Overview of Abnormality

Click here to download a word document which summarises everything you need to know for Monday's test and your Unit 2 AS exam (psychopathology / abnormality section).

CBT and Psychoanalysis

We looked at the final two therapies last Thursday - CBT (from the cognitive approach, with some behavioural ideas thrown in) and psychoanalysis, the therapy that Freud developed and which comes from the psychodynamic approach.

These are both 'talking therapies' and, along with behavioural therapies like systematic desensitisation, are 'psychological therapies' (meaning they are not biological / physical like drugs and ECT).

Unlike behavioural therapy (which aims to correct faulty behaviour with classical and operant conditioning) these both aim to correct problems with 'the mind' - that is, how we think. Make sure you can explain the key difference between them. CBT is based on conscious thoughts that we can think about and change ourselves once we understand their importance - it is based on practical strategies for changing the way we think about the current difficulties we face in our lives. Psychoanalysis assumes that the real causes of our current problems are hidden in our pasts and in our unconscious minds, and that we need the help of a therapist to uncover these.

Here is the presentation on CBT.

Here is the presentation on psychoanalysis.

For Monday's lesson you need to complete your notes on these, including strengths and limitations. Organise your notes for the whole abnormality topic, filling in any blanks, and revise for a test on Tuesday. I will post a  helpful document here later this weekend to help you prepare, but for now remember that you need to be able to describe and evaluate three definitions of abnormality (DSN, FFA, DIMH); four models of abnormality (biological, behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic; and five therapies (ECT, drugs, systematic desensitisation, CBT, psychoanalysis).

Behavioural Therapy

Here is the presentation from today's lesson.

Complete your notes on systematic desensitisation (in detail) and other behavioural therapies (more briefly) including their strengths and limitations, for Thursday's lesson please.

Next homework essay due

‘Outline and evaluate the working memory model’  (12 marks)

•Describe each component

•Describe supporting research evidence

•Evaluate this evidence if appropriate

•Evaluate the model as a whole

DUE FRIDAY 30th NOVEMBER

Factors affecting eyewitness testimony

Children are sometimes used to give evidence in criminal proceedings - can their evidence be relied upon? What about elderly people? We discussed further factors that might affect eyewitness testimony. You need to be familiar with the following terms/concepts:

Anxiety & eyewitness testimony
The Yerkes-Dodson law
The weapon effect
Schemas & eyewitness testimony
Age & eyewitness testimony
Own-age bias
Differential experience hypothesis

Today's ppt is here and the writing frame to fill in on age and eyewitness testimony is here.

Biological Therapies

Our abnormality topic concludes with a look at the therapies used by each approach to abnormality. There are two biological therapies you must be able to describe and evaluate - Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and drug therapy (also known as pharmacotherapy or chemotherapy). Psychosurgery is also worth knowing, particularly as the ethical issues that apply to this rather extreme case can be used to evaluate the other therapies that you might be asked directly about.

For example, a criticism of drug therapy is that it doesn't really solve the problems patients have, they simply remove some of their troublesome symptoms (this is probably particularly true in the case of schizophrenia). In a similar way frontal lobotomies didn't really address the symptoms patients with schizophrenia or extreme anxiety had, but they made them much easier to manage - are modern antipsychotic drugs simply chemical lobotomies? If so, at least their effects are reversible...

Homework for next Tuesday is to make detailed notes on the three biological therapies. You need to cover the following:

• ‘6 mark’ and ‘3 mark’ descriptions – what is it and how does it work? 
• How effective is it? For what disorder(s)? 
• What are its strengths? 
• What are its limitations? 
• What ethical issues arise?

Here is the presentation from today's lesson.

The Cognitive and Psychodynamic models of abnormality

The cognitive model of abnormality states that it's not the problems we encounter in life that cause us to become mentally unhealthy, but the way we think about them. Unlike other explanations for psychopathology, this leaves quite a lot of room for Free Will (it is a less Determinist approach) - you, the individual, can take control and learn to think in a more positive way.

Here is the presentation.

An essay - 'Describe and evaluate the cognitive model of abnormality' - 6 marks AO1 for describing + 6 marks AO2 for discussing strengths and limitations - is now overdue!

