Posts published during 2012
Lucy Tallon describes her own experiences of ECT in a recent article in The Guardian and says the experience is nothing like it is portrayed on screen, for example recently in the programme Homeland. See Lucy’s article here.
The photograph is from Homeland.
Thanks to a group of researchers in Norway, people can now measure the severity of their Facebook addiction using the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS). It is thought to be the first time psychologists have formally recognised social media dependency as a real addiction, and the scale is the first of its kind in world.
The BFAS consists of six statements, which users respond to by grading their social network dependency.
The statements are:
• You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planning how to use it
• You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more
• You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems
• You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success
• You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook
• You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies
The possible responses for each statement are as follows: (1) Very rarely, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, and (5) Very often. Scoring ‘often’ or ‘very often’ on at least four of the six items might suggest that you are addicted to Facebook.
After coming up with the BFAS scale, Cecilie Schou Andreassen and her colleagues at the University of Bergen in Norway recruited 227 female and 196 male students to test its effectiveness. They discovered that women were more at risk of developing Facebook addiction than were men, and that it occurs more regularly among younger than older users. They also found that people who are anxious and socially insecure use Facebook more than those with lower scores on those traits, probably because those who are anxious find it easier to communicate via social media than face-to-face. Andreassen’s study shows that the symptoms of Facebook addiction resemble those of drug and alcohol addiction.
One of the common criticisms made about the use of drugs to treat mental disorder is that they don’t act as a cure, they simply offer temporary relief from disabling symptoms. New research challenges this. Prof Shitij Kapur and his team at King’s College London (Vernon et al. 2012) have produced evidence that certain drugs change brain structure. In this study rats were given treatment with either lithium (used for bipolar disorder) or an antipsychotic for 6 weeks. Brain scans showed an increase in cortical grey matter for the lithium rats and a decrease for the antipsychotic rats. At present, however, the clinical significance of these changes is not clear.
Synesthesia describes the experience that some people have, where the stimulation of one sense results in other senses being stimulated. For example words take on different colours and may create a sensation of certain smells. A recent study by Milán et al. (2012) found that many psychic healers who claim to see the aura of their patients are actually synesthetes. This condition would explain why they think they may be able to heal people, however it doesn’t explain why seeing an aura would lead to healing. The occasional success of psychic healing may be explained in terms of a placebo effect.
Many AS AQA A students will be familiar with Rosa Parks and the effect she had on the American Civil Rights 
Movement. One day, while travelling home from work she refused an order from the bus driver to give up her seat to a white person. Her civil disobedience led to a bus boycott and inspired others to take action against an unjust law. This case is used as an example of how the actions of one individual can bring about social change, especially when they (in this case Rosa Parks) have risked their own liberty (the augmentation principle).
This week President Obama visited the museum where the bus Rosa was sitting on is one of the displays, leading him to reflect on how courage and tenacity have been part of America’s recent history (see here).
There are lots of articles on the web about managing your stress. Look at this or write your own suggestions.
Many people believe that playing violent video games is linked to increased in aggressive behaviour. However a new study by Swedish researchers Bennerstedt et al. (2011) offers an alternative perspective. They suggest that cooperation rather than aggression is more important in video gaming. The researchers spent hundreds of hours playing video games and watching other gamers. They especially focused on games where participants have to fight against each other. They found that successful gamers were considerate and cooperative, whereas those who acted aggressively tended not to do well.
On page 30 there is a box for key terms. Under the pituitary-adrenal system it should say ‘adrenal cortex not adrenal medulla. And under the sympathomedullary pathway it should be adrenal medulla.
Some recent research reported here suggests the fMRI studies may present a misleading picture of brain activity. Such studies are used to provide evidence that certain areas of the brain are active when a person is engaged in a target task. However the new research has demonstrated that, while certain areas may be especially active, it isn’tt a question of them being the only active areas – they are simply more active than the rest of the brain. This means that conclusions that link a specific area of the brain to a specific behaviour may be unjustified, because many other areas are also involved.
Why do people carry on smoking,
and why is stopping smoking so hard to do?
An internal locus of control is when people feels in control of themselves, they feel they can and do affect their own lives, make their own decisions and so on.
An external locus of control is where people feel they don’t have control over their own lives, so that it does not matter what they do or don’t do as it won’t affect them because outside forces and people have the power and make the decisions.
A 2012 USA study has now shown that ‘nicotine dependent’ participants, i.e. people addicted to smoking, are vulnerable to feeling a loss of self-control, to having an external locus of control. The study also found that smoking a cigarette had a double effect, improving mood and restoring a more external locus of control (increased self-control). Clearly this can go some way to explaining why people smoke and why it is so hard to quit the habit. However stopping smoking might be a little less daunting if alternative improving-self-control strategies could be taught, especially if these also raised mood. Suggested strategies include exercise as this puts the person in control and the endorphins released would boost positive mood.
Heckman,B.W., Ditre,J.W. and Brandon,T.H. The restorative effects of smoking upon self-control resources: A negative reinforcement pathway.. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2012; 121 (1): 244
