WB 27th Feb

Lesson 1  –  This lesson was all about the Raine study using PET scans to compare the brains of muderers (NGRI) and non murderers to see if there are any differences. Remember you have to choose which study to ‘learn in detail’   Raine f 2012    Raine factsheet  Additional information can be found on I Learn.

HW: Please work through the’ brain tutorial’ on i Learn – it is a great idea to get to know the various areas of the brain!   I would also like you to research Charles Whitman -find 5 facts if you can!

Also please complete the Raine APRC on p30-31 in your pack.

Group E have no lesson on Thursday – work set read p102-103 in your text book on animal research and then complete the tasks on p6-9 in your pack. 

Lesson 2  – We recapped where we’d got to so far with the biological approach – you considered what this approach assumes about behaviour, -like it can be attributed to genes, or brain structure for example. We looked at the research methods used by biological psychologists, like brain scanning, twin and adoption studies and animal and post mortum studies. We then watched some film clips from planet e stream (put in my name ‘Fran Thompson’ then search). We watched ‘the secret history of the brain’ part 1 and reflected on the type of animal studies which were used in the early days of psychology. We then used this powerpoint                animal research pp f and you had to complete p6-7 in your packs.

Lesson 3  – Animal studies for group A – text book, pro and anti film and bio pack tasks – timed exam questions next lesson! 

 Introduction to CNS and neurones for group C – you did exam questions under timed conditions first though 🙂

 

WB 20th Feb

Lesson 1 – Hi everyone, good to see you all back from half term 🙂 In our first lesson we played catch up, we looked back at the correlation we did last term and revisited the meaning of significance. We also looked at type 1 and type 2 errors and hopefully by now you will have all realised that the correlations we did were not significant – anything that looked like a correlation was likely due to chance. We therefore rejected the hypothesis and accepted the null hypothesis. Using the ‘Science pack’ we looked at descriptive statistics p26-29. We then read the section on inferential statistics p30-31.

 If you haven’t already done so please complete p39 in your science pack on correlations.

You should write up/have written up the correlation study on p60-62 including the evaluation. Remember there is a more than 5% chance that the results were due to chance.

Lesson 2   With the new biology packs in hand we ventured forth into the nature vs nurture debate by way of twin studies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gwnzW4jOMI&ob=av3e

we completed the twin gap fill in the new pack and you were asked to read p98-103 in your text book by next lesson. A question to ponder, how do you know that you are actually a boy or a girl? If you are a girl what makes you a girl and if you are a boy what makes you a boy? We explored the method of twin and adoption studies and Gotteman and Shields give us a good example of this kind of research.

Lesson 3 was about PET and MRI scanning techniques. The studies you can choose from are attached below, pick the one you like the most, you need to be able to descripe APRC and evaluate GRAVE this study!

Gottesman and Shields (1966) Schizophrenia in twins – 16 years’ consecutive Admissions to a Psychiatric Clinic

Raine et al (1997) – Brain Abnormalities in Murderers               

 de Bellis et al (2001) – Sex Differences in Brain Maturation during Childhood & adolescence

Some twin studies model answers:

WB 6th Feb

Lesson 1 – All about correlations Correlations     We designed a questionnaire correlation questions , collected data from the class and plotted this on a scattergraph. When scoring the questions we needed to ‘reverse polarity’ to make the marking consistent.

Lesson 2 – We recapped correlation and some Freud multi choice questions then we knuckled down to ranking the data in order to calculate the spearmans rho test. We checked the result using a stats package.

HW: Read p30-31 in your science pack about ‘significance’ and complete the correlation write up on p60-61. You could spend some useful time reading ahead for the biological approach, as well as making revsion cards for the psychodynamic approach. I will be springing a psychodynamic mock on you soon !!!

Group E got a lesson 3 and we did correlation recap and learnt about the meaning of significance in psychology. 

No lesson 3 due to development day