Core studies book
Freud
Longitudinal case study over a course of 2 years. Observation. Little Hans aged 3-5 years.
All data was gathered through letters Little Hans’ father sent to Freud.
Plumbing fantasy, giraffe fantasy.
Oedipus Complex and all the diff stages. Anal stage, oral + phallic.
ID, Ego, Superego
Aim was to test his Oedipus Complex and kinda prove that Little Hans had it.
Background was - older patients suffering from trauma inflicted by their childhood
Phobia of white horses with black bits around their mouth was thought to be caused by his father
who looked similar to the horse with his glasses.
Evaluation
Population validity was lacking because it only looked at one little boy from Vienna. Also
ethnocentric as it only looks at one country.
May have ethical issues as Little Hans himself could not consent to being studied. However, his
dad, who is his guardian, gave consent.
Confidentiality was given as Little Hans’ name was not revealed, but people found out who he
was anyway.
No ecological validity either.
Baron-Cohen
Testing Theory of Mind in those with autism/aspergers and tourettes, and ‘normal’ group
16 aspergers/autism, 50 normal, 10 tourettes.
Background was that those with autism/aspergers do not have the same theory of mind as
normal people. Sally Anne test but for adults. Previous research wasn’t complex enough.
Quasi experiment because the IV of if they had autism was naturally occurring.
DV was the score on the Eyes Task out of 25.
Independent measures design
Hypothesis was that those with autism/asperger's show more impairment in the Eyes Task +
normal would perform the best.
, Gender recognition task, Eyes task, Strange stories task, Basic emotion recognition task.
Females did better than males.
Mean scores out of 25 on the Eyes Task
16.3 for Autistic
20.3 for Normal
20.4 for Tourettes
Casey et al
562 4 yr olds from Stanford’s Bing Nursery
155 completed self-control scales in their 20s and 135 in their 30s.
59 completed exp 1 (go/no go).
27 completed the fMRI - exp 2
41 yr old man was excluded bcs his performance was too poor
Quasi exp
IV - high/low delayer
DV - reaction times and accuracy rate on cognitive go/no go task and imaging results of fMRI
Exp 1
- Cognitive go/no go task on laptops at home. Cool version had neutral male and female
faces with one sex as the target for go to press a button and no go to not press. The hot
task had happy and fearful faces. They were shown the target and then each face for
500ms followed by a 1s interval. 160 trials.
Exp 2
- fMRI was used to examine neural correlates when completing a hot version of the go/no go
task. Each face 500 ms followed by a jittered interval. 48 trails in pseudorandom order.
Task viewable on a projector and neuroscreen 5 button response pad collected the data.
Findings
- Exp 1 - reaction times. Go trials had no sig diff between high/low delayers
- Accuracy - over 99% for go trials on both hot and cool, on hot tasks low delayers made
more false alarms but comparable on cool tasks
- Exp 2 - reaction times same as exp 1. Hot task 98% accurate for cool and 12.4% false
alarms for hot task
Sperry
11 split brain patients with a history of severe epilepsy
, Quasi experiment
IV - split brain
DV - performance on the tasks,
Can also be known as a case study
Procedure
- Tachistoscope - one eye covered with an eye patch - fixate on the cross.
- Visual tasks - images flashed on 35mm transparencies for 1/10th of a second
- ? was presented to the LVF and asked if they could name it. If not, they were asked to draw
it with their left hand.
- $ presented to RVF at the same time
- Tactile tasks - objects placed in the hands. Key in the left and asked if they knew what it
was in their hand. If not, asked to retrieve it from the grab bag and select it from a range of
items without seeing it.
- Held a tennis ball in their right hand at the same time.
- The same images/words/objects were all of the same difficulty and the same experimenter
was used.
Grant et al
Background - drivers learnt word list under and above water and then had to recall them in either
state to see which one was better
Aim - see if context dependent memory affect recall and recognition memory
Sample - 40, 1 dropped due to low scores, 17 female 22 male
IV - matched/mismatched conditions
DV - score on short answers and multiple choice
Procedure
- Read paper on psycho-immunology then answered 10 recall and 16 recognition questions
- 30 min test w/ a 2 min break before the test
- Noise + silent conditions, tested individually but w/ same instructions
Results
- Recognition - Silent-silent + noisy-noisy was the same at 14.3
- Silent noisy and noisy silent - 12.7
- Recall - Silent only - 6.7 Noisy only - 6.2
- Silent-noisy - 5.4 - noisy silent - 4.6
Freud
Longitudinal case study over a course of 2 years. Observation. Little Hans aged 3-5 years.
