Bowlby's evolutionary theory of attachment

"Babies' smiles are powerful things, leaving mothers spellbound and enslaved. Who can doubt that the baby that most readily rewards his mother with a smile is the one who is best loved and cared for?" (Bowlby, 1957).

Today we discussed Bowlby's evolutionary theory of attachment. Bowlby believed that attachment was adaptive and promoted survival in two ways - to ensure the baby is cared for and also so that the child develops an internal working model on which to base future relationships (which can be traced back to Freud's ideas).

The baby has inbuilt social releasers which elicit caregiving - baby faces, noises etc, that prime the parents to care for them. Attachment needs to happen within a critical period for future relationships to function properly.

The sheet of keywords from today's lesson is here and you need to have a good understanding of them all. The powerpoint is here.

Stress, illness and the immune system

We began the lesson with this timed question:
"Outline two ways in which the body responds to stress." 8 marks AO1

It's now common knowledge that psychological stress can lead to poor health and a less effective immune system, but what research is this based on?

Selye's classic research with rats isn't directly named on the specification, so you won't be asked about it directly in the exam, but it's a useful study to know about, and provides evidence for two different stress response systems - here is the presentation.

What you do need to know is what the immune system is and how stress affects is, and you may need to describe and evaluate research into this. Here is a presentation on the immune system which looks at Kiecolt-Glazer (1995) - a study looking at wound-healing and cytokine levels in women caring for relatives with senile dementia.

You need to read and make notes about two other studies - Kiecolt-Glazer (1984) measuring natural killer cell (a type of white blood cell) levels in medical students during their exams - and Cohen, spraying cold viruses up participants' noses and asking them how stressed they felt. You also need notes on the meta-review of stress / immunse system research which provides strong evidence for a link.

We will meet a number of studies in this topic which look at the effects of stress on different aspects of health. These are the only ones that deal specifically with the immune system, and you need to use them for questions which refer to it.

Essay question for Friday 20th January:
"Describe and evaluate research findings relating to the link between stress, illness and the immune system." 6 marks AO1 + 6 marks AO2

The body's response to stress.

We started our 'Stress' topic (an aspect of Physiological Psychology - focusing on how the body works) last week with an introduction to the concept of psychological stress, and a look the changes in the body which accompany different kinds of stress response. Here is the Presentation.

The specificaiton specifically mentions two systems in the body which become activated when we perceive a stressor (a stimulus which produces a stress response).
The Sympathetic Adrenal Medullary system (SAM) leads to the acute (fast) 'fight or flight' response - adrenalin is quickly released into the blood increasing heart and breathing rates and preparing the body for action by diverting blood to the brain and muscles.
The Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal axis (HPA) leads to a chronic (slow) stress response which is less obvious - the end result is the release of cortisol, a hormone which increases blood glucose levels and the energy available to the body, but makes the immune system less effective.

These are named in the specification so you must be able to desribe them in reasonable detail. Homework was to produce a visual revision poster using as many of the words on this Key terms list as possible, showing the body's acute (fast) and chronic (slow) stress responses.

What is attachment?

Another picture of Luke as I'm sure you didn't see nearly enough today.

For homework, make notes on the stages of attachment proposed by Schaffer & Emerson in 1964. Also, don't forget the working memory model 12-mark essay due in next week.

Today's powerpoint is here.

Two video clips from today as well: separation anxiety (boy in the strange situation) and joy on reunion (US soldier returning home) - weepie alert.

Last memory section

For those on the history trip on Thursday 15th, it is vital that you catch up on this work as it will not be covered again in class.

We finished the memory module today. Strategies for memory improvement include visual imagery, mnemonics, method of loci & dual coding hypothesis (plus many more - you only need about 4). For each method you need to describe the strategy and then explain why it works. For an example of a past exam question on this topic see Q2 on this paper (January 2011). My ppt is here but is fairly brief - you must make your own notes from the textbook. A sheet that I have used in previous years is here - this contains a table to fill in on the different strategies.

The cognitive interview is straightforward enough. Describe it (remember COPE), give some supporting research, and say why it works. There are a few downsides as well - possibly unsuitable for children and very resource-intensive. My ppt is here.

Biological Therapies

Yesterday we introduced biological therapies with a look at psychosurgery and electroconvulstive therapy (ECT). Here is the presentation, which contains more detail than you need, especially on psychosurgery which you won't be asked specifically about in an exam (but could write about as part of a general question on biological therapies).

We went through the first ten of the twenty questions I set last week - we will go through the biological ones on Thursday when we will finish biological therapies.

Next Tuesday we will have a test on the whole of the Abnormality topic, so revise your definitions and the four models as well as the therapies. These multiple choice questions are to help you in your revision of therapies, and this Abnormality Specification Overview tells you exactly what you need to know for next Tuesday's test and your AS exam, with boxes to colour in when you initially audit your understanding and when you revise each topic.

Age & eyewitness testimony

Today's powerpoint is here, and if you missed the handout come and find me to get one. You need to know three ways in which eyewitness testimony is affected by age, and describe supporting evidence for each. The own-age bias is relevant here - superior recognition for those of our own age. Since many research studies use young people, this might go some way to explaining reduced performance in older participants.