Ministry of higher and secondary special education uzbekistan state university of world languages department of theoretical sciences of english language

1.2 Phenomena and its theories

A phenomenon (plural, phenomenon) is a general outcome that has been reliably observed in systematic empirical research. It is essentially an established answer to a research question. Some of the phenomena we encountered in this book were that expressive writing improves health, women do not speak more than men, and cell phone use impairs driving ability. Some argue that dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) has increased dramatically in popularity in the late 20th century, people doing better on tasks easy when followed by others (and less so on difficult tasks), and people remember the items presented at the beginning and end of the list better than those presented in the middle.⁴

Some Famous Psychological Phenomena
Phenomena are often named by their discoverers or other researchers, and these names can become common and widely known. The following list is a small example of well-known phenomena in psychology.

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  Blind. People with visual cortex damage are often able to consciously respond to visual stimuli they don't see.
  
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  Spectator Effect The more people present in an emergency, the less likely it is that any of them will help. Basic write error.
  
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  People tend to interpret the behavior of others in terms of personal characteristics as opposed to the situation in which they find themselves. The McGurk effect When the sound of a basic voice sound is combined with a video of a person moving their mouth to create another vocal sound, people often perceive a sound in between.
  
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  For an illustration, see http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~rosenblu/VSMcGurk.html. Race specific effects. People recognize the faces of people of their own race more accurately than the faces of people of another race.
  
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  Placebo effect. Placebo (pseudo-psychological or medical treatments) often lead to an improvement in people's symptoms and functioning.
  
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  Simple exposure effect. The more people are exposed to a stimulus, the more they like it, even when the stimulus is sublimely expressed.
  
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  Serial position effect. Stimuli that appear near the top and bottom of the list are remembered better than stimuli that appear in the middle. For an illustration, see http://cat.xula.edu/thinker/memory/working/serial.
  
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  Self-healing. A conditioned response that has been turned off usually returns without further formation after some time.
  
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  Although an experimental result may be called a phenomenon after it has been observed only once, the term is more likely to be used for results that have been reproduced.
  

Replication is the practice of repeating research, exactly as it was originally or with modifications, to ensure that the research produces the same results. Individual researchers often copy their own studies before publishing them. Many empirical research reports include an initial study and then one or more follow-up studies that replicate the original research with minor modifications. The results are particularly interesting that have attracted the attention of other researchers conducting their own copies. The positive impact of expressive handwriting on health and the negative impact of mobile phone use on driving ability are examples of phenomena that have been repeated by many researchers. different rescue.
Sometimes repeating a study produces results that differ from those of the original study. This could mean that the original research results or the copied results are a fluke - they happen by chance and don't reflect something that is usually true. In either case, additional copies will probably solve this problem. Failure to produce the same results could also mean that the copy was significantly different from the original study. For example, early studies show that people perform better and faster on many tasks when watched by others than when alone. However, some later transcripts showed that people performed worse when being watched by others. In the end, researcher Robert Zajonc identified a key difference between the two types of studies. People seem to perform better when supervised on highly practiced tasks, but worse when supervised on relatively lightly practiced tasks (Zajonc, 1965). These two phenomena are known today as social facilitation and social inhibition.⁵
A theory is a coherent explanation or explanation of one or more phenomena. Although theories can take many different forms, what they have in common is going beyond the phenomena they explain by including variables, structures, processes, functions, or organizational principles. position has not been directly observed. For example, consider Zajonc's theory of social facilitation and social inhibition. He proposed that being observed by others while performing a task would induce a general state of physiological arousal, increasing the likelihood of a dominant response (very likely). Thus, for highly practiced tasks, being monitored increases the propensity to give the correct answer, but for relatively lightly practiced tasks, being monitored increases the propensity to give the correct answer. direction to give the wrong answer. Note that this theory - which has since become a motivating theory - offers an explanation of both social facilitation and social inhibition beyond the phenomena themselves by including concepts such as " stimulus" and "dominant response", as well as processes such as the effect of stimulus on the dominant response.
Outside of science, referring to an idea as a theory often implies that it has not been tested - perhaps nothing more than a mythical conjecture. However, in science, the term theory has no such connotation. A theory is simply an explanation or explanation of a set of phenomena. It may not be tested, but it may well be widely tested, well supported, and accepted by the scientific community as an accurate description of the world. For example, the theory of evolution by natural selection is a theory because it explains the variety of life on earth, not because it has not been verified or supported by scientific research. On the contrary, the evidence for this theory is extremely positive and almost all scientists accept its basic assumptions as true. Likewise, the "germ theory" of disease is a theory because it explains the origin of diseases, not because there is any doubt that many diseases are caused by infectious microorganisms. infection in the body.
In addition to theory, psychological researchers use a number of related terms to refer to their explanations and interpretations of phenomena. Perspective is a broad approach - more general than a theory - to the explanation and interpretation of phenomena. For example, researchers from a biological perspective tend to explain phenomena in terms of genetics or the structure and processes of the nervous and endocrine systems, while researchers from a behavioral perspective vi tends to explain phenomena in terms of reinforcement, punishment, and other external events. . A model is an accurate explanation or interpretation of a particular phenomenon, usually expressed in the form of equations, computer programs, or biological structures and processes. A hypothesis can be an explanation based on only a few key concepts, although the term usually refers to the prediction of a new phenomenon based on a theory (see section 4.3 "Using theories of in psychological research"). Adding to the confusion is the fact that researchers often use these terms interchangeably. It would not be wrong to call motivation theory a motivational model or even a motivation hypothesis. And the psychosocial model of health psychology - the general idea that health is determined by the interaction of biological, psychological and social factors - is like a view as defined. meaning here. However, keep in mind that the most important distinction is between observation and interpretation. Of course, scientific theories aim to provide precise explanations or interpretations of phenomena. But there must be more than that. Consider that a theory can be correct without being very useful. Saying that expressive writing helps people “manage emotions” may be accurate, but it seems too vague to be of much use. Also consider that a theory can be useful without being entirely correct. Figure 1 "Representation of the multi-store model of human memory" is a representation of the classical multi-store model of human memory, which is still cited and discussed by researchers in textbooks although it is now known to be inaccurate in some respects. (Izawa, 1999). Both of these examples suggest that theories have purposes other than just providing precise explanations or interpretations. Here we consider three complementary purposes of theories: organizing known phenomena, predicting outcomes in new situations, and generating new research.