CANLI et al.

(2000)
May 24, 2018miadoesalevels

AIM:
To demonstrate that images causing high arousal levels will
be remembered better than those that are less emotive. To
investigate whether the amygdala is sensitive to varying
degrees of emotional intensity to external stimuli and find
what level of intensity affects the memory of the stimuli.
• Is the amygdala sensitive to varying degrees of
individually experienced emotional intensity?
• What degree of emotional intensity affects the role of
the amygdala in enhancing memory of emotional stimuli.

BACKGROUND:
There are two types of medical scans: structural – take
detailed pictures of the brain structure; functional – show
the location of activity in the brain. The study used an
fMRI machine (functional magnetic resonance imaging) which
detects changes in blood flow in the brain to illustrate how
the brain works during different tasks. The individual is
placed in a scanner which sends a magnetic field and
affects the spinning of the hydrogen molecules in the brain
and enables the scan to create a detailed picture of the
brain. The amygdala has been shown to have an association
with the processing of emotion and storing of memory.
LeBar & Phelps (1998) suggested that emotional arousal aids
the process of memory consolidation and therefore
emotional experiences are memorized better.
Canli et al (1999) found strong amygdala activation to
resulted in improved memorization for the causing stimuli.
He wanted to replicate his study with repeated measures
design rather than independent to make sure that the
initial results were not due to chance.

RESEARCH METHOD:
Participants were required to lay in an fMRI scanner, which
is a big and heavy apparatus, therefore the study was
conducted in a laboratory and was a laboratory experiment.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
This was a repeated measure design experiment as the
participants were unexpectedly asked to repeat the
procedure again three weeks after.

VARIABLES:
The independent variable can be considered the level of
arousal of each picture shown to the participants.
The dependent variable was the effect that this arousal
level had on the memory of each picture which reflected on
the ability of the participants to recognize the images at a
3 week follow up.

SAMPLE:
Participants were recruited by means of volunteer sampling
and consisted of 10 healthy, right-handed women. Women
were chosen specifically as it was believed that they would
be more likely to show physiological reaction to stimuli.

PROCEDURE:
Informed consent was collected from the participants and
they were informed about the aim of the experiment.
While the participants laid in a 1.5 Tesla fMRI scanner,
they were shown 96 pictures with various valence ratings
from the International Affective Picture System, projected
over their head and mirrored for convenient viewing. The
picture order was randomized and each picture was viewed
for 2.88 seconds, with an interval of 12.96 seconds
between two pictures in during which a fixed crossed was
projected. The participants had to view the pictures the
entire time they were projected and when the cross
appeared, they had to rate the emotional arousal the
picture triggered in them by pressing one out of four
buttons with their right hand; the buttons ranged from 0 to
3 with 0 being ‘not emotionally intense at all’ and 3
‘extremely emotionally intense’.
While the participants were laying in the scanner, the fMRI
machine collected information about the activity in the
brain during the picture viewing.
After 3 weeks, the participants were asked to return to
the laboratory, where they had to undergo an unexpected
task. It consisted of them viewing the same 96 pictures
plus 48 additional foils and asked to judge if the pictures
were wforgottenotte, familiar or remembered

RESULTS:
There was an appropriate correlation between the
subjective valance rating of the pictures and the valence of
the pictures, with correlational coefficients of -0.66 and
0.68. Additionally, amygdala activation was also found to
correlate with the emotional intensity reported by the
participants – the more emotionality intense the picture
was, the higher the amygdala activity of the participants
while viewing it – perceived arousal is associated with
amygdala activation.
At the follow-up, the emotionally intense pictures were
remembered significantly better. Pictures rated 0 to 2 had
a homogenous distribution of forgotten, familiar or
remembered labels while pictures rated with 3 were more
likely to be labeled as ‘remembered’. For pictures rated a
3, the amygdala activation could almost always predict
correctly the label the participants would give it at follow
up.

CONCLUSION:
There is an association with the perceived emotional
intensity of stimuli and the memory of it – the higher
valance a picture has, the more likely it is to be
remembered. High levels of arousal can produce more vivid
memories. The amygdala has been found sensitive to
emotional intensity, predominantly the left amygdala’s
activity during information encoding being an indicator for
the formation of the memory.
 DEMENT and
KLEITMAN (1957)
AIM:
To find out more about dreaming, specifically, find answers
to the following questions:
• Does dream recall differ between eye movement (REM)
and quiescent (NREM) stages of sleep? meaning, will
individuals remember their dreams differently in REM and
NREM
• Is there a positive correlation between subjective
estimates of dream duration and the length of the REM
period before waking? meaning, would the real duration of
the REM length coincide with the individual’s assumption
about its length
• Are eye movement patterns related to dream content?
meaning, is what we dream influencing how our eyes move
during sleep

BACKGROUND:
Aserinsky and Kleitman (1955) were first to use an EEG (a
machine that detects the activity of nerve muscles) to
investigate sleeping and dreaming. They found that humans
have several sleep stages during the night, which alternate
from REM (rapid eye movement) to NREM (non-rapid eye
movement). They reported that those participants woken up
during the REM sleep stage reported more vivid, visual
dreams.

RESEARCH METHOD:
This was a laboratory experiment since participants had to
sleep in a laboratory, away from their usual environment,
with electrodes from the EEG attached to them.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The experiment had a repeated measures design since all
participants underwent generally the same procedure,
however, to find answers for specific questions, there were
sometimes slight differences for some participants.

VARIABLES:
For question 1, involving the difference between REM and
NREM, the independent variable was whether participants
were woken up in REM or NREM and the dependent variable
was how well they recalled their dream.
For question 2, involving the real and subjective estimate of
the dream duration in REM, the independent variable was
whether participants were woken up after 15 or 5 mins in
REM sleep. The dependent variable was whether their
subjective guess of the estimate duration was right.

SAMPLE:
Initially, 9 adults were recruited to participate in the study
– 7 males and 2 females. However, only 5 of those were
studied in detail. The results from the other 4 were used
to confirm the reliability of the other 5.

