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Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

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Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#191

Post by dredmorbius »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #91

> (19) No difference between groups. ... Authors are instead advised to write “no significant difference between groups” or “no significant correlation between variables.” This is terrible advice. To the public, and often even to experts, "significant" doesn't mean "statistically significant" it means "big". We need to abolish this use of "significant" not promote it. Way too many papers show "significant" (statistic…

There's been strong pushback against the term "statistical significance", though I don't seem to find a widely-accepted alternative. See e.g.,

"Moving to a World Beyond “p https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2019.1...

"Statistically measurable" or "statistically determinable" come to mind though I can't find a cite.

The originally intended ... significance ... of the term was that a difference was capable of being shown using statistical methods. Not that its size or context was itself significant in some semantic, practical, or other sense.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#192

Post by denton-scratch »

adrian_b wrote: post #96
tantalor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with psychology. It's standard terminology used in medicine. > Symptoms cannot be seen and do not show up on medical tests. Some examples of symptoms are headache, fatigue, nausea, and pain. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-term...

It is a standard terminology that is recent and only in English. It has nothing to do with the original meanings of the words "symptom" and "sign" in English and other languages (where "symptom" is any sign of a disease, while "sign" is any sign of anything). The standard medical terminology in other languages is "subjective symptoms" and "objective symptoms". In my opinion, whoever has chosen these artificial and ar…

I don't think many ordinary British English speakers draw the distinction. And yah, I guess they'd take "sign" to mean any sign of anything. So in vernacular talk, all medical signs AND symptoms get smooshed into "symptoms".

So that's fine. Medical experts can use the technical meanings in expert discourse, and the vernacular meanings in vernacular discourse.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#195

Post by [deleted] »

zug_zug wrote: post #190

> (3) Autism epidemic. Uh, I'm having more and more trouble believing this is just an increase in diagnosis rates. That's what we said 13 years ago when I was graduating college, and yet the rates have actually increased very dramatically even since 2010 (from 1/68 to 1/44) a 54% increase. I appreciate that it's useful to consider alternative explanations of data, but presuming an alternative explanation is valid for…

[deleted]

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#196

Post by rhino369 »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #147
rhino369 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is a runny nose (observable) not a symptom of a cold? Is fever not a symptom of Covid? If that's how medicine actually uses the term, okay, sometimes terms of art clash with the plain meaning, but damn that is a pretty weird distinction, as a layman.

In the US those would be "signs", not symptoms. Symptoms are things like pain, fatigue, etc. Signs are observable. I think other countries/languages often use "subjective" symptoms and "objective" symptoms. It's a very useful distinction between things that only the patient can tell you versus things that can be observes and tested for. How do you run a test to determine if a patient is "really" experiencing chest pa…

It might be a useful distinction, but it's weird terminology to a layman. Because in non-medical lingo, those are symptoms in the USA.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#198

Post by SoftAnnaLee »

zug_zug wrote: post #190

> (3) Autism epidemic. Uh, I'm having more and more trouble believing this is just an increase in diagnosis rates. That's what we said 13 years ago when I was graduating college, and yet the rates have actually increased very dramatically even since 2010 (from 1/68 to 1/44) a 54% increase. I appreciate that it's useful to consider alternative explanations of data, but presuming an alternative explanation is valid for…

Increased understanding of autism on a societal level. 20 years ago autism was just, 'weird savant kid who screams and everybody can't understand why they can't ,' disease. 10 years ago, we saw depictions of autism that were less stereotypical in mainstream entertainment; which prompted some to see themselves reflected in these characters, and self-reflect if they're autistic too.

In the years since, autism communities on the internet and the psychological community have come together to help folks realize that there is a wider spectrum of how autism manifests. And the increased visibility of autism, and increased societal understanding of the nuances involved with autism, have led to folks who previously thought of themselves as neurotypical as realizing they are autistic too. Who then inform their family and friends, who may come to realize that they (or their friends, coworkers, or children) too might be autistic as well.

It's not an epidemic, it's merely language and labels being more accurately used within society.

Re: Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

#199

Post by tsumnia »

tacitusarc wrote: post #69

I disagree with the "steep learning curve" point. The X axis is acquired knowledge, and the Y axis is the effort required. I don't know why people assume the X axis is time. Not all graphs are temporal.

I disagreed at first, but realized what they were trying to convey. Specifically "learning curve" is a defined term in learning theory that represents the accumulation of knowledge. Like the the "forgetting curve" [1], the use of "curve" represents at each learning opportunity (or forgetting). "Learning curve" between intervals would be more akin to "learning gains".

So a "learning curve" that is "steep" implies that learning occurs rapidly; a "forgetting curve" that is "steep" would be "in one ear and out the other".

Super pedantic and I don't plan to change my use of steep learning curve, but I get where the intention is coming from.

[1] https://www.psychestudy.com/cognitive/memory/ebbinghaus-forg...

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