I have received a few questions recently about the synoptic aspect of the A2 papers and thought I would pass on my views!
SYNOPTICITY
The synoptic criteria has been dropped from the mark scheme. It is essentially equivalent to IDA.
ISSUES, DEBATES AND APPROACHES (IDA)
In a recent edition of the New Scientist (16 June 2010) the editorial discussed cracks in the peer review system. Staff at the New Scientist analysed a range of scientific journals and found a strong tendency for American researchers to be published faster and in higher profile journals than their rivals elsewhere. Th New Scientist undertook the analysis because a group of researchers had recently taken the unusual step of writing a letter to a leading journal complaining of ‘unreasonable and obstructive peer reviews’. Of course it may simply be that Americans are doing better research, but the New Scientist editorial says we will never know unless peer reviews are published. Some journals are already doing this and the New Scientist hopes this practice increases so that justice can be seen to be done. The editorial concludes by saying that ‘peer review may be flawed but it is the least-worst system we’ve got’.
In page 293 of the A2 book, the Mann-Whitney U test. Half way down it should say N1=10 instead of N1=0. Thanks to Ruth Bailey of Akeley Wood School for pointing this out.
Meat was an important source of nutrition for ancestral humans (as it is today, MacDonalds aside). It has been suggested that the importance of meat meant that men often traded it for other favours such as forging allegiances or for sex (Stanford, 1999 – see pages 101,
130 and 131 of our A2 Complete Companion). Observations of animal and human behaviour have been used to support this ‘meat for sex’ hypothesis, however a recently published study says the suggestion is baseless. Gilby et al. (2010) conducted an observational study of chimpanzees over a 28 year period (see here and here) and found no evidence that males hunted more when females were most fertile, nor were they more likely to share meat with fertile females. However there continues to be evidence that supports the meat for sex hypothesis (see here). This study by Gomes and Boesch (2006) found direct evidence of meat exchange in another study of wild chimpanzees. It may be that males exchange meat on a long-term basis i.e. they don’t do it just when a female is fertile but provide meat continually so they can take advantage of fertile periods when they occur.
A student recently pointed out an error in the AS Book on page 119 – in the Do it yourself feature we have suggested that one way to help yourself to remember the terms related to the body’s response to stress is to use more familiar ideas to represent the different words. For example, you might try to remember those Spanish cousins ‘Adrena Cortez’ (the adrenaline junkie) ‘Adrena Medulla’ (with her cortisol habit). However that is the wrong way round – Adrena Cortez has the cortisol habit. Sorry! Thanks to Jasmine Nelson for pointing this out (and telling us how much she liked this blog).
The online magazine Slate has been running a series about memory distortions and false memories (see here) There are 8 articles all together – at the top of the web page there are links to previous articles.
The first article describes a recent mass experiment conducted by Slate where they used some of Elizabeth Loftus’ techniques to plant false political memories.
You can see more spreads on the sample chapter tab or go to bookshop to order your copy.
May 18, 2010 The death of Richard Gregory was announced on Monday of this week
. He was an extremely well-known figure in Psychology, most notably for his work on visual illusions and his classic book Eye and Brain. His website has examples of some of his illusions. He also researched artificial intelligence, was an inventor with many patents to his name and founded the At-Bristol hands-on Science Museum, as well as appearing frequently on radio and TV.
I had the privilege of hearing him speak on several occasions and felt he had quite a magical ability to communicate enthusiasm and ideas.
Interesting footnote – Gregory was taught by Frederic Bartlett as an undergraduate and claimed Bartlett inspired him to take up psychology.
In the AQA A AS Complete Companion we have subdivided conformity into majority and minority influence. There was a reason for this – when the new specification was first published minority influence was a named topic so we wrote material on it. However, in a very late revision, minority influence was removed from the specification. However we (as well as other textbooks) left it in because it is an important part of the social change topic – social change is due to minority rather than majority influence.
It is arguable as to whether ‘conformity’ refers only to majority influence or can include minority influence – for example, the Scottish higher exam talks about conformity to majority and minority influence. We elected to include minority influence under the heading ‘conformity’. However, AQA’s ruling is that conformity is solely concerned with majority influence. This means that, in the exam, students will get no marks for material or research studies on minority influence in a question on conformity.
However material on minority influence can be made creditworthy when asked about the implications of social influence research for social change, so it remains an important topic of study.
Thanks to Emma Marsh for raising this issue.
I showed this video at a number of recent psychology conferences when I was talking about research methods, and thought I would share it on this site because it is quite entertaining.
Change blindness describes how people are quite poor at noticing change, something demonstrated in a number of studies (see also Daniel Simon and Daniel Levin’s classic ‘door study‘ or Richard Wiseman’s colour changing card trick or just look up change blindness).
Change blindness is different from inattentional blindness where people do not see things which are in plain sight – famously demonstrated in this video (and by Daniel Simons) this one from Richard Wiseman.
You may ask why I was using the video when talking about research methods – I suggested that students might think of ways to further test these phenomena. For example there is evidence that people are more likely to notice change if the other people are the same age as themselves.
