ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the methodological and statistical challenges confronting psychology, and focuses on problems that are particular to psychology, as opposed to the general problems of experimental design, confirmation, inference, and so on that confront essentially all sciences. It also focuses on problems for which no full and complete solution is known. By virtue of the individuals and processes being studied, cognitive psychology is a methodologically challenging science. Most of cognitive psychology is individualistic in target: it aims to develop models of cognitive functioning in particular individuals, for purposes of prediction, explanation, and understanding. The possibility of spurious correlations despite randomization is not peculiar to psychology, but is exacerbated by the relatively small sample sizes. The large variability of psychological data, the possibility of implicit cognitive mechanisms and individual differences, difficulty of experimental design and control, and the widespread use of null hypothesis statistical testing all stand to benefit from serious philosophical investigation.
