Aims

Friday, September 30, 2022 7:13 PM

Canli et al
• To investigate whether an area of the brain called the amygdala is sensitive to different levels to
emotions based on subjective emotional experiences.
• To investigate whether the degree of emotional intensity affects the role of the amygdala in aiding
memory recall of stimuli classes as being “emotional”

Dement and Kleitman

Overall aim:
• To investigate dreaming in an objective way by looking for the relationship between eye
movements in sleep and the dreamer’s recall.
Specific aims:
• To test whether dream recall differs between REM and nREM sleep.
• To investigate whether there is a positive correlation between subjective estimates of dream
duration and the length of REM period.
• To test whether eye-movement patterns are related to dream content. (Whether these patterns
represent the visual experience of dream content or whether they are simply random movements
arising from the activation of the CNS)

Schachter and Singer

• If a person is physiologically aroused and there is no immediate explanation, the arousal will be
labelled as a particular emotion based on the information (or cognitions) available.
• If a person is physiologically aroused and there is an appropriate explanation, there is no need to
seek further information (or cognitions) to label that emotion.
• If there is no physiological arousal then any cognition we have we dismiss and there is no
emotional experience

Andrade
• To test the view that doodling aids concentration by enabling people to attend more effectively or
by enhancing memory

Baron-Cohen et al. (2001)

• To test a group of adults with AS or HFA on the revised version of the eyes test. This was in order
to check if the deficits in this group that had been found in the original study could be replicated.
• To test if in a sample of normal adults, an inverse (negative) correlation would be found between
performance on the (revised) Eyes Test and the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ).
• To test whether females scored better on the Eyes Test than males.

Laney et al. (2008)

• To investigate whether positive false memories for loving asparagus can be implanted into people
and then change their childhood memories about liking asparagus.
• To investigate the consequences of implanting positive false memories in terms of the effects it
has on liking asparagus and choosing asparagus

Bandura et al
• To investigate whether children would imitate aggression of a model in absence of the model
• To investigate whether children are more likely to imitate the behaviour of a same sex model
• To investigate whether children imitate aggressive behaviour of an aggressive model

Saavedra and Silverman

 • To determine the cause of a button phobia in the boy.
• To attempt to treat a child’s phobia via targeting both disgust and fear responses using exposure-
based cognitive-behavioural therapy.

Pepperberg
• To see if an avian subject could use vocal labels to demonstrate symbolic comprehension of the
concepts of same and different
• To test whether Alex could distinguish between same and different objects.
• To test additional comprehension of categories, e.g. whether Alex could distinguish between two
novel objects he had never been seen before with regard to colour, shape and material.

Milgram
• Overall aim: To investigate how obedient people would be to orders from a person in authority
that would result in pain and harm to another person.
• Specific aim: To see how large an electric shock participants would give to a helpless man when
ordered to.

Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin

• To study bystander behaviour outside the laboratory, in a realistic setting where participants
would have a clear view of the victim.
• To see whether helping behaviour was affected by four variables: the victim’s responsibility of
being in a situation where they need help, the race of the victim, the effect of modelling helping
behaviour and the size of the group

Yamamoto et al. (2012)

• To investigate whether chimpanzees can respond to the needs of another with targeted helping.
• The research team had noted that the chimpanzees seldom help others without being asked and
the team, wanted to investigate this too.
• To investigate the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’, and whether chimpanzees can understand the
needs of other chimpanzees (conspecifics)
• To see if chimpanzees can help each other with no immediate gain from doing so, to see if they
showed altruistic behaviour