Casey (Biological Area) Flashcards
Casey Overall Aim of the Study
To investigate the extent to which the ability to resist temptation predicts impulse control later on in life - is the ability to delay or not a consistent personally trait?
Caseys aim of experiment 1
to find out if the participants who were low delayers on the marshmallow test at age 4 and reported low levels of self control in their 20s and 30s
Caseys Method
a longitudinal study - age 4 till 40
composed of 2 quasi experiments - whether they were high or low
Caseys Participants/Sample
562 Students (4yrs - marshmallow test) attended Stanfords Bing Nursery School
155 = completed self report on self control
135 = completed self report in their 30s - classified as low/high delayers
117 = contacted
59 = consented for experiment 1 (23 males, 36 females)
27 = consented for experiment 2 (13 males, 14 females)
Caseys Procedure for experiment 1
GO/NO-GO TASK:
the participant was given a target stimulus, were then shown different pictures and if the target stimuli was shown they had to press the button, if not they had to refrain from pressing the button.
‘hot’ task was the emotions - happy or fearful
‘cool’ tasks was neutral - neutral male or female face
Casey results from experiment 1
those who were able to delay gratification as children showed greater ability to express impulse control as adults.
both groups were very accurate in their correct responses to the ‘go’ tasks in both ‘hot’ and ‘cool’.
on the ‘no-go’ tasks low delayers performed less well than the high delayers on the ‘hot’ tasks
Caseys aim of experiment 2
to investigate the regions of the brain that they predicted would be used in self control - used on fMRI scan
Caseys procedure of experiment 2
only ‘hot’ versions of tasks was run - 70 ‘go’ and 25 ‘no-go’ tasks for each experiment
stimuli were same as the first experiment - apparatus was different, stimuli presented on screen in the scanner and different push button used to record response.
Participants were all in fMRI scan while doing the experiment
Caseys results of experiment 2
no significant different found in ‘go’ tasks.
low delayers had higher false alarms in ‘no-go’ tasks
