Discuss how and why particular research methods are used at the biological level of analysis (for example, experiments, observations, correlational studies). [22]

The biological level of analysis states three things: there is a biological basis for emotions and behavior, behavior can be genetically inherited, and that animal research can assist in understanding human behavior. Certain research methods can be used in order to investigate these aspects, which can gain data to be analyzed. Without research, psychologists cannot observe these behaviors whether directly or indirectly. But as research is extremely helpful, it is open to bias from researchers and errors, such as those fixed by inter-rater reliability, which assures that observations fit a shared definition by multiple researchers. However, both laboratory research and in-depth studies play a large role in investigating behavior from a biological point of view.

The laboratory experiment is an extremely common method for studying with the biological level of analysis. They are done to find a cause and effect relationship within the participants and the scrutinized behavior. An example of an experiment is Martinez and Kesner (1991), which studied the relationship between acetylcholine and memory. Rats were put in a maze to find the exit, wherein a piece of cheese was located. Their levels of acetylcholine were either enhanced or weakened, along with a control group with no changes. Results showed that rats with more acetylcholine were able to find the maze’s exit faster, while the opposite effect occurred for rats with less of the hormone. This experiment demonstrates the use of the individual and dependent variables which may be chosen and manipulated. These properties to experiments show their usefulness in which they are standardized, despite the artificial environment. The behavior can be more easily observed according to chosen variables, participants and overall controlled. However, this may lead to low ecological validity and may not actually show a cause and effect relationship but a correlation. For example, Martinez and Kesner’s results did show a cause and effect of enhanced memory, but other studies such as those using MRI imaging may only show brain images and not the actual inner workings of the brain, therefore showing only correlation.

The case study is somewhat more complicated than the laboratory experiment. It focuses on certain participants for a long period of time to see the effects of changes in their body on their behavior, and is more realistic in procedure. A famous example is the case study of Henry Molaison, who was mostly know as H.M. After receiving brain damage in his youth, H.M started to have epileptic seizures. He went to a neurosurgeon named William Scoville to get it healed, but Scoville took parts of his temporal lobe, including his hippocampus whose function was not determined yet. As a result, he gained retrograde and anterograde amnesia, losing the ability to store new long term memories or remember some after his operation. In 1957, Scoville and Milner investigated the function of the hippocampus and localized the area, finding that it was responsible for processing and keeping explicit long term memory. Corkin (1997) found during a brain scan of H.M’s brain that parts of his hippocampus remained, but were not enough to process semantic and episodic memory, despite still having procedural memory. These case studies are controversial as though they occur in real life and therefore have high ecological validity, people like H.M. may be seen as exploited as they sometimes cannot give clear consent. H.M was exposed to many experiments, but since he had amnesia, he forgot them as soon as he performed them. They are also impossible to exactly replicate, unlike that of experiments.

Both methods are extremely useful in finding biological origins of behavior, as they give a balance in terms of ecological validity, control and real life application. However, each must be best suited to the aim of the researchers. For example, in order to find copious and similar data which is easy to get, researchers may use experiments. However, they might not be too applicable to real life due to environment, and may mostly suit scientific phenomena that is more common and can be observed in most people. In contrast, case studies which provide more enriching and substantial yet limited participants, can be used for special cases such as those suffering from brain damage or diseases. It may assist in more rarer and marginalized cases, despite being hard to do due to using different sorts of method within the case study itself.

 

Examine one interaction between cognition and physiology in terms of behavior.

Focus: Brain damage

This essay will attempt to uncover the assumptions and interrelationships of the interaction between cognition and physiology in terms of amnesia. To examine the interaction between cognition and physiology in terms of amnesia, one must first understand that Cognition is the mental process of acquiring and processing knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses. Cognitive processes include perception, attention, language, memory and thinking. On the other hand Physiology is the internal, biological mechanisms of living organisms – the way the organism functions. Amnesia can be defined as the inability to learn new information or retrieve information that has already been stored in memory.  In terms of cognition, Amnesia is the condition in which people lose their ability to memorize/recall information. Amnesia can be caused by brain damage through injury, strokes,infections, specific drugs – usually sedative, closed head injuries, bilateral strokes among many others

 

