I hope you have found some of the great revision sites available to Psychology students, there are so many of them.
Illuminate the GHG and PHG people have produced flash cards and apps for your phone etc – you might want to check them out here (scroll down the page) >>>>>>>> .Illuminate website
Don’t forget there is masses of material available for free at >>>>>>> Tutor2U
Lesson 1 – Housekeeping – each of you told me what and how you had revised over the half term holiday. We then discussed the necessity of staying ahead as we pile through the Sz topic. You should have already looked at the material on the blog for the Dopamine Hypothesis and Neural Correlates explanation for Sz.
I always assume that you know you are expected to read the PHG text book and visit the links etc from the digital version. I should not need to remind you to do this for every topic we cover. If you have not done this I suggest you do so ASAP.
This lesson we recapped Rosenhan’s study as well as the CNS, Endocrine System and the neuron and synaptic transmission.
Your drug boxes were excellent …well done for taking the time to do this activity 🙂
Ensure you have read the relevant section of the PHG by tomorrow as we will work through at a cracking pace 🙂
Lesson 2 and Lesson 3 – We went through the dopamine and neural correlates explanations for Sz. See power points on previous blog. These explanations are not complex, however there are a few brain areas you need to learn the names of.
Check you have completed the activities in your PHG study pack exercises 8.1-8.6
Check you have also read your course companion too (useful for evaluation and wider understanding). I also emailed you a Sz pack which you may be finding helpful too.
At this point in the year I suggest you start to think about how you can ‘work smart rather than working hard’. You know by now that you may well be required to evaluate the biological explanation for topics like offending behaviour; Sz; OCD; and Gender.
TOP TIP: When you evaluate a biological explanation you can develop a generic argument that can be tailored to the specific topic. If you stick to evaluating the methodology – using twin studies, brain scans, animal research, drug research etc you can apply this to nearly everything.
Likewise, you can evaluate the biological explanation using issues and debates like: determinism vs freewill; reductionism vs holism; nomothetic vs idiographic; nature vs nurture.
Once you have created an effective argument for taking or not taking a biologiccal approach to explaining behaviour, you will have massively improved your chances of getting into the top marking level 🙂
Lesson 4-5 – Psychological explanations for Sz and psychological treatments. IMO, this is more complicated than the biological explanation. This measn you will need to simplify the explanations so they make sense to you.
Here is an interesting article to read about mothers and Sz
Psychological explanations 2019
Prepare for this timed question for next Tuesday. I will be taking in your answer to this question on Tuesday, but I am also asking that additionally, you reduce the answer to some bullet points (no more than 5). I will then allow you to use the bullet points to support you during the timed activity. In other words you are going to write this essay twice. Once for prep and once in timed conditions.
Discuss biological explanations for schizophrenia.
(16 marks)
Additionally – you will need to read ahead to the Psychological treatments for Sz. I will be asking you to prepare and make a presentation on these next week. We will do this on Monday because we can all use the computers that lesson.:)
Lesson 1 – Rosenhan, can we spot insanity? Is the diagnosis of mental illness reliable? or even valid? Rosenhan 2019 original rosenhan
We also completed a grid on twin studies ! We need to know how researchers tease out the relative contributions of both nature and nurture.
Lesson 2 – The joy of assessment 🙂 Forensic Assessment – which was timed and based on past examination questions 🙂
Lesson 3 – Genetic explanations for Sz >>> 108 possible gene combinations!! Genetic explanation 2019
Sorry I was off sick for lessons 4 and 5 – work set as follows:
I would like you to research the Biological explanations for Schizophrenia – pages 204-205 in their PHG text book.
I would then like you to answer the 3 ‘Apply it’ questions and also the ‘Check it’ questions on p 205 questions 1-4.
Lesson 4 – Dopamine explanation dopamine f hypothesis
Lesson 5 – Neural Correlates neural correlates
You have a drug box activity to complete – you will need to create 2 drug boxes, one for Typical and one for Atypical anti-psychotic medication. Include drug names, dosage and side effects. Ensure you have worked through the relevant double page spread in the PHG digital text book.
