IB SL Psychology Studies

HM: Milner

HM had tissue removed from the medial temporal lobe (including the hippocampus) on both sides of his brain. Researcher Milner used various methods to assess how his memory was affected (method triangulation- she used psychometric/IQ testing, direct behavioral observation, interviews, and cognitive testing) (Corkin used MRI scans to determine brain damage)

Milner found that HM could not acquire new episodic knowledge (memory for events) or new semantic knowledge (general knowledge about the world)

HM was able to form new procedural memories (motor skills), but he could not remember learning them - concentric star exercise

Crit-T: high ecological validity since nothing was changed, some aspects were retrospective, highly ethical (anonymity, etc.)

Maguire

(neuroplasticity, quasi-experiment, localization of function) - The posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to the control subjects when viewed via MRI

Maguire argues that the hippocampus changes in response to environment demands (plasticity)

Crit-T: quasi-experiment (so cause-and-effect relationship is be established)

Draganski

(plasticity & synaptic pruning) (MRI) - When participants were taught how to juggle they showed a significantly larger amount of grey matter in the mid-temporal area in both hemispheres (neuroplasticity); once participants stopped juggling, matter in these parts of the brain decreased (neural plasticity)

Crit-T: since the study was a field experiment (IV manipulated in natural conditions) and therefore has a lower internal validity

Antonova

(neurotransmitter - acetylcholine; antagonist - scopolamine) demonstrated that blocking acetylcholine receptors in the brain can affect spatial memory tasks

When participants were injected with scopolamine (an antagonist that reduces the effects of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine) they demonstrated a significant reduction in activation of the hippocampus (via fMRI) vs. the placebo condition

Crit-T: repeated measures design (eliminating participant variability), study was carried out blindly which controls research bias

Troster and Beatty

(neurotransmitter - acetylcholine) found that although acetylcholine did not have a significant effect on the recall of long-term memories, it does play a role in the encoding of both semantic and spatial memories

Used 3 tests: Free Recall Test, New Map Test, and the Remote Memory Battery

Although the study followed ethical considerations, there are concerns about administering drugs to humans

Crit-T: placebo condition to avoid effect of confounding variables but because the side effects of the scopolamine the participants were aware of their condition, very artificial, can establish cause-and-effect

Caspi

(genetic inheritance) participants who had inherited one or more short versions of the alle 5-HTT demonstrated more symptoms of depression and suicidal ideation in response to stressful live events

Crit-T: study is correlational so no cause-and-effect, stressful life events were self-reported so may be affected by salience

Weissman

kinship study - longitudinal family study (also in abnormal!)

Children had an increased risk of any disorder if depression was observed in both the grandparents compared to children whose grandparents and/or parents were not depressed

The severity of a parent's depression was correlated with an increased rate of mood disorders in the children

Crit-T: longitudinal & researcher triangulation so very reliable, the relationship a child has with a healthy grandparent may be a confounding variable, no actual genotype has been studied

Kendler

twin (kinship) study on depression, but correlational study that doesn't establish a cause-and-effect relationship (also in abnormal!)

Using the Swedish Twin Registry, found that women had a higher concordance rate for MDD than men; monozygotic (identical) twins has a higher concordance rate for MDD than dizygotic (frateneral) twins - supports heritability of MDD

Crit-T: correlational so no cause-and-effect, confirms previous information which strengthens reliability information

Bailey and Pillard

twin (kinship) study on homosexuality; genetic inheritance influence behavior

Found that 52% of monozygotic twins were both self-identified homosexuals, 22% of dizygotic twins were, and 11% of non-related adopted brothers were - then showed that non-twin brothers had a rate of 9.2%

Crit-T: ascertainment bias (all of the people who contacted the researchers already had a gay member of the family, skews the data), self-reported and retrospective data, the construct of homosexuality is hard to standardize

McGaugh and Cahill

(hormones, adrenaline and cortisol) (flashbulb memory - suited for Cognitive too)

