We will be having a Sz end of topic assessment tomorrow – Wednesday – NO books – just your memory of this topic.
Also – Next Wednesday I will take in your Forensic (write in pack) and your PHG Sz pack to check you have completed the various activities.
You have until next Wednesday to make sure these have been completed.
Lesson 1 – We started considering some of the terms associated with our new topic – Gender see >>>>>>>>>> Gender lesson 1
We didn’t get past the fairy tales tbh – page 1 PHG gender pack. We will resume with androgeny tomorrow.
Read ahead in your digital text book 🙂
Lesson 2 -3-4 – We looked at the concept of stereotyping then you took Bem’s BSRI test to see how masculine/feminine/androgynous you were. We read some interesting articles linked to gender and raising children gender neutral, and you completed exercise 6.3 in the PHG pack.
Some great fact sheets I came across recently – you may find these useful http://www.dana.org/publications/factsheets/
We went on to consider how Genes and Hormones affect the development of an embryo into male or female. power point >>> gender genes
Lesson 5-6 We started with a Sz assessment. We then went on to look at A typical sex chromosome patterns. Complete the activity 6.6 and 6.6 in PHG pack
You have some questions to complete, I gave you a sheet in the lesson printed from the power point linked to lesson 1. Due on Monday
Also due on Monday the worksheet/power point pdf work sent to you via email
Would you like to find out what sex your brain is ?>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml
Read ahead in Gender topic
Ensure you have created a revision timetable
A natural experiment which shows that being bought up female does NOTHING towards making a male adult feminine. Two articles on the subject are reproduced below:
Startling sex-changes on the island where little sister may become big brother
By SANDRA JOBS0N, in London
On a lush tropical island in a remote area of the Caribbean something, very peculiar is happening. The young girls in one village are turning into boys. This startling sex change is occurring naturally, and a team of scientists sent to the island believes it could throw a new light on fundamental aspects of human nature and sexual identification. It has all been revealed in a fascinating documentary shown recently on BBC television, called The Fight to be Male.
The Caribbean phenomenon has been happening for the past 50 years. In that time 37 village girls have changed into boys around the age of 13. The cause has been traced back to one woman seven generations ago who passed on genetic abnormality to her descendants.
The story of the Batista family is typical of the village. Four out of the ten children in the Batista family have changed from girls into boys. The eldest, Mario, now 29 and married with children, began life as a girl named Antonia. The next daughter Milady. remains a girl. Then came Chichi, now 19, a normal male who started out as a girl called Isobel. Then there is Venecia, a normal girl. And now Virgilio, who is 12 and in the process of changing from a female to a male.
The Batistas do not regard themselves or their affected children as freaks. After all, 22 other families have experienced the same sex transformation over the years. The primitive lifestyle of the village contributes greatly to the relaxed and passive acceptance of “God’s will.” The people of the island are a mixture of Negroid and Creole stock – well-built handsome men and tall, strapping girls able to share the work load of cutting sugar cane, the island’s staple crop.
The Caribbean climate makes life both easy and lazy. So some of the girls turn into boys? Who cares? As long as they are happy. Virgilio’s brothers immediately found girlfriends when they turned into boys. Mario, the eldest, is the father of two children now, living in one of the bigger towns.
“We always brought up our girls as girls” Mr Batista says. “Because that’s what we always thought they were.”
“And some of our girls stayed girls,” adds Mrs Batista, pointing to two of her grown-up daughters who remained girls and are now married with babies of their own. None of the Batista men who were girls appears to show any sign of embarrassment about the change. Even Virgilio, still in the process, did not mind removing his trousers to reveal his sexual parts.
At birth Virgilio and his other sisters who became boys looked just like any other female baby. But the male anatomy was waiting inside his body and the external genitalia began to change at puberty. The testes dropped, as with all pubescent boys. But in the Caribbean children, the testes have to force their way from deep inside the child’s body. The clitoris grew into a normal, full-size male penis.
In Virgilio’s case the process is still half-way and his external sexual organs appear curiously bisexual at present. But soon his tiny, infantile vagina will close up and he will be completely male. I am looking forward very much to being a man” she says through an interpreter. “I have a girlfriend already”.
The phenomenon was first observed by a Spanish doctor who visited the village on holiday soon after it was connected by road to the rest of the island back in 1950. He wrote up his discovery in a Spanish medical journal where it remained unnoticed until 1972 when a team of doctors _came cross the article and decided to investigate more closely.
To protect the families the team will not reveal the name of the village or the island, but a BBC producer, Edward Galdwyn, was allowed to film the children recently. The team, headed by Dr Julienne Imperator-McGinley has pieced together a family tree of all the 23 affected families, tracing them back seven generations to one woman named Altagracia who married four times and produced a large number of children.
All of them carried a mutant gene which shows up only when one of the members of the 23 families marries a cousin. The clue to it all is a chemical called dihydrotestosterone which Virgilio and the other affected children were unable to produce when they were tiny babies. Doctors can now reliably state that it is the chemical which creates the external anatomy of the male.
In the womb all babies have the beginnings of both male and female sex organs. How the child develops, is determined by the “program” laid down by the chromosomes within its cells. If the child has the female chromosome structure, she will develop ovaries, and the male organs will disintegrate, leaving the female organs to grow.
But the Caribbean children had inherited a faulty gene which meant that the testes developed, but failed to produce the chemical which would remove the female parts. The body did not start producing the vital chemical until puberty, and then the children underwent the changes that should have occurred in the womb.
What is particularly significant is that all of the Caribbean children were brought up as normal girls. They were taught the ordinary female village tasks: Washing the clothes, cooking, fetching the wood, and they played with dolls.