PROCEDURE:
Prior to the study, participants were instructed to abstain
from drinking caffeinated beverages and alcohol. They were
expected to arrive at the laboratory just before their usual
bedtime. They had to sleep in a dark room with electrodes
attached to their scalp and the wires gathered in a
ponytail. They were woken at various times during the night
by a loud doorbell and had to describe their dream in a
tape recorder and go back to sleep. The reports were
operationalized as ‘dreams’ if the participants could actually
recall its content and not just a feeling or impression of it.
• For question 1, participants were woken either during
their REM or NREM sleep stages, this was decided using
either a random number table, in groups of three, deceiving
the participant in which sleep stage they were woken up in
or at experimenter’s choice. If necessary, after recording
their dream, the experimenter entered to ask further
questions.
• For question 2, participants were woken during REM
sleep, at either 5 or 15 minutes after entering the stage.
They had to guess the duration of their dream. The number
of words used to describe the dream narrative was also
counted.
• For question 3, participants were woken after a particular
eye-pattern movement was recorded by the EEG for more
than one minute. These included mainly vertical, mainly
horizontal, vertical and horizontal or little to no movement.
The reports were compared to 20 others from woken
participants instructed to watch distant and close activities.

RESULTS:
It was reported that dream stages last from 3 to 50
minutes with a mean duration of 20 minutes and they were
typically longer in the night. There were bursts of around 2
to 100 rapid eye movements.
No rapid eye movements were recorded at the beginning of
the REM sleep.
Slee cycles varied from 70 to 104 minutes, mean duration
of 92 minutes.
Participants tended to return back to NREM when woken on
NREM but usually when woken in REM, did not dream until
the next NREM stage.
• Results for question 1: 79% of participants woken up in
REM produced dream recall and 93% in the NREM didn’t.
Absence of dreaming during REM was more common later in
the night. When woken in NREM, participants tended to
describe rather feelings and no specific dream content.
Participants did not become more accurate over time – they
didn’t learn the pattern of their awakenings.
• Results for question 2: 88% of participants guessed the 5
minutes correctly and 78% the 15 minutes correctly. The
dream duration and the number of words used to describe
the dream narrative were significantly positively correlated.
• Results for question 3: Periods of just vertical or just
horizontal were not common. One dream throughout which
the participants had only vertical eye movement involved
climbing up a series of ladders and looking down as he
climbed and in another, the dreamer was shooting at a
basketball at a net. An example of a horizontal eye
movement dream was two people throwing tomatoes at each
other. In a little no eye movement dream, the participants
dreamed of staring at a distant object. In mixed eye
movement dreams, participants reported looking at close
object or persons. The eye movements from the awake
comparison participants were similar in amplitude and
pattern.

CONCLUSIONS:
Dreaming is reported in REM but not in NREM. Participants
can judge the length of their dream duration – dreams
progress in ‘real time’. Eye movement patterns relate to
dream content.
 SCHACHTER and
SINGER (1962)
May 24, 2018miadoesalevels

AIM:
To test the Two Factor Theory of Emotions – emotional
experience is a result of both the physiological arousal and
the cognitive interpretation of a situation.

BACKGROUND:
Cognition – acquiring and processing knowledge and
understanding through experiences, senses, and thought.
Emotion – body’s response to a particular situation.
Schachter and Singer suggested that our cognition about
situations influences how we perceive our emotions and
therefore to label our emotion we use both our
interpretation of physiological arousal as well as the
cognition about what is happening around us.

HYPOTHESIS:
• If a person doesn’t have an explanation to their state of
arousal, they will label their feelings based on immediate
cognition.
• If a person has an explanation for their state of arousal
they won’t necessarily take into account available cognitions
to label their feelings.
• If a person experiences a previously encountered
emotional situation, they only react or feel emotional if
they are physiologically aroused.

RESEARCH METHOD:
The experiment was a laboratory one as it was conducted in
a controlled environment.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The experiment had an independent group design as each
participant took part in one of the seven groups:
epinephrine informed euphoria/anger, epinephrine
misinformed euphoria/anger, epinephrine ignorant
euphoria/anger, and placebo.

VARIABLES:
The independent variables were the information the
participants received about the effects of their epinephrine
injection – either they were told to correct symptoms –
informed, told the incorrect symptoms – misinformed or
were not told about any symptoms – ignorant. Another
independent variable was whether the participants were
placed in a room with a stooge in an angry or euphoric
condition.
The dependent variable was the reaction the participants
exerted to the actions of the stooge which was
recorded by observers through a one-way mirror, as well as
the results from the self-report on their mood that they
had to complete at the end of the experiment.

SAMPLE:
There were 185 individuals participating in the study, who
were taking a course of introductory psychology at the
University of Minnesota. They were given course credit for
participation.

PROCEDURE:
Participants’ medical records were checked to ensure the
injection they were about to receive could not have caused
health problems; they were administered by a trained
doctor. After the participants arrived at the laboratory,
they were deceived and were told the experiment
investigates the effect of the vitamin Suproxin on vision; in
fact, they were injected with either adrenaline or saline
solution in the placebo condition. Participants were then
split into the informed, misinformed and ignorant conditions
and being told different information about the symptoms of
the injection. In the informed condition, they were told the
correct symptoms – hands will shake, the heart will pound
and blood will rush to the face. The patients in the
misinformed condition were told incorrect symptoms – the
body will itch, feeling of numbness, slight headache. Those
in the ignorant condition were told to expect no symptoms.
They were then introduced to the stooge, who they were
told was another participant and asked to wait 10 minutes
for the injection to absorb in the bloodstream; the
experimenter left saying the participants were free to use
the props in the room. The stooge, unaware of the
participant’s condition started performing their
standardized routine. In the euphoria condition, he was
playing with hula hoops and pencils, threw paper and invited
the participant to join. In the anger condition, the stooge
made upsetting comments as well as asked the participant
personal questions such as ‘How many times a week do you
have sexual intercourse?’. When the routine was over, the
experimenter returned to the room and measured
participant’s pulse and gave them the final questionnaire
which included 4 questions: ‘How irritated, angry or annoyed
would you say you feel at present?’ or ‘How happy would you
say you feel at present?’ to which participants had to
choose the mark most fitting their state: 0 – not at all, 1 –
a little, 2 – quite, 3 – very, 4 – extremely. They were then
debriefed, promised secrecy to and asked for consent.

RESULTS:
All 185 participants agreed to the injection, however, 5 of
them had no physiological response and therefore their data
was dismissed. Another 11 participants were too suspicious
and their data was discredited, resulting in 169 data
samples being analyzed. Individuals who received the
adrenaline injections showed more sympathetic arousal and
had higher scores on the questions in the
questionnaire about palpitations and tremor. Therefore,
those in the adrenaline condition were more physiologically
aroused than the placebo condition. Self-reports showed
that in the euphoria condition, the misinformed participants
felt the happiest – they used the happy mood of the stooge
to explain their physiological arousal. The informed euphoria
group felt the least happy. In the anger condition, those in
the ignorant group were the angriest – they were more
susceptible to stooge’s mood since they had no explanation
for their arousal.

