Stop press! Latest Memory Research.

The mere sight of alcohol impairs drinkers' memories: For students who like a tipple or three, the mere sight of a bottle of Jack Daniels can have a detrimental effect on their memory. Dennis Kramer and Stephen Schmidt, who made the observation, said this is probably due to the emotional salience alcohol has for those who drink a lot. One hundred and twenty students performed a task reminiscent of the Generation Game, which involved them observing pictures of 15 everyday objects, such as a hammer or a banana, and then attempting to recall them 5 minutes later. After the memory task, the students were split into high and low drinkers based on their average number of drinks per month.For some of the students, the eighth item in the memory test was a bottle of Jack Daniels, while others saw a bottle of Pepsi Cola in its place. It turns out that among the high drinkers only, memory performance was significantly affected by the nature of this eighth item.Firstly, the high drinkers, but not the low drinkers, were more likely to recall the Jack Daniels than the Pepsi Cola. Moreover, the high drinkers who saw whiskey in the eighth position, were far less likely to recall the next three items in the memory test, than were the high drinkers who were shown Cola. This memory-impairing effect of whiskey was not observed among the low drinkers.The researchers said this is consistent with the idea that alcohol had acquired an emotional salience to the high drinkers, leading to an attention-narrowing effect that impaired their encoding of the items that followed the picture of whiskey. A similar effect was observed in an earlier study when a nude picture was inserted among a series of to-be-remembered items.The researchers concluded that a test like the one used in this study might be helpful in measuring how effective alcohol interventions have been at changing people's feelings towards drink.

1. What was the aim of this study?
2. Write a suitable one tailed hypothesis
3. Why might a one tailed hypothesis be appropriate for this study?
4. What research method and design were employed in this study?
5. What were the IV and DV (fully operationalised)?
6. Explain the procedure in your own words.
7. How were investigator effects reduced in this study?
8. Explain the findings in your own words.
9. What was the conclusion of this study?
10. Could the results be explained in any other ways?
11. Briefly explain how you might create another study to test the effect of emotional significance on memory in another target population.

Take the happiness test! :)

Blues and pinks:
After Christmas we will be starting 'Defining Psychological Abnormality'; Please take the very short happiness test linked here: http://www.coachingtohappiness.com/happiness-test.html

This provides a happiness score which I would like you to write down and keep in your folder. You will need it in your first Abnormality lesson. Don't worry I won't be asking you to read it out in class. I will ask you to write it on a scrap of paper and fold it up so that the data remains confidential.

Stress management

Hi Yr 13 AS
I have just uploaded some model answers on stress management to the google group pages. Range of as and bs outlining two physioligical and two psyucholigial methods with one elaborated strength and limitation of each. I am yet to write model essays but will attempt to do this tomorrow before our lesson on Tuesday. Don't forget to come along with your group brain map as you will be expected to present this learning to your peers and then to circulate around evalauting each method.
Cheerio

Ethics model answers now on Google Page

To all of you taking Paper 3 in Janaury, I have just added model answers for 'Critical Issue: Ethics in Psychological Research' a and b (AO1) questions. The answers are long and detailed and it is up to you to revise these through making bulletpointed summaries of what you would write for various questions and then practice writing your own informed, accurate and detailed answers within the time constraints. Good Luck, hard work pays off! :)