past.

¨  Anterograde amnesia - loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories (“senile dementia”)

This movie is the best example of the anterograde amnesia. Watch this movie if you want to know more about this kind of amnesia.

Therefore, we have learnt so much about memory, haven't we? Boston Psychology is great to have memory. :D

We can remember the good times, the great times, the fun times. And we can also remember the sad times, regretful times, angry times, although we might desperately want to forget such memories.

But our memories are precious la! Cannot just simply forget because it makes us who we are today.

Thank you for reading Boston Psychology and stay tuned for next week's post for more psychology wooo! We would greatly appreciate it if you would kindly give your responses and opinions on how to improve our blog so we can make it more fun and interesting for our readers to enjoy.

Goodnight everyone and study psychology!

Learning

On week two of the Summer Semester, we have learnt about "Learning".

Classical Conditioning

Based on the Thesaurus Dictionary, classical conditioning is defined by a learning process by which a subject comes to respond in a specific way to a previously neutral stimulus after the subject repeatedly encounters the neutral stimulus together with another stimulus that already elicits the response.

As for an example, the above diagram shows that the dog excretes saliva (unconditioned response) when it saw the food (unconditioned stimulus). Before the classical conditioning process, when the  bell (neutral stimulus) is ringed, there is no salivation. Then, the bell is ringed, followed by the presence of food, the salivation occur. After many trials done repeatedly, the dog learned that whenever there is a sound of bell, there will be food for it. In the end, the salivation will occur when the bell ringed, even without the presence of the food. At this stage, the sound of the bell will become conditioned stimulus, whereas the salivation will become conditioned response.

            There are some disadvantages of this classical conditioning as we are able to create fear in any animals and even the human. For a simple example, please click on the video!

            
As you can see, the kid learned that whenever there is a “quack” sound, something will hit him from the back. This simple experiment done to human to show that even human can be conditioned. This situation might get worse if the fear of the duck sound continues until he grows up. He might get a phobia of any duck sound.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning - depends on consequences and involves reinforcements and punishments.

Reinforcements

Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement is giving something pleasant for a behaviour or an attitude. This increases the probability that the behaviour will continue. Examples are:

• Receiving praise after a musical performance would increase the amount that you perform.
• A teacher complimenting students when they answer correctly will increase that behaviour.
• At a gym, customers receive a discount if they work out a certain number of times and eat healthy.
• In the Skinner Box experiment, a rat got food as a reward for acceptable behavior, such as pressing a lever.

Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement is taking away something unpleasant as a result of the behavior that is acceptable. This is also meant to increase the behaviour. Examples are:

• It is very noisy outside so you turn on the television to mask the noise. Turning on the radio decreased the unpleasant noise.
• At a store, a child throws a tantrum because he did not get a candy bar. Dad finally gets him one. He stopped the tantrum so he took away something unpleasant and Dad’s behavior of getting candy bars will increase.
• In the Skinner box experiment, a loud noise continuously sounded inside the cage until the rat did what Skinner wanted him to do. When he did, the noise stopped, so the unpleasant noise was taken away. 
• In a biology class, students who made an "A" on the test did not have to dissect a frog.

Shaping

Shaping is all about changing behavior gradually, step by step. For example, when training circus animals, a trainer cannot immediately expect them to master a new trick. A lion jumping through a hoop should first be trained to stay in a hoop, walk through a hoop, hop through a hoop, and then, jump through a hoop.

Schedules of Reinforcement

Schedules of reinforcement are divided into two which are ratios and intervals. Ratio is something that related with amount while interval is something that related with time.  In ratio we have fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement and variable ratio schedules of reinforcement. Same things go to interval, we have fixed interval schedules of reinforcement and variable interval schedules of reinforcement. 