Adrenaline and cortisol are released from the amygdala in stress situations; 2 stories of woman and boy in hospital: Participants who heard the more emotionally arousing story remembered more details

Crit-T: establishes cause-and-effect relationship, highly artificial & controlled so low ecological validity, easily replicable

Newcomer

(hormones, cortisol) using 3 different conditions of cortisol levels, showed that high cortisol levels impaired the participants who received the highest level of cortisol, showed the worst performance

Crit-T: cause-and-effect relationship, ethical concerns as participants ingested cortisol which negatively impacted their memory but they did sign informed consent forms & the damage was only temporary

Wedekind

(MHC, pheromones, evolutionary argument) women scored male body odors as more pleasant when they differed from their own MHC than when they were more similar; this difference in odor assessment was reversed when the women were taking oral contraceptives

Crit-T: double-blind experiment to minimize demand characteristics, theory could be considered reductionist, successfully replicable

Landry and Bartling

supports the Working Memory Model through a dual task technique

The experiment used an articulatory suppression task, where participants were asked to repeatedly say the numbers 1 and 2 while trying to remember "F, K, L, M, R, X, and Q"

The mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was higher than in the experimental group; supports the Working Memory Model as articulatory suppression is preventing rehearsal in the phonological loop from overload

Crit-T: high internal validity, lacks ecological validity

Loftus and Palmer

(schema) "car crash study" - participant's memory of an accident could be changed by using suggestive questions/leading questions

Switching the words associated with a car accident, such as switching "hit" with "bumped" or "smashed"

Crit-T: low ecological validity

Brewer and Treyens

(schema) "office study" - reconstructive memory and retrieval

Schema played a role in both the encoding & recall of the objects in the office; participants were more likely to remember things in their schema of an office, than office that were incongruent with offices (skull, screwdriver, etc)

Crit-T: non-ethical consideration is that it used deception

Tversky and Khaneman (Anchoring Bias)

(heuristics) System 1 and System 2 thinking

1 group asked to multiple 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8 and the other 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1; group 1 used "1" as an anchor and predicted a lower value than that of the group with an "8" as its anchor

Crit-T: very artificial, low ecological validity

Tversky and Khaneman (Framing Bias)

(loss aversion & cognitive biases)

Condition 1 "positive frame" - only uses statistic for those who would be saved, not those who would die of both groups; Condition 2 "negative frame" - statistics of those who would die in both groups

When information was framed positively, people took the chance; when the information as framed negatively people took the certain option for loss aversion

Crit-T: high internal validity, low mundane realism

Sharot

(flashbulb memory, brain activity scanned with fMRI) (in artificial conditions - quasi-experiment)

Participants that reported having flashbulb memories were closer to the World Trade Center on 9/11

Activation of the amygdala for the participants who were downtown was higher when they recalled memories of the terrorist attack than when they recalled events from the preceding summer (in the fMRI scan)

Crit-T: highly artificial (recalling 9/11), correlational so no cause-and-effect relationship

Kulkofsky

(flashbulb memory) observed the rates of flashbulb memories in individualistic v. collectivistic cultures

Crit-T: avoids interviewer effect through using questionnaires, used back-translation to make sure translation was not a confounding variable, danger of ecological fallacy, etic approach

Drury

Social identity theory (highly ethical, low ecological validity, high internal validity)

London VR train fire simulator (maybe remember soccer game), participants with a high in-group identification gave more help and pushed others less than did those who did not have in-group identification

Crit-T: high internal validity, high mundane realism, low ecological validity, highly ethical!