CONCLUSIONS:
The results support the Two Factor Theory of Emotions
which assumes that the physiological arousal which we
experience in relation to different emotions is the same and
we label these emotions based on available cognitions. All
the three proposed hypothesis were arguably supported and
found that indeed if there is a lack of explanation for a
state of arousal the feelings will be labeled based on
available cognitions.
 ANDRADE (2010)
AIM:
To find whether doodling would aid information processing
by either increasing the efficacy of listening or enhancing
memory.

BACKGROUND:
Researchers found that when an individual’s attention is
divided, they tend to perform poorer, however, doodling
has been found to enhance concentration (Do and Schallert,
2004), perhaps due to the reduction of daydreaming. This
can be explained by the working memory model which
suggests that daydreaming is associated with high levels of
arousal when concentrating on a task and therefore the
‘central executive’ cannot spend enough cognitive processing
resources on the primary task. As reported by Wilson and
Korn (2007), doodling might help maintain an optional
arousal level by either increasing or decreasing it depending
on the situation.

RESEARCH METHOD:
The experiment was a laboratory one since it took place in
a controlled environment and the participants would be
highly unlikely to experience a phone call in such a
situation.

RESEARCH DESIGN:
The participants were distributed to either the ‘doodling’ or
to the ‘control’ condition and therefore the experiment had
an independent groups design.

VARIABLES:
The independent variable was if the participants were in
the ‘doodling’ or ‘control’ condition. The dependent variable
was the number of correctly recalled names.

SAMPLE:
There were 40 individuals, with ages ranging from 15 to
55, recruited using opportunity sampling from the Medical
Research Council – they were paid a small sum for
participating. Each group consisted of 20 participants, in
the majority of females, with 2 males in the control and
three in the doodling one.

PROCEDURE:
Participants listened to a boring, simulated phone
conversation describing a birthday party and individuals who
are going and not going there, several places were
mentioned too. The phone call lasted 2.5 minutes and
included 8 names of the party-goers and 3 of the non-
party-goers as well as 8 place names. Individuals in the
‘doodling’ group were provided an A4 paper with outlined
shapes and encouraged to doodle while listening to the
conversation, those in the ‘control’ group were not. They
were told they will be tested on recalling the names of the
individuals who will go to the party, which was the
‘monitoring’ task. Additionally, there was a ‘recall’ task in
which they were asked to remember the names of the
places mentioned. Counterbalancing was used (the order of
the ‘monitoring’ and ‘recall’ task was randomized) in order to
reduce order effects. The dependent variable was
operationalized by accepting the names misspelled due to
the participants hearing it wrong and considering the names
of the individuals who weren’t going to the party as false
alarms. The final score was calculated by subtracting the
false alarms from the number of correct names provided.
The experimenter debriefed the participants about the
memory test and apologized for deceiving them.

RESULTS:
Participants in the doodling condition doodled 36 shapes on
average, those in the control condition did not. Participants
in the ‘control’ condition provided correctly a mean of 7.1
out of 8 names with five of them making false alarms while
participants in the ‘doodling’ condition recalled a mean of
7.8 party-goer names and only one false alarm was made.
The ‘doodling’ group provided 29% more correct information
about the names of individuals and places than the ‘control’
one, their recall for monitored and incidental information
was significantly higher.
CONCLUSIONS:
Doodling was concluded to aid concentration since those who
did doodle recalled more information than those who did
not. As those in the ‘doodling’ condition performed better
on both the monitored and incidental tasks, it can be
assumed that they either noticed more words because their
attention was enhanced, or their memory was improved
since doodling might have supported a deeper information
processing. It is difficult to assess which of these
suggestions is more realistic due to there not being
information collected on the levels of daydreaming of
individuals – a self-report or cortex activity brain scan
could have been taken.
 BARON-COHEN et
al. (2001)
May 28, 2018miadoesalevels

AIM:
To test if the revised version of ‘Reading the Mind in the
Eyes’ task would be successful at differentiating
participants with Asperger’s Syndrome or High-Functioning
Autism from the general population → AS and HFA
participants would be impaired at the task

HYPOTHESIS:
• Participants with AS or HFA will have lower scores on the
task (this would show a lack of ‘theory of mind’ in these
participants)
• Participants with AS or HFA will have higher scores on
the Autism Spectrum Quotient Test (AQ) measure
• Females in the adult and student comparison group will
score higher on the task than males in the same group (this
would show females have more ‘theory of mind’)
• Males in the student comparison group will score higher on
the AQ than females (this would show mild autistic traits
generally in males)
• The scores on the AQ and task will be negatively
correlated (the more up the scores will go on one measure,
the more down on the other: more autistic traits in an
individual means less ‘theory of mind’)

BACKGROUND:
Autism is a condition characterized by challenges in social
skills, impaired verbal and non-verbal communication and
lack of imaginative abilities. Individuals with autism,
therefore, struggle with understanding the intentions of
others, realizing what they experience and lack empathy.
Baron-Cohen named this decreased cognitive process a lack
of ‘theory of mind’ – they cannot impersonate others.
To measure the ‘theory of mind’ of individuals with autism,
Baron-Cohen et al. came up with the ‘Reading the Mind in
the Eyes’ task, where participants would be evaluated on
their ability to label others’ emotions by observing their eye
expressions on photographs. Some issues with the initial
form of the task were: only two choices of answers for
each emotion and usually they were antonyms (high
possibility of giving a correct answer by chance), only 25
examples which created a ceiling effect (test was too easy
and individuals with autism would score similarly to those
without), the ratio between the number of male and female
on the photographs was imbalanced, some emotion
description were not familiar to the participants (difficult
to understand and make the right choice), some emotions
could be easily labeled by checking the direction of gaze.

RESEARCH METHOD:
The experiment was conducted in a laboratory setting but
because the independent variable was naturally occurring
(whether participants had AS or HFA), it was a quasi-
experiment.
RESEARCH DESIGN:
The experiment had an individual groups design since the
participants took part in only one of the four groups.

