Component 2: Casey et al (Biological)

Question 1

What is an alluring situation?

Answer 1

(e.g. opportunities to commit theft/offers to take drugs) can diminidh a person’s willpower and cognitive control.

Question 2

Define inferior frontal gyrus.

Answer 2

This is a ‘cool’ system involved in deciding whether or not to resist temptation.

Question 3

Define ventral striatum.

Answer 3

This is a ‘hot’ system related to emotions/desires. E.g. rewards

Question 4

What is the background to Casey et al.s study?

Answer 4

Previous research showed that children’s perfromance in a delay-of-gratification task would also predict their inability to control other impulses in a cognitive control task. The findings suggested the children’s performance could predict capacity in a bility to delay gratification (or not) in later life.

Question 5

What were the aims of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 5

To build on previous research to assess whether delay gratification in childhood predicts impulse control abilities and sensitivity to alluring social cues (happy face) in later adult life (at 40 years of age)

Question 6

Describe the sample of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 6

The original sample was 562 4 years olds from Stanford Bing Nursery School who completed the marshmallow test in the 1970s/80s.
117 of these were contacted to take part in this study and 59 of them agreed.
27/59 were low delayers and 32/59 were high delayers.

Question 7

What is the research method of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 7

Quasi experiment and a longitudinal study.

Question 8

What were the IVs and DVs of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 8

IV - high or low delayer in previous childhood study.
D - performance in impulse control tasks (accuracy and reaction times) and fMRI scans (in a lab) which measures the brain activity by detecting associated changes in blood flow.

Question 9

Describe the procedure of experiment 1 in Casey et al.s study?

Answer 9

1. All 59 participants tested - self control measured via go/no go task
2. Go/no-go taks - press a button (go) when you see a certain stimuli or don’t press it when you see stimuli (no go)
3. Hot stimuli - happy face vs fearful
4. Cool stimuli - male or female neutral face
5. Each participant completed 4 go/no go tasks. Faces were shown on a laptop screen which were delivered to participants homes.
6. Each face was shown for 0.5 seconds with a 1 second interval between faces. Before each taks, the particpiants were told which face was the target stimuli.
7. Participants had to press the button for the target stimuli and not press it for anything else.

Question 10

What were the results of experiment 1 of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 10

1. High delayers and low delayers performed with a high level of accuracy on the go trails for both hot and cool stimuli. (no significant difference)
2. High delayers and low delayers made more errors on the no-go tasks (measured as % of false alarms.)
3. Low delayers made more errors on the hot no go tasks (couldn’t resist pressing the button for the happy face)

Question 11

What was the aim of Casey et al.s second experiment?

Answer 11

To investigate regions of the brain that they predicted would be implicated in self control via fMRI.

Question 12

Describe the procedure of experiment 2 of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 12

1. 27/59 of the participants from experiment 1 agreed to take part in this experimengt too. There was one anomaly so 26 particpants. (15 high delayers, 11 low delayers)
2. There was the same go-no go tasks as before but intead of 1 second intervals it was a 2-14 second delay (mean 5.2 seconds)
3. The apparatus was different. Stimuli was presented on a screen in a scanner and a different type of push button was used.
4. Brain activity was measured while the tasks were carried out.

Question 13

What were the results of experiment 2 of Casey et al.s study?

Answer 13

1. The low delayers showed lower activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus than high delayers. This region of the brain deals with ability to resist temptation.
2. Low delayers showed higher activity in the ventral striatum, specifically when the happy faces were the no go stimuli. This suggests the ‘hot’ alluring stimuli made this reward related region more active, hence, harder to resist and led to more errors.

Question 14

What are the conclusions of Casey et al’s study?

Answer 14

1. Sensitivity to environmental hot cues plays a significant role in an individuals ability to supress actions towrads alluring cues.
2. Individuals, who at four years old, had difficulty dealying gratification, have more difficulty as adults supressing responses to positive social cues than those who don’t.

Question 15

How does Casey et al.s study relate to the biological area?

Answer 15

Casey et al belongs to the biological area because it involves trying to see whether there is operant basis to self-regulation. This is done through fMRI scans of people who, fourty years previously, had taken part in Mishel’s delay of gratification (marshmallow) test.

Question 16

How does Casey et al.s study relate to the behaviourist perspective?

Answer 16

It belongs to the behaviourist perpective because of the way it provides impirical support for nueral conditioning (both positive and negative reinforcement)

Question 17

How does Casey et al.s study change our understanding of the key theme regions of the brain?

Answer 17

Refocused our attention on the role of frontal lobes. The new work starts to unpick what are the specific features of the excucutive functions that are processed in this area.