New Dog Book spreads for anomalistic psychology

Click here to download the new spreads from the third edition of the Dog Book for the updated specification, in case you can't find these (I have been giving them out...).

This also explains how the specification has changed since your Nelson Thornes textbook and the second edition of the Dog Book were written. This is well worth a look, or you will be underprepared for probability judgement / coincidence / superstition / magical thinking questions in particular.

RWa and TLa available for revision support

Here is when we have Y13 lessons over the next two weeks:

Wednesday 5th - 2 (TLa)
Thursday 6th - 4 & 5 (RWa)
Friday 7th - 3 (RWa)
Monday 10th 1&2 - (RWa)
Tuesday 11th - 5 (TLa)
Wednesday 12th - 2 (TLa)
Thursday 13th - 3,4&5 (TLa)
Friday 14th - 3&4 (RWa)

Lies, damned lies and statistics

During the last half term we've covered four statistical tests in some detail, and if you've completed all the work set then you will be fully prepared for any questions on stats in the unit 4 exam. You won't be asked to complete a test from start to finish starting with raw data; past questions have focused on one section of the process eg comparing obtained vs critical values or looking or critical values or ranking data.

A common question on the paper is to ask which test should be used for a particular set of data. This sheet gives a summary of each test and when to use them. This sort of question is often worth 2 or 3 marks - meaning that it isn't enough to state that the data is correlational (or independent groups or whatever) - you also need to match the type of data to the test. This sheet is a good summary of different data types (nominal, ordinal, ratio & interval).

Resources by test:

Spearman's rho:

• Used for correlational data, when the two sets of data are pairs of scores from one person, and when the data are ordinal or interval.
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Chi-squared test:

• Used when the hypothesis predicts a difference or an association - is membership of one category associated with  membership of another category? Used for categorical data and for comparing frequencies. The data must be unrelated - you can't be in more than one category.
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Mann-Whitney test:

• Used for independent groups design, when the hypothesis predicts a difference between two sets of data. The data must be interval or ordinal. 
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

Wilcoxon T test:

• Used in repeated measures or matched pairs design, for ordinal or interval data,
• Intro ppt
• Step-by-step worksheet
• Worksheet 2

UNIT 4 MOCK

Your unit 4 mock exam will take place on Tuesday 21st May during P5 and then from 3pm for an hour.

The questions will on the following topics:

Schizophrenia: Biological and Psychological therapies
Anomalistic: Science vs Pseudoscience, magical thinking and psychic mediumship
RM: Revise everything as the paper covers a wide range of RM topics

The paper is 2 hours long. If you have an issue with staying after school on that day you must see Mr Lawrence or Mrs Watson in advance of Tuesday.

UNIT 2 MOCK PAPER

In a change to the previously published plan this will take place on MONDAY 13th MAY. 

Here are the topics you need to revise:

• Disorders of sleep
• Biosocial approach to gender
• Formation of relationships & influence of childhood on relationships

Psychic Mediumship

Here is a link to Derren Brown Investigates - The Man Who Talks To The Dead:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-investigates/episode-guide/series-12/episode-2
Well worth a watch, especially for Richard Wiseman's explanation of 'cold reading' - a rational explanation for the impressive feats of mediums.

Make sure you can:
- define mediumship
- explain how 'cold reading' can explain what mediums are capable of
- describe and evaluate controlled research in mediumship - Schwartz (2001)

The presentation is in an earlier post below.

Near Death Experiences and Out Of Body Experiences

Around one in five people who are declared clinically dead (because their heart has stopped beating) but who are then revived (resuscitated) report some kind of 'Near Death Experience'. Often this involves the sensation of leaving their body, and these 'Out Of Body Experiences' can occur at other times. NDEs often involve a tunnel with a bright light at the end, a feeling of intense calm, reduced fear of death, increased belief in an afterlife, a 'life review' and meetings with dead loved-ones and religious figures.

Most psychologists explain these as interpretations of hallucinations created by changes in the brain as it is starved of oxygen. Your textbook gives quite a lot of detail on this - you don't need to know this much but a couple of examples would be useful. Believers in an 'immortal soul' - the idea that 'we' continue to exist once our body is dead - point to NDEs and OOBEs, especially when they involve people seeing and hearing things that they otherwise couldn't have - as strong evidence for these beliefs.

Make sure you can describe the case study of Maria's 'tennis shoe' OOBE and the criticism of this as a piece of evidence. Read about this in detail here.

Here is an article in the Daily Mail about a very recent piece of scientific research into NDEs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-89926/Scientists-discover-near-death-evidence.html
These researchers claim that the fact not all the patients who were clinically dead then revived which they studied had NDEs is evidence that the explanation was not physiological, and instead supports the idea of an immortal soul.

You should also be able to describe Ehrsson's research (in your textbook) into artificially induced OOBEs - the point here is that the sense that we are inside our own bodies is actually created by the brain. This research suggests that it isn't that surprising that people can have a vivid experience of leaving their bodies when their brain is undergoing big changes.