Baron-Cohen 

Autism is a profound disorder that affects physical, social, and language skills. The term itself refers to a state of increased self-absorption, which seems to go along with language problems and problems in developing normal social relationships, shown by reluctance to engage in physical contact or displays of affection. There are also difficulties in developing normal social attachments to significant adults in the child's life, though there can also be very strong attachments developed to particular objects. Other symptoms can involve compulsive body movements such as rocking, limited reactions to sound or pain, and a strong desire to maintain a particular environment (with great distress shown at the possibility of change). 

Cognitive psychology explores cognitive processes such as perception, problem solving, and memory, usually making use of behavioural data. Methodologically, cognitive psychology marked a clear break with behaviourism in once again making the mind a legitimate focus of study in psychology, instead of insisting on observing only external behaviours. Cognitive psychologists felt that higher cognitive processes such as language and thinking could not be given satisfactory explanations simply in terms of stimulus-response relationships (no matter how complex). Learning depends not just on the kind of experiences we have, but also on our own abilities to process the information we receive, and link it to previous knowledge. While attempting to keep the behaviourist insistence on careful, replicable experimental methodology, cognitive psychologists developed ingenious new methods of gathering data. Cognitive psychology can be seen as a subset of 'cognitive science', which comprises any discipline that studies cognition scientifically. This can include linguistics, psychology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as other disciplines. Cognitive science can be contrasted with neuroscience, in that cognitive science can be seen as essentially trying to map the brain's software (e.g. computer programs), with neuroscience examining the brain's hardware (e.g. the electronic circuitry in a computer). This computer metaphor is an appropriate one, as it is not an accident that cognitive psychology arose at about the same time as rapid developments in computing technology (and some associated theoretical developments in mathematics, such as Claude Shannon's pioneering work in information theory). Computers provided an irresistible metaphor for the workings of the mind (much as at-the-time cutting-edge technologies such as hydraulics had done for Freud 70 or more years earlier), helping introduce an information processing approach to studying psychology. Many researchers found their thinking greatly stimulated by the presence of this machine metaphor (and some of its associated mathematics). Some researchers, however, go a step further, arguing that people literally are machines of a certain sort. In the memorable phrase of the AI researcher Marvin Minsky, the brain can be seen as a 'computer made of meat'. In the cognitive perspective, information is assumed to be received via senses (such as sight, hearing, or touch). This information is further processed in various ways, with the resulting outputs used to guide future action and behaviour. Cognitive psychologists try to describe what is 'in the head' (i.e., what is called the mind) in terms of function (i.e. what the mind does) and process (how the mind does what it does) often without specifying in detail how these functions and processes are physically represented in terms of actual brain structure. For example, memory could be described in terms of what is (and what isn't) remembered, and factors influencing this. Perception could be described in terms of what people perceive, when they perceive it, and issues such as how prior knowledge influences what we perceive. Our everyday practical use and understanding of complex systems like computers, televisions and cars is mostly based at these levels of function and process. As I write this document now, I know exactly how to change the format or the typeface, but have little idea of how the underlying electronic pathways of the computer produce these functions. Nor do I need to know this, to operate the word-processing function effectively. Similarly, even a four year old child could know how to use the computer for certain purposes, but have virtually no understanding of how this function is physically achieved. This is not necessary, in order to be effective (though such knowledge may be very useful if the computer breaks down in some way! It is neuropsychology/neuropsychiatry that helps in the diagnosis, and sometimes the cure, of organic brain disorders, seen in this metaphor as 'hardware' problems. However, it should also be added that some cognitive psychologists are also interested in the underlying neural structures [e.g. the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory ). Cognitive psychology's strategy of trying to understand the mind in terms of its functions and processes is therefore not so far removed from our level of understanding of other complex systems. As well as studying processes such as perception and memory, at the level of the individual, some cognitive psychologists turned towards the study of social cognition(e.g. how human beings use cognitive processes to make sense of social situations). A particular impetus for this came from the work of the cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser, who suggested that cognitive psychologists shouldn't just confine themselves to (possibly quite artificial) laboratory-based studies, but should 'understand cognition as it occurs in the ordinary environment and in the context of natural purposeful activity' (Neisser, 1976, 'Cognition and Reality' p 7). Neisser argued that cognitive psychologists should undertake research which had much higher 'ecological validity', i.e. was much more relevant to the everyday lives of people in the real world (and the kinds of information and cognitive processing that arose in such contexts). Such research now plays a much more central role within cognitive psychology. 