Please also read ahead in the PHG digital text book – read about the psychological explanations of Sz.
Any additional time should be used revising for the summer examination. START NOW if you haven’t started already!! Seriously. NOW is the time to be revising year 1 Psychology, as well as what we did at the start of this year. Approaches, is psychology a science? Research Methods, Issues and Debates etc.
Do NOT leave your revision until Easter
Lesson 1
Introduction to Schizophrenia. We are revisiting concepts first encountered during the Psychopathology Unit. It is a good idea to find your notes from year 12 as this is a good time to revise this unit.
You should already be familiar with the different ways of defining mental illness. These are, deviation from the social norm, statistical infrequency, deviation from ideal mental health and failure to function adequately.
Psychiatrists also refer to classification manuals to help diagnose different types of psychological impairments. The two we need to know are ICD (Europian) and DSM (USA). Both are revised regularly. Both are getting bigger all the time. The current ICD is version 10. Here is the current DSM for you to have a look at >>> DSM V Each classifies psychiatric conditions slightly differently from each other. This makes classification difficult as there will be issues with the reliability of diagnoses as well as the validity of diagnoses.
It is essential that you take some time to revisit your understanding of the meaning of these 2 key terms. You will also need to familiarize yourself with different types of reliability and validity. See p 48-49 PHG Revision Guide for a quick recap.
Tutor2U have some fantastic material for you to look at >>>>>>>
https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/what-is-schizophrenia
Lesson 2 and 3 – We continued to work our way through the power-point which I emailed you. We learnt about the different sub-types of Sz, as well as differences in how Sz is classified in DCM and ICD. We also focused on the terminology used to describe the positive and negative symptoms of the Sz. I hope that by the end of these lessons you have a better understanding of how devastating this mental illness can be for the sufferer and their families. Treatments have massively improved and far fewer people suffer the indignity we saw in the old film footage we watched.
Reminder – Forensic Assessment tomorrow 🙂
Lesson 4-5. Only 3 students in the lesson today. We spent our time revising Social Influence using the specification as our guide and the GHG revision guide as the source of information. We will do the forensic assessment next week. I hope you all feel better soon.
Prep
Watch the Gerald clip again – (PHG digital book or Power point) Complete exercise 8.3 in your PHG Sz pack for tomorrow.
Please complete the reliability and validity work sheet for next Monday.
As always make sure you are doing enough preparatory and consolidation reading. Read ahead in the PHG. Do the quizzes and try the Apply it questions. We have only got a few weeks left. Everything you do now will make a massive difference to your final grade.
In preparation for next week please read ahead. We will be examining the Biological explanation for Sz together with the biological treatment.
Look at this short power point to remind you about twin studies
The starter activity on Monday will require that you have some knowledge of twin studies.
Additionally we will be looking at Rosenhan’s classic participant observation study that took place in real psychiatric hospitals – it is one of the most fascinating studies ever. See here >>> original rosenhan
“Reliability is the extent to which a finding is consistent. It is the extent to which psychiatrists can agree on the same diagnosis when independently assessing patients (inter-rater reliability). In order for a classification system to be reliable, the same diagnosis should be made each time. Therefore different psychiatrists should reach the same decision when assessing a patient.
Validity is the extent to which we are measuring what we are intending to measure. In the case of an illness like schizophrenia we have to consider the validity of the diagnostic tools; for example, do different assessment systems arrive at the same diagnosis for the same patient? ” Source Joseph Sparks – Tutor2U
In preparation for our first lesson on this topic please watch this Ted talk. You may not know anyone suffering from Schizophrenia so this is a good starting point.
This is interesting too https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/mentalillness/
Not forgetting the good old ‘Crash Course’ series – great for quick overviews/recaps 🙂
Do read ahead in the PHG digital text book – this is a web link from page 202
Totally Psyched 2 