Psychology GCSE Edexcel - Case Studies and Researches

Robert Slavin (2005)

• Suggested implications for teaching based on Piaget’s stages:

  • It’s is the child’s cognitive processes and thinking that is important and not the right answer.

  • Discovery learning is important to engage freely with the environment rather than being taught facts.

  • Children do not think think adults.

  • Each child develops at different rates so whole-class teaching is not advised, in order to suit all children.
    

Pierre Dason (1994)

Aboriginal children developed to conserve at a later stage than Piaget’s Swiss sample. Piaget’s theory cannot be generalized to children of other cultures or different social interactions.

Mueller and Dweck (1998)

Praising student’s ability led them to a fixed mindset

Duffy and Czeisler (2009)

Entrainment: when biological rhythms are matched to their environmental triggers, such as circadian rhythms being set in response to external (light) cues,

Miles et al. (1977)

Looked at a blind man whose bodily rhythms were closer to 25 hours, suggested we have circadian rhythms influenced by internal factors. If a person who can’t perceive light resets their biological clock daily, it suggests that circadian rhythms are endogenous.

Li-You Chen et al. (2015)

The study used rats and found that early sleep deprivation (ESD) reduced melatonin levels, proving that the pineal hormone melatonin is important for controlling sleep.

Mistlberger and Skene (2004)

They agree zeitgebers, light being the main one, and social stimuli, such as exercise and arousal level, are cues to time, and these external cues affect their sleep-wake cycle.

Barker (1948)

There is a relationship between situational stress and narcolepsy.

Guenole et al. (2013)

Found that people who were exposed to noise while sleeping reported more dreaming when they woke up, compared to those who woke up without the noise. This implies that dreaming might play a role in keeping us asleep despite external stimuli, as the content of our dreams could be influenced by these stimuli. This suggests that dreaming might serve as a protective mechanism to maintain sleep.

McCarley and Hobson (1975)

Found that the reticular activating system and and pons were area of the brain that showed activity during REM sleep, and thus involved in movement inhibition. This evidence was gathered from experimenting on cats.

Rittenhouse, Stickgold, Hobson (1999)

Found out that 34% of 200 dreams did not make logical sense.

Hobson (1999)

Suggested there was some meaning in hidden dreams and that the random firing of neurons could be useful as a source of good ideas.

New theory:

• A - activation

• I - input and output prevention

• M - modulation - neuron activation in the brain and memory or consciousness of the information activated.

Bandura (1977)

Explains behavior as a consequence of observing and modelling our role models.

Christiansen (1977)

35% of identical male twins recorded in Denmark were both criminals compared to 13% of non-identical male twins.

21% of identical female twins 8% of non-identical twins and 8% of non-identical twins.

Hutchings and Mednick (1975)

21% of adopted children who went on to commit a crime had a biological father who was convicted of a crime.10% of children whose biological father was not convicted of a criminal offence but the adoptive father had a criminal record.

Lombrosso (1890)

Criminals can be distinguished from non-criminals by their predominant facial characteristics

Farrington et al. (1982)

There is a relationship between high P and N scores and criminal behavior, but there was no relationship between high E scores and criminality.