Evolutionary. As the name suggests, evolutionary psychology tries to make sense of behaviours by looking at their possible evolutionary basis, i.e. how a particular behaviour might have helped humans adapt to their original prehistoric environments. This is an example of a functional explanation, as it seeks to understand a behaviour by seeing the possible function it may have played, within the evolutionary framework of Darwinian theory. The central idea is that modern humans will have brain structures, behaviours and motivations that evolved in prehistoric times but still exist today as genetically-transmitted, biologically based predispositions, passed down because of their adaptive value. A key point to understand is that evolutionary adaption (at least for humans) acts on long timescales, typically over tens or hundreds of thousands of years, or even longer. However, human culture changes dramatically over much shorter timescales – think of the changes over just the last century or so. In fact, it is only a few thousand years since most humans were still living essentially 'prehistoric' hunter-gather lifestyles. So although the environment humans live in is dramatically different in practically every way from our original prehistoric one, our brains and nervous systems will not have had time to adapt to any great extent, if at all. The extent to which our behaviours have changed is the crucial empirical question for which evidence has to be collected.\n\nThis perspective is multidisciplinary as it draws on a mixture of existing data, evidence and methods from psychological disciplines such as cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and group behaviour, as well as disciplines outside psychology, for example: • genetics • social anthropology: observations of current-day tribes living in hunter-gatherer groups • paleoanthropology: the collecting and documenting of ancient artefacts and tools, also prehistoric cave pictures and other art • primatology • ethology. Although it is clearly not possible to devise experiments to study the behaviours and social organisation of prehistoric humanity, evolutionary psychologists draw on data from the above disciplines to formulate possible hypotheses about different aspects of human behaviour. It may then be possible to examine actual human behaviour, to see if it fits in with the prediction, for example on the kinds of gender differences that would be expected to be found in male and female experiences of jealousy, based on Darwinian ideas about reproductive strategy. \n\nAnother area to which evolutionary psychology has been applied is in-group and out-group differences, i.e. the strong tendency to favour members of the 'in-group' to which one belongs, while being indifferent or even hostile to outsiders from an 'out-group'. This can be explained in evolutionary terms by seeing the potential 'adaptive value' this could have had for our ancestors living in small tribal groups. Group members who supported and co-operated with others within their group but were prepared to compete with outsiders for resources could plausibly be argued to have a survival advantage. Their superior access to resources would have enhanced their chances of survival, and hence reproduction. This would therefore have meant they had a greater chance of passing on their genes to future generations. So those genetic combinations which led to greater in-group/out-group differentiation would have been more likely to have been perpetuated (this is essentially what the 'adaptive value' of a particular behaviour refers to). While such behaviour towards in-groups and out-groups may well have been 'adaptive' for prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities, it is likely to be a good deal less fruitful under modern day conditions. For example, an evolutionary psychologist might try to analyze the conflict in Northern Ireland between Nationalists and Unionists in 'tribal' terms, as an expression of in-group/out-group behaviour. This might help understand some of the (to outsiders) apparently irrational and self-destructive aspects of many of the social interactions involved, If such social behaviours are indeed at least partly rooted in our evolutionary past, this understanding may suggest some contributions evolutionary psychology could make towards possible solutions. Explanations of social behaviour in evolutionary terms tend to be opposed by those psychologists who are influenced more by sociological viewpoints than biological, such as SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISTS (see the section on this). The latter argue that the major reasons for such conflicts are better seen in terms of socio-cultural forces, and the kinds of language in which they are framed. Unfortunately, there is rarely much attempt made in psychology to integrate such differing viewpoints. It is on the one hand important to be on guard against the kind of 'theoretical laziness' which ignores the profound conceptual and methodological conflict between such perspectives, in pursuit of a superficial eclecticism. However, it is perhaps another kind of 'laziness' which prevents proponents of one approach from even trying to get deeply inside alternative perspectives, with the aim of developing a genuinely multiple perspective viewpoint (even if this involves acknowledging some unresolved contradictions and disagreements). Humans are complex creatures, rarely explainable in terms of a single type of influence. This arguably requires psychologists to draw together as many perspectives as possible. 