The first assumption is that, there is an interaction between biological and cognitive factors in amnesia. This means that Amnesia has a biological cause (e.g. brain damage) and affects cognition (e.g. memory). In amnesia patients, episodic memory is affected to a greater extent than semantic memory. Episodic memories are memories linked to a certain time and place. Semantic memories are memories for the meaning of information. We will also be assuming that the Regions affected in the brain are Diencephalon (subcortical), Medial temporal lobe (cortical), Hippocampus. Furthermore, there are 2 types of Amnesia. Anterograde Amnesia where impairment in ability to recall new information after the onset, Inability to form new memories. And Retrograde Amnesia where, Impairment in ability to recall old information before the onset, Inability to recall old memories

 

Amnesia interacts directly with physiology because it is basically caused by damage in the hippocampi region of the brain. Therefore, the physiological effects of amnesia are what influences or affects cognition, particularly the mental process of memory. Studies demonstrating damage in the brain causing memory impairment illustrating the interaction between the two factors will be examined, including evaluation of some of the major cases.

 

The first study is the HM study conducted by Milner and Scoville. HM was a patient who started having seizures after having a bike accident at the age of 9. He then had a brain surgery at 27, removing his hippocampus. While he did recover from the seizures he could not form any new memories and had forgotten memories prior to the experiment, he did though remember childhood memories. This was a case of extreme anterograde amnesia. Later, an MRI scan concluded damage to the hippocampus, amygdala and areas nearby. The case of HM reveals the interaction of cognition (memory) and physiology (brain damage in the hippocampus) in amnesia. Brain damage in relevant areas caused memory impairment. This study suggests that certain brain regions are responsible for the cognitive process of memory.

 

Another example of such a person is Clive Wearing. He contracted encephalitis – a viral infection. The disease caused major damage to his hippocampus. He also got Retrograde and Anterograde Amnesia following the damage to his hippocampus. MRI showed the same data; his hippocampus was damaged. It was also found that he could not transfer data from STM to LTM because his memories didn’t last more than 30 seconds. The case of Clive Wearing provides insight into the biological foundation of different memory systems, which is a cognitive process. Wearing’s case highlights the interaction between cognition and physiology as it establishes the link by illustrating the effect of physiological causes in the brain (brain damage occurring in hippocampi region, on the social and cognitive interactions of the individual

 

In amnesia patients, damage to certain brain areas impaired the patient’s’ memory, therefore supporting the idea of the interaction between the physiology (of the brain) and cognition (of memory) in amnesia. Therefore, amnesia has a bidirectional relationship between its physiological cause occurring in the brain and the cognitive process of memory. There are correlations between brain areas and memory and damage to these relevant areas results in memory impairment. Supported by Milner and Scoville (1957), Clive Wearing(2007), all the cases experienced damage to specific brain areas and suffered amnesia.There are two types of amnesia – anterograde and retrograde. Supported by HM who only suffered anterograde amnesia. Therefore the studies support the idea of the direct interaction between the physiology of the physical brain and cognition.

 

Evaluate schema theory with reference to research studies

This essay will evaluate schema theory. Schema are structures designed as hypothetical constructs for processing new information from using previously known information. Piaget defines it as internal representations of real life physical or mental actions. It is a theory proposed by Frederic Bartlett in 1932 and defines it as a cognitive theory of processing and organising information. Schema are mental representations of knowledge a person has from past experiences that is formed into a mental map. It helps to organise information and is influenced by culture and experiences.

Brewer and Treyens (1981) aimed to see if people’s schema of an office would affect their memory of an office. The method consisted of participants, 30 university students, who arrived individually to the laboratory and were asked to wait in an office containing objects. Alongside, there were also other objects that did not conform to the office schema. After waiting for some time, participants were taken out of the office and asked to write the objects they could remember from the room. The results showed that most participants recalled the schematic objects. Some participants reported things that would be expected in a typical office but were not present in this one. Many participants also recalled the skull, and very unusual object resulted in better recall than predicted by schema theory. The study confirms schema theory, but it was a controlled laboratory experiment so there are issues of artificiality. The study used deception (participants were not told about the real purpose of the experiment) but they were debriefed afterwards and not harmed. They study could not have been made without deception so it was justified There is a sample bias. University students were used as participants so it may be difficult to generalize the results.

