Key Research - All Topics

Question 1

R1 - Raine (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 1

Aim:

• to investigate the differences in brain function of NGRI (murderers who have pleaded not guilty to their charge due to the reason of insanity) and nonmurderers.

Method:

• It was a quasi-experiment with a matched participant design.
• The IV was whether the participant was a NGRI murderer or a non-murderer.
• The DV was what brain dysfunction was present.

Sample:

• There were 41 GA murders, 39 males and 2 females who had committed murder or manslaughter and pleaded NGRI

Procedure:

• The participants were injected with FDG - radioactive glucose which measures brain activity as the more activity in one area means more glucose is needed and the radioactivity means it can be tracked through a scanner.
• Once injected they completed continual performance tasks.
• During this time, 32 minutes after being injected the participants brain was scanned in a PET scanner.

Results:

• Found NGRI murderers had reduced activity in their amygdala, prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex and corpus callosum.

Question 2

R2 - Hall & Player (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 2

Aim:

• investigated if the introduction of an emotional context affects finger print analysis and decision making.

Method:

• They used a lab experiment

Sample:

• 70 volunteers who were fingerprint experts from the metropolitan police. They were split into 2 groups

Procedure:

• one group looked at a low emotional context, a fraud case and a high emotional context, a murder case.
• The murder case had a higher emotional context due to the severity of the crime and the expert may feel under more pressure to find a match as they want to catch the killer.
• They had to test the fingerprints and report whether they found a match, how much case information they used, whether the case information affected them and would they take their findings to court.

Results:

• A lot more experts of the high emotional context felt affected by the information is the case compared to a much lower amount of the low emotional context felt affected.
• there was no significant difference in how confident the high and low emotional context were in presenting the findings to court.

Question 3

R3 - Memon & Higham (Method/Aim, Conclusions)

Answer 3

Method/ Aim:

• review article which reviews the effectiveness of the cognitive interview and methodological issues in research on the cognitive interview.
• Research suggests the cognitive reinstatement stage when the witness mentally reconstructs the circumstances of when they saw the incident is the most effective component.
• Milne found that the context reinstatement gained as many facts as the whole Cognitive Interview in a mock witness study.
• Memon and Higham also looked at comparison interviews which could be used to see if the cognitive interview is effective.

Conclusions:

• concluded that the structured interviews is the best comparison because it has good rapport and no interruption which is similar to the cognitive interview but with no cognitive element.
• Overall they concluded more research was required to see if the cognitive interview is effective.

Question 4

R4 - Dixon (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 4

Aim:

• investigated the effects of regional accent, race and crime type on attributions of guilt.

Method:

• They used a lab experiment at the University of Worchester

Sample:

• 119 white undergraduate psychology students both male and female with a mean age of 25.

Procedure:

• The participants listened to a 2 minute recorded conversation between a police officer and a young male suspect pleading innocence.
• The suspect had either a standard accent or a Brummie accent, from Birmingham. They also manipulated whether they committed a blue collar crime, armed robbery or white collar crime, cheque fraud.
• The final manipulation was if the transcript revealed the suspect was black or white.
• After listening the participants had to rate the suspect’s guilt on a 7 point rating scale from innocent to guilty. They also rated suspects on their language.

Results:

• They found the Brummie suspect was rated guiltier.
• They also found an interaction between the Brummie accent, black suspect and blue collar crime with significantly higher guilt findings for this combinations

Question 5

R5 - Wilson and Kelling (4)

Answer 5

Wilson and Kelling used an article published in The Atlantic Online reviewing the role of the police in neighbourhood safety.

The first part of the article focuses on Safe Neighbourhoods:

• Many individuals are frightened by crime and disruption and so the police presence on the streets in the Safe and Clean Neighbourhoods Program reduced this fear and increased public order. They did this by ensuring that disreputable regular stuck to the rules such as alcohol being kept in a bag and no begging at the bus stop. This comes from Zimbardo’s Broken Window theory which states if a broken window is left unrepaired eventually all the windows will be broken as it signifies no-one cares which fits with Wilson and Kelling as they believed that if the small level crime is permitted then it will grow into larger scale crime.
• Through further study Zimbardo concluded that all areas are vulnerable to criminal invasion as a car left in both the Bronx and Palo Alto will both eventually be vandalised. Wilson and Kelling also looked at the changing role of the police.
• The role of the police has shifted from maintaining order to apprehending and detecting criminals.
• Finally Wilson and Kelling wrote about maintaining order and strategies to help this such as employing private security guards or off duty police to enforce rules on smoking and drinking.

Question 6

R6 - Haney (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 6

Aim/ Method:

• Lab experiment to study the effect of imprisonment on both prisoners and guards.
• They used observations, interviews and questionnaires.

Sample:

• They used 22 males who volunteered for $15 a day.
• They were middle class and mentally and physically stable.

Procedure:

1. The students were randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners.
2. The guards were told to maintain a reasonable degree of order to allow effective functioning without physical punishment.
3. The prisoners were arrested at their homes and taken to the prison given uniforms and ID numbers which they would now be known by.
4. They were supervised 24 hours a day and given regular roll calls where they would have to line up and be counted by the guards.

Results:

• The experiment had to be stopped after 6 days due to the pathological reactions.
• The prisoners had different coping strategies such as depression and anger or being pretending to be ill or being excessively obedient.
• This lead to the prisoners showing pathological prisoner syndrome which is seen through depression or excessive obedience as this is due to the loss of identity.
• The guards became hostile and had tendency’s to have negative interactions with prisoners.
• The guards developed a pathology of power where they enjoyed and misused their power.
• This was demonstrated through increasing sanctions and demands

Question 7

H1 - Van Leeuwen (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 7

Aim:

• to investigate whether biological factors and/or environmental factors might affect intelligence

Method:

• research article using an extended twin design.