Experimental (incorporating: Multivariate experimental comparison, Quantitative data collection, Intervention, Quasi-experimental, Cross-sectional) Quantitative data collection Experiments tend to focus on quantitative data, i.e. information in the form of numbers of some kind. It is perfectly possible for qualitative data to be gathered as well, i.e. information in verbal form, though usually in experiments this is seen as of secondary importance compared with quantitative data. Quantitative data do have some disadvantages in that much of the 'richness' of human psychological processes is necessarily lost in reducing it to numerical form. However, there are also many advantages to these forms of data (which is why they have played such a large role in psychological research). Firstly, it can be easier to compare quantitative data from different researchers who are using the same measures, compared with qualitative research, where data can not be 'standardised' in the same manner. Once data are in quantitative form, all sorts of mathematical and statistical manipulations can be employed, giving rise to possibilities that simply don't occur with qualitative research (which does, of course, has its own strengths, as described in the 'methods' section describing these forms of data). For example, average (or mean) scores can be worked out (and perhaps used to compare different groups of people, or between experimental conditions). Statistical tests can be used to calculate whether differences between particular scores are likely to reflect a genuine psychological phenomenon (or are just due to random fluctuations in the data). Other statistical techniques can be used to see if different aspects of data are associated with each other (or 'correlated'). The power of quantitative data can be very easily seen with sciences such as physics, which has given human beings great understanding and control over our natural world. Many psychologists over the past century or so have aspired to placing psychology on the same kind of footing. Experimental Method\nExperiments have been the most commonly used psychological method over the last century of psychological research. It aims to discover if there are 'cause-effect relationships' between variables by changing one variable (the 'independent' variable), and measuring the results of this on another psychological factor (the 'dependent' variable). While doing this, the experimenter will attempt to control all other variables that may affect the results, so that whatever changes occur can be explained in terms of the effect of the independent variable. There is a clear distinction here from observational methods, in that this method is based on a deliberate intervention by the researcher. Experiments can be done in natural settings or in laboratories, though because of the need to control other factors (not easy to do 'in the field'), the majority of experimental research has been done in laboratory settings. ('Laboratory', for a psychologist, often just refers to a room with a computer.) There is something of a trade-off here for a psychologist – the more 'controlled' the setting is, the more certain the psychologist can be that the results are due only to changes in the independent variable and nothing else. However, the very measures taken to reach this careful control can result in an environment unlike 'everyday life'. There is then the question, 'will the results still apply outside the laboratory, in everyday life?' (which is, after all, the usual aim of psychological research). This has been a particularly strong issue for social psychology (e.g. when looking at how people in group come to make decisions), where the socio-cultural setting is clearly going to be a significant component. It is arguably less of a problem with cognitive psychology, where memory research, for example, has benefited from being able to isolate particular memory processes from their everyday contexts. \nWithin the general field of experimental research, there are a number of specialised methods, such as:\nMultivariate experimental comparison. Multivariate approaches are designed to assess the affects of multiple variables simultaneously, instead of just looking at a single variable. This is very important in dealing with complex psychological processes which often have more than one cause. Quasi-experimental, Experiments involve two or more experimental conditions. Ideally, researchers will have full control over who is allocated to the different conditions, e.g. by randomly allocating people to one or other condition. However, with quasi-experimental designs, this control is limited in some way. An example might be research into gender differences, – people are already either men or women, so obviously can't be randomly allocated to the different conditions. Another example might involve looking at people's psychological reactions to experiencing a rail crash (compared with a control group who weren't in the crash). Again, the participants aren't randomly allocated between the conditions. The possibility then arises that there is some other distinction between the groups apart from the chosen independent variable which is giving rise to any differences found in the results. In the second example above, perhaps train travellers in the rail crash are untypical in significant ways from the people in the control group (e.g. if it was a commuter train, there is likely to be an age bias, and possibly also class, gender etc.). One way to try and limit these effects is to use matching – the people in the control group may be chosen to match the people in the 'rail crash' group on age, class, gender and so on. The difficulty is that the researcher can never be certain to have matched all the variables that have an effect. However, for many phenomena (such as the examples above) this method may be the only way possible to study them experimentally. Cross-sectional Studies Cross-sectional research is the most commonly used survey research design. It can provide good descriptions of the characteristics of the groups on whom the research is done and the differences between them. With this method, groups of people are selected from different sections of society. For example, they can come from different age bands. The researchers then compare these different groups (at more or less the same moment in time), looking for developmental trends, or age-related changes. \nThis method is commonly used in developmental psychology, to provide data which can be used to examine developmental theories such as Piaget's theory of cognitive development, or Freud's theory of emotional and personality development. Researchers may also do cross-sectional studies with factors such as social class, gender, ethnicity or occupational group being the basis of the division. One potential disadvantage of cross-sectional studies is that researchers can't be sure two different groups are similar enough for direct comparison. This would mean that there may be other reasons they are different, apart from the one the researcher assumes accounts for the difference. The longitudinal method is designed to overcome this disadvantage. 

