Psychology Biological Approach Studies

Draganski (2004)

Draganski (2004)

Participants were allocated 2 conditions, jugglers or non-jugglers. They did an MRI scan on the brains of the people in the study. There was no difference in gray matter. Then after a couple of months, they did another MRI scan and found more gray matter in the people who juggled. (Neuroplasticity)

HM: Milner (1966)

Is a longitudinal case study of a man named HM. Who had his hippocampus removed. He lost the ability to create new semantic knowledge which is general knowledge about the world, and episodic memory, which is memory about events. The study found that the hippocampus was one of the critical structures that moves short-term memory to long term. (Localization)

Newcomer et al (1999)

Studied the effects of stress on verbal declarative memory. Studied the effect of the hormone cortisol. Participants were split into groups and given a different level of producing drug in a pill for each group. The amount of cortisol was inversely proportional to the performance in a memory test. The higher the cortisol levels, the worse the performance. (Hormones)

Wedekind (1995)

Studied a set of genes called MHC and their role on attraction. It tested the group of women participants by seeing if they could rate t shirts with a similar level of MHC better or worse than of ones of different MHC than their own. Participants rated shirts with different MHC than their own as better smelling. (Evolutionary explanations of behavior, pheromones)

Bartlett (1932)

British participants were told a native American story. Participants were required to recall the story after weeks and months. They found that the story changed after each recollection to reflect things within the British culture more and more. The participants also changed the length of the story and cut out parts they deemed unimportant.

Weissman et al (2005)

Is a classic kinship study. It is a longitudinal case study with a lot of different families. It looked at families with high and low risks of depression. They looked at depression in different generations and found that families with depression in grandparents had increaded odds for grandchildren. The odds of a grandchild getting depressions appears to not be dependent on parents having depression or not. (Kinship and twin studies)

Bailey and Pillard (1990)

Is a study on the genetic behavior of sexual orientation. It is a twin study that studies the sexual orientation of Monozygotic and Dyzygotic twins. They found that a majority of monozygotic twins where one was homosexual, the other also was. This percentage declines significantly for dyzygotic and non- twin brothers. This shows that the more genetically similar the brothers are, the more likely they are to exhibit similar sexual orientations. (Genes and Behavior)

Setiawan et al (2013

Studied young social drinkers. The participants took initial tests that the researchers used to deem them at different levels of risk for an alcohol Use disorder (AUD). The particpants were asked to drink a placebo drink or alcohol and their BAC was measured. The people who were deemed at the start of the study had a higher risk of alcoholism also had higher activation of the reward center of the brain based on their consumption of alcohol. Shows neurotransmitters affect behavior because people have different reactions based on the amount of neurotransmitters put out by their brain.