Treatments for schizophrenia

PSYA4 June 2012 had a question which asked ‘Outline one biological therapy and one psychological therapy for schizophrenia.’ The mark scheme included the following: ‘Therapies such as psychoanalysis and psychosurgery have been used for schizophrenia in the past but are no longer generally considered suitable. A general outline of these techniques which are not made […]

Read more

Stress and attachment

You will have heard of the nature-nurture debate. In the last decade researchers have come to a deeper understanding of how the two interact. The field is called epigenetics and there is an interesting example of this in the link between stress and attachment. Research has shown that rats who have been raised by mothers […]

Read more

Missing the gorilla

Many of you will be familiar with the video where two teams are throwing basketballs to each other and, in the middle of the match a man in a gorilla suit walks through the middle – but many people fail to notice because of a phenomenon called inattentional blindness. We often don’t see things that […]

Read more

Type 1 error – error

The latest edition (3rd edition) of our A2 Complete Companion has an error on page 285. The two blue boxes under the heading ‘Truth’ are in the wrong order. It should be H1 is correct (There is something going on) first and then H0 (There is nothing going on) second). The true positive occurs when the […]

Read more

Effectiveness of drug therapies

A book published by Ben Goldacre this year has drawn attention to the fact that drug trials producing negative or nil results are simply not published, thereby making the drugs appear to be more successful than they really are. Goldacre is spearheading a movement to force drug companies into publishing all their results and ensuring […]

Read more