VARIABLES:
The independent variable was the type of participant in
each condition – either they had AS or HFA or not; for the
control group – their IQ and social background
The dependent variable was the scores on the AQ and the
eyes task

SAMPLE:
There were four participant groups in the experiment:
• Group 1. AS/HFA participants – 15 adults recruited by
volunteer sampling using an advert in the Autistic Society
magazine, they were diagnosed by the DSM or ICD
criteria, their mean IQ was 115 (matched with Group 4)
and mean age 30
• Group 2. Adult comparison group – 122 adults recruited
by opportunity sampling from educational classes in Exeter
and Cambridge library users, mean age 46
• Group 3. Student comparison group – 103 young adults,
recruited by opportunity sampling from the Cambridge
University (their intellect may be higher since Cambridge is
a highly selective university and therefore not
representative of the general population) mean age 21
• Group 4. IQ matched group – 14 individuals recruited by
random sampling from the general population, with a mean
IQ of 116 and mean age of 28

PROCEDURE:
Prior to the study, a pilot study was conducted to assess
the most appropriate label for each of the emotions on the
photographs – at least 5 out of the 8 judges had to agree.
The revised ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task was
improved with the following adjustments: there were more
sets of eyes – 36 as opposed to the prior 25; the gender
of the eyes was balanced – 18 males and 18 females; there
were 4 choices of emotions for every photograph; the
participants were given a glossary to which they could refer
to for the definition of the emotions at any time during the
experiment.
All participants consented to take part in the study.
Participants in all groups expect the adult comparison one
were asked to complete the Autism Spectrum Quotient
test.
Participants in all groups were asked to complete the eyes
task. Additionally, participants in the AS/HFA group were
asked to determine the gender of the eyes. The control
groups were not asked so since pilot tests showed that most
‘normal’ adults score 100% at this.
Participants could take as much time as necessary to
complete the task.

RESULTS:
The eyes task showed that participants in the AS/HFA
group identified fewer correct emotion labels than those in
the other groups. They, however, identified at least 33 out
of the 36 genders on the photographs. There
were differences between the results of males and females
in the adult and student comparison group but they were
not significant. There were no cases in which participants
would check more than 2 definitions in the glossary.
AS/HFA group participants scored significantly higher on
the AQ test than the student comparison and IQ matched
group. There was a significant difference between the male
and female score in the student comparison group on the
AQ test.
The negative correlation between the AQ and eyes task was
confirmed and therefore suggests how as an individual’s AQ
score increases (presenting higher autistic traits), their
ability to recognize emotions decreases. There was no
negative correlation between IQ and eyes task.

CONCLUSIONS:
Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and High Functioning
Autism have an impaired cognition at identifying the
emotions of others and therefore a lack of theory of mind.
There is a basis to which males can be considered as having
more autistic traits than females since they performed
poorer at the Eyes Task, however not significant.
The revised version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes
task is more efficient at measuring social intelligence than
the original version and thus allows a more accurate method
of deciphering individual differences when assessing autistic
traits.

LANEY et al (2008)
May 28, 2018miadoesalevels

BACKGROUND:
It has been found that memories can be distorted. Braun
et al. (2002) reported that it is possible to implant false
neutral memories by convincing individuals they have met
Bugs Bunny at Disneyland while Bugs Bunny is a Warner
Bros character. Other studies, such as Bernstein et al
(2005) showed that memory alteration can also have
consequences as individuals who were implanted false
memories about being sick after eating pickles or eggs
changed their likelihood of eating them. Alternatively,
Laney et al. wanted to find whether implantation of positive
memories could create positive consequences.

The study was composed of two experiments. The first

experiment was conducted to investigate whether it is
possible to change a individual’s eating behaviour by
implanting a positive false memory about liking a specific
food. The second experiment aimed at ensuring the
reliability of the findings from the first experiment and
investigate the underlying mechanism of the false memory
consequence effect.

QUESTIONNAIRES:
Throughout the two experiments, several questionnaires
were used:
•Food History Inventory – participants had to rate 24
items on a 1 – 8 scale in terms of how sure they are the
event stated happened, e.g. Loved asparagus first time you
tried it.
•Restaurant Questionnaire – participants had to rate 32
dishes presented on a menu-like form with 5 courses on a 1
– 8 scale in terms of how likely they would be to order
each dish at a dinner, regardless of its price e.g sauteed
asparagus spears.
• Food Preference Questionnaire – participants had to rate
62 items, e.g asparagus, on a scale 1 – 8 in terms of how
much they like to eat each item.
• Food Cost Questionnaire – participants had to choose the
price they were ready to pay out of multiple options for 21
food items e.g. a pound of asparagus – $1.90 $2.50 $3.20
$3.80 $4.40 $5 $5.70 or ‘would never buy’
• Memory or Belief – participants had to indicate for 3
items of the Food History Inventory e.g. asparagus,
whether they had a memory or experience with, and specify
whether they had a specific memory that the event occur,
a belief that it did , or were sure that event didn’t occur.

EXPERIMENT 1

AIM:
To find if by giving participants false feedback about them
loving to eat asparagus as a child, it would produce a false
memory or belief of the experience linked to eating and
enjoying asparagus.

RESEARCH METHOD:
It was a laboratory experiment, the procedure was
conducted in an unnatural setting, however some details
were attempted to mock real life, like the menu form a
questionnaire.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The experiment had an independent groups design since
participants were randomly assigned to either of the two
conditions – the ‘love’ or the ‘control’ group.

VARIABLES:
The independent variable was if the participants had a
false belief about eating asparagus after receiving a false
feedback or not. The ones who did have false memories or
beliefs were compared to the ones in the control group, the
ones who didn’t.
The dependent variables were the responses to the 5 self-
report questionnaires.

SAMPLE:
There were 128 participants recruited by means of
volunteer sampling from the University of California. There
were 99 females and 29 males, with mean age of 21. They
received course credit for participating in the study.

PROCEDURE:
Participants came to the laboratory in groups of 8 and were
deceived that they are taking part in a study investigating
food preferences and personality. All participants were
asked to complete initially the Food History Inventory and
the Restaurant Questionnaire. Following that, they were
asked to also complete three distraction questionnaires on
personality, social desirability and eating habits.
After one week, they were asked to return to the
laboratory and were randomly allocated to either the ‘love’
or ‘control’ conditions. They were given a report about their
childhood experiences based on their questionnaires. The
participants in the ‘love’ condition had the critical
statement ‘you loved to eat cooked asparagus’ in their
report.
Participants were asked questions about these experiences
like specific details of the memories or rate on a 1-9 scale
how likely the experience affected them, to ensure they
had processed the feedback.
Participants were then asked to complete the Food History
Inventory and Restaurant Questionnaire again as well as
three other questionnaires – Food Preference
Questionnaire, Food Cost Questionnaire and the Memory or
Belief Questionnaire.
Following this, the participants were debriefed and describe
the real aim of the study.

