Raine et al Flashcards
How many participants were there?
82, 41 murderers and 41 non murderers, 39 males and 2 females in each sample. Matched on gender, age, mental ability, mental problems e.g six murderers had schizophrenia so 6 non murderers also did.
What is the scan cause that they used?
PET, Positron emission tomography
How long did they complete tasks for?
32 minutes
Where did they find murderers had less activity?
The medial and prefrontal cortex
Where did murderers show higher levels of activity?
The right side of the thalamus
Where was there asymmetrical activity?
the amygdala it was lower in the left but higher in the right
What happened in the corpus callosum?
Less activity
What was shown in the Opcipital lobe?
Higher activity
Where was there identical activity?
Temporal lobe
Strength of PET scanning?
Can be interpreted objectively by more than one researcher, thus results tend to be reliable as the same results can be found by different people giving the study inter rater reliability
Strength relating to application to real life?
Able to provide the possibility that there may be biological factors involved in the murderers behavior. But this cannot be shown by research it provides the basis for further research.
Why is reliability a strength of the study?
There were many controls such as the specific time gap between the injection and taking the PET scan of 32 minutes. All ptps were also subject to the same tasks before the scan was produced, thus the experiment could be recreated to attain similar results which gives it reliability. This is also strengthened by the fact they used a PET scan which is a scientific method where procedures are controlled which can be repeated to check for consistent results.
Why is generalisabiltiy a strength?
Large sample of 82 ptps which was the largest in PET studies. There were sufficient amounts of people in each group for conclusions to have been fairly firm and generalisation might have been possible to other murderers pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.
Why is internal validity a weakness?
It is limited as the researchers claimed the PET scans weren’t particularly clear which may have effected their interpretation of the images meaning mistakes could be due to subjectivity meaning results might not be accurate
What is a problem with trying to explain this biologically?
Findings could be due to environmental factors.
Why is generalisability a weakness?
It can only be generalised to murderers pleading not guilty by way of insanity because that was the specific group studied. The findings can’t be said to be true for all violent offenders as they were not included in the sample even though violence was being studied making the sample non representative of the target population. There was also no non violent criminals in the control group so we cannot see if brain difference would be found in all types of criminals.