We have also re-examined the psychodynamic model, and in particular Freud's theory of abnormality. This also stresses mental causes of abnormality (remember, the biological model deals with physical causes, and the behavioural model with 'non-mental learning' - simple learning that we can study in animals) but here the idea is that the causes of psychopathology are buried in the subconscious thanks to defence mechanisms like repression.

Here is the presentation.

Eyewitness testimony

Can evidence from eyewitnesses be relied upon in court? Is it accurate? What factors affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony? Do some people have better eyewitness testimony than others?

We have been looking at the work of Elizabeth Loftus and colleagues investigating these questions. This is one area of psychology in which research has informed public and legal policy, and we have seen why. The intro ppt is here and the ppt summarising the relevant studies is here. 

Progress tests November 2012

The abnormality progress test for Mr Lawrence is here

If you missed the memory progress test you will need to see Mrs Watson in person for a paper copy

The Biological and Behavioural Models of Abnormality

A model in this sense is a simple, general theory - or a set of assumptions on which specific theories of disorders are based. We covered the four approaches on which the four models of abnormality you need to know are based in our first few lessons in September.

The biological model (also called 'physiological' or 'medical') assumes that psychological disorders have physical causes in the brain/body (e.g. genes, neurotransmitter chemicals) and that treatments should also be physical (e.g. drugs).

Here is the biological model presentation.

The behavioural model is a psychological one (meaning it assumes the causes of abnormality are non-physical). It assumes that faulty learning results in abnormal behaviour, and this can be explained without involving the mind, thoughts or memories, but rather by looking at simple 'associative learning' (learning associations between stimuli, or between our behaviours and reward/punishment) - classical and operant conditioning.

Here is the behavioural model presentation.

You need to be able to write a description of each model worth six marks - at least half a side, ideally with examples of how the model can be used to explain specific disorders e.g. Depression (low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, perhaps as a result of a faulty gene, or 'learned helplessness' as a result of conditioning with negative stimuli that can't be escaped). You also need to be able to write an evaluation of each, explaining their strengths and limitations.

More Definitions of Abnormality

We have now covered three different ways psychologists use to define psychological abnormality - different answers to the question 'what does "abnormal" mean?'.

Deviation from Social Norms (DSN) is covered in an earlier post.

Failure to Function Adequately (FFA) is also based on observable behaviour (so shares many of the same strengths and limitations as DSN - in both cases it is relatively easy for observers to agree who is abnormal - they are objective - but arguably they are reductionist in that they reduce the normal/abnormal question down to a certain type of behaviour, rather than looking at how people think and feel). Rather than focusing on social behaviour it looks at whether a person is coping with their daily routine - normality is getting to work / school on time, in clean clothes.

Here is the FFA presentation.

Deviation from Ideal Mental Health (DIMH) differs from the other two important respects. It deals with signs of normality rather than abnormality, and it focuses on thoughts and feelings rather than behaviours. It is less reductionist, but less objective (it's harder to agree when someone's mental state has deviated far enough from the ideal for them to be considered 'abnormal').

Here is the DIMH presentation.

Make sure you can describe how each definition works, with details e.g. a few of Jahoda's criteria for DIMH, give examples of abnormality according to each, and explain strengths and limitations.

The working memory model

A big criticism of the multi-store model is that it is over-simplistic and doesn't allow for the complexity of human memory. The working memory model breaks down short-term memory into a number of different components and is significantly more complex. You need to be able to describe both models, give an account of the research that supports them and also compare the models in terms of their validity. 

The big powerpoint containing all the research from the last few lessons on the working memory model is here.

You also have to complete your practical work and write up the results (due after half term - Friday 10th November). The title of the project is 'Does articulatory suppression eliminate the word length effect?'. A copy of the guideline sheet for the write-up is here.

Deviation from Social Norms

The first of our definitions of abnormality - these are not theories or explanations of abnormality (they don't seek to answer the question 'why?') but ways of deciding who has a psychological disorder.