RESULTS:
Because they indicated they liked asparagus the first time
they tried, 31 participants were excluded and therefore
the following data is based on the remaining 97
participants.
Participant’s scores on the Food History Inventory in the
‘love’ condition increased by 2.6 points after receiving the
false feedback, significantly more than of those in the
‘control’ condition.
There was a statistically insignificant difference between
the report of memory or beliefs between the ‘love’ and the
‘control’ condition.
To be classified as a ‘believer’, the participants had to
have an initially low score at the Food History Inventory,
an increase in score on the second completion and give
either memory or belief response on the Memory or Belief
Questionnaire. In the ‘love’ condition, 48% of participants –
22 individuals, met the criteria for ‘believers’. The
‘believers’ reported more desire to eat asparagus on the
Restaurant Questionnaire, as well as liking asparagus
significantly more on the Food Preference Questionnaire and
willing to pay more on the Food Cost Questionnaire (none
selected never buy option).

CONCLUSIONS:
It is possible to implant false positive memories and these
can have an effect on the behaviour and food preference of
a person. The false beliefs affected the participants’
perceived desire, preference and willingness to spend on
asparagus.
EXPERIMENT 2

AIM:
To investigate the potential underlying mechanism of false
memory consequence. This would be done by exploring
whether after the false feedback given to participants
about asparagus, they would find it more visually pleasant
and attractive.
The second experiments was also conducted to replicate the
first experiment and to ensure the reliability of its
findings.

RESEARCH METHOD:
The second experiment was also a laboratory one, it was
conducted in a similar environment to the first experiment.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
Similarly to the first experiment, the participants were also
split into the ‘love’ and ‘control’ condition and therefore the
second experiment had an independent groups design.

VARIABLES:
The independent variable was whether participants had the
phrase ‘you loved asparagus’ in their feedback – whether
they were in the ‘love’ or ‘control’ group.
The dependent variable were the scores given to asparagus
on the picture slideshow.

SAMPLE:
There were 103 participants, 64 female and 39 male
undergraduate students at the University of Washington
with the mean age of 20. They also received course credit
for participation.

PROCEDURE:
Participants were not deceived about the aim of the study
and were only told they will have to complete a few
questionnaires so that their profile of eating experiences
can be generated. They initially completed the Food History
Inventory, Restaurant Questionnaire and the Food
Preference Questionnaire. Following that, they were given
two distractor questionnaires on personality measure and
social desirability.
One week later, the participants had to return to the
laboratory where they were split into the ‘love’ and ‘control’
groups. Participants were given a feedback report based
and those in the ‘love’ condition had the phrase ‘ you loved
asparagus the first time you tried it’ in it. Those in the
‘love’ condition had to complete an elaboration exercise
based on the memories, those in the ‘control’ group did not.
All participants were asked to provide thei most important
childhood food-event that the feedback did not provide.
Participants then had to view a slideshow of 20 photographs
of common foods, each displayed for 30 seconds. They had
to rate 4 questions about how appetizing the food was, how
disgusting, artistic qualities of the photograph and
experience of the photographer on a 1 – 8 scale.
The Food History Inventory, The Restaurant Questionnaire
and the Food Preference Questionnaires were completed
again as well as the Memory or Belief Questionnaire.
Participants were then fully debriefed.

RESULTS:
There were 30 participants excluded from the results
assessment because they initially indicated they they loved
asparagus the first time they tried it.
In the Food History Inventory, all participants gave similar
ratings before the manipulation but the ‘love’ condition gave
significantly higher ratings for asparagus after the
manipulation.
There wasn’t a significant difference between the two
groups on the Memory or Beliefs Questionnaire, those in
the ‘love’ group had only a slightly greater chance of
generating false memories or beliefs.
The quantity of believers in the ‘love’ condition consisted of
40 participants
There was no increase desire for asparagus on the
Restaurant Questionnaire in either of the two groups,
however, there was a significantly increased desire to eat
asparagus for the ‘love’ group participants on the Food
Preference Questionnaires.
Believers rated the photographs of asparagus on the
slideshow more appetizing and less disgusting than the non-
believers.

CONCLUSION:
It is possible to implant false positive memories in
individuals and these will have consequence on their attitude
and behaviour towards food. The ratings of the
photographs provided information about the cognitive
mechanism associated with false memories – false memories
primes an individual to process the image of asparagus as
more positive and interpret it something familiar,
misattributing it to childhood memories.
 BANDURA et
al. (1961)
May 28, 2018miadoesalevels

AIM:
To find whether after observing a model’s
aggressive behavior, children will reproduce it in the model’s
absence
To find if the model’s gender affected this in any way

HYPOTHESIS:
• Subjects exposed to aggressive models will reproduce
aggressive acts resembling those of the models – observed
aggressive behavior will be imitated
• Observation of non-aggressive behavior will be imitated –
children seeing non-aggressive models will be less aggressive
than those seeing no model
• Subjects will imitate the behavior of a same-sex model
to a greater degree than a model of the opposite sex
• Boys will be more predisposed than girls towards imitating
aggression

BACKGROUND:
Imitative (social) learning is the concept of learning a new
behavior by means of observation and imitating it in the
model’s absence. The behaviors of a child are thought to be
‘facilitated’ by the immediate social setting in which the
child is located.
It is thought that children have gender biased ideas of
behaviors implemented by being previously rewarded for
specific behaviors based on their gender. Therefore, it may
be assumed that children would be more likely to imitate
the behaviors of a same-sex model as they interpret it
more appropriately for themselves.

RESEARCH METHOD:
This was a laboratory experiment as the procedure was
conducted in a laboratory setting, the environment and
situation were fully controlled.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The experiment had an independent group design since the
participants were split into separate levels of the
independent variable and they underwent different
experimental conditions (either having an aggressive, non-
aggressive or no model). However, the experiment also
involved matched pairs as the children were mathced based
on their previously rated levels of agression.

VARIABLES:
The independent variables were the type (aggressive, non-
aggressive, none) and gender (male or female) of the model
and the gender of the child (boy or girl).
The dependent variable was the behavior displayed by the
children. This was measured by controlled observations and
recorded behavior using time sampling.

SAMPLE:
There 72 children participants with a mean age of 4.3
years. There were 36 girls and 36 boys recruited by means
of opportunity sampling from the Stanford University
nursery.

