A Level Psychology - Unit 1

A Level Psychology - Unit 1

1. Psychopathology

   • -> objectivity and subjectivity -> cultural relativism -> labelling -> value and usefulness -> is abnormality always undesirable?
   • Definitions of abnormality
     • http://www.simplypsychology.org/abnormal-psychology.html
     • Statistical infrequency
       • Where the individual possesses a characteristic or behaviour which id not shared by the majority of the population 
       • Worked out statistically using a normal distribution of behaviour and classing individuals at the extreme ends of the curve abnormal 
       • Pros:  -> level of objectivity -> appropriate way of working out what is abnormal 
       • Cons:  -> cut off points are arbitrary -> does not consider the desirability of certain abnormalities 
     • Deviation from social norms
       • an individual is considered to be abnormal if their behaviour differs from social norms or desirability 
       • Pros:  -> face validity -> considers the effect behaviour has on others
       • Cons:  -> dependant on context  -> succeptable to abuse
     • Failure to function adequately
       • Suffering Unpredictability Maladaptive Observer discomfort  Vivid and uncharacteristic  Violation of moral/social norms Irrationality 
       • Pros:  -> more holistic -> supported by it's use of the GAF scale 
       • Cons:  -> some are functional  -> subjective
     • Deviation from mental health
       • Jahoda (1958)  1. realistic self esteem  2. personal growth  3. integration 4. autonomy  5. accurate perception of reality 6. environmental mastery 
       • Pros:  -> takes a positivist approach  -> face validity
       • Cons: -> unrealistic -> assumes mental health is like physical health 
   • Being sane in insane places
     • Rosenhan (1973)
       • set out to prove that mental health cannot be treated like physical health 
       • http://holah.co.uk/study/rosenhan/
   • Characteristics of disorders
     • Behavioural:  refers to how a person behaves, often very obvious
     • Emotional: refers to the emothional state of the person
     • Cognitive: refers to the notable thought patterns (or lack thereof) for a person with a specific disorder 
   • Phobias
     • Behavioural: avoidance and panic Cognitive: exaggerated and irrational Emotional: anxiety and fear
     • Pros:  -> supporting evidence -> real world application /evidence -> efficiency of behavioural therapy
     • Cons:  ->phobias without behavioural route (ex: agoraphobia) -> reductionism -> alternate explanations -> determinist 
     • Behavioural treatments of phobias
       • -> If all behaviour is learned, therefore all behaviour can be unlearned or new behaviour can be learned  -> OC and CC can be used to re-treat a stimulous
       • Pros:  -> Effective - supportive research  -> Preferred - more ethical  -> Accessible and diverse 
       • Cons:  -> Doesn't work for everyone  -> Slow -> Not as effective as CBT
       • Wolpe (1958)
         • Systematic desensitisation: -> based on the idea of CC and reciprocal inhibition  -> over time, the patient is exposed to each level (see next sticky) and made to relax in that situation -> takes place over a course of time
         • 3 Processes / levels -> anxiety hierarchy -> relaxation -> exposure
       • Brosnan and Thorpe (2006)
         • -> group of technophobes subjected to a 10 week SD group -> after a year, the subject s were as fine as non-phobic people
       • Jones (1924)
         • -> treated Little Peter's fear of fluffy animals using SD and food 
       • Rothbaum (1998)
         • -> virtual  reality can be used for SD
       • Flooding
         • -> Uses the process of extinction  ^ this is where the conditioned stimulus no longer causes a conditioned response  -> anxiety uses a lot of energy and so once peak anxiety is reached, i has to reduce and the patient learns that their response is no longer justified  ^ they must be exposed to their highest fear rapidly. 
         • Pros:  -> Effective - supporting research  -> Quicker and more cost effective 
         • Cons:  -> Doesn't work for everyone (health risks)  -> Sometimes impractical -> Unethical and traumatic (high drop-out rate) 
         • Wolpe (1960)
           • -> Removed a girl's fear of cars by forcing her into one and driving around for four hours until her hysteria subsided and fear was eradicated 
         • Ost (1997)
           • -> Found that flooding is a rapid treatment that delivers almost immediate improvement
     • Behavioural explanations of phobias
       • Watson and Raynor (1920)
         • Little Albert  -> repeated measures
         • Structure: -> LA shown white, furry rat -> rat paired with loud noise
         • Results: -> LA showed fear response to rat which was generalised to other furry things
         • Conclusion: -> CC can induce phobias
       • Classical Conditioning
         • UCS -> UCR UCS + NR -> UCR CS -> CR
       • Operant Conditioning
         • Maintaining phobias -> maintained through negative reinforcement as avoidance of the phobic stimuni meets with the reward of lowered anxiety
