So I have picked a research article; which I can attach and I need to write a paragraph about how these six principles (described below of the teachers verbatim definitions ) relate. I also have to use the textbook which I have in PDF and can send. It needs to be in APA 7. I have done the first two paragraphs and just need the six principles. There is a sample paper. Do not use direct quotes paraphrase only. 1. Ruling Out Rival Hypotheses. Do the results of the recovered memories research consider rival hypotheses? Do the results of the recovered memories research that discounts the notion (i.e., suggests that traumatic memories work the same way as other kinds of memories and are nothing special) consider rival hypotheses? For instance how can one account for the findings that indicate that most people who have experienced severe trauma find it extremely difficult to forget the trauma? Many seek treatment because they find memories of the trauma to be incredibly vivid and completely disturbing to them. Such memories severely impair their ability to function in everyday life. Are recovered traumatic memories really just another instance of the kinds of forgetting that occur in all of us and influenced by factors such as age, drug use, head injury, and sleep deprivation and involves the same potential for errors common to everyday memory retrieval? Make sure in your assignment to consider other compelling interpretations of the data. 2. Correlation vs Causation. When interpreting the results discussed in your research article are the results obtained from a true experiment (or experiments) described in the research article? Were any correlations also conducted? True experiments allow one to draw conclusions based on cause and effect. They typically have a treatment group and a control group. Correlational research on the other hand typically only tells you that two or more things are related to each other in some way and not that one necessarily causes the other. For instance, there is a relationship between depression and hopelessness as depression increases, hopelessness usually increases too. This is called a positive correlation. But does depression cause hopelessness, or does hopelessness lead one to become depressed instead? Or is it that some other variable or variables causes both like experiencing numerous frustrations or rejections over time? So is some of the research discussed in the article correlational in nature? If so one must be very careful about not assuming that one thing causes another in such studies. The research youve found on recovered memories of trauma may suggest people who are suggestible are more likely to report having experienced recovered memories. Does suggestibility cause recovered memories to develop? Or do recovered memories cause one to become more suggestible? Or is there some other factor weve missed that could explain both increased suggestibility and the potential for recovered memories? Another good example of correlation vs causation involves eating ice cream. Research suggests that there is a correlation between as ice cream sales and drownings. More specifically, as ice cream sales increase, drownings in rivers and lakes also increase. So does this mean that ice cream sales cause drownings? This is doubtful. Do drownings cause ice cream sales? I suspect this is unlikely too. The more tenable explanation is that when the temperatures increase during the summer, there are more people buying ice cream and more people swimming in lakes and rivers (which increase the probability that there will be drownings). This demonstrates why its important to never assume that correlational research can provide information about the cause of some kind of behaviour. 3. Falsifiability. This simply refers to the possibility that the results from a research study have the potential to be deemed false. A simple way to think about falsifiability is like this: Do you know someone who often refuses to admit that they are wrong even when you have shown them pretty convincing evidence that they are mistaken?!? This person refuses to be proven wrong. This is a key aspect of falsifiability. Before someone conducts a research study, they are required to predict what findings are likely to occur (these are called hypotheses) based on their theory. If the findings turn out just like they had predicted the person can then say that the results confirm their predictions and support their theory. HOWEVER, good researchers ALSO must predict what WILL NOT occur. If what they predict should NOT happen actually happens then the person needs to accept that their predictions (hypotheses) may be incorrect and thus challenge their theory. This allows scientific knowledge to move forward and gives direction to research. If you never predicted what was NOT supposed to happen you would never be wrong when it occurred. You could just say Oh .yeah ..thats not surprising .I knew that would happen ..and it still um .supports my predictions. In a nut-shell, falsifiability allows a researcher to be wrong in their predictions. But most people dont like being wrong. They want to be right. So some researchers will conduct research that protects them from being wrong. If a researcher is interested in testing whether a new treatment for anxiety is effective, they may conduct a study that involves treating a group of anxious participants over 6 weeks. They may find that their treatment was effective in reducing anxiety. So they can say See our treatment works! However, what if a control group was used and found that the anxious participants in the control group who received NO TREATMENT AT ALL showed just as much improvement at the end of the 6 weeks as the treated group? This would call into question whether the treatment itself or merely just the passage of time was responsible for the improvement in anxiety in the research participants. So in this case not including a control group in such a study suggests a lack of falsifiability because by not including a control group the researchers are helping to ensure that their belief about the effectiveness of a new treatment is protected from being shown to be false. Students often have a difficult time understanding falsifiability. So here is another example to help you out. Do the authors of a research study take risks in t
