Stress research

It seems that the stress RI topic is posing the most problems in terms of finding suitable background research for your write-ups.

Some general comments:

1) It is hard to find stuff specifically on things like GSR (skin conductivity) and heart rate because these tend to be viewed as primarily biology rather than psychology. However, most psychology books will contain an overview of how the stress response works on a biological level.

2) Health psychology has a strong crossover with these areas, but do not put too many of these studies in if not directly relevant. For example, you are not studying immune function, so go easy on that. If you are looking at heart rate, studies like the Friedman and Rosenman (1974) study of heart disease could be used.

3) I have tended to warn against including stress reduction stuff. However, there are exceptions - some stress reduction studies are closely linked with your research. For example, the technique of biofeedback uses measures such as GSR and heart rate in an attempt to teach people to relax.

4) The SQA handout only has referenced to studies by Selye, but this in itself should give you a clue to what is expected. If anyone wants to look at Selye's book 'The Stress of Life' (1956) I have a copy, it is an easy read and you could probably find a good quote or two.

5) A lot of the research that I have found on the internet is very applied, i.e. it concerns using the concepts for practical purposes. This is ok, and in fact I think it would be very good if you worked in some applications of your research, perhaps towards the end of your intro and again in the discussion section.

Elite athletes

From BPS Research Digest:

It's reassuring to learn that even the most elite athletes can suffer frommental frailties. Maurizio Bertollo and colleagues interviewed 13 members ofItaly's 2004 pentathlon squad and a common theme to emerge was the curse ofso-called "ironic effects". As one athlete explained: "In some circumstancesmy intention is not to do the best but to avoid making a bad shot. That iswhen I make a bad shot. When I think about avoiding the error, I make the error."

The modern pentathlon involves pistol shooting, épée fencing, 200m freestyleswimming, show jumping, and a 3km cross-country run, all conducted on thesame day. Bertollo's research team transcribed the interviews they conducted with the pentathletes.

Several of the athletes said that during the days before an event they attempted to recreate the emotional stress of a real competition.They also said they prioritised relaxation time, set themselves goals andmentally rehearsed success.

During a competition, the athletes performed an opposite mental exercise tothat conducted prior to the event, attempting to recreate the feelings, such as of muscle relaxation, that they achieved during training. They also revealed that they tried to avoid dwelling on mistakes; that they reassured themselves that dysfunctional emotions usually stop once a contest getsstarted; and that they strive to focus their attention in useful ways, such as on the sight and target during shooting.

REFERENCE: Bertollo et al (2009). Mental preparation strategies of elite modern pentathletes. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 10 (2), 244-254.

RI update

Ok, some great work on the RIs so far, lots of data gathered, and most people have made a positive start on the first draft. These are due in soon, though, so we really really need to get on with these quickly now.

If you haven't already gathered your data, there is no more class time for that, so please use your free periods or lunchtimes.

In class we will be working on write-ups. Start with the introduction section, with all your background research, and the method, where you say what you did.

If you haven't finished data gathering, this should not hold you back from writing 90% of your write-up. It will be easy to go back and change your data tables and conclusions if you need to.

One other thing - use past tense throughout, and avoid 'I' and 'we', just use the passive voice (e.g. 'the participants were told to sit down' instead of 'we told the participants to sit down').

Essay competition

A member of staff passed on this opportunity from Newnham College, Cambridge:

Cambridge University’s Department of Social & Developmental Psychology is offering a new prize for a student essay in the field of social & developmental psychology. Schools and colleges are invited to submit essays by up to three different pupils in their first or second year of study for A-level, A/S level, Scottish Higher Level or an equivalent qualification.

A maximum of three entries per school are allowed. Each essay must be on an area of social & developmental psychology and should be accompanied by confirmation from a psychology teacher or the head teacher of the school or college that it is the work of the pupil, who should have completed not more than two years of full-time study post 16 years of age.

Examples of potential topics for the essay include antisocial behaviour; child-child relationships; the cultural relevance of psychological theories; families; fathers; fertility; mothers & daughters; personality and individual differences; same-sex parents; sex differences and their origins; etc.

Essays must not exceed 2,000 words in length (excluding the bibliography: figures, tables, etc). All debts to other scholars (including teachers, books, articles and web sites) should be acknowledged. Essays must be on a topic relating to the study of social & developmental psychology and must be written in the English language. We reserve the right to check submitted essays for plagiarism using online tools.

The First Prize in the Competition is £1,000: £600 for the pupil and £400 for his or her school or college. In the case of a tie for first place the prize will be divided. The writers of the winning essays with their subject teachers will be invited to an award ceremony held at Newnham College, Cambridge. Expenses within the UK will be paid for the winner and his or her teacher to attend.

The closing date for receipt of entries is 31st May 2009. You can download these details from the University website: http://www.ppsis.cam.ac.uk/psy/

World's cleverest child...

Great preparation for the topic 'Intelligence' later this term would be to watch:

'The world's cleverest child and me' which can be seen on Channel 4 on Wednesday night.

Thinking with analogy

The idea of using an analogy to explain something is common in everyday life and in the classroom. In psychology it is particularly important, as many key ideas cannot be seen or easily visualised. An example of such an analogy is to liken the brain to a computer hard drive and the mind to an operating system.

You can liken the problem to the difficulty in comprehending the large quantities of size and distance in the field of astrophysics. A commonly used analogy for planetary sizes is the relative sizes of fruits. I've come across a couple of examples recently of using comparison images, such as this example of the planets Earth and Neptune.
These maintain the key idea (size ratio), while leaving out such minor details as actual sizes or positions. So an analogy has one key characteristics of what we are attempting to explain, with other details being ignored. Many models and theories in psychology also rely on analogies in a sense, computer analogies being especially popular.

The concept of analogy also comes into IQ testing, with items such as:

"Hand is to palm as foot is to ____?"

These ask people to recognise that two different relationships have a common pattern. Artificial intelligence researcher Douglas Hofstadter feels this is so fundamental to thought, that he says in an interview, "analogy is really at the core of thinking", and describes it as "stripping away irrelevancies to get at the gist of things".

Couple of links

Here are a couple of revision-related links:

Mini-articles from the BBC website on memory techniques - simplistic but useful, and the discussion comments are interesting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/memory/improve/no_mistakes.shtml

A short video about stress from the same site (there's also a transcript):