Findings & Conclusion

Question 1

Findings of Andrade

Answer 1

In doodling condition:
1. mean number of shaded shapes on printed sheet: 36.3
2. range: 3-110
3. participants correctly recalled a mean of 7.8 of the 8 partygoers’ names
4. 1 person made 1 false alarm
5. recalled mean of 7.5 names and places, 29% more than mean of control group

In control condition:
1. no participants doodled spontaneously
2. participants correctly recalled a mean of 7.1 of the 8 partygoers’ names
3. 5 people made a false alarm
4. participants recalled names (5.1) much better than places (2.4)

Question 2

Conclusion of Andrade

Answer 2

• doodling helps concentration on a primary task
• because participants in doodling condition performed better than control condition who were just listening to the primary task without a concurrent task
• reason behind the better recall is unclear

Question 3

Findings of Dement and Kleitman

Answer 3

1. uninterrupted dream stages:
   * lasted 3-50 min (mean 20min)
   * typically longer LATER in night
   * showed intermitten bursts of around** 2-100 REM**
2. 79.6% of REM awakenings recalled dreams
3. 93.1% of nREM didn’t recall dreams
4. eye movement patterns found to be related to dream content:
   * vertical eye movement:
   
   • standing at bottom of cliff, operating on hoist machine
   • throwing basketballs at hoops, then looking up at net, down to pick up another ball

• horizontal eye movement:
  
  • watching 2 people throw tomatoes at each other

Question 4

Conclusion of Dement and Kleitman

Answer 4

• eye movements during REM tend to fit with what the dreamer is looking at, suggesting that eye movements aren’t ‘random’
• dreaming is experienced in REM, not nREM

Question 5

Findings of Hassett

Answer 5

1. male monkeys preferred wheel toys (mean: 9.77) compared to plush toys (mean: 2.06)
   * 18% showed no significant preference; not affected by age/rank
2. female monkeys showed no preference
   * 30% preferred plush toys
   * 39% preferred wheel toys
   * 30% no significant preference
3. significant positive correlation between social rank and frequency of interaction
   * higher-ranking monkeys played more with the toys

Question 6

Conclusion of Hassett

Answer 6

1. sex-type preferences in humans may be due to biological differences, because even without socialisation, monkeys showed preferences similar to human infants
   
   • male monkeys similar to boys
   • female monkeys more variable in toy preferences
2. toy preferences affect behavioral and cognitive biases influenced by hormones

Question 7

Findings of Bandura

Answer 7

• Boys who witnessed an aggressive male model had the highest imitative aggression score of 25.8
• Girls were more verbally aggressive with a female aggressive model compared to the boys
• Girls scored more highly on verbal aggression than boys
• Boys scored more highly on physical aggression than girls

Question 8

Conclusion of Bandura

Answer 8

• observing an aggressive model can lead to imitative aggression in the observer
• boys are more likely to imitate aggression compared to girls
• Boys are more likely to imitate physically aggressive behaviour than girls, while girls are slightly more likely to imitate verbally aggressive behaviour than boys.
• Children were more likely to copy aggression from a
  model of the same-sex.

Question 9

Findings of Piliavin

Answer 9

1. males more likely to help the man than females
2. 90% of first helpers were male, 68% were white
3. in 20% of trials, a total of 34 people left critical area
4. the researchers gathered bystander comments:
   Female comments included:
   
   • It’s for men to help him
   • You feel so bad that you don’t know what to do.

Question 10

Conclusion of Piliavin

Answer 10

• A person who is ‘ill’ is more likely to receive help than a person who is ‘drunk’

Question 11

Findings of Fagen

Answer 11

1. juvenile elephants all learned the full trunk wash in 25-35 sessions
2. mean average session was 12 min
3. adult elephant was never tested on the full trunk wash, as she failed to learn the full sequence
   
   • behaviors she couldn’t master: blow into bucket & hold trunk steady
4. most difficult behavior was 1st one (put trunk into trainer’s hand), which took an average of 295 offers, compared to blow into bucket (54 offers) which took less practice

Question 12

Conclusion of Fagen

Answer 12

secondary positive reinforcement is effective for training juvenile, traditionally trained elephants to voluntarily AND reliably participate in a trunk wash

Question 13

Findings of Baren Cohen

Answer 13

• Group 1 (AS/HFA) scored lower on the eyes test compared to Group 3 (student comparison group)
• in Group 1, significant negative correlation between the AQ and Eyes Test

Question 14

Conclusion of Baron Cohen

Answer 14

People with AS/HFA have a more difficult time with theory of mind as they cannot assign emotional/mental states to other people

Question 15

Findings of Milgram

Answer 15

• 26/40 participants were fully obedient and administered the full 450V
• 40/40 participants went up to 300V, which was when the victim first pounded on the wall
• at this point, 5 ppts refused to continue
• extreme tension was observed (e.g. sweating, trembling, stuttering)
• 14 ppts showed signs of nervous laughter and smiling
• 3 ppts had full blown seizures
• mode of the 14-point scale from ‘Not at all painful’ to ‘Extremely painful’ was 14 (Extremely painful)

Question 16

Conclusion of Milgram

Answer 16

• people appeared willing to go against their own morals and obey an authority figure
• following orders to administer electric shocks to other poeple caused extraordinary moral strain

Milgram provided reasons as to why the obedience occurred, e.g:
1. prestigious location of uni (Yale Uni)
2. exp was seen as a worthy contribution to science
3. ppts were paid to take part, increasing sense of obligation

Question 17

Findings of Saavedra and Silverman

Answer 17

1. Positive reinforcement therapy
   * successful completion of all exposure tasks
   * boy was observed approaching the buttons more positively (started handling larger no. of buttons during later sessions)

