Posts archived in Abnormality
Very nice little interactive diagram to be found here. You click on an activity such as ‘speech’ or ‘memory’ and the diagram indicates which part of the brain governs such activity.
Research done by Ley (1988) suggested that to enable patients to remember what advice they had been given doctors and nurses should give the most important information first, thus exploiting the primacy effect. Information also needs to be understandable ( well, what a surprise!) so simple sentences and language are appropriate. Instructions need to be explicit, and prefaced by their category, e.g. “this is the problem …”, or “this is what you need to do”, and “this is how you can do it”. Repetition is also helpful in accurate recall.
Now in 2009 similar information is being given by Fischhoff who has pointed out the relevance of psychological research to addressing the current health issue. He has told USA authorities that health communications should
I do wonder if these recommendations could be spread more widely – Westminster comes to mind!
I’ve just found an excellent article for one of those ‘Introduction to Psychology’ induction style activities. It concerns Jill Price, a woman who appears to have exceptionally accurate recall for dates and events. As the author explains:
“I first saw Price last May in a YouTube clip of her on 20/20. Diane Sawyer asks Price, an avid television viewer, to identify certain significant dates in broadcast history. When did CBS air the “Who shot JR?” episode of Dallas? When was All in the Family‘s baby episode shown? And so on. Price nails every question. She not only gives the date for the final episode of MASH but describes the weather that day”.
As is so often the case with such case studies, the truth behind the simple headline is at once more complex and more mundane than it initially appears.
I think that the article is a good one for use with classes because it starts off with consideration of cognitive and biological factors, veers into psychopathology and ends up with conclusions that are more psychodynamic in tone. On the way it touches upon a range of research methodologies and ethical issues – all in an accessible tone well suited to an introductory lesson.
From Ben Goldacre’s excellent ‘Bad Science’ column for the Guardian a while back:
“Some researchers in Bologna demonstrate the spectacular hopelessness of memory. One morning in 1980, a bomb exploded in Bologna station: 85 people died, and the clock stopped ominously showing 10.25, the time of the explosion. This image became a famous symbol for the event, but the clock was repaired soon after, and worked perfectly for the next 16 years. When it broke again in 1996, it was decided to leave the clock showing 10.25 permanently, as a memorial. The researchers asked 180 people familiar with the station, or working there, with an average age of 55, about the clock: 173 knew it was stopped, and 160 said it always had been, ever since 1980. What’s more, 127 claimed they had always seen it stuck on 10.25, ever since the explosion, including – fairly excellently – all 21 railway employees. In a similar study published last year, 40% of 150 UK participants claimed to remember seeing closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square on July 7th 2005. No such footage exists”.
Brain decline begins at 27……
Professor Timothy Salthouse of Virginia University found reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation all decline in our late 20s.
Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said
The London Dungeon offers you to chance to be transported back ‘to the darkest moments in the capital’s history … live actors, shows, two rides and interactive special effects ensure that you face your fears head on in this unique ninety minute experience.’ Two psychologists (Tim Valentine and Jan Mesout of Goldsmith’s College, University of London) had the great idea to utilise this experience as an opportunity to ethically test EWT in a stressful context.In the Labyrinth of the Lost a hooded actor jumps out on unsuspecting visitors, blocking their path – which offered the psychologists the opportunity to ask people, after they emerged from the labyrith, if they could identify the man from a set of photographs. In total they interviewed 56 people and found that those who reported feeling more anxious about the labyrinth experience were less accurate in their identification – 17% of high anxiety participants were correct compared with 75% of low anxiety participants. This demonstrates the negtive effects of anxiety on EWT.A separate investigation showed that self-reports of anxiety were positively correlated with physiological arousal in the labyrinth.
BBC radio 4 has been running an interesting series called Am I normal? One of the programmes looks at Working Memory and what is normal in terms of how people can use there working memories. Have a look here. Research suggests that working meory is the single most important predictor of later academic success – the big question then is, how can you improve your working memory?
In the AS Complete Companion the arrows were incorrectly drawn in the diagram. The correct version is shown below and will appear in more recent reprints.
