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OCR Core Studies – 2008 Specification This is a special post for teachers and students of the OCR A/AS-level exam specification in the UK. We were particularly attracted to the OCR specification because it includes the unique ‘core studies’ unit which revisits classic studies from across the breadth of the psychology. Below we collect together some key resources from the Research Digest and The Psychologist magazine (shown in red throughout [ Read More ]
It’s difficult to imagine anything worse than lying paralysed, being fully aware and yet unable to signal to your loved ones sitting around you that – yes, you can hear them, you are there. If only the doctors could scan your brain and see that you were listening and thinking. Remarkably, that’s what British researchers Adrian Owen and colleagues at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit claim to have [ Read More ]
When it comes to the ‘positive’ symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hearing voices, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has mostly be used to help reduce the distress and burden that they can cause. But now Jerome Favrod and colleagues in Switzerland have tested the idea that CBT could help tackle the cognitive deficit that some argue causes the voices to be heard in the first place. One theory for why people [ Read More ]
Professional rugby players are more worried about getting injured than anything else, including whether or not they win the match, or whether their opponents cheated. That’s according to Adam Nicholls and colleagues who succeeded in getting eight professional players to fill out a diary after each rugby match they played during a 28-day period in 2004. The players, including a full international All-Black and three full Irish internationals, completed a [ Read More ]
We talk about “washing away” our sins and “feeling dirty” after doing something naughty, but is this just a quirk of our language, or are moral and physical cleanliness really intertwined? Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist first demonstrated that the two concepts really are linked in our minds. Participants asked to recall a recent unethical deed they had committed were subsequently more likely to convert word fragments (e.g. W__H) into [ Read More ]
A minority of teachers may still have an overly-narrow conception of what constitutes bullying, according to Paul Naylor and colleagues. They asked 225 teachers and 1,820 pupils (aged between 11 and 14) from 51 schools to write down what ‘they think bullying is’. Despite the fact the participating schools all had high-profile anti-bullying policies, 33 per cent of pupils and 10 per cent of teachers restricted their definition to direct [ Read More ]
Drawings of humans by children with autism tend to lack variety, researchers have found, possibly reflecting the unusual way they think about and relate to other people. Anthony Lee and Peter Hobson compared drawings by 14 autistic children (aged 8 to 15) with drawings by 14 non-autistic children who were learning disabled. When the children were asked to draw two houses followed by their own house, they all tended to [ Read More ]
Eye-catching studies that didn’t make the final cut this fortnight: ‘Spot the book’ and ‘Spot the country’ – new tests for estimating people’s IQ prior to brain-related illness or injury. The brains of men and women differ in how they respond to images of sexual and emotional infidelity. Predicting which students will have drink problems based on psychological tests of mental control. What is it like to discover you have [ Read More ]
Approaches to identifying students with specific learning difficulties. (Psychology In The Schools). Mental representations of attachment. (Attachment and Human Development). Inhibition of return (we’re slower to return our gaze to the same place twice). (Cognitive Neuropsychology). The nature of music. (Cognition). Genes, brain and cognition – a roadmap for the cognitive neuroscientist. (Cognition).
To celebrate three years since its launch as an email newsletter (the blog came later), the BPS Research Digest will soon bring you a showcase of psychological science, as some of the world’s best psychology bloggers discuss their favourite psychology studies from the last three years. Among the attendees at this banquet of the mind will be Mind Hacks, the Relaxed Therapist, Cognitive Daily, the Staff Psychologist and several more… [ Read More ]