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Approaches + Biopsych (+ Research methods)
Wundt
First to be called a psychologist, and opened the first psychology lab in Germany.
Studied structure of human mind by breaking down behaviours into their basic elements (structuralism), and the nature of human consciousness (introspection).
Introspection = the first systematic experimental attempt to study the mind by breaking up conscious awareness into basic structures of thoughts, images and sensations.
Watson (no study, just argument)
Highly critical of introspection because he believed the psychology should only be restricted to studying phenomena that can be observed and measured.
Started Behaviourist approach.
Pavlov
Pavlov’s dogs experiment.
Classical conditioning - dog learns an association between the NS and UCS.
Skinner
Skinner’s rats and pigeons experiment using Skinner’s box.
Operant conditioning - rat learns through reinforcement.
Positive reinforcement = Adding reward to increase the likelihood of desired behaviour being repeated.
Negative reinforcement = Removing an unpleasant stimulus after desired behaviour is displayed, to increase the likelihood of it being repeated.
Punishment = Any negative stimulus which is added to decrease the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated.
Aasvad,
Griffiths
Aasvad = found that many gamblers talk about have a large win early in their gambling career and that they likely continue to gamble in order to repeat these early experiences.
Griffiths = Argues that some types of gambling eg. slot machines, may become addictive because of :
Physiological rewards - adrenaline and dopamine from wins.
Psychological rewards - excitement.
Social rewards - praise from peers.
Rather than just financial rewards.
Gilroy et al.
42 patients with arachnophobia (fear of spiders).
Each patient was treated using three 45-minute systematic desensitisation sessions.
Findings = After three months and 33 months later, the systematic desensitisation group were less fearful than a control group (who were only taught relaxation techniques).
Support for systematic desensitisation, as a long-term treatment for phobias.
Bugelski & Alampay, Rat Man study
Study of schemas.
2 groups of PPs, shown a sequence of pictures, either faces or different animals. Then they were shown the rat-man photo. People who saw faces saw a man, and vice versa.
Bartlett
Research on role of schema.
PPs listened to a Native American story - War of the Ghosts - and were then asked to recall the soy.
Findings = PPs left out parts of the story which were culturally unfamiliar to them eg spirits and ghosts. Added in material to make the story more coherent with their schemas.
Concs = People use their schemas to make sense of incoming info, this can lead to distorted memories.
Darwin
2 main concepts in evolutionary theory :
Natural selection - characteristics that are not suited to a species’ environment will die out as it struggles to survive, and with time will evolve over generations so that only adaptive characteristics remain in future offspring.
Sexual selection - women make their choice of who to mate with because they have limited eggs, whereas men have unlimited sperm and a lesser role in raising an infant. Also basing decision on who is best-suited to raise an infant with them.
McGuffin
Found that if one identical twin has depression, there is a 46% chance the other twin will also have depression, compared to 20% chance in siblings.
March et al.
Found that CBT emerged as effective as medication and helpful alongside CBT as well. Medication only masks symptoms.
Stephen Mobley
Support nature argument, deterministic.
His defence against a murder charge was that the generations of hid family suffered from behavioural disorder and his actions were therefore genetically determined and beyond his control.
Bandura
Bandura’s Bobo Doll Study.
Lab experiment, sample 36 American boys and 36 American girls aged 3-6 years old.
Three conditions - 1 shown aggressive model, 2 shown non-aggressive model, 3 not shown a model.
Procedure = Aggression arousal by putting children in a room with attractive toys but not allowed to play with them. Then taken individually into the room with bobo doll.
Findings = Group 1 most aggressive, imitated specific aggressive acts displayed by the model. Boys did more physically aggressive acts than girls, but no difference in verbal aggression.
Bandura and Walters
Bobo doll experiment repeated but the three groups were all exposed to aggressive model, and each group saw different consequences for the model :
Group 1 = model was praised.
Group 2 = model was punished.
Group 3 = no consequences for aggressive behaviour.
Findings - group 1 most aggressive, followed by group 3 and finally group 2.
Seigal and McCormick (no study, just argument)
Argue that young people who hold deviant attitudes are more likely to associate with similar peers, reinforcing the deviant behaviour.
Freud (no study)
Key pioneer of psychodynamic research and psychoanalytic theory of personality.
Explained the importance of childhood experiences which affect unconscious mind.
Developed the first talking cure - psychoanalysis, to release problematic repressed memories and relieve symptoms.
Freud, Little Hans
Case study of Hans, 5 year old boy with a phobia of horses. Freud wanted to find out the cause of the phobia.
From a young age, Hans had an interest in his genitals and other males’. Likely because his mother threatened to cut it off.
Freud linked the fear to the horse’s large penis. The fear of horses was apparently unconsciously representing the fear of his father.
Williams
Evidence supporting the existence of ego defence mechanisms such as repression.
Found that adults can forget traumatic childhood sexual abuse.
