Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Build and Test Psychological Theories?
Separate the phenomenon to explain from the proposed mechanism and the simulation used to explore it.
Why you’re reading it. Give theory construction a sequence of decisions that can be inspected.
A question to consider. Would reproducing the positive correlations among cognitive tests establish that abilities promote one another’s development?
Why this reading
Borsboom and colleagues turn theory construction into an explicit sequence of decisions. Their mutualism example separates observations, the regularities to explain, and a proposed process that could generate those regularities.
Before you read
Abduction proposes an explanation; deduction works out its implications. A prototheory is an initial explanatory proposal. A simulation can establish what follows from assumptions without establishing that those assumptions describe the world.
Read for
- Track the movement from phenomena to a proposed explanation, a formal model and evaluation.
- Separate reproducing a pattern from judging explanatory breadth, simplicity and plausibility.
Consider afterwards
- Two models reproduce the same correlations. What would you compare before judging one a better explanation?
Editorial context
The framework is a proposed methodology illustrated through an existing theory, not a comparative trial establishing the best way to conduct all research. The authors describe an iterative process and regard theory construction and stringent testing as complementary. Mutualism provides an example of the method rather than a settled explanation of intelligence.