Biopsychology: hemispheric lateralisation (split brain research)

Question 1

What does split brain involve?

Answer 1

.the severing of the corpus collasum

Question 2

What does split brain mean for patients?

Answer 2

.the two hemispheres of the brain cannot communicate with eachother

Question 3

Who conducted the research on split brain?

Answer 3

Sperry (1968)

Question 4

How many patients did sperry (1968) look at?

Answer 4

11

Question 5

What did sperry (1968) do?

Answer 5

.projected an image or word to either the right or left visual field

Question 6

What happened when objects were shown to the right visual field?

Answer 6

.object can be identified spoken

Question 7

Why can the object be identified spoken when the object is projected to the right visual field?

Answer 7

.because the Broca’s area is in the left hemisphere

Question 8

What happened when objects were projected to the left visual field?

Answer 8

.object can not be identified spoken
.but can be drawn

Question 9

Why can the object not be identified spoken when the object is projected to the left visual field?

Answer 9

.because there is no Broca’s area in the right hemisphere

Question 10

What were some negatives to sperry’s (1968) research?

Answer 10

.small sample size (11 patients)
.confounding variables (participant variables) - sperry only researched epileptic split brain patients so the findings cannot be applied accurately to non epileptic split brain patients

Question 11

What were some positives to sperry (1968) research?

Answer 11

.consistent findings -
Luck et al (1989) found that split brain patients are better at identifying the odd one out

Question 12

How does the research conducted by luck et al (1989) support sperry is findings?

Answer 12

.supports the idea that left brains and right brains are distinct in terms of functions and abilities