Experimental Social Psychology. A classic definition of experimental social psychology was given by Gordon Allport, as the perspective which 'attempts to understand and explain how the thought, feeling or behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.'\nIn the same way that psychology overall can be seen as a fragmented discipline, there are at least two distinct approaches to social psychology. There is very limited mutual recognition between these two approaches, as their fundamental assumptions are so different. The key is how the relationship between the self and the social context is approached. Experimental social psychologists tend to come from the broad approach of Psychological Social Psychology (PSP), where social psychology is seen as a branch of general psychology, and comprises the study of how basic aspects of individual's psychological functioning are modified in a social context. Essentially, the social context is seen as an additional variable. This can be contrasted with Sociological Social Psychology, which sees the relationship between the social and the self as inextricably linked and mutually influencing each other (see SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM and SOCIOLOGY). Experimental social psychology frames its questions so that that they can be studied using carefully controlled experimental methods. Like all experimental approaches, it is looking for looking for reliable information about cause-effect relationships. It is possible to do 'field experiments' in a natural setting, and important work of this kind has been done (e.g. on inter-group relations). However, in order to maintain careful control of variables the topics quite often have to be simplified and taken out of 'real life' into the psychologists' laboratory in order to obtain reliable data. Not only does this move into the laboratory necessarily reduce the complexity of what can be studied, but it also can produce different results from those gained in natural settings. Although this can be a problem even with research into cognitive topics like perception and memory, this is likely to be a particular challenge for social psychology, as the social context provided in a laboratory experiment is necessarily different in non-trivial ways from social contexts in the outside world. However, for the experimentalist, the increase in control that the laboratory can offer provides a good trade-off, as long as the potential errors in generalizing the results to the 'real world' are kept in mind. \n\nWhile cognitive psychologists began with perception and moved towards inclusion of the social world, social psychologists began in the social environment, with perception of 'social objects' such as people, events, and social issues. The first social psychologists used people's attitudes - made up of their beliefs and feelings - about other people and social issues so as to understand social behaviour. What we believe or know and how we think (our cognitions) have also always been at the centre of theories about how we perceive people – hence much experimental social psychology is concerned with social cognition. The roots of social cognition can be traced back to the contributions of Fritz Heider, an Austrian born psychologist who moved to the USA in 1930, about the same time as many European academics of his generation who managed to avoid Nazi persecution in the Second World War.\nSocial psychologists like Fritz Heider argued that in order to understand social behaviour we must pay attention to how people perceive and struggle to understand their social world. A crucial notion is the idea that people operate like 'intuitive scientists', trying to make sense of their world in terms of regularity and predictability. This will involve building models of cause and effect, so as to control what happens in their lives. Heider applied these ideas to how we perceive other people and their actions, and our attributions of cause and effect, leading to the topic of 'attribution theory'. \nOther social psychologists in this tradition have built upon the research of pioneers such as Heider to apply experimental approaches to the study of topics like: intergroup relations group performance social influence in small groups aggression conflict and cooperation social relationships interpersonal communication social cognition. 