Abrams

Social identity Theory (in-group and out-group - conformity) (limitation of SIT is construct validity)

In-group members may be seen as more correct, while out-group members are seen as less likely to be correct when participants are made conscious of their group membership

Crit-T: low ecological validity

Bandura

Social Cognitive theory (humans learn behavior through observation)

Bobo doll!! Vicarious reinforcement (imitating a behavior for a reward), the children who saw the aggressive model acted more aggressively than the children who saw the non-aggressive model

Crit-T: matched pairs design, low ecological validity, ethically problematic! (exposed children to adult violence against the Bobo, can be argued that the children experienced undue stress and there was a potential for long-term psychological effects on their behavior)

Eron and Huesmann

Social Cognitive theory (longitudinal case study)

Positive correlation between the number of hours of violence watched on television by elementary school children and the level of aggression demonstrated when they were teenagers

Crit-T: only correlational so no cause-and-effect can be established

Roger and Frantz

Formation of stereotypes (as a result of conformity)

In South Rhodesia ( Zimbabwe) the length of European settlers' residence increased, race attitudes would become more "conservative"

Crit-T: cross-sectional (not longitudinal), large sample - generalizable

Hamilton and Gifford

Formation of stereotypes

Group A was larger than Group B, more negative traits for observed for participants of B than A; negative stereotypes may be more common for minority groups than for the majority

Crit-T: created 2 groups (A & B) which gave it a higher internal validity, highly artificial, low ecological validity, repeated measures designs and concurrent (tested at same time)

Steele and Aronson

Effects of Stereotyping

Stereotype threat affecting test performance in African Americans: in the stereotype threat condition (diagnostic), African Americans performed worse to their white counterparts, but performed equally without the threat

Crit-T: independent samples design, sample made up of Stanford University students so it may not be representative

Spencer

Effects of Stereotyping

Stereotype threat affecting intellectual performance; gave a difficult mathematics test to students who were strong in mathematics - women in the experiment significantly underperformed compared with equally qualified men on difficult mathematics tests

Crit-T: independent samples design

Martin and Halverson

Enculturation & Gender

Children easily recalled the sex of the actor for scenes in which actors had performed gender-consistent activities

Crit-T: highly standardized, controlled for response bias, very artificial, low ecological validity, cross-sectional - does not provide empirical support

Fagot

Enculturation & Gender (overt naturalistic observation)

Observers used an observation checklist of 46 child behaviors and 19 reactions by parents

Found that parents reacted more favorably to the child when the child was engaged in same-sex preferred behavior; children were more likely to receive negative responses to cross-sex-preferred behaviors; parents gave girls more positive responses when they engaged in adult-oriented, dependent behavior

Crit-T: natural environment of a family (high ecological validity), families were all linked to the university and they were all white Americans (sampling bias)

Lueck and Wilson

Acculturation (semi-structured interviews - could lead to the limitation of interviewer effects/bias)

Acculturative stress refers to the stressors associated with being an ethnic minority and going through the acculturation process; found that a bilingual language preference contributed to lower acculturative stress, but an English assertion increased acculturative stress

Crit-T: semi-structured interviews could lead to interviewer effects

Berry

compared the cultures of Sierra Leone (the Temne), Inuits of Canada, and Scotland (since the Temne was very collectivist and conforming, the Inuits are very individual & nonconforming, while the Scots are a middle-ground) (conformity)

Crit-T: low ecological validity, highly artificial, etic, concerns of temporal validity (study is from 1967 - questionable if these conformity rates are still valid today), danger of ecological fallacy

Kulkofsky

(etic approach), (flashbulb memory * remember in cognitive!)

Studied five countries (China, Germany, Turkey, the UK, and the USA) to see if there was any difference in the rate of flashbulb memories in collectivistic and individualistic cultures (memory)

Crit-T: a representative of the culture administered the test and the questionnaires were given in the native languages of the participants to avoid interviewer effects, used back-translation to make sure that the translation of the questionnaires was not a confounding variable, etic, danger of ecological fallacy

Chen

Singaporean (long-term orientation - Confucian Work Dynamism) v. American (short-term orientation) - Singaporean participants were less likely to pay extra for same-day shipping while American participants were more likely to pay the extra $2.99 since Western culture is more indulgent and saves less for the future

Crit-T: naturalistic, highly standardized

Lobbestael

reliability

Single-blind procedure (the second psychiatrist did not know the diagnosis made by the first psychiatrist), clinical interviews; found a high reliability for personality disorders over other disorders