       • Mowrer (1960)
         • 2 process model  process 1 -> phobia acquired through CC process 2 -> phobia maintained through OC 
       • Supporting evidence
         • Watson and Raynor (1920)  -> phobias can be acquired through CC
         • Mowrer (1960)  ->phobias are acuired through CC and maintained with OC
         • King et al (1998)  -> most phobias come from a traumatic childhood event
         • DiGallo (1996) ->20% of people in a car accident develop a fear of car travel, reinforced by staying at home
       • Alternate explanations
         • Seligman  -> simple phobias are easier to acquire as they are evolutionary -> says that not all phobias are learnt, disproving the behaviourist theory
         • Cognitive explanations: -> 2 people could have the same traumatic theory and reacti differently 
   • Depression
     • Cognitive explanations
       • Pros:  -> supporting evidence - increases validity  ^ Beck (1967) and Koster (2003) -> less reductionist - more useful ^ considers range of possible causes for -ive schemas  -> efficacy of CBT - increases validity of behav expl or increases usefulness with application ^ CBT is considered one of the most effective treatments 
       • Cons:  -> doesn't offer any explanation of why people develop -ive beliefs - reduces validity ^ Beck says possible life events -> circular argument - reduces validity and usefulness  ^negative thoughts could be a symptom, not a cause -> alternate explanations - cog cannot explain usefulness ^ serotonin hypothesis has effective application in drug therapies 
       • Negative Triad
         • Beck (1967)  -> believed depression is caused through negative schemas, causing cognitive bias in the individual which reinforces the negative schema and therefore the depression
         • Negative triad:  -> Negative view of the world -> Negative view of the future -> Negative view of the self
         • Cognitive bias:  -> overgeneralisation -> arbitrary influence -> selective abstraction -> magnification(-)/ minimisation(+)
         • Beck (1974)
           • -> interviewed depressed and "normal" patients and made them keep thought diaries -> compared their thiking and found an automatic negative bias in the depressed ppts
         • Koster et al (2000)
           • -> found in an eye-tracking experiment with +ive and -ive words all over the screen, depressed ppts took longer to look away from the -ive words when told to focus on a square 
       • ABC model
         • Ellis (1962)  -> believes, like Beck, that depression is caused by our beliefs about our experiences 
         • Acting event (what happened) Beliefs (our beliefs around it)  Consequences (how it makes us feel / behave 
         • Musturbation
           • -> depressed people are musturbators- believing things MUST be a certain way, leading to disappointment 
         • McIntosh and Fischer (2000)
           • -> preformed a meta-analysis on depressive studies and found that negative thoughts were common, but that the key belief was negative thoughts about self 
       • Alternate explanations
         • Biological
           • Serotonin hypothesis (Schilldkeraut) -> the depressed brain re-uptakes serotonin too efficiently or breaks it down in the synapse too efficiently, making it hard or difficult to regulate mood
           • Genetic arguments (Capsi) 
         • Behavioural
           • Learned helplessness (Seligman)
     • Cognitive treatments of depresion
       • Pros:  -> supporting evidence increases validity (DOH and Hollen)  -> Can be effective in a short period of time and more cost effective (Ellis found 27 weeks as enough, doesn't have to be weekly) -> no side effects makes CBT more useful and safer (drug therapies can cause side effects, including increased risk of suicide)
       • Cons:  -> subject to individual differences reduces validity (Patient must be willing or it won't work) -> requires a skilled practitioner, reducing the usefulness (less able therapists produce poorer results)  -> requires an articulate and focused client, reducing usefulness (less effective if client can't describe thoughts) 
       • REBT (ABC+DE)
         • Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy  -> ABC model + DE
         • Disputing irrational beliefs- how: 1. Question the client to make them see the lack of evidence and logic 2. Set them homework so they can see how, eve in every day life, their beliefs are irrational 3. Encourage exercise and relaxation- more fresh hair will help them (biologically) get better 4. Be unconditionally positive to show the client their value as a human being and make them feel more positive 
         • Expected new behaviours:  -> if the treatment is successful, the client will have positive emotional outcomes
         • Department of Health (2001)
           • -> Reviewed research onn various the
         • David et al (2008)
           • -> showed that the treatment outcome after 14 weeks was better than drug therapies 