Developmental psychology focuses on how our psychological characteristics change and develop throughout life, from birth (or, indeed, conception) to old age. Developmental characteristics studied include personality, development of relationships with others, cognitive capacities, and biological changes. All these characteristics are seen as interacting: for example the level of biological development influences our cognitive capacity; this will in turn have consequences for social interaction and so on. Two of the research designs used in developmental psychology are: • longitudinal studies, Where the same people are followed over time, and their changes in behaviour plotted. • Cross-sectional studies – which look at different people in different age groups, examing their different capacities in terms of cognition, capacity for social relationships etc. One of the first major influences on developmental psychology was Darwin, whose theory of evolution prompted a radical re-examination of the way people thought about human development. The first idea that developmental psychology inherited from Darwin's theory was a functionalist perspective, arguing that if a behaviour is functional it increases the organism's chances for survival. Darwin examined the high degree of similarity between adults and children within any one species, as well as degrees of difference, suggesting that some actions must be innate reflexes rather than learned behaviours. An individual is the result of a gradual sequence of prior changes, both in a broad evolutionary sense and within that individual's own lifetime. Throughout, an individual's life further development and change lies ahead. This emphasis on gradual and continual change forms the basis of modern lifespan psychology. At the beginning of the 20th Century developmental psychologists were particularly concerned with charting the ages at which certain changes in behaviour 'normally' occur (e.g. when does a child talk for the first time). This developed into an approach to studying human development that is known as the organismic approach. That is, the individual (or 'organism') is its main focus. Changes in behaviour throughout life are typically presented as a natural sequence of changes that occur sequentially, in a fixed order, so that an individual has to pass through an earlier stage before reaching a later one. This is referred to as a stage theory. It should also be noted that there are distinct 'developmental lines' which tend to develop in parallel, for example cognitive development (cf Piaget) and psychosexual development (cf Freud). One of the assumptions of an organismic stage theory is that environmental influences, while important, can only affect the speed of development. They may slow development down, or accelerate it, or even stop it, but they cannot alter the nature of the stages themselves or the sequence in which they occur.\nAn early influential example of such an approach to human development was Freud's theory of psychosexual stages, which a child had to pass through, seen as central to the emotional development of that child. If a crisis occurred during any developmental stage, then it would be reflected in that person's personality. Like many earlier developmental theories, it tended to conceive of adulthood as a relatively static 'product' of childhood development, rather than seeing it as having its own unique developmental stages. Another developmental approach in the organismic tradition was produced by Piaget, who focused on cognitive development rather than emotional development. Although Freud and Piaget both took an organismic approach, their research methods and psychological traditions are very different. Freud's ideas were based on the clinical data of psychoanalysis, whereas Piaget's theorizing was based, initially, on observation of his own children - informed by biological, evolutionary and psychometric perspectives.\nIn contrast to the organismic approach, the mechanistic approach to representing human development focuses not on the individual, but on his or her behaviour. Development is primarily seen as the product of environmental influences (external factors), with genetic inheritance and cognitive processes (internal factors) seen as less significant. This approach draws on behaviourism and its principles, where development is characterised as a sequence of behavioural responses to environmental stimuli. However, behaviour analysis attempts to address the full context and complexity of human responses to his or her environment, and differs from behaviourism is in its greater acknowledgement of biological influences and constraints on development. \nInitially, developmental psychology focussed primarily on changes during childhood; however, 'lifespan' theories (such as Erik Erikson's) attempt to look at possible developmental challenges occurring throughout adult life also. This represents the beginnings of attempts to overcome the rather pessimistic view implied by traditional approaches, which viewed adulthood as a relatively static 'end-point' of childhood development, with the only change perceived as the physical and psychological decline of old age.\nErik Erikson's lifespan psychology was pioneering in several ways: firstly, in explicitly recognising that psychological development continues during later life, and trying to map some of the key transitions. Secondly, because of its emphasis on the relationship between the individual and society in affecting personal development. Erikson's model of later life is essentially person-centred. Another approach is function-centred: looking at just one type of behaviour (e.g. memory) and measuring variation in it across the lifespan. This approach focuses on changes in ability with age. These changes can include both losses and gains (e.g. loss of processing speed compared to a young adult, but potentially balanced by increase in experience and knowledge). Modern developmental psychologists increasingly conceive development is as a transaction between the individual and their environment, with each influencing the other and in turn affecting the developmental path followed. This acknowledgement of the role a person plays in determining their own environment (and vice-versa) means that the 'nature-nurture' distinction is seen as overly simplistic in developmental psychology. Modern theories also conceive development as the outcome of interactions between age-related factors (e.g. biological maturation, social events such as attending school), historically-related factors (e.g. evolution, the occurrence of war), and 'random' biological and environmental occurrences that only relate to one individual. This approach to lifespan development is known as 'contextualism', drawing on a wide range of perspectives in addition to psychology, such as neuroscience, sociology, history and anthropology. The basic idea behind developmental contextualism is that development does not occur in isolation, it is affected by the context of a person's life. It is suggested that internal influences on development like an individual's biology and psychology interact with external factors such as their cultural influences, interpersonal relationships etc. It is this interaction between influences that results in human development. With this approach, development is seen as clearly embedded within society, its cultures and history. 