Crit-T: the single-blind procedure is a strength, by using only audiotapes the non-verbal behavior or the appearance of the patient did not affect the diagnosis process

Lipton and Simon

reliability

In a Manhattan Psychiatric Center, of an original 89 diagnoses of schizophrenia, only 16 received the same diagnosis on re-evaluation - indicates that the same symptoms may not lead to the same diagnosis by a different psychiatrist (unreliable)

Takes the place of Rosenhan as a more ethical study (no Rosenhan unless heavily critiqued)

Crit-T: limitation is that patients were already undergoing treatment which may have led to changes in symptoms & explain the different diagnoses

Li-repac

cultural bias in diagnosis

European-American patients/clinicians and Chinese patients/clinicians; findings:

European American clinicians saw the Chinese patients as more depressed and lower in self-esteem than did the Chinese-American raters

European American clinicians saw Chinese patients as less socially competent and as having less capacity for interpersonal relationships than did Chinese-American clinicians

Chinese-American clinicians reported more severe pathology than European American clinicians when judging quiet clients

Crit-T: semi-structured interviews, controlled variables for cultural differences, small sample size of only 10 participants (not generalizable), researchers did not determine the stereotypes or prejudice of each group before the study

Parker

cultural perspectives on depression

Malaysian Chinese participants were more likely to report somatic (physical) symptoms, while Australian patients reported more mood-related symptoms

Crit-T: imposed etic (may have eliminated people from the sample who may have a form of depression that does not meet the Western criteria for diagnosis), recalling their "first symptoms" is may lead to memory distortion and demand characteristics

Bolton

emic approach

An emic approach was used to distinguish PTSD (guhahamuka) and normal grief (aghinda gakabije) to the Rwandan genocide, emic because it used local definitions and terms

Crit-T: used data triangulation (interviewed residents, traditional healers, and local leaders

Langer and Abelson

Ethics in diagnosis (stigmatization)

Psychiatrists watched a video of a younger man talking to an older man with the sound removed. Half the therapists were told that the younger man was a patient; the other half, that he was a job applicant. -> when viewers were told that he was a job applicant, he was described as confident; if they were told that he was a patient, he was aggressive, and/or frightened; stereotypes may interfere in the diagnosis and lead to a wrong diagnosis

Crit-T: may lack temporal validity, sampling bias (all participants affiliated with university)

Gove and Fain

Ethics in diagnosis (counter to stigmatization)

Through extensive interviews of 429 former mental health patients - researchers found that a majority stated that their diagnosis led to an improvement in their social relationships, while only a minority did not agree

Crit-T: limitation of the research is that since they were former patients asked to recall memories & feelings from years ago, they may not have been accurate recollections

Temerlin

confirmation bias

Clinical psychologists watched a video of an interview with a healthy individual, but one group heard a respected psychologist say, "A very interesting man because he looked neurotic, but actually was quite psychotic." then the majority (60%) of the psychiatrists diagnosed the patient as psychotic, but in a control group, none of the 78 participants made this diagnosis.

After hearing the respected psychologist make an informal diagnosis, the participants paid attention to behaviors that agreed with the idea that the man was psychotic

Crit-T: high internal validity (controlled design and standardized procedure), low ecological validity, highly artificial

Brown and Harris

gender bias in diagnosis, semi-structured interviews

458 women in South London were interviewed about their daily lives and depressive episodes; 3 major factors affected the development of depression (protective factors, vulnerability factors, and provoking agents)

Argues that women are exposed to more stressors than men as a result of social hierarchies, which can be linked to "causing" depression

Crit-T: semi-structured interviews, large sample size makes results more reliable, based on self-reported depressive episodes, correlational and does not establish cause-and-effect

Swami

gender bias in diagnosis

2 exactly same short descriptions of depression in a male and female (with the only difference being gender - Jack or Kate), but participants were more likely to indicate that a male vignette (description) did not suffer from a mental health disorder compared to a female vignette

Crit-T: large sample size makes more reliable (1218 British adults as participants), did not use professional psychiatrists just members of the general public