CASEY - Biological Studies

Question 1

What is part of long term life success where psychologists would suggest that individuals have different strategies to resist temptation?

Answer 1

The ability to resist temptation and delay your gratification (put off the joy until later)

Question 2

What do psychologists believe we use to delay gratification by suppressing inappropriate thoughts or actions?

Answer 2

Cognitive control strategies

Question 3

Delay of gratification depends on what?

Answer 3

A persons ability to have this cognitive control - and there are natural differences in how humans use these strategies.

Question 4

What is cooling?

Answer 4

A cognitive strategy which means your attention is placed on the ‘cool’ features of a stimulus, such as shape of a piece of cake, rather than a HOT or appealing features such as the taste.

Question 5

What would the cognitive difference between people explain?

Answer 5

Why some people seem naturally better at resisting temptation than others

Question 6

What does research suggest about ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ systems?

Answer 6

That they are interacting neural-cognitive systems.

This means that there is an interaction between brain areas and thought processes that affects people’s ability to resist temptation.

Question 7

What does the ‘cool’ system involve?

Answer 7

Cognitive control

Question 8

What does the hot system involves?

Answer 8

Desires and emotions that are associated with emotional brain regions such as the central striatum.

Question 9

What did Eigsti (2006) suggest about doing delay of gratification tasks in childhood?

Answer 9

It can predict the performance on cognitive control tasks in adult life - such as the ability to control ones’ inappropriate thoughts and actions in favour of appropriate ones

In gratification tasks, children who focussed on the reward or hot feature e.g. Taste of marshmallow or biscuit and had a high temptation focus found it difficult to suppress inappropriate actions than low temptation focus people.

Question 10

What other forms could temptation focus come in?

Answer 10

Social situations

• either revise or go out to a party

Low delayers would go to the party

Question 11

What is the definition of delay of gratification?

Answer 11

You resist the temptation of an immediate reward in order to receive a bigger better reward later

Question 12

Cool features/tasks definition

Answer 12

Attention is placed on the ‘cool’ neutral features of stimulus.

E.g. The shape of the slice of cake

Question 13

Definition of hot features/tasks

Answer 13

Focussing on the more appealing features of the stimulus

Eh delicious taste or sweet smell

Question 14

Inferior Frontal Gyrus

Answer 14

• Located in the pre-frontal cortex
• Involved in decision making and interprets facial and situational expression
• Resolves competing motives
• Employs cognitive control strategies

Question 15

Individuals with greater activity in the IFG should be able to…

Answer 15

Exhibit more cognitive control.. this means that those individuals with greater activity in this part of the brain are more likely to be better at delaying gratification.

Question 16

Individuals with lower activity in the IFG are less able to…

Answer 16

Exhibit cognitive controls… this means those individuals with less activity in this part of the brain are less likely to resist temptation and are worse at delaying gratification.

Question 17

Ventral Striatum

Answer 17

-Involved in decision making but with more immediate choices and rewards.

Question 18

Individuals with greater activity at the Ventral Striatum suggests…

Answer 18

a person has a stronger feeling about the rewards on offer, so is less likely to delay their gratification.. they can’t resist temptation and would have to immediately take the reward and act on impulse.

Question 19

Individuals with lower activity at the Ventral Striatum suggests a person would be..

Answer 19

more likely to delay their gratification… and would wait for better reward rather than act on impulse.

Question 20

What is the aim of Casey’s study

Answer 20

To build on previous research to assess whether the delay of gratification in childhood predicts impulse control activities to alluring cues or social cues in terms of both behaviours and brain function.

Question 21

Why were the nature of the targets in an impulse control task manipulated (some more alluring than others) ?

Answer 21

to examine the relationship between performance on the tasks and brain activity at the time (behavioural and neural correlates) of high and low delayers using functional magnetics resonance imaging (fMRI).

Question 22

Research Method of Casey’s study

Answer 22

Quasi Experiment - naturally occurring IV whether the participant is a high or low delayer:

• High delayers- p’s who resisted the cookie at 4yrs old
• Low delayers were participants who did not resist the cookie at 4yrs old.

Question 23

What were the DV’s?