But when they reached the age of l0 they suddenly felt the urge to be male. Young Virgilio explains: “I began to feel like a man in my muscles.” Virgilio’s father explains: “When they turn into men they change into different clothes. Soon everybody forgets. They find girlfriends very quickly.” Indeed, the affected children become more muscular and virile than their normal brothers.
The easy adjustment of the Caribbean children led the scientists to challenge the usual view that our “male” or “female” behaviour is determined more by the way we are brought up than by our physiology. They suggest that there may be a part of the brain which is different in males and females and which governs much of what we think of as sex-role behaviour.
(From the Sydney “SUN-HERALD” JUNE 17 1979, p. 41)
Once you have read this article read p148-149 PHG digital text book – this is going to be fascinating!
Lesson 1 – After recapping the psychological explanations for Sz, during the lesson you designed a power point to explain 3 ways of treating Sz using psychological treatments. Once you have completed your P point please email to me.
Please take the time to work through this power point about CBT>>> psychological treatments
It directs you to complete an activity in your PHG pack. This should be completed by Wednesday. Additionally there are some examination type questions to consider. If you want to answer the exam questions please feel free to do so and hand in for feedback.
Lesson 2 – Timed exam practice – you answered the question “Discuss biological explantions for Sz” (16 marks). You were allowed to use your bullet point to help you.
Lesson 3 – Hopefully you have all taken the time to look at the power point attached to lesson 1 – this should mean you have a reasonable understanding of how CBT is used with Sz patients. This lesson we will explore the other psychological treatments including token economy and family therapy. token economy and family therapy treatment
Additionally I gave you another Research Methods/stats revision sheet to complete. It was designed to remind you about NOIR/probability/statistical significance/type 1 and 11 errors and the different stats tests. You were given 10 minutes at the start of the lesson to complete the activities on this sheet. We then went through them in class.
Lesson 4 – You requested another lesson each week to allow us to finish the course sooner. Mrs Harris-Moss has agreed.
We used the lesson to finish the work started in lesson 3 which was designing a programme of token economy for patients in a psychiatric hospital. See task on power point above. Please hand in once you have completed yours.
Lesson 5-6 – We finished of Sz topic by looking at the Interactionist approach to understanding and treating Sz – you wrote a 6 mark outline and an evaluation paragraph during the lesson which I checked. You also completed some tutor2U questions we we checked in class. See >>>>interactionist pp
There will be a Sz end of unit test on Wednesday of next week
Please check you have completed the various exercises in your PHG Sz pack – up to and including exercise 8.12. We will finish this pack this week and I will take in the completed pack on Monday of next week
As always, complete any work that was not completed during the lessons – if you have unfinished sheets in your folder please complete ASAP and hand in for checking .
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
Lesson 1 – We continued with Custodial sentencing – please look at this power point. I cannot spend another lesson on this topic (time is limited) dealing-with-offending-behaviour
Custodial sentencing involves imprisonment for offending behaviour and serves several functions:
1.Deterrence – imprisonment is so unpleasant that criminals will not re-offend.
2.Retribution – imprisonment punishes offenders for their criminal actions.
3.Confinement – imprisonment protects society through offenders not being free to re-offend.
4.Rehabilitation – imprisonment allows for counselling and other programmes to help teach criminals not to re-offend.
The psychological effects of custodial sentencing concern the mental consequences of imprisonment:
1.Institutionalisation – individuals deliberately re-offend, as they cannot live independently outside of prison.
2.Negative mental health – imprisonment incurs high levels of self-harm, suicide, depression, etc.
3. Recidivism – imprisonment incurs high re-offending levels through institutionalisation, the learning of criminal skills in prison, and
ex-prisoners finding employment hard to come by.
Lesson 2 – 1 token economy 2017
Miltenberger (2008) identified seven components of a token economy: If you were asked HOW to design a TEP these are the stages
1. Target behaviours: This is the behaviours that are decided are desirable and undesirable, which should be shown more or less.
2. Type of tokens: This is the type of tokens that are used, such as stars, poker chips, plastic tokens, etc.
3. The reinforcers are identified: This is what tokens will be exchanged for – usually material items, services or activities.
4. Reinforcement schedule: A reinforcement schedule needs to be decided – this is initially continuous but partial reinforcement could be used as time passes.
5. Exchange criterion: This is the exchange price – for example, a chocolate bar is 5 tokens
6. Time/place for exchange: A decision about when the tokens can be exchanged and where.
7. *Response cost: A penalty or fine could be used where tokens are taken away for engaging in undesirable behaviour. *Not always used
Lesson 3 – Anger management. The process is described in this power point >>> 2 am and rj 2017
Lesson 4 – Restorative justice – this seems to be the best way of genuinely changing an offender’s attitude and behaviour. It is straight forward to describe provided you understand the PROCESS. Like Anger management the Process is crucial in your understanding, because a ‘HOW’ question could be asked. Do check that you can evaluate these different types of ways of treating offenders.
During the lesson you did lots of activities to further your understanding of these treatments.
Prep
By now you should have already read the relevant chapters in the PHG text book and Revision guide. Ensure you have understood and can describe the 4 ways of dealing with offenders: Prison, changing behaviour using operant conditioning, treating anger issues and restorative justice. You will need to be able to explain the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Consider too which is the most effective at reducing recidivism.
To write this essay you should first explain what we mean by custodial sentencing. Then identify prison’s four functions. You should comment on how effective you think these are. Do they reduce recidivism? What is the evidence? You should identify the positive and negative psychological effects of custodial sentencing. This question requires that you reach a conclusion. Do you think it is effective? I have given you an essay plannner to help you construct your answer.
ADVANCE WARNING: There will be a Forensic Assessment next Wednesday – DO revise.
Schizophrenia next. Time to print out the resources I have sent you 🙂
Totally Psyched 2 