Neuroscience. Neurological scanning (e.g. MRI, PET) Techniques used involve neurological scanning of different parts of the brain (using complex and expensive apparatus with techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI, and Positron Emission Tomography or PET). Such scanning can, for example, show which parts of the brain are active when different cognitive or emotional activity is happening. They have allowed psychologists to map the brain activity that occurs in different everyday activities.\nAnother technique measures the small electrical signals produced by the brain, using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Different frequency ranges of signals are recorded separately, as Alpha Waves, Beta waves, Delta waves etc. Researchers have studied correlations between different brain wave activity (e.g. relative proportion of Alpha and Beta waves) with different psychological states, such as dreaming, non-dream sleep, normal waking activity, day-dreaming etc. Interesting correlations were found with things like rapid eye movement periods in dreaming (REM) and high levels of brain wave activity. Operations and case studies of brain damaged patients\nOne way of studying how different parts of the brain may be affecting human experience is to study the behavioural and experiential consequences of alterations to the normal brain set-up. Obviously, this cannot ethically be done as a deliberate experiment on humans (though it is sometimes carried out on animals – see section on animal research, and associated ethical issues). However, psychologists can study the resulting effects when this occurs in humans because of brain-damage (either present from birth, or due to injury), or surgical intervention. An example of the latter is the operation to sever the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain (this is sometimes carried out to help very severe cases of epilepsy, for example). \nResearchers such as Sperry have used special equipment in the laboratory to present different tasks to the two brain hemispheres. These studies gave considerable insight into how cognitive functions such as touch and vision appear to be processed by the different hemispheres. For example, visual stimuli presented so as to be processed by the left hemisphere of the patient could be described easily. However, when presented to the right hemisphere, they could not be described, or even properly recognised in conceptual terms, although they affected the emotions. This shows how language is a left-hemisphere function (for right-handers), and is a good example of the kind of research done with this methodology. 

Neuropsychology. Theories relating mental processes to particular parts of the body go back to the Ancient Greeks – e.g. philosophers such as Empedocles and Aristotle located the mind in the heart, whereas Hippocrates located it in the brain. Modern neuropsychology examines how neurological processes affect behaviour. Essentially, the study of relationships between brain and behaviour. This involves the study of brain function, for example by examining the structure of the brain and the corresponding neural activity within it. Another approach is to examine damaged brains, looking at the consequences of the damage for behaviour, perception, language etc.. Although correlation between a particular cognitive or behavioural deficit and damage to a specific brain region cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that this part of the brain is the 'source' of this cognitive function, it clearly demonstrates that this region plays some kind of an essential role in relation to this function. Examples of this in relation to language processing were discovered in early research performed by Broca and Wernicke, in the nineteenth century. However, it has sometimes proved remarkably difficult to localize certain mental processes, in particular memory, to specific regions of the brain. This has led to a shift of emphasis, from looking for particular locations (e.g. localisation of memory functions) towards examining brain processes involved in storage and retrieval of memories.\nIn addition to examining human brains, experiments upon animal brains are also carried out by neuropsychologists, in the hope of providing insight into human brain processes. For obvious ethical reasons, deliberate damage cannot be inflicted on human brains in order to study resulting psychological deficits from particular brain lesions, whereas current ethical/professional standards do allow this with animal studies (though not without strong disagreement from a number of quarters).\nOther methods involve electrical stimulation of human brains during surgery, performed under local anaesthetic, with the patient therefore conscious and able to report any resulting sensations (it should be noted that such research is only carried out as a by-product of necessary clinical intervention). The rate of blood flow to different regions can also shed light on neuropsychological questions, as can electrical recordings of brain activity. These techniques are 'non-invasive', such as magnetic resonance imaging.\n(see also NEUROPSYCHIATRY, under PSYCHIATRY)