raine et al

Question 1

what is the aim?

Answer 1

to investigate whether there were differences in brain patterns between murder’s who pleaded guilty for reasons of insanity in comparisson to non-murders.

Question 2

how many participants were used?

Answer 2

41, 39 boys and 2 girls

Question 3

what design was used?

Answer 3

matched pairs for example - 6 individuals in both groups had been diagnosed with schizophrenia

Question 4

why were the participants screened and what for?

Answer 4

to check that they had stopped taking medication a week before they were to be scanned and to check health conditions.

Question 5

what did the participants do?

Answer 5

they carried out a 10 minuet practise test before being injected by a radioactive glucose tracer to enable the experimenters to see what parts of the brain were responding. a 32 minuet continuous performance activity was then carried out.

Question 6

how long after the CPT were the participants scanned?

Answer 6

immediately afterwards

Question 7

what scan was used on participants?

Answer 7

PET scans

Question 8

differences within the prefrontal cortext?

Answer 8

M = showed much less activity on the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex.

• e.g. murders left = 1.20 and right = 1.17
• e.g. non-murders = 1.25 lefts and right = 1.22

Question 9

what other differences were found between M and NM ?

Answer 9

much less activity in the Parietal areas and the Corpus callossum.

Question 10

what specifically was Raine aiming to look for?

Answer 10

• using PET scans to see if there was differences in the functioning/activity of the pre-frontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, corpus callosum and angular gyrus.

Question 11

what is an example of what was involved in the CPT?

Answer 11

• focusing on a blurred number sequence.

Question 12

what conclusions can be made on the findings of this study?

Answer 12

• murderers who pleased guilty for reasons of insanity have different brain functioning to non-murderers
• much less activity in the pre-frontal cortex which controls impulsivity and aggression.

Question 13

how is this study objective?

Answer 13

• PET scans are used which are scientifically credible and universally accepted to be accurate
• this makes them also highly reliable and replicable.

Question 14

how else is the study reliable appart from objectivity?

Answer 14

• Reliability is also high in the experiment as there were many controls put in place,
• such as the specific time gap between the injection and taking the PET scan of 32 minutes.
• All participants were also subject to the same tasks before the scan was produced.

Question 15

how did raine reduce the chance of individual differences?

Answer 15

• matched pairs design
• matched them on gender, age, ethnicity
• matched on mental disorders.
  this therefore increases the internal validity of the study.

Question 16

why might the study lack ecological validity?

Answer 16

• takes place in a lab with scanners etc…
• not participants usual environment and therefore the behaviour being displayed may not be natural which effects the validity of the results.
• also lacks mundane realism.

Question 17

how might the study being unethical?

Answer 17

• injection of a radioactive glucose trace, intrusive and invasive
• radioactivity can be bad for you

Question 18

applications to society?

Answer 18

• lots of applications
• can be considered in court when sentencing murderers
• causes the question of is it really their fault if they are wired to behave this way

Question 19

is the study generalisable?

Answer 19

only uses 4 girls therefore not hugely representative sample.