ID:
PSICOG04
Duration (hours):
60
CFU:
6
SSD:
PSICOMETRIA
Located in:
CHIETI
Url:
PSYCHOLOGY/NEUROSCIENZE COGNITIVE Year: 1
Year:
2025
Course Catalogue:
Overview
Date/time interval
Secondo Semestre (09/02/2026 - 30/05/2026)
Syllabus
Course Objectives
The course aims to realize the educational objectives of the “Laurea Magistrale in Psicologia” by providing the theoretical foundations as well as the practical skills needed for the application of statistical analysis methods and techniques in psychological research and in clinical contexts. It also includes the study of the relationship between brain and behavior. The course also foresees the familiarization with informatic/digital procedures for the analysis of quantitative data in research as well as clinical contexts. Concerning the expected educational achievements, the student is expected to show to have achieved the following goals:
1) Knowledge about the concepts, the operationalization and the instruments of psychometric measurement of general psychological constructs;
2) Knowledge about the use of the general psychological constructs of intelligence and personality for the characterization of individual differences in cognitive and clinical neuroscience;
3) The capacity to detect deficits in patients and the dissociation between psychological/cognitive test scores by using principal statistical methods, and to identify typical and atypical psychological and cognitive functioning in the context of clinical neuropsychology;
4) The capacity to use quantitative datasets of cognitive neuroscience research and to implement principal statistical procedures and models for data analysis (data with categorical factors, repeated measures and continuous variables) starting from an hypothesis;
5) The understanding of the use of informatic support (software, electronic datasets, platforms for data sharing) for the statistical analysis is described above by the points 3) and 4);
6) The capacity to integrate and interpret the results obtained through the procedures described above by points 1-5) at a statistical, conceptual and clinical level; to be able to communicate this interpretation, using a disciplinary lexicon, to specialists as well as non-specialists.
Course Prerequisites
No
Teaching Methods
The course consists of 60 hours of frontal teaching, divided in lessons of 2 or 3 hours, twice or three times a week, depending on the academic calendar. Frontal teaching will consist partially of theoretical lessons. During the lessons, considerable time will also be spent on practical exercises (>16 hours) with the aim to consolidate the achieved theoretical knowledge to provide the opportunity to acquire familiarity, experience and autonomy in the application and the understanding of statistical techniques. The exercises will be performed at the group and the individual level in an interactive way with the teacher and the other students. The use of a personal laptop could be useful as a support for the exercises. Participation in the lessons is optional for the students, but given the complexity of the topics and the course content, it is strongly recommended to participate regularly and continuously.
In addition to the frontal teaching described above, the online e-learning platform will be used to support teaching ( https://... ), which allows to provide material for exercising and studying autonomously. This material will be treated also during the frontal teaching hours.
- Software (free) for the statistical analysis of single cases in neuropsychology: https://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/j.crawford/pages/dept/SingleCaseMethodology.htm
- Software (free) for experimental statistical analysis (JASP open source)
https://jasp-stats.org
- Online platform (free) for datasets for the exercises (Open Science Framework) https://osf.io
Assessment Methods
The exam is composed of two parts (total end score: 30 points).
1) Written test (optional partial test, April, otherwise during the exam session; educational objectives 1-5): The evaluation of the achievements of the students will take place: writing a summary in accordance with APA norms concerning the output of a t-test for discrepancy of a single case (10 points, 1/3 of the total end score) for a duration of 50 minutes. The topics of the written exam reflect those of the course program at both a theoretical and a practical level (contents 1 and 2 of the course).
2) Oral examination (final test, during the official exam session; educational objectives 4-6 or course contents 3 and 4): The preparation of the students will be evaluated in an interview by the teacher (20 points, 2/3 of the total end score) for 20 minutes. The aim of the interview is to examine the capacity of the student to read and interpret the quantitative results of a statistical analysis, and to communicate the statistical results in theoretical and clinical terms in an appropriate disciplinary language suitable to inform specialists as well as non-specialists. At the application level, the students will be required to determine what is the appropriate statistical model to answer a clinical or experimental question starting from an hypothesis and dataset (e.g. indicate in a determined context which is the suitable test, model, identify the variables, factors and the factor levels to select).
Evaluation:
Final vote
Texts
“STATISTICA SPERIMENTALE UNIVARIATA: UNA GUIDA PRATICA CON L’AUSILIO DEL SOFTWARE JASP (Di Plinio & Ebisch, 2021)” available on the e-learning platform: https://...
(Contenuti nr. 3 and 4)
Elementi di statistica per la psicologia. Anna Paola Ercolani, Alessandra Areni e Luigi Leone. ISBN 978-88-15-12169-1. Il Mulino, Bologna, 2018. (Capitoli 6 e 7; Contenuti 3 and 4).
Introducing ANOVA and ANCOVA: a GLM approach. Andrew Rutherford. SAGE publications, 2001. ISBN 0 7619 5160 1. (optional book to support the course; contenuti 3 and 4)
Articles and material available at the e-learning page (https://elearning.unich.it) of the course (Contenuto 2):
- Crawford, J. R., & Howell, D. C. (1998). Comparing an individual's test score against norms derived from small samples. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 12(4), 482-486.
- Crawford, J. R., & Garthwaite, P. H. (2002). Investigation of the single case in neuropsychology: Confidence limits on the abnormality of test scores and test score differences. Neuropsychologia, 40(8), 1196-1208.
- Crawford, J. R. & Garthwaite, P.H. (2005). Testing for suspected impairments and dissociations in single-case studies in neuropsychology: Evaluation of alternatives using Monte Carlo simulations and revised tests for dissociations”. Neuropsychology,19, 318-331.
Additional teaching materials (slides, exercises, teaching material in pdf, web links to free/open source programs) will be available at the e-learning platform: https://elearning.unich.it
Contents
The topics treated during the course include:
1. The foundations of the measurement of psychological constructs, particularly cognitive tests (general cognition abilities) and non-cognitive tests (general personality traits), and their application in the neurosciences (educational objectives 1 and 2);
2. Methods for the statistical analysis of single cases in neuropsychology, and to identify psychological/cognitive deficits in patients (educational objectives 3, 5 and 6);
3. Statistical analysis of experimental datasets with single/multiple factors and the integration of continuous variables in neuroscience for hypothesis testing: regression, analysis of variance and analysis of covariance (educational objectives 4, 5 and 6);
4. The application of specialized software for the analysis of quantitative data and becoming familiar with the use of an open access data sharing platform (educational objectives 5 and 6).
Course Language
Italian
More information
E-mail of the teacher: s.ebisch@unich.it
In addition to the receiving hours of the teacher (Tuesday, 9:00-11:00), the teacher also will be available to elucidate questions of the students in the context of the lessons. The students are recommended to regularly access and check the e-learning page for updates, communications about the content of the lessons and required preparations, slides of the lessons, etc: https://...
Web page teacher: https://www.dnisc.unich.it/home-ebisch-sjoerd-johannes-hendrikus-4237
Degrees
Degrees
PSYCHOLOGY
Master’s Degree
2 years
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