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Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, including (among others) sensation, perception, memory, cognition, learning, motivation, emotion; developmental processes, social psychology, and the neural ...
The experiments of Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794), a French chemist regarded as the founder of modern chemistry, were among the first to be truly quantitative. Lavoisier showed that although matter changes its state in a chemical reaction, the quantity of matter is the same at the end as at the beginning of every chemical reaction.
Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Experiments vary greatly in goal and scale but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results. There also exist natural experimental studies.
A 1953 article in the medical/scientific journal Clinical Science [110] described a medical experiment in which researchers intentionally blistered the skin on the abdomens of 41 children, who ranged in age from 8 to 14, using cantharide. The study was performed to determine how severely the substance injures/irritates the skin of children.
The use of a sequence of experiments, where the design of each may depend on the results of previous experiments, including the possible decision to stop experimenting, is within the scope of sequential analysis, a field that was pioneered [12] by Abraham Wald in the context of sequential tests of statistical hypotheses. [13]
One of Milgram's most famous works is a study of obedience and authority, which is widely known as the Milgram Experiment. [5] Milgram's earlier association with Pool and Kochen was the likely source of his interest in the increasing interconnectedness among human beings. Gurevich's interviews served as a basis for his small world experiments.
Organisms with longer generations times, although costly, can be used in experimental evolution. Laboratory studies with foxes [6] and with rodents (see below) have shown that notable adaptations can occur within as few as 10–20 generations and experiments with wild guppies have observed adaptations within comparable numbers of generations. [7]
This study was an example of a natural experiment, called a case-crossover experiment, where the exposure is removed for a time and then returned. The study also noted its own weaknesses which potentially suggest that the inability to control variables in natural experiments can impede investigators from drawing firm conclusions.' [12]