Heston (1966)

Question 1

Why was the study carried out?

Answer 1

Previous research into the possible inheritance of schizophrenia showed that relatives of schizophrenic individuals had a greater chance of being diagnosed with it

Question 2

In the 50s and 60s there was a theory that thought schizophrenia was due to nurture and ‘schizophrenogenic mothers’ caused

Answer 2

the disorder by creating a distorted family environment

Question 3

How many participants took part?

Answer 3

74 initially but 16 dropped out leaving 58 but after a follow up there was only 47 (30 male 17 female) and 50 controls (33 male 17 female)

Question 4

All participants were born to mothers from an

Answer 4

American psychatric hospital

Question 5

Children were selected if their mothers had

Answer 5

> put them up for adoption
the mother had schizophrenia
the mother showed evidence of schizophrenia
no diseases
and the mother and child had been seperated from birth

Question 6

Why did people drop out of the experiment?

Answer 6

Due to reasons such as death, having contact with their mother, disease, no control ppt due to exceptional circumstances, loss of contact

Question 7

What were ppts matched on?

Answer 7

Sex, type of eventual placement and length of time in childcare

Question 8

To asses psychiatric status, these things were used….

Answer 8

>Police records/School records/Hospital records
>Retail credit reports
>Civil and criminal court actions
>IQ
>Personality interview
>Info from friends and relatives

Question 9

How many psychiatrists evaluated the dossier compiled on each participant? And how did they do it?

Answer 9

Two psychiatrists did it blindly and independently with a third evaluation by Heston

Question 10

When was a diagnosis of schizophrenia given?

Answer 10

When all three raters agreed and they were also diagnosed by a psychiatric hospital

Question 11

A score of 1-100 regarding psycho-social disability was assigned to each participant where

Answer 11

scores below 75 indicate psychiatric symptoms become troublesome

Question 12

The average psycho-social disability score for the control group was

Answer 12

80.1

Question 13

The average psycho-social disability score for the experimental group was

Answer 13

65.2

Question 14

Only 1 member of the control group had schizophrenia wheras

Answer 14

5 did in the experimental group

Question 15

The rate of schizophrenia in those born in schizophrenic individuals was 10.6% compared to

Answer 15

0%

Question 16

Heston concluded that the findings

Answer 16

support the influence of genes in schizophrenia and that inheritance also contributes to psycho-social disability

Question 17

A strength of this study is that there was a thorough selection process which

Answer 17

reduces extraneous variables and allows conclusions to be made

Question 18

Matched pairs design was used which

Answer 18

eliminates individual differences and enhances internal validity

Question 19

There is inter rater reliability as two

Answer 19

psychiatrists and Heston evaluated the data independently

Question 20

There is control for the environment as it is an adoption study so

Answer 20

genes are seperated from the environment while keeping the genetic link enhancing internal validity

Question 21

A weakness is that its

Answer 21

only generalisable to adopted children

Question 22

There are confounding variables as children are

Answer 22

often adopted into families similar to their own