Studies Flashcards
Maguire 2000
Biological
Aim: To examine structural changes in the brain of London taxi drivers.
Procedure: Quasi-experiment. Participants were 16 right-handed male London taxi drivers, who had been driving for more than 1.5 years, and 50 healthy right-handed males who did not drive taxis. Maguire obtained MRI scans.
Results: 1. Increased grey matter was found in the brains of taxi drivers compared with controls in the posterior hippocampus, while controls had greater volumes of grey matter in the anterior hippocampus. 2. A correlation between the amount of time spent as a taxi driver and volume in the posterior hippocampus was found.
Conclusion: Grey matter redistributed from the anterior hippocampus (responsible for learning new spatial information) to the posterior hippocampus (responsible for using existing spatial information. This indicates that extensive practice with spatial navigation affects the hippocampus.
Feder et al 2004
Biological
Aim: To test the effectiveness of ketamine on reducing the symptoms of PTSD
Procedure: True experiment with repeated measures. Participants were 41 PTSD patients who were given Ketamine and Midazolam separately.
Results: Ketamine was significantly more effective in reducing PTSD symptoms, compared with midazolam.
Conclusion: Ketamine is an antagonist of glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter. Ketamine may prevent the excitatory effects of glutamate in hyper-responsive areas of the brain, like the amygdala.
Kendler et al 2015
Biological
Aim: To investigate the role of the rearing environment in cognitive ability
Procedure: Adoption study of 436 male sibling pairs in which one of the siblings was home-reared and the other one was adopted away. IQ was measured at 18-20 years old as part of the Swedish military service. Educational level of parents was rated
Results: Correlation between adopted siblings and adoptive parents was 0.18, while the correlation with biological parents was 0.20.
Correlation between home-reared siblings and parents was 0.34
Conclusion: Results suggest an additive influence of environment and genetics.
Intelligence seems to be inheritable, but it can also be shaped by the environment.
Lueck and Wilson 2010
Sociocultural
Aim: To investigate the factors that can affect acculturative stress in Asian immigrants to America
Procedure: Semi-structured interviews. 2,905 Asian-Americans (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.); half were born in Asia and had immigrated to America, half were the children of immigrants.
They were interviewed about their acculturation experiences. The interviewers had a similar cultural background to the participants and could speak their native language.
Results: Around 70% of participants reported acculturative stress (AS). Factors that contributed to lower AS were 1. bilingualism, 2. sharing values with their family and 3. economic satisfaction. Higher AS was related to 4. a preference of speaking English only and 5. experiences of discrimination, prejudice or stereotyping
Conclusion: Acculturative stress is common amongst immigrants. Assimilation (4) seems to contribute to this phenomenon, while integration seems to reduce it (1) as it helps immigrants maintain strong ties to their Asian culture while also being able to integrate in American society.
Brashford and Johnson 1972
Cognitive
Aim: To see how prior knowledge (schema) can influence comprehension and memory.
Procedure: True experiment. This study included four different experiments. In all of them, participants listened to a passage of information that was deliberately vague, which was followed by comprehension rating and recall tasks. In one experiment they were divided in 3 conditions: No topic, Topic before passage (Making and flying a kite”), Topic after passage.
Results:. Comprehension and memory were the highest in the Topic before condition
Conclusion: Schemas can improve comprehension and memory of new information because they enable us to relate new information to our existing knowledge of a subject
Milner and Scoville 1957
Biological
Aim: To study the case of patient HM regarding memory.
Procedure: Case study. Henry Molaison (HM) had his hippocampus removed to cure his epilepsy. After surgery, his epilepsy was better but he suffered from memory loss.
Observations, interviews and tests were conducted
Results: His personality and 1Q were unaffected. He could hold information in his STM if he kept rehearsing it, but would not transfer to the LTM. He was able to remember old memories from before the surgery but was not able to create new long-term memoties. The star-tracing test found that his procedural. memory was intact but his dectarative memory was damaged
Conclusion: The hippocampus plays an important role on memory consolidation (transter from SIM to LIM). Memoty needs to be transferred in order to be retrieved. The fact that HM is cible to use his STM is evidence that memories ore in different stores
Passamonti et al 2012
Biological
Aim: To see what effect reduced serotonin
has on the prefrontal cortex when exposed to threat.
Procedure: True experiment. Experimental group consumed a tryptophan-depleting drink (leading to reduced serotonin). Then, they were placed in a MRI machine and shown angry, neutral and sad faces.
Results: Reduced function in their PFC when viewing angry faces (threat) and a disruption of the neural network communication between the amygdala and the PFC
Conclusion: Serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter and an endogenous agonist that is linked with aggression. Low serotonin is related to impulsive-reactive aggression because it affects the ability of the PFC of regulating the amygdala.
Dabbs et al 1987
Biological
Aim: To investigate the role of testosterone in aggression
Procedure: Correlational study and interviews. Researchers took saliva samples of 89 male prison inmates.
Results: 10 out of 11 men with the highest concentration of testosterone were convicted of violent crimes. In contrast, 9 out of the 1l males with the lowest testosterone levels had been convicted of non-violent crimes.
The inmates rated the toughest and most aggressive by their peers had the highest levels of testosterone within that population. The inmates who received parole earliest for good behavior while in prison were among those with the lowest testosterone levels.
