Raine et el

Question 1

aim of Raine

Answer 1

To find out if there is a difference in the structure of brain activity between murderers and non murderers

Question 2

IV of Raine

Answer 2

whether the participant is a offender pleading not guilty due to reasons of insanity or if they are in the control group of non offenders

Question 3

what experiment is Raine

Answer 3

Lab experiment

Question 4

what design is Raine

Answer 4

matched pairs

Question 5

Dv of Raine

Answer 5

Relative glucose levels in the prefrontal cortex and other lobes in the brain

Question 6

sample of Raine

Answer 6

82

41 NGRI
41 control

Question 7

what were the NGRI stats

Answer 7

39 men 2 women
23 had brain damage history
3 with drug abuse history
6 schizophrenics
2 with epilepsy
7 with learning or emotional disorders

controls were normal except the 6 with schizophrenia

Question 8

procedure of Raine

Answer 8

tested at the university of California
each injected with a glucose tracer then performed the continuous performance task for 32 minutes
a pet scan was the carried out
made such no ppts were on any medications or were med free for two weeks before

Question 9

results of Raine

Answer 9

NGRI’s showed less activity in frontal lobe, especially the pre-frontal cortex.
less activity in the parietal lobe which is associated with abstract thinking.

NGRI’s had less activity in the corpus collosum

Question 10

conclusion of Raine

Answer 10

Brain abnormalties in the NGRI’s might translate to violence or anti-social behaviour

pre-frontal deficits might make someone more impulsive and emotional

deficits in limbic system might make someone aggressive.

Question 11

generalisability of Raine

Answer 11

one weakness of Raines study is it lacks generalisability. Raine used a sample of 41 murderers and 41 non-murderers, all from California. This makes its hard to geographically generalise as they are all from one location and hard to generalise as there are only two women involved.

Question 12

application of Raine

Answer 12

one strength is that Raines study can be applied to the real world. The PET c=scan results showed low levels of brain activity in certain areas may cause a person display violent behaviour. Brain scans can be done to identify potential murderers so that they can be helped. This can also be used to help remove prison sentences.

Question 13

validity of Raine

strength

Answer 13

one strength of Raine is that iit has validity. The sampling was done effectiively as ppts were matched on age, gender and mental illness. This meaans comparisons of brain activity could be made to see if differences in this affect people to murder and if brain abnormalties are linked to aggressive behaviour. therefore the study has validty as there are high levels of control

Question 14

Validity of Raine

weakness

Answer 14

one weakness of Raines study was that it had low task validity. The participants completed a continuous perfomance task which involved looking at blurred numbers on a screen and they were also injected with glucose tracers .

This proves low task validity as non of these things are like real life tasks and would not happen in real life.

Question 15

conclusion of Raine

Answer 15

In conclusion, the study has helped to identify the role of the brain and its activity in violent behaviour. However, the task the participants did was artefical and would not have shown activity actually is when they are aggressive.