
Susan O. answered 11/26/19
Licensed Psychologist with a Doctorate (PsyD) in Clinical Psychology
Null hypothesis: infants who are in a room with a crying adult will not show any signs of distress.
Alternative hypothesis: Infants will show more signs of distress when seated in a room with a crying adult than when seated in a room with an adult who is not showing any emotion. This is a directional hypothesis because you are specifying the anticipated direction (i.e., more rather than less distress) of change in the infants display of emotional distress.
Type I error: this occurs when you correctly reject the null hypothesis. For instance, if the null hypothesis is that infants will not show signs of distress when in a room with a crying adult and results of the study show that infants are MORE likely to show signs of distress when seated with a crying adult then you would reject the null hypothesis because the data showed that infants actually were more distressed when with a crying adult.
Type II error: this refers to rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true. For instance, the type 2 error will be the likelihood of saying infants did not show signs of distress when seated with a crying adult (null hypothesis) when the data showed the opposite to be true (i.e., the infants showed no signs of distress when seated in a room with a crying adult but you reject the null hypothesis).