Another study was “The War of the Ghosts” by Bartlett in 1932. The aim was to investigate whether people’s memory for a story is affected by previous knowledge and the extent to which memory is reconstructive. Bartlett used the method wherein he asked British participants to hear a story and reproduce it after a short time and then repeatedly over a period of months or years. The story was an unfamiliar Native American legend called “The War of the Ghosts”. The results showed that the participants remembered the main idea of the story but they changed unfamiliar elements to make sense of the story busing terms more familiar to their own cultural expectations. The story remained a coherent whole although it was changed it became noticeably shorter for each reproduction. Bartlett concluded that remembering is an active process. Memories are not copies of experience but rather “reconstructions”. The results of the study confirms schema theory, but it was performed in a laboratory and can be criticized for lack of ecological validity. Participants did not receive standardized instructions and some of the money distortions may due to participant’s guessing. Weaknesses from this study was that it was not controlled and other variables could have affected results. Another weakness is also that it was only specific to western culture, as the participants were only British, showing unfamiliarity only from their perspective. This also takes an etic approach, as the results from this experiment are generalised across the whole population, assuming that this phenomenon occurs worldwide. However, this is not proven, as it does not take into consideration other cultures and nationalities, which might exhibit contrasting results.

Furthermore, Loftus and Palmer (1974) aimed to investigate whether the use of leading questions would affect recall in a situation where participants were asked to estimate speed. This is a situation that could happen when people appear in court as eyewitness testimonies. The method was the student participants saw videos of traffic accidents and had to answer questions about the accident. There were different terminologies about the accident such as; smashed, hit, collided, bumped or contacted in other conditions. The results showed that the mean estimates of speed were highest in the “smashed” condition of 40.8 mph and lowest in the “contacted” condition of 31.8 mph. The results indicated that memory is not reliable and that memory can be manipulated by using specific words. The critical word in the question consistently affected the participant’s’ answer to the question. One explanation could be that the use of different words influenced participants’ mental representation of the accident. For example, the verb “smashed” activates a cognitive schema of a severe accident and therefore speed estimates increase. It is not the actual details of the accidents that are remembered but rather what is in line with a cognitive schema of a severe accident. The experiment was conducted in a laboratory. There may be a problem of ecological validity. Neisser has criticized laboratory experiments on memory for being too artificial. The fact that the experiment used students as participants has also been criticized because students are not representative of a general population. The films shown in the experiment were made for teaching purposes and therefore the participants’ experience was not the same as if it had been a real accident. The experiment was rigorously controlled so it was possible to establish a cause-effect relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable.

Overall, this essay evaluated schema theory. Schemas affect our cognitive processes as they are used to organize our knowledge, assist recall, guide our behaviour, and predict likely happenings and make sense of current experiences. In conclusion, schema theory is strong as it provides an explanation on how knowledge is stored in the mind which remains unknown in psychology. There is much research that supports the schema theory. However, there are limitations. It is unclear exactly how schemas are acquired and how people choose between schemas. It does not account for new informations without a link to existing schema. Overall, with the amount of evidence, schema theory should be considered an important theory that provides insight into information processing and behavior. It has contributed largely to our understanding of mental processes. The theory, however, requires further research to overcome its limitations and uncover its unclear aspects.

Discuss factors influencing conformity

This essay will discuss group size and culture as the two factors affecting conformity. Conformity is a social influence involving a change in belief or behaviour in order to fit in with a group.

There are 2 types of conformity. One is Informational Conformity, and this is when an individual turns to members of a group to obtain information about what is right. The other is Normative Conformity, and this is when an individual conforms in order to be accepted or liked by other members of the group. In addition, it is proven that people have a need for social approval and acceptance.

A factor that influences conformity is group size. In 1951, Asch conducted an experiment to investigate whether perceived group pressure by a majority can influence a minority in an experimental set-up that is not ambiguous. Participants looked at one card that had three lines (A, B, C) and another that had one line. They had to say out loud which of the three lines on the right had the same length as the line on the left. There was one real participant in the experimental setup and six were confederates who were instructed to give unanimous wrong answers. Ashc found that if there is only person, then there is no conformity. If there are two people in a group, conformity increases to 13.6%. If there are three people in a group conformity increases to 31.8%. Asch made variations of the original study by altering the amount of confederates. After three people in a group, the percent did not increase for people conforming, so it is concluded that the size of opposition is important only up to a certain point. Asch suggested that with larger groups, participants may become resistant to conform if they suspect that members of the majority are working together on purpose.