         • Hollen et al (2006)
           • -> found that CBT had a lower relapse rate than drug therapies over the course of a year
   • OCD
     • Biological explanations
       • Pros:  -> supporting evidence increases validity (Nestdat 2010)  -> efficacy increases validity -> contributes to psychology as a science making the explanation more credible
       • Cons:  -> concordance rates are not 100% therefore there bust be other explanations to account for this -> Antidepressants don't work for everyone reducing isefulness -> too many candidate genes involved reducing the isefulness as we cannot find a specific cause
       • Genetic vulnerability
         • -> individuals who are more likely to develop disorders because of the genes they carry
         • Nesdat (2010)  -> 68% concordance rate in monozygotic twins and 31% in dizygotic twins
       • Candidate genes
         • -> genes that are believed to be responsible for / involved / common in certain disorders 
         • The COMT gene -> regulates prodution of dopamine  -> less COMT results in more dopamine and therefore a higher chance of OCD
         • the SERT gene (5-HTT)  -> linked to poorer transportation of serotonin -> mutations of 5-HTT are common in OCD sufferers
         • Tuckel et al (2003)  -> found the COMT gene that produces less COMT and therefore more dopamine was common in OCD patients
         • Ozakai et al (2003)  -> foind a mutation in the SERT gene in two families where 6/7 people had OCD
         • Stewart et al (2007)  -> foind that the OLIG-2 gene was common in OCD patients
       • Polygenic
         • -> not a single gene, but a combination of genes that may be / are involved 
         • -> evidence suggests that up to 230 genes can be involved in developing OCD, explaining why there are so many variants
         • Taylor et al (2013)  -> up to 230 genes can be involved in OCD -> research into candidate genes can clearly explain this
       • Diathesis–stress model
         • -> where environmental stimuli, including stress, can cause a candidate to trigger a disorder
       • Neural explanations
         • Neurotransmitters
           • Abnormal levels of neurotransmitters:  -> OCD sufferers benefit from serotonin increasing drugs  -> dopamine is involved in motivation and drive, therefore there must be higher levels in OCD sufferers 
         • Brain circutory
           • -> the orbital frontal cortex is believed to send signals to the thalamus about things we should be worrying about -> the caudate nucleus is believed to suppress and filter out the things we shouldn't be worried about 
         • Corner (1998)
           • -> reported that serotonin and dopamine are both used in the frontal lobes and caudate nucleus and abnormal levels of these could damage these systems
         • Fallon and Nields (1994)
           • -> 40% of people who contract lyme's disease (caused by tics) suffer from neural damage resulting in OCD symptoms
         • Zohar et al (1987)
           • -> found that is OCD patients were given drugs that increased dopamine levels, that their OCD levels grew severely worse 
       • Alternate explanations
         • Congitive
           • A-B-C model -> challenging thoughts and beliefs
         • Behavioural
           • 2-process model  -> anxiety is reduces when they carry out the activity
     • Biological treatments of OCD
       • Drug treatments
         • Pros:  -> supporting evidence increases validity / usefulness -> convenience- does not take hours of therapy / changing your daily routine  -> cheap in the short term increasing usefulness, psychology and economy
         • Cons:  -> evidence of negative side effects were not published, reducing reliability -> does not treat cause, reducing usefulness -> severe side effects, reducing usefulness 
         • Combined approach:  -> more useful if you use CBT and drugs (O'Conner et al 1999) 
         • Antidepressant SSRIs
           • -> blocks re-uptake sites in the presynaptic neurone ^ leaves more serotonin in the synapse  ^ increases chances of successful transmission and mood regulation
         • Antiphychotics
           • -> blocks the receptor sites for dopamine in the post-synaptic neurone ^ reduces successful transmission of dopamine
         • Anxiolytic drugs: Benzodiazepines (BZs)
           • -> enhance the quality of GABA ^ has a general quieting effect on many neurones in the brain
         • Supporting evidence
           • Piggott and Seay (1999)
             • -> reviewed the use of drug therapies -> concluded that the use of SSRIs were effective but antipsychotics were better 
           • Julian (2007)
             • -> argues that 50-80% of people's quality of life is improved by drug therapies
         • Research against
           • Healy (2013)
             • -> argues that drug companies are more interested in profit than health  ^ the use of SSRIs increased by 10% per year in Europe, leading  to:  • increase in suicides by 2,500 per year  • 30,000 miscarriages in mothers using SSRIs 

