New Dog Book spreads for anomalistic psychology

Click here to download the new spreads from the third edition of the Dog Book for the updated specification, in case you can't find these (I have been giving them out...).

This also explains how the specification has changed since your Nelson Thornes textbook and the second edition of the Dog Book were written. This is well worth a look, or you will be underprepared for probability judgement / coincidence / superstition / magical thinking questions in particular.

RWa and TLa available for revision support

Here is when we have Y13 lessons over the next two weeks:

Wednesday 5th - 2 (TLa)
Thursday 6th - 4 & 5 (RWa)
Friday 7th - 3 (RWa)
Monday 10th 1&2 - (RWa)
Tuesday 11th - 5 (TLa)
Wednesday 12th - 2 (TLa)
Thursday 13th - 3,4&5 (TLa)
Friday 14th - 3&4 (RWa)

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

During the last half term we've covered four statistical tests in some detail, and if you've completed all the work set then you will be fully prepared for any questions on stats in the unit 4 exam. You won't be asked to complete a test from start to finish starting with raw data; past questions have focused on one section of the process eg comparing obtained vs critical values or looking or critical values or ranking data.

A common question on the paper is to ask which test should be used for a particular set of data. This sheet gives a summary of each test and when to use them. This sort of question is often worth 2 or 3 marks - meaning that it isn't enough to state that the data is correlational (or independent groups or whatever) - you also need to match the type of data to the test. This sheet is a good summary of different data types (nominal, ordinal, ratio & interval).

Resources by test:

Spearman's rho:

• Used for correlational data, when the two sets of data are pairs of scores from one person, and when the data are ordinal or interval.
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Chi-squared test:

• Used when the hypothesis predicts a difference or an association - is membership of one category associated with  membership of another category? Used for categorical data and for comparing frequencies. The data must be unrelated - you can't be in more than one category.
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Mann-Whitney test:

• Used for independent groups design, when the hypothesis predicts a difference between two sets of data. The data must be interval or ordinal. 
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Wilcoxon T test:

• Used in repeated measures or matched pairs design, for ordinal or interval data,
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Unit 4 mock

Your unit 4 mock exam will take place on Friday 17th May during P3 and P4.

The questions will on the following topics:

Schizophrenia: Biological and Psychological therapies
Anomalistic: Science vs Pseudoscience, magical thinking and psychic mediumship
RM: Revise everything as the paper covers a wide range of RM topics

The paper is 2 hours long. 

The Scientific Method in Psychology and Validating New Knowledge

Today we looked at the first part of the research methods specification, linking this to a look-back over the anomalistic psychology topic.

You need to know the 'major features of science, including:

• replicability 
• objectivity 
• theory construction 
• hypothesis testing (falsifiability) 
• the use of empirical methods'

We defined these and wrote an example of 'good...' and 'bad...' from psychology / parapsychology.

We then looked at 'validating new knowledge and the role of peer review'.

Essentially, scientists make each other aware of their theoretical and experimental research through scientific journals. Most of these have a small circulation so are very expensive and are bought by university libraries. Journal articles on research studies typically have the following structure (which you may be tested on in your unit 4 exam):

• Abstract - a summary of the rest of the article, to allow researchers to quickly decide if it is relevant to them.
• Introduction including a literature review - the background to the study, including theories and previous research findings.
• Method - details of participants and how they were sampled, procedures including standardised instructions, materials used (e.g. questionnaires used) and ethical concerns. This should allow a full replication.
• Results - summary graphs and tables (full data usually available on request) and statements of the results of statistical tests.
• Discussion - of what the findings mean, of issues with the research and recommendations for future research.

Most journals operate a system for checking that research meets high standards of methodology (e.g. good control of variables) and has accurate statistical testing through a process called 'peer review'. The editors will select a panel of experts in the relevant research (the 'peers' of the researcher submitting the article) to make this decision.

Make sure you can answer these questions:

1. What does it mean to ‘validate new knowledge’? 
2. How does peer review work? 
3. Give an example of pseudoscientific research where new knowledge is not validated or subject to peer review. 
4. What are the drawbacks of peer review?

Near Death Experiences and Out Of Body Experiences

Around one in five people who are declared clinically dead (because their heart has stopped beating) but who are then revived (resuscitated) report some kind of 'Near Death Experience'. Often this involves the sensation of leaving their body, and these 'Out Of Body Experiences' can occur at other times. NDEs often involve a tunnel with a bright light at the end, a feeling of intense calm, reduced fear of death, increased belief in an afterlife, a 'life review' and meetings with dead loved-ones and religious figures.

Most psychologists explain these as interpretations of hallucinations created by changes in the brain as it is starved of oxygen. Your textbook gives quite a lot of detail on this - you don't need to know this much but a couple of examples would be useful. Believers in an 'immortal soul' - the idea that 'we' continue to exist once our body is dead - point to NDEs and OOBEs, especially when they involve people seeing and hearing things that they otherwise couldn't have - as strong evidence for these beliefs.

Make sure you can describe the case study of Maria's 'tennis shoe' OOBE and the criticism of this as a piece of evidence. Read about this in detail here.

Here is an article in the Daily Mail about a very recent piece of scientific research into NDEs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-89926/Scientists-discover-near-death-evidence.html
These researchers claim that the fact not all the patients who were clinically dead then revived which they studied had NDEs is evidence that the explanation was not physiological, and instead supports the idea of an immortal soul.

You should also be able to describe Ehrsson's research (in your textbook) into artificially induced OOBEs - the point here is that the sense that we are inside our own bodies is actually created by the brain. This research suggests that it isn't that surprising that people can have a vivid experience of leaving their bodies when their brain is undergoing big changes.

Psychic Mediumship

Here is a link to Derren Brown Investigates - The Man Who Talks To The Dead:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-investigates/episode-guide/series-12/episode-2
Well worth a watch, especially for Richard Wiseman's explanation of 'cold reading' - a rational explanation for the impressive feats of mediums.

Make sure you can:
- define mediumship
- explain how 'cold reading' can explain what mediums are capable of
- describe and evaluate controlled research in mediumship - Schwartz (2001)

The presentation is in an earlier post below.