ultradian and infradian rhythms Flashcards
strength: found the impact of the menstrual cycle on sexual behaviour.
E - Penton-Voak found that women showed a preference for ‘slightly feminised’ male faces when selecting a long-term partner, but during the ovulation phase they showed a preference for more masculinised faces.
E – This preference is believed to represent a preference for physical attributes associated with kindness and cooperation when a woman is looking for a partner who will care for her children, and attributes associated with ‘good genes’ when the genes may be passed on to her offspring. This finding illustrates how infradian rhythms such as the menstrual cycle can have a powerful effect on human behaviour. However, it is worth noting that this research into the effects of the menstrual cycle on behaviour is socially sensitive. This is because it might be interpreted by some to mean that women’s partner selection is entirely biologically determined, meaning women may have little free will about their choice of partners. This could be used to stigmatise women.
strength:helped us understand a type of ultradian rhtyhm called the sleep cycle.
E - Dement and Kleitman monitored nine sleeping particiapnts. Using EEG, they identified 5 stages of distinct brain activity. They found in one of these stages, the eyes of the patients moved rapidly, so they called this stage REM and the other 4 stages NREM. Participants woken from REM sleep were much more likely to report dreaming than those in NREM sleep.
E – This study was pioneering as it allowed researchers to identify and understand a new type of ultradian rhythm: the sleep cycle. Moreover, the finding that participants recalled more dreams in REM sleep helped develop scientific knowledge of the nature of dreams, which had previously been regarded as a mysterious phenomena. . However, this study’s findings have been criticised for weak population validity, as the small sample size means that generalising from this sample’s sleep cycle to a general law on how everyone’s sleep cycle works is problematic.
L – Therefore, this study has provided a detailed and credible account of the nature of the sleep cycle – a type of ultradian rhythm – although the extent to which its account is generalisable is questionable, given the small sample siz