PROCEDURE:
Prior to the study, the experimenter and the children’s
teacher observed them in their nursery to rate each child’s
level of aggression. The ratings were based on physical and
verbal agression as well as aggression to inanimate objects
and aggression inhibition (anxiety). The ratings were given
on a 5 point scale. There was high inter-rater reliability
between the exprimenter’s and the teacher’s ratings –
r=0.89.
The children were split into 3 main groups: one with an
aggressive model (24), one with a non-aggressive (24) and a
control group (24). Withing the aggressive and non-
aggressive group, the children were split into subgroups
with a female (12) and a male (12) role model. Each
subgroup consisted of equal amounts of boys (6) and girls
(6).
The children were initially made purposefully annoyed, to
ensure that even the children in the non-aggressive and
control group were likely to express non-aggressionandn the
reduction of it would be visible. This was done by showing
them a room with attractive toys but being told that this
room was reserved for another child. The children were
then guided to the observation room, containing a ‘play
area’ and a Bobo doll opposite to it.
In the non-aggressive condition, the model simply assembled
a Tinkertoy for 10 minutes. In the aggressive condition,
the model attacked the Bobo doll, performing both physical
and verbal aggressive actions. The control group had no
model.
Following this, the children were observed for 20 minutes
through a one-way mirror. Their behavior was observed
using time sampling, with records made every 5 seconds.
The recorded categories were: imitation of physical
aggression, imitation of verbal agression and imitation of
non-aggressive verbal responses. Partial imitation was given
points if children performed the following action
incompletely: mallet agression, sitting on the Bobo doll,
aggressive gun play, non-imitative physical and verbal
agression.
The scores were done by one male except for the condition
where he had to act as the model – he was not aware of
which condition each child was in. Another scorer rated half
of the behaviors and the reliability proved to be high –
r=0.9.

RESULTS:
Children in the aggressive group imitated the exact
behaviors of the models and tended to be more aggressive
than those in the other 2 groups; they also imitated the
non-aggressive behaviors. Boys were more likely to imitate
physical aggression and girls were more likely to imitate
verbal aggression. Boys were more likely to imitate the
same-sex model than girls. Girls imitated physical
aggression less with a female model than with a male one.
Children in the non-aggressive group were less likely to
exhibit any kind of aggressive behavior. Non-imitative
aggressive behaviors occurred more frequent int he
aggressive group than in the others. In the non-aggressive
play, girls were more likely to play with dolls, tea sets and
coloring and boys were more engaged in explorarton and gun
play. Children in the non-aggressive group engaged more in
non-aggressive play than in the other groups. Additionally,
sex-typed behavior comments were recorded from the
children.

CONCLUSIONS:
Imitation can account for learning specific behaviors
without the need for reinforcement.
• o

bserved aggressive behaviors are imitated

• observed non-aggressive behaviors are imitated
• children are more likely to copy a same-sex model
• boys are more likely to copy aggression than girls
 SAAVEDRA and
SILVERMAN (2002)
January 8, 2019miadoesalevels

AIM:
To examine classical conditioning in regards to fear and
stimulus avoidance.
To find weather exposure therapy would reduce disgust and
avoidance towards buttons in the case of a boy with button
phobia.

BACKGROUND:
Evaluative learning is a form of classical conditioning where
a neutral stimulus becomes negative as the product of
complex thought processes and emotions associated with it.
Pavlov observed classical conditioning in dogs. The dog’s
salivation was an unconditioned response to food (an
unconditioned stimulus). When dogs learned that the ringing
of the bell (a neutral stimulus) meant they will be fed, the
dogs, therefore, started associating the food with the bell
ring. Now, when the dogs heard the bell (conditioned
stimulus) they would start salivating even in the absence of
food, therefore salivation would become a conditioned
response.
Psychologists proposed the idea of phobias being learned
like other behaviors by evaluative learning meaning that the
removal of the fear and disgust feelings towards a stimulus
would help the individuals unlearn the phobia and would act
as a treatment.

RESEARCH METHOD:
The experiment was a case study where data were
collected by self-report. The boy and his mom were
interviewed beforehand about the origins of the phobia.
Results from treatment were measured using the ‘Feelings
Thermometer’ – a 9-point scale for disgust.

SAMPLE:
The participant was a 9-year-old Hispanic American boy
recruited from the Child Anxiety and Phobia program at the
Florida International University. He has been experiencing
button phobia symptoms for four years beforehand.

PROCEDURE:
Both the boy and his mother gave consent for participation
in the study and publishing of the results. They had to give
an interview with which the experimenters could determine
where the phobia originated. It is believed his phobia
started after an unpleasant experience with buttons at the
age of 5 when he dropped a bowl of buttons during a crafts
lesson in front of his teacher and classmates. The
persistent avoidance of buttons worsened his quality of life
and interfered with his daily normal functioning.
Prior to the treatments, a hierarchy of the boy’s feared
stimuli was constructed, consisting of 11 items in increasing
severity. This Feelings Thermometer measure was an 8
point scale and the boy rated clear, small, plastic buttons
an 8.
The treatment involved contingency management and
imagery exposure interventions.
→ The contingency management was an in vivo technique
(physically happening) involving positive reinforcement, in
which the boy was gradually exposed to the 11 stimuli on
the hierarchy and was rewarded with his mother’s affection
for completing each hierarchy level. The sessions ranged
between 20 and 30 minutes.
→ The imagery exposure was an in vivo technique (using
imagination) involving visualization techniques in which the
boy was asked to imagine the buttons falling on him, and
considering how they looked, smelled and felt. The imagery
button exposures were also done according to the Feelings
Thermometer hierarchy. Throughout the sessions, the boy
had to perform cognitive self-control strategies – self-talk
in which the individual considers positive thoughts when
troubling ones occur.

RESULTS:
→ Exposure therapy: All items on the hierarchy were
successfully completed. The boy could handle larger button
number in later sessions. Distress increased significantly
between session 2 and 3. At session 4, some items have
increased in the distress score, such as hugging mom when
she wears buttons. Although the boy could handle the
items, his fear and anxiety increased. Despite the
behavioral changes, evaluative reactions do not improve as a
consequence of positive reinforcement, supporting evaluative
learning.
→ Imagery therapy: Successful in minimizing the ratings of
distress. Before therapy, the most fearful experience
rated with 8 was ‘hundreds of buttons falling other the
body’. Mid therapy this reduced to 5 and by the end of it
limited to 3.
→ After a 6 and 12 months follow-up, the boy reported
minimal distress towards buttons. he no longer met the
criteria for button phobia. He was able to wear small clear
buttons on his school uniform, buttons no longer affected
his daily life.