Answer 23

• Experiment 1 performance on impulse control task (reaction time & accuracy)
• Experiment 2 performance on impulse control task (reaction time & accuracy) and imagining results using fMRI

Question 24

What did some participants complete in their 20’s, 30’s?

Answer 24

Self-report scales

Question 25

What was the experimental design?

Answer 25

Repeated measures as participants in experiment 1 did both ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ tasks

Question 26

What is this study classed as?

Answer 26

longitudinal as it followed some participants from 4yrs until 40yrs - so tracking development of the high and low delayers as children into adulthood.

Question 27

What did the original sample consist of?

Answer 27

562 4yr olds from Stanford Nursery who completed the traditional delay of gratification task- marshmallow test in 1960s/70s.

Question 28

How many completed self-control scales in their 20s?

Answer 28

155 (1993)

Question 29

How many completed it in their 30s?

Answer 29

135 (2003)

Question 30

Why did they complete these?

Answer 30

To see if their self-control abilities remained consistent in these follow up assessments - this was to check that they still are low and high delayers as adults.

Question 31

How many people, who were above (high delayer) or below average (low delayer) on their original childhood gratification task, were contacted?

Answer 31

59 (23m,36f)
they were contacted and agreed to experiment 1 when they were in their 40’s

They were split into either high (32) or low delayers (27) from previous tests.

Question 32

how many participants in experiment one agreed to the fMRI study of experiment two?

Answer 32

27 (13m, 14f) of the 59 in experiment one agreed to the fMRI study of experiment 2, there were 15 high delayers and 11 low delayers.

One man was excluded due to poor performance.

Question 33

Experiment one - tested at home via pre-programmed laptops.

Answer 33

Two tasks were devised to investigate impulse control. One in the presence of neutral ‘cool’ stimulus (which would be gender based) and one containing ‘hot’ stimuli (which would be expression based).

Question 34

Why was the test devised?

Answer 34

To be more adult appropriate than marshmallows and cookies as they would be unrewarding, so social cues of faces with emotional expressions were used instead, as our desire for social acceptance may create more alluring situations.

Question 35

Experiment one - more information

Answer 35

All the faces used were standardised and drawn from facial expressions on the package NimStim.

The participants were tested in their own homes via pre-programmed laptops, and completed two versions of a ‘go/no go task’ in which they had to either press a button (go) or withhold from pressing the button (no-go).

Before the task started, on screen standardised instructions were displayed- telling participants to respond as quickly and accurately as possible by pressing a button for ‘go’ stimulus (whether that be gender or emotion), or withholding a button press for ‘no-go’ stimulus.

Question 36

Cool Tasks - Gender

Answer 36

The ‘cool’ version of the task included a presentation of male and female with neutral expressions, one sex was the ‘go’ stimulus, the other with the ‘no-go’ stimulus.

• The task was considered the cool task as gender is considered a less alluring property of a facial picture, than the emotion displayed.
• The screen also identified which sex was to be the ‘go’ or target stimulus for each trial. Each face was displayed one at a time for 500ms, with a 1 second interval between faces.

Question 37

Hot Tasks - Facial Expressions

Answer 37

• The difference for the ‘hot’ task was that happy and fearful facial expressions were used as the target ‘go’ and ‘no-go’ instead of male and female, they were no longer interested in the gender aspect, but the emotional cues.
• The task was considered the hot task as emotional cues are a more alluring/hot property of a facial picture, than the gender displayed.
• The screen identified which emotion was to be the ‘go’ or target stimulus for each run. Each face (trial) was displayed one at a time for 500ms, with a 1 second interval between faces.

Question 38

Facts about the hot and cool tasks

Answer 38

-160 faces (trials) were presented per run which were presented in a pseudo random order (120 go/40 no go). The accuracy and reaction times were acquired in four runs representing each combination, of which there were four:
RUN 1 - GO - MALE
RUN 2 - GO - FEMALE
RUN 3 - GO - HAPPY
RUN 4 - GO - FEARFUL

Question 39

Findings - Experiment one

-REACTION TIMES (OUTSIDE THE SCANNER)

Answer 39

No significant differences were found between high and low delayers on ‘go’ trials (when they had to press button on presentation of a male/female/happy/fearful face)