BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS : GENETIC AND NEURAL Flashcards

Question

MIRROR NEURONS - what did keysers find and how

Answer 1

only when offedners were asked to empathise (with a person on film xp pain) did their empathy reaction (controleld by mirror neurons in brain) activate

Answer 2

APD indi not totally without empathy but may have a neural switch that can be turned on and off unlike normal brain which has empathy switch permanently on

Answer 3

criminaality too complex to reduce to genetic or neural level lots of thing seem to run in families such as poverty and social deprevation therfore difficult to disentagle oall of possible influences on offending behaviour furthermore CR in twin studies never 100% - meaning enviro factors may be at least parlty responsible for criminal behaviour so for example diathesis tress model could be better explanation for criminal behaviour where CR for MZ twins not 100%

Answer 4

researchers did study on over 13,000 adoptees foun when neither the biological nor adoptive parents had convictions the % of adoptees that did was 13.5 % found when either of bio parents did went up to 20% wennt up to 25% when both parents had a conviction shows genetic inheritance plays an important role but environmental influence cannot be disregarded providing support for diathesis stress model of crime

Answer 5

studies tend to asume twins raised in equal enviro as twins generally raised together limitation however could apply to much more to MZ than DZ twins as people - ptclry parents tend to treat MZ twins more similarly than DZ This therfore impacts behaviour so higher CR could be result of them being treated same rather than due to genetics - which is a confounding variable for this research

Answer 6

presumed seperation of genetic and enviro influences (- whihc is whole point of adoption studies )complicated by fact many kids xp late adoption so much of childhood could have been spent with bio parents anyway similarly lots of adoptees maintain reg conctat with bio parents following adoption this makes it difficult to assess the relative impact of biology on offending behaviour therfore assessing relative impact of nature/nurture may only be possible with very early adoptions where contact with biological relatives dont occur oherwise contact with bio relatives is a confounding varibales

Answer 7

one strength of the neural explanation is support for the link between crime and frontal lobe Kandel and Freed reviewed evidence of frontal lobe damage and antisocial behaviour people with such damage tended to show impulsive behaviour, emotional instability and an inability to learn from their mistakes the frontal lobe is associated with planning behaviour this supports the idea that brain damage may be causal factor in offending behaviour

Answer 8

one limitation of the neural explanation is the link between neural differences and APD may be complex other factors may contribute to APD, and ultimately to offending Farrington et al studied a group of men who scored high on psychopathy (APD) these men had experience various risk factors during childhood, such as being raised by a convicted parent and being physically neglected it's possible that these early childhood experiences cause APD and also some of the neural differences associated with it - such as reduced anxiety in the frontal lobe due to trauma this suggests that relationship between neural differences , APD and offending is complex and there may be other intervening variables that have an impact