the cat in the hat experiment

p The Cat and the Hat Experiment

Decaspar and Spence

In the Cat in the Hat experiment , Decaspar and Spence (1986 ) looked at infant perception of the human voice . In any , experiment you have and independent , and a dependent variable . In the case of the Cat in Hat experiment , the independent variable was an adult reading the Dr . Seuss story The Cat in the Ha while an infant nursed . The dependent variable was the rate of sucking while the infant was being nursed . The hypothesis of Decaspar and Spence (1986 ) was that

if an infant recognized its mothers voice the rate of sucking would increase . The other side of this hypothesis was that if the infant did not recognize the voice that was reading the rate of sucking would decrease

It is important when doing an experiment to decide before starting your research what type of research you wish to do . There are two primary categories of psychological research , qualitative and quantitative . The Cat in the Hat experiment was a quantitative experiment . This meant that they were studying a behavior that was objective and measurable . In a qualitative study what researchers study is more subjective and open to interpretation . Using quantitative measures such as number of sucks per minute is important in an experiment because this data can support your theory . If the data does not support the theory , you can then look at why it did not support your theory if you have quantitative data

The reason that the researchers needed to measure both increases and decreases in infant sucking patterns in response to their mother voice is for the simple fact that they needed to be able to support their theory . If the infant 's rate of sucking decreased rather than increased when their mother read The Cat in the Hat to them it would indicate that , their initial hypothesis was incorrect and that they needed to find out why . In this way , they could use the data from the failed hypothesis to develop a new hypothesis for use in further experiments It is important for researchers to gain such information as either way it will lead the researcher to a greater understanding of human development

Measuring increases and decreases in infant sucking rates could also indicate to Decaspar and Spence (1986 ) if there was something wrong with their population sample . This could be for many reasons from the infant having a cold to having an undiagnosed developmental disability . Any of these things would have skewed Decaspar and Spence 's (1986 ) results and this would have been a reason to replicate the experiment . Finally , the other reason for studying both increases and decreases in the sucking rate would be to prove the validity and reliability of whatever tools they were using to measure the sucking rate . Unreliable tools can invalidate the results of your experiment .So if Decaspar and Spence (1986 ) had noticed a decrease in the behavior they were measuring this would have lead them to either calibrate...