Abraham Maslow
Self-actualisation = fundamental to human nature, the desire to grow and develop to achieve our full potential.
Hierarchy of needs =
Physiological
Safety
Love & Belonging
Esteem
Self-actualisation
Carl Rogers
Congruence
Conditions of worth
Defence mechanisms (distortion, denial, blocking)
Client-centred therapy
Unconditional positive regard.
Broca, Patient Tan
Patient Tan could only say the word ‘tan’.
Broca’s post-mortem examination of him found lesions to the left frontal lobe (Broca’s area). Responsible for speech production.
Asphasia = disorder jay results from damage to this area.
Wernicke
Patients who could talk but not understand language. Lesions to left temporal lobe responsibly for language comprehension.
Peterson
Used brain scans to demonstrate that Wenicke’s area was active during a listening task and Broca’s area was active during a reading task.
Supports localisation of function and ways of studying brain.
Phineas Gage
Suffered severe damage to his left frontal lobe as a result of an explosive accident whilst mining. He survived, and functioned normally except his personality had changed from calm and considerate to being ill-tempered.
Supports localisation and lateralisation suggesting that frontal lobe may regulate mood.
Cameron Mott
Young girl with Rasmussen’s syndrome suffered from violent seizures around 10 times a day. John Hopkins hospital removed half of her brain, she was left with only right hemisphere. She no longer has seizures and lives a normal life as her half brain compensates for the missing half.
Support brain plasticity, contradicts localisation theory.
Lashley
Equipotentiality theory - arguing that while basic motor and sensory functions are localised, higher mental functions are not.
He believed localisation theories are overly simplistic and biologically reductionist.
Suggested undamaged parts of the cortex can take responsibility for cognitive functions following brain damage.
Herasty
Found that women have a proportionally larger Broca’s and Wernicke’s area than men, which could explain the greater ease of language amongst women.
Eleanor Maguire et al.
Aim = the examine whether structural changes could be detected in the brains of people with extensive experience of spatial navigation.
Structural MRI scans of 50 right handed, healthy non-taxi drivers and 16 right handed, male London Taxi drivers of over 1.5 years.
Findings = increased grey matter in the right posterior hippocampus of taxi drivers compared to controls.
Conc = results support idea of brain plasticity and suggests that experience can change brain structure.
Bezzola et al.
40 hours of golf training produced changes in the neural representation of movement in PPs aged 40-60.
Using fMRI, researchers observed reduced motor cortex activity in the novice golfers compared to a control group, suggesting more efficient neural representations after training.
Shows neural plasticity continues through lifespan.
Kuhn
Found a significant increase in grey matter in various regions of the brain after participants played video games for 30 minutes over a two month period.
Shows how experience can cause structural changes in the brain.
Schneider et al.
Found that people with a longer educational career were more likely to have a disability free recovery after brain injury.
40% of PPs with more than 16 years of schooling had no disability. Only 10% in PPs with less than 12 years of schooling.
Taijiri et al.
Found that stem cells provided to rats after brain trauma showed a clear development of neurone-like cells in the area of injury, showing the ability of the brain to create new connection using neuron’s manufactured by stem cells.
Michael Siffre
Case study where he stayed in a cave in Texas for 6 months.
Findings = days passed - 179, he thought only 151 days had gone.
Average circadian rhythm of approx. 25 hours – suggests strong influence of endogenous factors.
Simon Folkard et al.
12 people living in dark cave for 3 weeks. They went to bed at 11:45pm and woke at 7:45.
Researchers sped up the clocks so the day lasted 22 hours (without them knowing).
Only 1 PP adjusted to the times comfortably.
Supports endogenous factors.
Miles et al.
Studied a psychologically normal, blind man with sleep-wake rhythm of 25 hours.
It was due to lack of exposure to light, had to medicate to entrain rhythm to 24 hours by taking sedatives at night and stimulants when he woke.
Stern and McClintock
Aim - wanted to ‘synch up’ menstrual cycles.
Pps - 29 women with history of irregular cycles.
Procedure - pheromone samples were gathered on cotton pads placed under the arms of 9 women, each at different stages of their menstrual cycle. Samples then frozen and treated with alcohol and then rubbed onto the top lip of the PPs.
Findings - 68% of women experienced changes in their cycle which brought them closer to that of their ‘odour donor’.
Sperry and Gazzaniga
Aim - to examine the extent to which the two hemispheres are specialised for certain functions.
Used 11 split brain patients who had undergone a corpus callostomy.
By presenting objects 2 one visual field and then asking them to perform a task eg describe, draw, identify similar object in a lineup, show how its used etc.
Findings = left visual field = processed by right hemisphere with visualmotor centre = could draw it or show how to use.
Left hemisphere = language centres.
Turk et al.
Discovered a patient (patient JW), who suffered damage to the left hemisphere but developed the capacity to speak in the right hemisphere, eventually leading to the ability to speak about the information presented in split brain task to either side of the brain.