Fixed ratio schedules of reinforcement	The amount you need to achieve or get in order to get the reward will always be the same. For example, you need to sell 5 cars in order to get paid RM 10 000. In the example, the amount you need to achieve is selling 5 cars and you will get RM 10 000 as the reward. So for every 5 cars you sell, you will be paid RM 10 000.
Variable schedules of reinforcement	The amount you need to achieve or get in order to get the reward are different for every trial or event. For example for the first month you will be rewarded RM 10 000 for every 5 cars you sold. For the second month you         will be rewarded RM 15 000 for every 7 cars you sold and for the third month you will be rewarded RM 7000 for every 3 cars you sold. From the example, we can see that the amount of cars that you need to sell is different in the 3 months in order to be rewarded.
Fixed interval schedules of reinforcement	In easy way to explain this term, you need to pass a certain time in order to get the reinforcement and the time will be always be the same. For example, the person who is working with the government, they need to wait until the end of the month before they receive their salary.
Variable interval schedules of reinforcement	You need to pass a certain of time in order to get the reinforcement and the time is different for every trial or event. The easiest example in order to understand this term is fishing. During fishing you need to wait before you a get a fish. Let say, after 15 minutes of waiting you caught your first fish and 30 minutes later you caught your second fish. This example actually explained that you will not know for how long you need to wait before you can catch a fish.

Punishment

Punishment are events or objects that makes a response less likely to happen again.

1. Punishment by Application

Punishment by application is also known as positive punishment. It involves the presence of an undesirable stimulus after a behavior. As an example, when a student misbehaves, a teacher might cane the child as a form of punishment by application. When the child experiences the pain and humiliation of being caned, he will stop misbehaving.

2. Punishment by Removal

Punishment by removal is known as negative punishment. It involves the removal of a pleasurable stimulus after a behavior. Let us use the example of the child misbehaving again. When the student misbehaves, the teacher will take away a desirable stimulus, such as the student's recess time away from him.

How To Make Punishment More Effective

1. Punishment should follow the behavior it is meant to punish.

The time interval between response and punishment should be kept as short as possible. For example, when the teacher catches the student misbehaving, the teacher should immediately punish the child.

2. Punishment should be consistent.

Consistency in punishment is imperative. For example, if a teacher punishes the child once for misbehavior, then the teacher should punish the child for every misbehavior.

3. Punishment of the wrong behavior should be paired, whenever possible, with reinforcement of the right behavior.

Punishment of the wrong behavior when paired with reinforcement of the right behavior would make the right behavior more prominent. For example, when the child is behaving well, then the teacher should give them a cookie.

Cognitive Learning Theory

• -          is a learning that requires cognition which is thinking process.
• -          Cognition in other words are the mental events that take place inside a person’s mind while  behaviour could no longer be ignored.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness can be seen not only in animals, but in humans as well. In fact, we believe that learned helplessness impacts students such as ourselves more than we realize. For example, an ample amount of students have had a monstrous result in a Calculus test or quiz. If the student has experienced failure enough times, then the student would feel that no matter what he does, he would always fail (helplessness). Later in life, when a student is faced with a math challenge, the student might have a sense of helplessness.

http://izquotes.com/quote/165502

Latent Learning

-          is a learning that remains hidden until its application become useful.

-          For example, when you observe the ways your mother cooks chicken curry. You gain the knowledge but you do not apply it until at one particular time, when you are alone and you want to eat chicken curry, you will apply the knowledge that you have learned by observing your mom.

Insight also is one of the most popular behavior in psychology

• -          It is the sudden perception of relationships among various parts of problem, allowing the solution to the problem to come quickly and it cannot be gained through trial-and-error learning alone.
• -          We can notice this behaviour by the presence of “Aha moment”.
• -          The most popular experiment is regarding a chimpanzee was given two sticks that can be combined together. Then the monkey was given a banana and it had to take the banana by using that particular sticks. At the end of the experiment, the chimpanzee managed to grab the banana by combining these sticks. This experiment showed that the chimpanzee didn’t learn how to combining the sticks but its sudden perception that the sticks can be combined together had helped it to grab the banana.
• -          In our daily life, we also usually use our insight to solve many problems but sometimes we just did not notice it. 