All data was gathered through letters Little Hans’ father sent to Freud.
Plumbing fantasy, giraffe fantasy.
Oedipus Complex and all the diff stages. Anal stage, oral + phallic.
ID, Ego, Superego
Aim was to test his Oedipus Complex and kinda prove that Little Hans had it.
Background was - older patients suffering from trauma inflicted by their childhood
Phobia of white horses with black bits around their mouth was thought to be caused by his father
who looked similar to the horse with his glasses.
Evaluation
Population validity was lacking because it only looked at one little boy from Vienna. Also
ethnocentric as it only looks at one country.
May have ethical issues as Little Hans himself could not consent to being studied. However, his
dad, who is his guardian, gave consent.
Confidentiality was given as Little Hans’ name was not revealed, but people found out who he
was anyway.
No ecological validity either.
Baron-Cohen
Testing Theory of Mind in those with autism/aspergers and tourettes, and ‘normal’ group
16 aspergers/autism, 50 normal, 10 tourettes.
Background was that those with autism/aspergers do not have the same theory of mind as
normal people. Sally Anne test but for adults. Previous research wasn’t complex enough.
Quasi experiment because the IV of if they had autism was naturally occurring.
DV was the score on the Eyes Task out of 25.
Independent measures design
Hypothesis was that those with autism/asperger's show more impairment in the Eyes Task +
normal would perform the best.
, Gender recognition task, Eyes task, Strange stories task, Basic emotion recognition task.
Females did better than males.
Mean scores out of 25 on the Eyes Task
16.3 for Autistic
20.3 for Normal
20.4 for Tourettes
Casey et al
562 4 yr olds from Stanford’s Bing Nursery
155 completed self-control scales in their 20s and 135 in their 30s.
59 completed exp 1 (go/no go).
27 completed the fMRI - exp 2
41 yr old man was excluded bcs his performance was too poor
Quasi exp
IV - high/low delayer
DV - reaction times and accuracy rate on cognitive go/no go task and imaging results of fMRI
Exp 1
- Cognitive go/no go task on laptops at home. Cool version had neutral male and female
faces with one sex as the target for go to press a button and no go to not press. The hot
task had happy and fearful faces. They were shown the target and then each face for
500ms followed by a 1s interval. 160 trials.
Exp 2
- fMRI was used to examine neural correlates when completing a hot version of the go/no go
task. Each face 500 ms followed by a jittered interval. 48 trails in pseudorandom order.
Task viewable on a projector and neuroscreen 5 button response pad collected the data.
Findings
- Exp 1 - reaction times. Go trials had no sig diff between high/low delayers
- Accuracy - over 99% for go trials on both hot and cool, on hot tasks low delayers made
more false alarms but comparable on cool tasks
- Exp 2 - reaction times same as exp 1. Hot task 98% accurate for cool and 12.4% false
alarms for hot task
Sperry
11 split brain patients with a history of severe epilepsy
, Quasi experiment
IV - split brain
DV - performance on the tasks,
Can also be known as a case study
Procedure
- Tachistoscope - one eye covered with an eye patch - fixate on the cross.
- Visual tasks - images flashed on 35mm transparencies for 1/10th of a second
- ? was presented to the LVF and asked if they could name it. If not, they were asked to draw
it with their left hand.
- $ presented to RVF at the same time
- Tactile tasks - objects placed in the hands. Key in the left and asked if they knew what it
was in their hand. If not, asked to retrieve it from the grab bag and select it from a range of
items without seeing it.
- Held a tennis ball in their right hand at the same time.
- The same images/words/objects were all of the same difficulty and the same experimenter
was used.
Grant et al
Background - drivers learnt word list under and above water and then had to recall them in either
state to see which one was better
Aim - see if context dependent memory affect recall and recognition memory
Sample - 40, 1 dropped due to low scores, 17 female 22 male
IV - matched/mismatched conditions
DV - score on short answers and multiple choice
Procedure
- Read paper on psycho-immunology then answered 10 recall and 16 recognition questions
- 30 min test w/ a 2 min break before the test
- Noise + silent conditions, tested individually but w/ same instructions
Results
- Recognition - Silent-silent + noisy-noisy was the same at 14.3
- Silent noisy and noisy silent - 12.7
- Recall - Silent only - 6.7 Noisy only - 6.2
- Silent-noisy - 5.4 - noisy silent - 4.6