2. Attachment

   • Macoby (1980)
     • Seeking proximity
       • wanting to be near each other 
     • Distressed if separated
       • the infant and caregiver feel distressed if separated
     • Pleasure when reunited
       • both the infant feel joyous when reunites 
     • General orientation
       • generally always aware and makes frequent contact with caregiver 
   • Key concepts
     • -> earliest attachment is important to caregiving  -> depends on interactions
     • 1. reciprocity
     • 2. interactional synchrony
     • Interactions
       • -> interactions with other individuals innately seeked by infant  -> these offer short term security -> the first attachment acts as a template of how to behave and form in later relationships 
     • Feldman & Eidelman (2007)
       • -> from birth, babies and their carers spend a lot of time together  -> babies have periodic 'alert phases' and signal that they are ready for interaction with carers responding 66.7% of the time 
     • Feldman (2007)
       • -> from around 3 months, the interactions between babies and caregivers begins to increase in frequency and involves more verbal signals and facial expressions
     • Brazelton et al (1975)
       • -> traditional childhood views have put babies in a passive role, receiving care -> both carer and child can initiate interactions, showing an active role
     • Feldman (2007)
       • -> interactional synchrony can be described as 'co-ordination of micro-level social behaviour'  -> carer and infant mirror each other's emotions and actions
     • Meltzoff and Moore (1977)
       • -> observes beginnings of interactional synchrony in infants as young as 2 weeks old 
     • Isabella et al (1989)
       • -> observed 30 mothers and infants to asses the degree of synchrony and the quality of attachment -> higher levels of synchrony was associated with better quality attachment
   • Role of the father
     • 1. multiple attachments 2. attachment to fathers 3. father's role 4. father as primary caregiver
     • there is interest in finding out whether it is essential that the mother must b the primary caregiver 
     • Shaffer & Emerson
       • -> showed that the primary caregiver is more likely to be the mother and is more likely to be the primary attachment
       • Parental involvement
         • -> the amount of time fathers spend with the child is impacted by a number of factors
         • cultural factors
           • men are expected to be the workers of the family 
         • economic factors
           • -> men may work many miles away from their families to keep them financially stable, ending up not physically being there
         • social policies
           • -> in the UK, men were ot given paternal leave so the responsibility for child care was only on the mothers
         • biological factors
           • -> women are biologically adapted to feed the infant and have the nurturing hormone oestrogen 
   • Animal Studies
     • Lorenz (1935)
       • Summary:  -> kept goose eggs until they hatched -> 50% under mother goose, other half with him  -> once hatched, he quacked like a mother goose and the goslings followed him accordingly  -> other group followed mother goose
       • Pros:  -> ethical -> can be repeated -> good sample size
       • Cons:  -> cannot be generalised to human babies -> cannot be repeated with human babies -> 
     • Harlow (1958)
       • Summary:  -> wanted to study the mechanism by which rhesus monkeys bond with their mothers  -> dependency for food, protection, comfort or socialisation does not clarify reason for bond ^Harlow's explanation says it is a result of the mother providing 'tactile comfort'
       • Pros:  -> used a generalisable species -> repeatable method -> found the result they were looking for
       • Cons:  -> unethical, therefore not repeatable -> cannot be repeated with human babies 
   • Schaffer's Stages of Attachment
     • Longitudinal Experiment + rich data + insight and detail + development over time + validity - subject attribution (drop outs) - reliability - temporal validity  - open to interpretation
     • Carried out in ppts homes
       • + increases eco val making it more applicable
     • Mothers filled out diaries
       • + good insight - subjective  - open to participant variables
     • Observations
       • - can't ask the baby - parent's interpretation of baby's behaviour 
     • Sample
       • + good sample size  + low subject attribution - low applicability  ^ same class, city, culture
     • Baby's immobility
       • - can misinterpret baby's movements
     • Bowlby (1969)
       • -> argues babies form attachments to a single carer before being capable of multiple attachments  ^ some cultures show babies with multiple attachments from the start
       • -> points out that babies have 'playmates' as well as attachment figures ^ they may be distressed when the playmate leaves, but this does not show attachment  *How do we know what true attachment is?*
   • Explanations of attachment
     • Cupboard love
       • Dollard and Miller (1950) state attachment is a learned behaviour acquired though CC and OC
       • Nurture theory:  food = pleasure mother = food  mother = pleasure
     • Dollard and Miller (1950)
       • suggested attachment was due to drive reduction
       • Drive reduction
         • -> hunger and cold are primary drives -> food and warmth are primary reinforcers hunger and cold drive the baby to satisfy their need for being fed and warm. the mother provides food and warmth, therefore becoming the secondary reinforcer
     • Bowlby's theory of Attachment
       • Bowlby's Theory
         • -> attachment is biologically pre-programmed > encoded in human genes > evolves and persists because it is useful  -> believes attachment is innate and adaptive
         • Promotes survival in 3 ways
           • 1
             • Safety
               • -> attachment keeps mother an child close to each other > separation results in anxiety 
           • 2
             • Safe base for exploration
               • -> child is happy to wander and explore knowing they have a safe base to return to if things go wrong > developing independence  necessary for later life 
           • 3
             • Internal working model (IWM)
               • -> based on Freud's idea of mother-child relationships acting as a prototype for all future relationships  > gives the child a relationship schema

