A* grade evaluation points for BIOPSYCHOLOGY in AQA A-Level Psychology Paper 2. Learn these short, summarised evaluation points to prepare you for any essay or evaluation question that could come up in the exam. The document is laid out in a table to make it easy to memorise and comes with a blank ...
AQA A-Level Psychology
BIOPSYCHOLOGY
Paper 2: AO3 Points
Fight or flight + -
response
Both males and females do have a more cooperative approach in GRAY argues we don’t have a natural flight or fight response but we
stressful situations do have a freeze response, we stop, look, listen and gather info
VON DAWANS et al. study showed that with acute stress both males
and females show more cooperative approach (e.g: on 9/11)
CA: there is a genetic basis to sex differences in stress Tend and befriend
response, LEE + HARLEY TAYLOR, females protect themselves and their young and befriend
SRY gene in male Y chromosome, more prone to aggression and other women
fight or flight response Whereas men do fight or flight
No SRY gene in women, makes it less likely
Modern life stressors rarely require such physical response
Increasing blood pressure + continually shutting down immune
response is not healthy - susceptible to infection
Localisation of + -
Function
Evidence from neurosurgery, areas of brain that are damaged LASHLEY, rats
are linked to mental illness - DOUGHERTY et al. Removed 10-50% of rats’ cortex, learning route of maze, found no
Reported on 44 OCD patients after a cingulotomy (isolating the area more important than others for learning routes
cingulate gyrus - associated with OCD) Learning requires every part of cortex
30% had successful response, 14% had partial response 32 wks = higher cognitive processes, like learning, aren’t localised but
later distributed holistically
Suggests behaviours associated with mental disorders are localised
Evidence from brain scans - PETERSON et al., BUCKNER + Evidence from case studies - Phineas Gage 1848,
PETERSON un-generalisable
PETERSON et al.: Wernicke’s area is active in listening activities, Iron rod through brain, damaged frontal lobe, led to negative changes
Broca’s in reading in Gage’s character: ‘no longer Gage’, but made a full recovery aside
BUCKNER + PETERSON review of LTM: revealed semantic resides from personality
in left prefrontal cortex, episodic in right prefrontal cortex = suggests personality and temperament reside in frontal lobe +
= objective methods for measuring brain activity provide evidence frontal lobe is responsible for regulating mood
that everyday behaviour is localised
, Support from aphasia studies CA: to aphasia studies - DRONKERS et al., DICK + TREMBLAY
Broca’s patient Tan understood spoken language but couldn’t MRI of 2 of Broca’s patients found other areas other than Broca’s that
produce coherent speech (could only say ‘Tan’) had been damaged.
Post-mortem revealed a lesion in the left frontal lobe, Broca = language and cognition are much more complex, involving
concluded this area is responsible for speech production networks of brain regions, not localised to a specific area
DICK + TREMBLAY: only 2% of modern researchers think language
is completely controlled by Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas
fMRI allows neural processes to be studied with more clarity =
Language streams have been identified across the cortex in right
hemisphere and subcortical regions, e.g: thalamus
Hemispheric + -
Lateralisation
Evidence for lateralisation in the connected brain - FINK et al. NIELSEN et al.
Even in connected brains, the hemispheres process info differently Idea that LH - analyser and RH - synthesiser is wrong
FINK used PET scans to identify areas active in visual processing NIELSEN analysed 1000 brain scans (aged 7-29)
Found when connected brain ppts paid attention to global element of Found people used certain hemispheres for certain tasks but no
picture (a whole forest) regions of right hemisphere (RH) active evidence of dominant sides
When finer details (trees) left hemisphere (LH) was dominant Notion of left-brained and right-brained is wrong
= visual processing suggests hem lat is feature of both connected
and split brain
Split-brain + -
research
Research support - LUCK et al.
Split-brains are faster at identifying odd one out in an array of objects
In normal brain, LH’s better cognitive strategies are weakened by
inferior RH (KINGSTONE et al.)
= support Sperry’s research that left-brain and right-brain have
different qualities
Sperry’s research is ethical and good internal validity CA: hard to establish causal relationships
It was controlled and standardised Trauma of operation, ppts might not fully understand what they
Operation not performed for purpose of study, ppts not deliberately agreed to
harmed, full informed consent Subject to testing for years can be stressful
Hard to establish causal relationships
Behaviour of Sperry’s ppts was compared to a neurotypical group,
none with epilepsy - confounding variable of having epilepsy
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