Observational Learning

A child can be too aggressive after watching the video that shows people fighting with each other and they can be either way when they are watching the video with good values. This is because during the session, they are observing every action that came out in the video. This is called observational learning. Observational learning is learning new behavior by watching a model perform that behavior. So, we need to be very careful with every action that we do in front of the child because they tend to follow us. They observe what we do and then, they will try to do it. For example, when we are smoking in front of them, there is no doubt they will try smoking too. This can be proven through the experiment that had been conducted by Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila Ross (1963). In this experiment, they asked two groups of children to watch films in which an adult or a cartoon character violently attacked an inflated ‘Bobo” doll. Another group watched a different film. They then left the children in a room with a Bobo doll. Only the children who had watched films with attacks on the doll attacked the doll themselves, using many of the same movements they had just seen. This shows that it is really important for us to be a good model for the children. If not, there will be many bad consequences to the children. The clear implication is that children copy the aggressive behavior they have seen in other. 

The Science of Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Behavior refers to actions and responses which are observable, whereas mental processes refers to internal states such as thoughts and feelings. Mental processes cannot be directly seen .

Four Goals of Psychology

There are four goals of psychology which are to describe, to explain, to predict, and to control.

1.      To Describe
Description is one of the most basic goals of psychology. It poses the question, “What is happening?” Psychologists aim to describe how people behave, think, and feel.

2.      To Explain
To explain –to understand why people do what they do- prompts psychologists to ask the question, “Why is it happening?” Explanations may come in a variety of forms, typically hypotheses and theories that specify the causes of behavior.

3.      To Predict
Psychologists are able to predict how a behavior will appear in the future and if others will exhibit the same behavior. By understanding the behavior and why people exert a particular behavior, psychologists can make predictions regarding the behavior in the future.

4.      To Control
Finally, psychology aims to control our behavior to make practical and effective adjustments in the lives of society. By conducting experiments and forming links between variables, psychologists are able to enhance human well-being . Thus, controlling and modifying human behavior is undoubtedly a key focus in psychology.

From the four goals of psychology, we have learnt that the goals in psychology is similar to what we experience in our everyday lives when we are connecting with others. Without realizing, there are a myriad of instances when we try to describe, explain, predict, and change the conducts of the community around us. The four goals of psychology is acutely relatable especially at the current time because it is our first week as a class together this semester and there are many new people to meet and adapt to.

Besides that, the four goals of psychology allows us to understand the reasoning behind why people behave the way they do and allows us to utilize the information for the benefit of society. We have found that psychology plays a notable part in constructing the world into a better place.

Schools of Thought

Structuralism: Focused on structure or basic elements of the mind

Functionalism: How the mind allows people to function in the real world

Gestalt psychology: Good figure psychology

Psychoanalysis: The theory and therapy based on the work of Sigmund Freud

Behaviorism: The science of behavior that focuses on observable behavior only.

After going through this chapter, there are few names that we should know in the history of psychology. The names are:

Wilhelm Wundt (appsychology.com)

1. Wilhelm Wundt

-He is the founder of Structuralism in German 1879

-He also developed the technique of objective introspection

2. Edward Titchener

-He is Wundt’s student

-He was the one who bring structuralism to America

- He also the one who expend the idea

3. William James

-He is the founder of Functionalism

4. Wertheimer

-He is the one who started the Gestalt psychology

5. Sigmund Freud

- His theory and his therapy result in the foundation of Psychoanalysis.

6. John B. Watson

- The person who proposed Behaviorism

Reflection

In my opinion, these names have contributed so much to the world of psychology and we should thank them to their hard work and their determination while doing the research. Without them, maybe the psychology itself may not exist.

7 Psychology Perspectives

Psychology can be defined as the study of human behaviour and mental processes. However, the definition is too general, covering a lot of ground because the causes of behaviour and mental processes are not always clear. Therefore, many scientists had come with their own ideas and perspectives on psychology. Basically, there are 7 major psychology perspectives, which are psychodynamic, behaviourism, cognitive, biological, existential, sociocultural, and evolutionary.