3. Memory

   • http://www.simplypsychology.org/memory.html
   • Multi-store model
     • Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) http://www.simplypsychology.org/multi-store.html
     • visual processing
     • acoustic processing
     • semantic processing
     • STM
       • -> Duration: 0-18 seconds -> Capacity: 7 +/- 2 items  (Jacobson 1887 and Miller 1959)-> Encoding: mainly auditory (Baddeley 1966) 
       • -> limited capacity (only about 7 items can be stored at a time) -> limited duration (storage is very fragile and information can be lost with distraction or passage of time)-> encoding (primarily acoustic, even translating visual information into sounds).
       • http://www.simplypsychology.org/short-term-memory.html
     • LTM
       • -> Duration: Unlimited -> Capacity: Unlimited (Wagenar 1986 and Fagot & Cook 1996) -> Encoding: Mainly Semantic (but can be visual and auditory) (Baddeley 1966) 
       • http://www.simplypsychology.org/long-term-memory.html
     • SR
       • -> Duration: ¼ to ½ second -> Capacity: all sensory experience (v. larger capacity) -> Encoding: sense specific (e.g. different stores for each sense)
   • Working model
     • http://www.simplypsychology.org/working%20memory.html
     • Baddeley and Hitch (1976) -> dual task experiment
     • Phonological loop
       • spoken and written material
       • Phonological store
         • -> inner ear -> holds acoustic infromation for about 1-2 seconds
       • Articulary process
         • -> inner voice  -> rehearse and stores information from the phonological store
     • Visuo-spatal sketchpad
       • -> inner eye -> holds or stores visual information 
       • Inner scribe
         • -> records the arrangement of objects in the visual field  -> rehearses and transfers information to the CE
       • Visual cache
         • -> stores visual data about form and colour
     • Episodic buffer
       • -> acts as a temporary store for information communicating with the LTM and other slave systems 
   • Forgetting
     • Interference
       • Postman (1960) 
       • Proactive
         • old learning prevents recall of newer information
       • Retroactive
         • where new learning prevents recall of older information
     • Retrieval failure
       • Baddeley (1975) -> divers
       • Context dependent
         • external cues in the environment -> context at encoding must match context at retrieval
       • State dependent
         • bodily cues inside of us -> memory will be best when a person's psychological and physiological cuesare sim,ilar at encoding and retrieval
       • Organisation dependent
         • recall is improved if the organisation has a similar structure to encoding at retrieval 
   • EWT
     • Misleading information
       • Loftus and Palmer (1974) -> car crash video -> leading questions
     • Anxiety
       • Yerkes-Dodson law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law
       • +Yuille and Cutshall (1986)  -> real-life shooting in Vancouver gun shop -> owner shot man dead -> interviews held 3-4 months after incident -> showed 88% recall accuracy compared to the less stressed group which showed 75% accuracy
       • -Johnson and Scott (1976)  low anxiety:  argument - grease covered pen high anxiety: smashed glass - blood covered paper knife -> tunnel theory 
     • the Cognitive Interview
       • 1
         • Report everything
           • include every single detail, even if it seems irrelevant, as it may trigger another memory
       • 2
         • Reinstate the context
           • related to context dependent forgetting: return to the crime scene in their mind and imagine the environment and their emotions 
       • 3
         • Reverse the order
           • prevents people reporting how they expect things to turn out 
       • 4
         • Change perspective
           • disrupts schema on recall to prevent generating expectations
     • the Enhanced Cognitive Interview
       • -> encourage the witness to relax and speak slowly -> offer comments to help clarify witness statements -> adapt questions to suit the understanding of individual witnesses

4. Social Influence

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