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

You need to:

• Make sure you have an outline of the definition, and can define 'social norms' with examples.
• Give examples of behaviours which deviate from social norms, which are genuine signs of abnormality and which are actually 'normal' behaviour (that is, examples where DSN isn't working).
• Write a half-page evaluation discussing strengths (recognition of the desirability of behaviour - its effect on others / the fact that it is based on observable behaviour) and limitations (without understanding the context it can be hard to say whether such behaviour is related to abnormality / social norms vary between cultures and over time but abnormality shouldn't).

Encoding in STM and LTM

Information enters our brain via our sense organs:

Encoding refers to how information is changed so that it can be stored in memory. The conclusions from today's lesson and class experiments are as follows:

- information in STM is stored acoustically (as sounds)
- some visual (picture) codes are also used in STM
- information in LTM tends to be encoded semantically (in terms of meaning)

We have discussed two key studies in this area. Baddeley (1966) gave participants lists of words and tested the effects of acoustic and semantic similarity on recall. Brandimote (1992) demonstrated that visual coding does take place in STM as well as acoustic. The two powerpoints containing all the stimuli used are here (Baddeley) and here (Brandimote).

Today's homework is to complete the following essay:

'Give a brief account of the differences between STM and LTM and discuss the extent to which research supports this distinction' (12 marks). 

A suggested essay plan is here. This should be handed in by Friday 19th October. 

The cognitive approach to abnormality

We introduced the fourth and final approach to psychology today. The cognitive approach assumes that thoughts (conscious ones, which we are aware of and have some control over - unlike those dealt with by the psychodynamic approach) are the main cause of abnormality. A useful example to know is Beck's Cognitive Triad explanation for depression:

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

On Friday we will have a test on the key assumptions of the four approaches - review your notes using your textbook to add some detail. Complete a glossary for the cognitive approach, and revise for the test.

A list of key terms for the four approaches is here.

An introduction to memory

We have started to look at ways in which psychologists have tried to pin down aspects of memory. We defined STM and LTM (ppt here) and discussed duration (presentation here) and capacity (presentation here).

You carried out a replication of Peterson & Peterson (1959) and we found our class figures were very typical of their figures.

The schedule for the term that I handed out is here. It shows what you need to be doing for homework each week, and also the essay titles that we shall be working our way through this term.

Introduction to the Biological approach

In the second half of our double today we briefly introduced the biological approach. This rests on the assumption that all the psychological phenomena  we experience (emotions, thoughts, memories) there is a physical (physiological) change in the body associated with this, and we should try to understand, and if necessary change this.

Here is the presentation - mainly nice pictures!

Here are the terms to define by next Monday, as well as ensuring that previous assignments listed below are completed:

• Nervous system 
• Central nervous system 
• Peripheral nervous system
• Autonomic nervous system   
• Hormone 
• Gene 
• Pathogen 
• Cerebral cortex
• CAT scan / MRI scan 
• PET scan / fMRI scan 
• Neurone 
• Neurotransmitter 
• Twin study

Introduction to Behavioural psychology

Here is the presentation from this lesson last week - sorry for not posting sooner.

We wrote answers to this question in today's lesson:

"Evaluate Freud's psychodynamic theory of personality."

Homework which was due in today was a short essay evaluating the behavioural approach to abnormality:

"Contrast the behavioural approach with the psychodynamic approach to abnormality."

You should consider these questions while explaining what the differences between the approaches are, and explain which approach is 'better' according to this difference if you can:

• What do they say about the role of the mind (thoughts, memories etc) in the causes of a disorder e.g. depression?
• How do they explain the importance of past experiences?
• What do they have to say about our parents?
• How easy is it to test their ideas / predictions with experiments?
• Can they be accused of over-simplifying a complex issue (being reductionist)?

Psychology book club

Everyone is invited to the first meeting of our Psychology book club

R23, Monday 17th September at 1.30 pm

We will be reading 'As nature made him' by John Colapinto. Copies are limited so will  be shared within pairs. It is out of print but there are a number of used copies on Amazon. The following meeting will be 15th October where we will meet to discuss the book and introduce the next.

Introduction to Freud's psychodynamic theory of personality

Here is the presentation from our first lesson. Your work is to construct your own glossary of terms relating to the psychodynamic approach, as well as completing / refining the holiday work which is on the second page of the subject information sheet.

You can download the subject information sheet for psychology here.