Case Studies Of Brain Damage Patients Flashcards
Description
Used to investigate how brain injury affects cognitive functioning. These are usually several methods within the case study (interviews, experiments, observations etc.) this will mean case studies have high validity because they collect rich detailed data.
Case studies are usually investigating one person but can also be a group. They are designed around an unique, interesting occurrence.
+usefulness
Case studies are particularly useful in cognitive psychology because they are one of the only ways to isolate which areas of memory are separate. For example, Clive Wearing had a STM but issues with his LTM or Dementia patients who have semantic ability but lose episodic memory’s first.
+allows for epirical evidence
Cognitive psychology can also be criticised as an approach sometimes as it lacks empirical evidence. i.e. you can’t see what/how people are thinking and a lot of the models are based on assumptions. Case studies of brain damage patients allow us to be more scientific with research and see physically how memory works in the brain
-generalisability
usually be a small sample size and a unique person. However, brain damage cases are more generalizable as we can assume the brain is very similar from person to person.
+validity
Several methods within the case study (interviews, experiments, observations etc.) this will mean case studies have high validity because they collect rich detailed data
-ethical
Ethical issues arise from case studies as they are often vulnerable people e.g. brain damage. And can be taken advantage off (e.g.. can they fully understand consent?) They can also involve over testing which can cause participants discomfort or stress.
+Qualitative data
Case studies collect a lot of qualitative data which is great because it gives us understanding of why things happen not just what happens and has depth and detail
Summary of HM
HM suffered from epileptic seizures that made him very unwell. Dr Scoville took the decision to remove HM’s hippocampus (located in the MTL and associated with seizures). This cured HM of his epilepsy, but left him with Anterograde amnesia which was an inability to form any new episodic/semantic memories after the operation. Despite this he could learn new procedural memories, despite having no recollection of learning them. (e.g. drawing the star in the mirror). He did also have some retrograde amnesia of events before the operation, but Scoville thought this was more likely to be due to the frequency of seizures and medication.
HM can be evaluated with the general case study strengths and weaknesses.