esting their hypotheses? If a meteorologist says I predict that the weather tomorrow will be a bit different than the weather today this isnt taking much of a risk. It IS likely that the weather will be a bit different from day to day. And the meteorologist isnt even stating in what way the weather will be different. Will it be warmer? Will it be colder? So they are likely to be right all the time. Now if the meteorologist said I predict it will rain tomorrow by 12 noon and we will get about 5 mm of rainfall until 4 PM at which point the rain will stop and the sun will appear. Now THAT is a risky prediction. If it turns out that she was correct in her prediction thats noteworthy (though she could have been correct simply due to chance). However notice there is also a reasonable likelihood that she could be wrong too if the weather doesnt turn out like she specifically predicted. This is Falsifiability. Allowing the chance you could be wrong by making risky predictions that can be deemed either true or false. And if she gets the forecast wrong then she must say my prediction was incorrect. Still dont understand falsifiability? Here are more examples. A group of researchers are conducting a study to test the theory that sugar causes hyperactivity in children. They hypothesize that sugar consumption will lead to observable increases in activity level compared to a placebo control group. They then conduct the study. The results show that there is no increase in activity level in the sugar treatment group. So do the researchers now state that sugar apparently causes no increase in activity level in children? No. The researchers then claim that they didn?t use enough sugar to get an effect. So they conduct another study. This time they use more sugar and find that the sugar treatment group still shows no increase in activity level. Do they now state that sugar apparently causes no increase in activity level in children? No. They state that they believe they found no effect because the effect will only occur in sugar ?sensitive? children. So they conduct another study in sugar sensitive children and find that once again the sugar sensitive children show no increase in activity level compared to the placebo controlled group. Do they finally state that there appears to be no relationship between sugar and hyperactivity level? No. See what is happening here? In this case it seems that no amount of evidence is enough for the researchers to finally concede that sugar does not increase activity level in children. So they have not set up their research to be falsifiable. 4. Replicability. Has the research you are evaluating been repeated by other scientists? Keep in mind that replication doesnt necessarily mean that the exact same study must be repeated. A different study could use a different method, but still be interested in finding an answer to the same question, and this would still be considered a replication. Still, the bottom line is this: Do the findings generally agree with other studies investigating the same questions? You should strongly avoid making comments like I agree with the notion of recovered memories because I found one study that suggests they do exist and involve special memory mechanisms. Why? Because you cant generalize the findings from one study, particularly if there are several good studies that contradict those found in that one article. Replicability gives strength to research findings because it adds reassurance that other researchers (often many other researchers) have arrived at the same kind of conclusions through a variety of other research methods designed to answer the same question. That gives us more confidence that the findings are real and didnt occur just by chance. 5. Extraordinary Claims. The saying goes like this: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What does this mean? Well, it means that startling claims (i.e., bold claims like infants can remember the trauma associated with birth) require more evidence than less remarkable claims like
..Finding ways to organized information into meaningful chunks improves encoding, retention, and later recall of that material from memory. For the article that you have chosen, does it involve an extraordinary claim? Were you able to find lots of sound evidence to support it or disconfirm it? If not its probably best to be cautious and admit that your topic area (or a belief you may have about that topic area) has not been effectively researched. So if you find a new research study that claims that all of the previous research findings on recovered traumatic memories have been disconfirmed you should first be very skeptical. Why? Because it is rare that a new study comes along that creates a break-through in knowledge and absolutely re-writes everything that was known previously about a phenomenon. You must also require the authors of that study to present an extraordinary amount of convincing scientific evidence before you begin to cautiously entertain or even remotely begin to give credence to such an unexpected and extraordinary claim. 6. Occams Razor. Is a simpler explanation more likely to better fit an observation or claim than a more unusual, far-fetched, and complex one? When you watch an illusionist like David Blaine levitate a few inches off the ground would a simpler explanation better fit that observation (e.g., He is fooling you into thinking he is levitating based on the angle you are viewing him from, or that he used a cable hidden from view to raise himself up) than concluding that David Blaine has some kind of magical and special superpower? If you read a research study that suggests recovered memories occur as a result of repression due to the inability of the Ego to mediate ID impulses and Superego restraint you could argue that Occam s razor would suggest a simpler, more rational explanation. A more parsimonious explanation, in this case, might be that repression is a term used to simply describe the kinds of forgetting and later cued retrieval we all experience and is related to normal biological functions.
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