Psychodynamic	Due to unconscious mind or inner force.
Behaviourism	Environmental effect or impact to the behaviour. Example: rewards/punishments.
Cognitive	Resulting from the mental processes.
Biopsychology	Variation in human behaviour due to different biological (hormones, neurotransmitters, inheritance, etc.)
Existential	Based on reality that people live and the freedom to choose their own path.
Sociocultural	Human behaviour affected by social context, environmental cues, social pressure, and cultural influences.
Evolutionary	Behaviour that results from the process that support the survival of the species.

Scientific and Descriptive methods

Scientific methods

Psychology is considered as scientific as it uses scientific method, data and measurement. Scientific method is the gathering of data so that measurement has less error and biases. Scientific method includes a few steps that need to be go through accordingly:

1.      Understand the question

2.      Form the hypothesis

3.      Test the hypothesis

4.      Drawing conclusions from the hypothesis and test

5.      Make a report so it can be replicated

Descriptive Methods

Descriptive method do not answer how/ when/ why questions. They only answer ‘what’ questions.

Type of observation	Advantage	Disadvantage
Naturalistic observation: observing animals/humans in their normal environment	Realistic picture of behaviour	Observer effect Participant observation Observer bias Blind observers
Laboratory observation: Observing animals/humans in a lab setting	Control of environment Use of equipment	Artificial situation
Case study: Study of something deeply	Large amount of information	Not applicable to others
Surveys: Researchers asking questions on the study
Representative sample: Selection of random sample of subjects from a larger population of objects	Data from large number of people Study unobservable behaviours	Have to ensure representative sample People are not accurate every time

Correlation

A measure of the relationship between two variables.

Measures of two variables goes in a math formula and produce this correlation coefficient which represents:

• -          Direction of relationship
• -          Strength of relationship

Positive correlation- variables are directly proportional to each other.

Negative correlation- variables are inversely proportional to each other.

EXPERIMENT

Experiment is a deliberate manipulation of a variable to see if corresponding changes in behavior result, allowing the determination of cause-and-effect relationships.

In experiment, there must be:

•          Operational definition which is a definition of a variable of interest that allows it to be directly measured.

•          Independent variable (IV) which is a variable in an experiment that is manipulated by the experimenter.

•          Dependent variable (DV) which is a variable in an experiment that represents the measurable response or behavior of the subjects in the experiment.

In experiment, there will be also:

•          Experimental group which are the subjects in an experiment who are subjected to the independent variable.

•          Control group which are subjects in an experiment who are not subjected to the independent variable and who may receive a placebo treatment (controls for confounding variables).

•          Random assignment which is a process of assigning subjects to the experimental or control groups randomly, so that each subject has an equal chance of being in either group.

Other than that, we also need to concern with the weaknesses of this method as it might change the results:

1.      Placebo effect - expectations of the participants in a study can influence their behavior.

a.       To avoid this effect, experimenter can carry out single-blind-study where the subjects do not know if they are in the experimental or the control group.

2.      Experimenter effect - experimenter’s expectations unintentionally influence the results of the study.

a.       To avoid this effect, experimenter can carry out double-blind study which neither the experimenter nor the subjects knows if the subjects are in the experimental or control group.

3.      Quasi-experimental designs - not considered true experiments because of the inability to randomly assign participants to the experimental and control groups.

Ethics in Psychological Research

Before this, I had always wondered how the psychologists perform their researches. For example, if they believed that watching violent programs might really transform viewers into murderers, do they really conduct the experiments to find out for sure? Isn't it unethical to conduct that kind of experiment because they could change or alter the viewers’ behavior? Also, it is unethical to perform procedures that are likely to cause significant pain, embarrassment, or any other harm. But, once I learn psychology studies, now I know that psychologists also have their ethical in psychological research and they should follow them.  From these ethics, the participants have the right to decide whether they want to participate or not. This is really helpful because they can stop participating if they feel that they are at risk. So, the psychologists cannot do whatever they want without the participant’s permissions. The ethics in psychological research has taught me that we still need to take note towards others feeling or opinion when we are doing something to them.