Sample:

• Van Leeuwen used 112 families from the Netherlands Twin Registry.
• The twins were contacted on their 9th birthday and had a mean age of 9.1

Procedure:

1. DNA was taken from cheek swabs. At a lab cognitive testing took place which consisted of Raven Standard progressive matrices for children and Ravens advanced progressive matrices for adults.
2. The zygosity, how similar the twin’s genes were to each other was tested.

Results:

• found that there was no significant sex difference in IQ.
• Correlation between Monozygotic twins IQ scores was higher than the correlation between Dizygotic twins
• There was also a significant correlation between spousal IQ scores. It was found 67% of intelligence comes from Genetics and the rest is environmental influences.

Question 8

H2 - Barkley & Levenson (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 8

Aim:

• to research if adolescences value money or greater available rewards by examining subjective variance of objectively valued choices.

Method:

• They used a quasi-experiment with independent measures.
• IV was whether the participant was an adult or an adolescent
• DV was their performance on a gambling game during FMRI scanning which measures brain activity.

Sample:

• consisted of 19 right handed adults ages 25-30 and 22 right handed adolescents 13-17.

Procedure:

1. After attending an intake session the participants were given money which they could play with in a gambling game.
2. While in a fMRI scanner the participants completed a gambling tests where they could win or lose between $5 and $20.

Results:

• found that adolescents were more likely to gamble if there was a higher expected value. The expected value is a predicted value of a variable, calculated as the sum of all possible values each multiplied by the probability of its occurrence. The formula for expected value is (probability of winning x amount won per bet) – (probability of losing x amount lost per bet).
• The adolescent had greater activation of the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex but decreased activity in the amygdala.

Question 9

H3 - Gibson & Walk (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 9

Aim:

• to find evidence to support the theory that humans and species have innate depth perception, the ability to see in 3D and to find out which visual clues influence depth perception, pattern density, the use of larger and smaller patterns to assess depth and motion parallax, the use of objects moving faster or slower.

Method:

lab experiment with repeated measures for the human children and a quasi-experiment for the animals.

• IV for the babies was whether they were called to the shallow or deep side and
• DV was whether the child crawled to their mother or not.
• IV for the other animals was what species they were
• DV was whether they went to the shallow or deep side.

Sample:

• consisted of 36 babies aged 6-14 months.
• The other animals used were chicks, turtles, rats, lambs, pigs, kittens and dogs.

Procedure:

1. Child was placed on the centre board and the mother called them from the shallow side for 2 minutes and then swapped to the deep side.

Results:

• 27 infants crawled into the shallow side and only 3 children crawled onto the deep side.
• Most of the animals also crawled to the shallow side, even dark reared rats.

Question 10

H4 - Wood (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 10

Aim:

• to investigate the instructional relationships between tutors and children in the context of skill acquisition and problem solving.

Method:

• They used a controlled observation with an artificial environment
• participant were observed individually for 20 minutes to an hour.

Sample:

• 30 children aged 3,4 and 5 within a 5-mile radius of Harvard University.
• The participants were equally split between the 3 ages.

Procedure:

1. The tutor had to help the child construct a 3D wooden pyramid from blocks by following a standard procedure of tutoring and allowing the child to do as much as possible independently.
2. The behaviours were categorised and inter-rater reliability was found to be 94%.

Results:

• that the children’s ratio of incorrect to correct solution was; 3-year-old = 9:0, 4 year olds= 2:8 and 5 year olds =1:2.
• The 3-year-old children often rejected the help of the tutor.
• The tutor also only stuck to procedure with 4 year olds 86% of the time as they offered more help than allowed.

Question 11

H5 - Ainsworth & Bell (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 11

Aim:

• to investigate the interaction between infant attachment behaviour and other behaviours such as exploration, separation anxiety and fear of strangers.
• Separation anxiety behaviours include crying when the mother leaves.

Method:

• They used a control observation.

Sample:

• consisted of 56 infants mainly from white middle class backgrounds that were contacted through private paediatricians.
• 23 of the children were part of a longitudinal study whereas 33 where chosen independently for this study.
• The children were 49-51 weeks old.

Procedure:

1. The children were subjected to a strange situation where a parent would play with their child in a playroom, over the time the parent would leave, and a stranger would enter, leaving the child in unfamiliar settings.
2. Time sampling was used to record behaviours such as exploratory, proximity and searching behaviours.
3. The other measurement used is that five classes of behaviour were rated on a 7-point rating scale such as proximity behaviour and search behaviours.

Results:

• found that children use their mother as a secure base in which they explore from.
• Exploratory behaviour decreased when the mother left and the stranger entered.
• The children also increased in crying when the mother left.
• The children did not seek as much contact from the stranger as they did from their mother.

Question 12

H6 - Johnson & Young (Aim, Method, Sample, Procedure, Results)

Answer 12

Aim:

• to investigate whether adverts portray gender stereotypes via the discourse and themes used.

Method/ Sample:

• used a content analysis of a sample of 147 toy adverts shown in 1996, 1997 and 1999.

Procedure:

1. The adverts were split into the categories, orientated for boys, orientated for girl and orientated for girls and boys.
2. Procedure studied different aspects of the adverts such as the voice over, the use of the word power and the verbs used such as action, destructive and nurturing. Action words included race and fly, destruction words included crush and knockout and nurturing words included cuddle and love.

Results:

• found that most of girls aimed adverts had a female voice over and that in most of times the voice was exaggerated.
• The boys adverts used lots of competition and control words. Whereas girls mainly used nurturing and feeling verbs, 66 times compared to male 0 times.
• The word power was used in boy adverts 45 times but only once in girl adverts.