Raine

Question 1

what was the aim?

Answer 1

to see the difference in brain structure between murders pleading not guilty through insanity and non-murderers

Question 2

what was the sample/participants?

Answer 2

41 murderers and 41 control group

Question 3

what was the procedure?

Answer 3

1-ppts carried out practice test-visual targeting test
2-10 mins later injected with a tracer then completed visual targeting test again
3-32mins later PET scan was carried out to see how active brain had been when doing tasks

Question 4

what controls were used?

Answer 4

-looked at whether left/right handedness was significant-wasn’t

Question 5

what were the results?

Answer 5

CORTICAL:
-prefrontal lobe-lower glucose metabolism in murderers
-Parietal lobe- lower glucose metabolism in murderers
occipital lobe-higher glucose metabolism in murderers
SUB-CORTICAL:
-Amygdala-low levels in left but high levels in right
Thalamus-greter right thalamic activity

Question 6

what were the conclusions?

Answer 6

• areas that had abnormal activity-due to lower self control/increased aggression
• murderers brains significantly different to non-murderer’s brains

Question 7

GENERALISABILITY?

Answer 7

+41 is large sample for these kinds of studies make the results ore representative to these contexts
-not a large sample overall and ppts mean that reults can’t be generalised to large population

Question 8

RELIABILITY?

Answer 8

+standardised procedure-same timings-same machines

Question 9

APPLICABILITY?

Answer 9

-the ppts uniqueness (plead insanity) can’t apply to other types of criminals or other types of murderers

Question 10

VALIDITY?

Answer 10

-some characteristics of ppts couldn’t be matched in the controls increasing ID-lowering validity
+matched pairs does reduce ID making more valid
-low ecological validity-scanning process
-subjective interpretation on som PET scan results

Question 11

ETHICS?

Answer 11

• informed consent and withdrawal may have been limited as prisoners have little power
• injected-lack of protection from harm
• off meds for 2 weeks-lack protection from harm

Question 12

what were the ppts matched on?

Answer 12

sex,age,gender, 6 had schizophrenia

Question 13

how many of the ppts were women?

Answer 13

2

Question 14

what design measure was used?

Answer 14

matched pairs design

Question 15

what is this study classed as?

Answer 15

classical study