Conclusion: Testosterone is a hormone that plays a role in human aggression.
Wedekin et al 1995
Biological
Aim: To see if MHC genes influence attraction through the sense of smell
Procedure: Natural experiment. 49 women and 44 men were selected for their variety of MHC gene types. Men wore a T-shirt for two days, then put them into boxes. Women smelled the shirts (during their ovulation period) and rated them 1-10 in terms of intensity, pleasantness, and sexiness. Women smelled three shirts worn by men with similar MHC genes and three by men with dissimilar MHC genes.
Results: Women preferred the scents of T-shirts worn by men who had different MHC genes from their own. EXCEPT if they were taking oral contraceptives.
Conclusion: Women are attracted to the smells of men with opposite MHC genes, because they will provide them with the heathiest offspring. Pheromones in sweat could explain this results.
Curtis et al 2004
Biological
Aim: To investigate the hypothesis that disgust evolved as protection from disease
Procedure: Online survey (BBS science website) of 20 images. Among them, there were 7 pairs of images that showed either disease-salient stimulus, or a similar image without the disease stimulus. All images were rated for disgust on a Likert scale from 1 to 5. A total of 39.829 valid responses from all five continents.
Results: Disgust response was stronger when facing disease-salient stimulus. It was similar across-cultures, more pronounced in women (caretakers), declining with age and stronger in contact with strangers.
Conclusion: Disgust seems to have evolved as protection from the risk of disease
Stone et al 2010
Cognitive
Aim: To see how stereotypes influence the perception of information.
Procedure: True experiment. 5l participants listened to a 20-minute recording of a college basketball game with a written transcript. They were given a player’s name and were told to listen carefully so they could evaluate them. Half of the participants were shown a picture of a White athlete and half a picture of a Black athlete. Afterwards, they completed a questionnaire evaluating the natural ability, performance, and contributions of the player.
Results: Participants reported that Black men have more athletic ability and are better at playing basketball, while white men can contribute because they are more intelligent and make up for their lack of physical ability through effort.
Conclusion: Participants focused on the details that were consistent with their schemas (stereotypes). This can lead to confirmation bias, reinforcing the existing stereotype and making it harder to change
Kahneman and Tversky 1974
Cognitive
Aim: To see if people rely on intuitive thinking (system 1) more than rational thinking (system 2).
Procedure: 95 participants were given a scenario of two hospitals in a town. The larger hospital has 45 babies born each day, the smallest one has about 15. Participants were reminded that gender ratio is usually 50/50. For 1 year, both hospitals recorded how many days they had higher than 60% of one gender born. Then, they were asked
“Which hospital do you think recorded more of such days?” The larger one, the smaller one, or about the same?
Resus 52/01 the an eer ence representative heurst), bu ne core one were.
was the smaller one, because statistical probabilities suggest that the larger the sample size the closer it will get to the average,
Conclusion: Participants used system I more than system 2. System lis commonly used when solving problems, butit can lead to errors in thinking and decision making.
Peterson and Peterson 1959
Cognitive
Aim: To test the duration of the STM store.
Procedure: True experiment. Participants tried to remember trigrams (consonant triplets).
After hearing the trigrams, participants in the control condition were asked to recall the words. Participants in the experimental condition had to count backwards in 3s from a random number to prevent rehearsal for 6, 12 or 18 seconds.
Results: Delays stopped participants from rehearsing, and this stopped information from traveling to the LTM. As the time delay increased, memory of the trigrams decreased: after 18 seconds, there was almost zero recollection of the trigrams.
Conclusion: The average duration of the STM is about 18 seconds. Rehearsal is needed for information to go from the SIM to the LTM.
Loftus and Palmer 1974
Cognitive
Aim: To see if leading questions can change eyewitness memory of an event.
Procedure: True experiment. 45 students watched clips of car crashes and were asked “How fast were the cars going when they
each other?”. The IV was the verb used in the question
(contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed) and the DV was their speed estimates. in a second experiment, only “hit”, “smashed and no question were used (150 participants total) and after one week they were asked if they saw broken glass (there was not).
Results: Stronger verbs led to higher average speed estimates, In the second experiment, 32% of the smashed condition said they saw broken glass, compared to 14% in the hit and
12% in the no question conditions.
Conclusion: The higher intensily verb acts as misinformation and produced a false memory of something that did not happen (broken glass). This could be due to schemas activated by the different intensity verbs. This suggests that memory is reconstructive in nature and the information we hear after an event can distort how we remember it.
Brown and Kulik 1977
Cognitive
Aim: To Investigate whether people have unusually vivid memories of highly emotional events.
Procedure: Quasi-experiment. Participants were 80 Americans, half of which were white, the other half black. They were asked to recali assassinations of famous people, like JFK. They were also asked to recall memories of an emotionally intense persona event, such as the unexpected death of a family member.
Results: Nearly all participants had very vivid memories of JFK’s assassination, including where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news. Black participants also had vivid memories of the assassination of key civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr. 91% of all participants also had at least one exceptionally vivid memory of an emotionally intense personal event, the most common being the death of a parent
Conclusion: Emotionally intense events are remembered in cetail.