CONCLUSION:
The treatment was successful. Particularly imagery
exposure can give long-term results for the reduction of
fear, disgust and distress that come with specific phobias
by altering negative evaluations. It may be argued that
emotions and cognitions are the crucial items in a person’s
learning of phobic stimuli response.
MILGRAM ( 1963)
May 28, 2018miadoesalevels
AIM:
To find whether people would still be obedient to orders
from an authority individual even if it means it would result
in physically harming others.

BACKGROUND:
During the WW2 Holocaust, approximatively 11
million people were killed by the Nazis under the
instructions of Adolf Hitler. When inquired during the
Nuremberg trials, the officers and guards said they were
‘just following instructions’. The possible explanations for
such a large-scale murderous phenomenon to happen, a
dispositional argument was proposed of Germans having a
flawed personality trait which would allow such extreme
levels of destructive obedience. Milgram, who was himself
from a Jewish family, proposed a situational explanation,
which seeks to justify the obedience in terms of anyone
being in a similar situation would perform harm or murder
under the orders of an authority figure

RESEARCH METHOD:
Originally, the experiment was intended to be a laboratory
experiment, however, due to the procedure being identical
for all participants and no control condition used, it could
be rather considered a controlled observation in laboratory
settings.

SAMPLE:
The sample consisted of 40 men aged between 20 and 50
years old, recruited by means of volunteer sampling from a
newspaper advert. Their backgrounds included unskilled and
white color workers as well as professionals all from the
New Haven area. They were given $4.50 for taking part
regardless if they complete the study or not.

PROCEDURE:
Participants were invited to a modern laboratory at Yale
University in order to make a credible procedure and create
a situational factor for obedience. They were introduced to
another participant who was, in fact, a stooge. They were
told to draw two pieces of paper to allocate the roles of
‘teacher’ and ‘learner’; in fact, the roles were
predetermined and the participant was always intended to
be the ‘teacher’. They were then taken to the ‘student’
room where the stooge was strapped to a chair and
attached electrodes to. The participant was introduced to
the shock generator, which had voltage sections ranging
from 15 to 450 V and labeled from moderate to
severe shock and XXX; they were given a 45V shock sample
for credibility. The participant was told that although the
electric shocks were painful, they do not produce permanent
physical damage. The participant was then taken to the
‘teacher’ room and instructed by the experimenter, a 31
y.o. man in a gray lab coat, about the ‘memory’ task they
were about to perform on the ‘learner’. The task consisted
of reading pairs of words aloud and testing whether the
‘learner’ could recognize it; if they fail to do so, the
participant had to shock them, increasing the voltage with
15 V for every mistake. Starting with 300V, the stooge
started performing protesting behavior, implying how much
they were hurt, such as screaming and pounding in the wall.
After a while, the stooge made no more noise. If the
participants refused to continue, they were given verbal
prods by the experimenter such as ‘you have no other
choice, you must go on’ / ‘it is absolutely essential that you
continue’. The procedure was over when the maximum 450 V
was administered or participants refused to go on.
Participant’s behavior was observed through a one-way
mirror and comments made by participants were also noted.
Finally, the participants were debriefed and allowed to
meet the stooge to be convinced they didn’t get harmed.
They were also interviewed and asked to estimate how
hurtful a 450 V shock would be on a scale from 0 to 14.

RESULTS:
Prior to the study, Milgram asked psychology students and
his colleagues to estimate the percentage of participants
who would apply the maximum measure of voltage shock;
those asked believed that less than 3% of individuals would.
The mean estimate of painfulness for the 450 V was 13.42
which suggests that participants were fully aware they were
causing pain. All participants administered at least 300 V
shock and 65% administered the maximum of 450 V. There
were signs of nervousness and tension exhibited by
participants. Sweating, shaking and groaning were common
responses; 14 participants exhibited nervous laughing or
smiling. One participant had a violent seizure and could not
continue the procedure. However, a small minority seemed
to be strangely calm. Some comments included ‘I can’t do
it, this is inhumane’ and ‘I will hurt his heart’, but the
prods did manage to convince the participants to continue.
Participants showed visible signs of relief after being
debriefed.

CONCLUSIONS:
The results seem to support the situational explanation of
obedience. The factors that contributed to the high levels
of obedience might have been: the perceived legitimacy of
the study constituted by the professional academic
environment and the use of a uniform for the experimenter,
the feel of financial obligation for the experiment, the
belief that the stooge was also a volunteer participant.
• The majority of individuals are much more obedient to
authority than we believe
• Even if they are highly obedient, people find it stressful
to carry destructive actions because they find themselves
in a conflict between two social phenomena: the need to
obey authority and the need to avoid causing harm to
others.
 PILIAVIN et al
( 1969)
May 24, 2018miadoesalevels

AIM:
To investigate bystander behaviour in a natural setting and
to investigate the effect of the following 4 variables – the
type of victim, the race of the victim, the behaviour of
model and size of bystander group on helping
behaviours/’Good Samaritanism.

BACKGROUND:
The case of Kitty Genovese in 1964, who has assaulted
near her home, interested psychologists as they tried to
understand the bystander behaviours of the witnesses.
None of the 38 individuals witnessing the case did anything
to prevent her murder. One explanation – diffusion of
responsibility was proposed by Darley and Latane (1968),
which states that, in an emergency situation, bystanders
will be less likely to help the more people there are around,
as they believe the responsibility is not only theirs. People
would be also more likely to help if they see a ‘model’ do
so. Additionally, there is evidence that people are more
likely to help those who are more similar to themselves.

RESEARCH METHOD:
Since the study took place in a New York subway, it was a
field experiment

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The experiment had an independent groups design as
different people were exposed to different models on their
train journey.

VARIABLES:
The independent variables were:
• type of victim – either ‘drunk’ or ‘ill’
• race of victim – either black or white
• the ‘model’ behaviour – close or distant from the victim,
helping early or late
• size of bystander group (naturally occurring)
The dependent variables were the time take for a
passenger to help and the total number of passengers who
offered help; verbal remarks were also recorded

SAMPLE:
The study had opportunity sampling which consisted of the
passenger traveling by subway between Harlem and Bronx
on weekdays between 11 am and 3 pm. The number of
participants was estimated to be 4450 people, 45% being
black and 55% white. There were around 43 passengers per
carriage and 8.5 in the critical area.