However,
* subjective ratings of distress increased SIGNIFICANTLY between sessions 2 & 3, and continued to rise
* by session 4, a no. of items (e.g. hugging mother when she wore buttons) increased in dislike
* despite behavior towards stimuli improving, his fear & disgust increased because of PRT

2. Imagery exposure therapy
   * successful in reducing boy’s rating of distress
   * e.g. relating to imagery of ‘hundreds of buttons falling all over his body’
   - before imagery therapy: 8
   - after imagery therapy: 3

Question 18

Conclusion of Saavedra and Silverman

Answer 18

• positive reinforcement therapy successful in changing OBSERVABLE BEHAVIOR
• imagery exposure therspy successful in REDUCING FEAR AND DISGUST

Question 19

Findings of Pozzulo

Answer 19

• children could easily find correct face in target-present with cartoons (identifying with almost 100% accuracy = ceiling effect)

Target-present (identification):
* children have similar accuracy as adults for identifying cartoon faces
* children significantly less accurate than adults when identifying human faces

Target-absent (rejection):
* children significantly less accurate than adults when REJECTING cartoon AND human faces

Question 20

Conclusion of Pozzulo

Answer 20

• any error in target-absent line ups for CARTOON FACES must be a result of social factors than COGNITIVE FACTORS
  * because it can’t be explained by a faulty memory of cartoon faces
• difference seen between children and adults in rejection rates for HUMAN FACES can be explained by social factors

Question 21

Findings of Holzel

Answer 21

• experimental group had an average of 22.6 hours of MBSR exercises, with a SD of 6.3 hours
  
  • (suggests that some participants practiced considerably more than others)
• overall, ppts spent approx. 27 mins per day on mindfulness homework durng the course
• most time was spent on body scanning, almost twice as much on this compared to yoga or meditation
  * no significant correlation between any of the individual exercises (suggests different people preferred different exercises, but doing a lot of one particular exercise didn’t mean they did a lot of either of the 2)
• FMQ showed that the experimental group had a significant improvement from pre-test to post-test scores in ‘acting with awareness’, ‘observing’ and ‘non-judging’ after MBSR compared to the control group
  * didn’t show improvements in ‘describing’, or ‘non-reactivity’

GREY MATTER CHANGES
1. experimental group experienced a significant increase in grey matter concentration in their left hippocampus, and for whole brain analysis – in the posterior cingulate cortex, temporo-parietal junction, and cerebellum compared to the control group

2. Changes in the cerebellum were observed in brainstem and lateral cerebellum
   * no significant difference was found in grey matter concentration in the insulae before and after MBSR
3. Grey matter concentration was not correlated with the amount of time spent engaged in mindfulness exercises or changes on the FFMQ
   * suggests that time spent on mindfulness is not as important as regularly practicing it is
4. No parts of the brain showed decrease in grey matter concentration from the MBSR program
   * control group did show a decrease in the posterior cingulate cortex

Question 22

Conclusion of Holzel

Answer 22

• Structural changes in the ROI such as the left hippocampus shows an increase in grey matter concentration after an eight-week participation in MBSR
  * These structural changes are also observed in other brain regions such as the posterior cingulate cortex, temporal-parietal junction, and cerebellum
• as the hippocampus plays a role in learning and memory, the participants who took he MBSR course had learning experiences that changed the hippocampal grey matter
• the study did not confirm previous research findings relating to the insula,
  * so, changes in this region may require more than eight weeks of practice

Question 23

Findings of Perry et al

Answer 23

EXPERIMENT ONE - CID

• Oxytocin decreased the preferred mean distance from a protagonist in the high empathy group (placebo: 26.11% vs oxytocin: 23.29%) and increased it in the low empathy group (placebo: 26.98% vs oxytocin: 30.20%). This difference, however, was very small.
• IV: Conditions - For experiment 1: CID, there were differences found between preferred distances between stranger, authority, ball and friend across all trials. This finding supports the idea that participants’ need for personal distance increases the less well the approaching figure is known to them.

stranger - 39.82%
authority - 34.12%
ball - 20.20%
friend - 12.46%

• IV: interaction effect of IVs - Oxytocin (OT) was found to decrease the mean prefered distance from participant to other in the high empathy group but had the opposite effect in the low empathy group.
• The effect of OT in the low empathy group was to increase the preferred distance between self and other. This finding suggests that the administration of OT has a differential effect rather than the same effect on high and low empathisers.
• There was also an interaction between the IVs of treatment, condition and empathy. With the placebo, high empathisers showed statistically significant differences between preferred distances from friend and authority, as well as friend and stranger.
• With OT, the same differences appeared, but there were also significant differences between ball and stranger and ball and authority.
• This finding could indicate that the ball is an invitation to social interaction, a cue which is enhanced with the treatment of OT for high empathisers.

EXPERIMENT TWO - CHANGING ROOMS

• There were differences in preferences for chair distance but not for preferred angles.
• Participants in the high empathy group chose close chair distances following OT administration than placebo administration. (78.07 cm vs 80.58 cm)
• OT administration had the opposite effect for those participants in the low empathy group. (80.14 cm vs 78.33 cm)
• Interaction between treatment and empathy was only present in the experimental condition (distance between chairs) meaning OT and empathy had no effect on choices of distance between the plant and table.
• This finding supports the social salience hypothesis, as OT did not affect participants general preferences, only the preferences that have a social context.

Question 24

Perry et al conclusions

Answer 24

• Results of both experiments were compared, showing a moderate correlation between average distance chosen in Exp 1 and average chair distance chosen in Exp 2.
• The administration of Oxytocin enhances social cues in opposite ways for individuals with different empathetic abilities, supporting the idea of social salience.
• People with low empathetic ability respond to OT with a preference for increased personal distance.
• People with high empathetic ability respond to OT with a preference for decreased personal distance.