Split Brain Research

Question 1

Strength: scientific methods

Answer 1

Uses scientific enquiry, objective and empirical techniques eg controlled laboratory setting, used to identify which hemisphere responsible for which task, split brain only able to say what they saw when object shown to RVF, suggests left hemisphere activated during language tasks, increases internal validity and raises psychology’s scientific status

Question 2

Weakness: individual differences

Answer 2

Individual differences with how lateralised brain was, degree corpus callosum was severed varied greatly, some had greater disconnection between hemispheres, may still be some ability to communicate between hemispheres, may not be measuring effects of lateralisation, confounding variable reduces internal validity

Question 3

Weakness: casual relationship hard to establish

Answer 3

Behaviour in sperry’s split brain research compared to neurotypical control group, none of control group had epilepsy, major confounding variable as differences between groups could be due to epilepsy rather than split brain, epilepsy could have caused unique changes, influenced findings on how brain is lateralised, difficult to establish whether cognitive ability and lateralisation due to split brain or epilepsy, lowers internal validity

Question 4

Weakness: RTC EB

Answer 4

EB suffered brain damage, removal of left hemisphere, regained some language ability, not possible if brain completely lateralised, language in more areas than left hemisphere, lowers validity of using split brain patients to investigate effects of lateralisation