PROCEDURE:
On each trial, students boarded the train, 2 males – the
victim and the model, and 2 females – confederates who
observed and recorded data. The victim was played by 2
different men, one black and one white; they were similarly
dressed. In the ‘drunk’ condition (38/103 trials), the victim
smelled of alcohol and carried a bottle in a brown bag. In
the ‘ill’ condition, he carried a black cane. The ‘models’
were all white and dressed informally. After 70 seconds in
the journey, the victim, standing near the pole in the
center of the critical area, tripped, fell down and remained
on the floor. The helping trials were split into 5 conditions:
model standing in the critical area and helping 70 seconds
after a person fell – critical/early; model standing int he
critical area and helping after 150 seconds – critical/late;
model standing in adjacent area and helping after 70
seconds – adjacent/early; model standing in the adjacent
area and helping after 150 seconds – adjacent/late; the
model only helping the victim after the train journey was
finished – no model.
RESULTS:
The majority of helpers were males, spontaneous help was
offered in 80% of the cases and in 60% of cases more
individuals helped. The ‘ill’ victim was more likely to get
help and the help was offered faster and without the need
for ‘modelling’ compared to the ‘drunk’ victim. Both white
and black victims were equally likely to get help, however,
in the ‘drunk’ condition, victims were more likely to receive
help from same-race passengers. Black ‘drunk’ victims
received the least help out of all the conditions. Overall,
most of the help was spontaneous but ‘early’ modelling
seemed to result in more helping behaviour than the ‘late’
one. The ‘diffusion of responsibility’ hypothesis was not
supported – more people were likely to help in smaller
groups and also faster. Additionally, in 20% of the trials,
some passengers moved away from the critical area. In
trials where no help was offered, there was a high amount
of verbal comments made, especially in the ‘drunk’
condition.

CONCLUSIONS:
Since the ‘diffusion of responsibility’ hypothesis was not
supported, Piliavin proposed the ‘cost-benefit model’
instead, which states that individuals will have a decision-
making process in order to decide whether to help or not,
depending on the weight of the advantages and
disadvantages that their behaviour will bring.
The following conclusions can be drawn from the results:
• an ill person will be more likely to receive help than a
drunk one
• men are more likely to help than women
• individuals will be more likely to help victims of their own
race
• if individuals do not help in an emergency situation, they
will search for coping behaviours to escape guilt, such as
making comments
 YAMAMOTO et
al (2012)
May 28, 2018miadoesalevels

AIM:
To learn more about altruistic behavior in chimpanzees:
• To find if chimpanzees can comprehend the needs of
their conspecifics – members of their own species
• To find if they can react to these needs with targeted
helping

BACKGROUND:
Unlike humans, animals help more often at a direct request
of their conspecific and not voluntarily. Target help is
based on the understanding of the situation the individual in
need is and therefore the helper requires ‘theory of mind’.
Some believed that the ‘theory of mind’ and therefore
altruistic helping is only attributed to humans, however,
studies have found that primates showed altruistic food
sharing. One cognitive explanation for social behavior is
targeted/instrumental helping – help is provided when the
situational needs are perceived by the helper. Chimpanzees
have shown to offer targeted help at the direct request
but it not known whether they can interpret the need of
conspecifics.

RESEARCH METHOD:
The experiment was a laboratory one since it took place in
an artificial environment.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The chimpanzees took part in both conditions of the study
and each condition had several trials, therefore, the
experiment had repeated measures design.

VARIABLES:
The independent variable was whether the chimpanzees
could see the other chimpanzee’s situation or not (if the
panel between the adjacent rooms was transparent or not)
The dependent variable was the targeted help offered by
the chimpanzees. This was operationalized as a correct tool
or not correct non-tool item offered.

SAMPLE:
The participants were recruited from the Primate Research
Institute at Kyoto University and consisted of 5
chimpanzees (Ai, Pan, Ayumu, Pal and Cleo) paired in
mother and child. The chimpanzees participated beforehand
in studies on helping behavior and were acquainted with the
tool-use task in this experiment.

PROCEDURE:
the task consisted of one chimp being in one room with the
need for a stick or a straw in order to get a juice drink.
The other chimp had to provide the first with the correct
tool out of the 7 available from the adjacent room through
a hole in the wall.
Prior to the trials, the chimps had a familiarisation phase in
which they could investigate and use each tool to learn its
purpose and potential application to situations.
The procedure consisted of 3 conditions: first was the ‘can
see’ condition – the chimps could see into the adjacent room
as the panel between them was transparent, then the
‘cannot see’ condition – the panel was opaque and therefore
the situation was not visible through it, and lastly, another
‘can see’ condition to ensure the actions were intentional
and not done because of order effects. Each condition had
48 trials, half of which had the correct tool as the stick
and the other half the straw; the order was randomized.
There were around 2-4 trials conducted per day.
The trials were considered finished when either the
receipent obtained an offered tool or after 5 minutes of no
tool being offered. An ‘offer’ was operationalized as a
chimp holding a tool for the other, even if the other didn’t
take it; only first offers were counted.
The procedure was recorded using a video camera, filming
chimpanzee’s behavior. From this, quantitative and
qualitative data were extracted, in the form of the number
of correct offers given and chimpanzee’s
gestures/movement respectively.
RESULTS:
In the first ‘can see’ condition, offers were given in 91% of
the trial, however, mostly upon request. This is a
significant increase from the familiarisation phase were only
5% of offers were made. Except for one chimp, the tool
offers were more frequent than the non-tool ones – chimps
are able to asses the difference between tools and non-
tools. In most cases, the chimps offered the correct tool –
stick or straw, according to the situation – they were able
to offer targeted help by understanding the other chimp’s
situation.
In the ‘cannot see’ conditions – tools were offered 96% of
the trials but also mainly upon request. Most chimps
offered a tool more frequent than a non-tool. The chimp
Pan was offering mainly a brush at first, but when this was
removed, she made correct offers.
In the ‘can see’ there was a significant difference between
the offer of a stick or straw, meanwhile in the ‘cannot see’
condition there wasn’t. The chimp Ayumu offered correct
tools more frequently because he was peeking through the
hole between the rooms – he observed the situation in order
to evaluate the appropriate tool.
In the second ‘can see’ condition offers were made in 98%
of the trials with 80% of them being upon request; there
was a significant difference between the offers of stick or
straw – confirms the need of situation evaluation.

CONCLUSIONS:
• Chimpanzees are able to understand the needs of
conspecifics and help them solve tasks.
• Chimps will offer help in most cases but rather at direct
request than spontaneously
• Chimpanzees require a visual confirmation to understand a
conspecific’s goal so to offer targeted help