Another factor that influences conformity is cultural norms. In 1196, Bond and Smith performed a meta-analysis of 133 studies in 17 different countries on Asch’s paradigm. They found higher conformity levels in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. The level of conformity (ie. percentage of incorrect answers) ranged from 15% in an experiment with Belgian students (Doms, 1983) to 58% among Indian teachers in Fiji (Chandra, 1973). They also found that generally the conformity was higher when the majority group was large. Berry (1967) used a variation of Asch’s conformity experiment to study whether conformity rates among the Temne in Sierra Leone in Africa and the Inuits of Baffin Island in Canada could be linked to social norms and socialization practices. He found that the Temne, who had an agricultural economy, had high conformity levels. The culture emphasized obedience in child-rearing practices because the culture is dependent on cooperation in farming. The Inuits, on the other hand, are hunters and often hunt alone. Therefore, they need to be able to make decisions for themselves. Child-rearing practices emphasize self-reliance because this is needed within this culture. This could perhaps explain why the Inuits tend to conform less as compared to the Temne.

To conclude, this essay discussed two factors that affect conformity- situational factors (group size and unanimity) and cultural norms.

Examine one evolutionary explanation of behaviour.

Disgust

Examine : Scrutinize the theory of how disgust helps us survive and make sure our offspring survive. In terms of the the theory of evolution this helps us survive. Try to note and understand the interrelationship and assumptions made to justify the emotion of disgust.

Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. It was proposed by Charles Darwin, arguing that species assimilate traits over successive generation. These traits are selected according to previous generations that had a higher chance of survival than their counterparts and therefore could lead a more ‘successful’ (in biological terms, had more offspring due to longer lifespan, better mate attraction and retention, etc) lifestyle. Assumptions Made at Beginning were that some behaviours are engraved in our genetics, such as disgust, happiness, aggression etc. And according to the theory, the behaviour that is with us from birth must have had some survival upsides to it for us to have inherited it. This Essay will deal with the behaviour of disgust. The emotion of disgust is largely connected to 2 studies.

First of all, the most recent of the studies if the study conducted by Fessler in 2006. During the first trimester of Pregnancy the immune system is slows its function down so as to have the body accept the baby. He argues that the emotion of disgust allowed our ancestors to survive long enough to produce offspring, who in turn passed the same sensitivities to us. He asked 496 healthy pregnant women between ages 18 – 50 to rank 32 potentially disgusting scenarios. He also asked the women if they were experiencing morning sickness. Women during the first trimester had a higher level of intensity for disgust sensitivity than women in their second and third trimester. With a control on the morning sickness, Fessler could pinpoint food as a major source of disgust in a pregnant women’s day to day life.

A lot of diseases are food borne. Ancestors probably learned disgust as a method to stay away from a food that caused a disease or killed their family member. This can be seen in pregnant women in an enhanced form as said earlier the immune systems shuts down its function to some extent. While this is worse to the pregnant women it is also harmful to the foetus as the foetus could die easily from even a small disease, hence disgust serves as a child protection method ensuring the future of the species. This study supports the role of disgust in helping reproduction, and thus, as an evolutionary behaviour.

The second study is by Curtis et al. done in 2004. Studied the Disgust reaction in over 75000 people from 165 people (Large Reach and can be said to relate to most humans), had them rate 20 images on their level of disgust. Out of the 20 images, there were 7 pairs where one was infectious or harmful to the immune system and the other was similar but non-infectious. The disgust was ranked stronger for images that were infectious/harmful  to the immune system than the ones where they were non-infectious. Disgust seemed to decrease with age and women had a higher disgust sensitivity towards the images than the men. Natural selection may have helped human ancestors to be more disgusted at things which threatened the immune system, to avoid things that could potentially lead to diseases or sickness. The decrease of disgust with age may be explained by the fact that the older a member of a species, the less likely they are to reproduce. Therefore, their disgust reaction (that can prevent death of offspring) decreases. The stronger disgust reaction of women may be because of women being carriers for offspring, they have a stronger disgust reaction so as not to threaten the lives of unborn offspring and consequently, the species. This study supports the role of disgust in aiding reproduction, and thus, as an evolutionary behaviour.

Darwin’s theory of evolution is based on the key assumption of Natural Selection, those who adapt best to environmental challenges will have characteristics better suited to the environment and are more likely to reproduce and pass on these traits. Natural selection results in adaptation – successive generations of a species developing characteristics that make it more competitive in its field. Along with these there is an evolutionary explanation of disgust. Fessler (2006) showed that disgust may be an evolutionary behaviour as it assists in reproduction of offspring by compensating for a suppressed immune system. Curtis et al. (2004) found that the disgust reaction may help to prevent illnesses. Research suggests that disgust aids the survival of the human species and is therefore an evolutionary behaviour.

More Info on Psychology Overall

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