Epoch TOPICS CONTEXTS PERSPECTIVES ACTIVITIES METHODS FIGURES HELP TIME LINE Acknowledgements ACTIVITY 3 Exploring persepctives ACTIVITY 1 Using the timeline ACTIVITY 2 Using the biographies ACTIVITY 5 Using the figures, methods, perspectives, topics and context icons ACTIVITY 4 Exploring Topics Ainsworth Allport Baddeley Baron-Cohen Asperger Asch Binet Bartlett Bilig Belbin Bowlby Bruce Buss Cattell Ceci Byrne Bruner Bryant Cohen Cosmides Chomsky Cooper Charcot Conway Damasio Darwin Costa Dawkins Csikszentmihalyi Crick Erikson Eysenck Ekman Descartes Ebbinghaus Dennet Frith Freud Anna Freud Sigmund Falschung Fodor Festinger Goffman Gibson Goodall Galton Goldberg Gathercole Gregory Humphrey James Heider Janet Goodman Kahneman Lazarus Jung Kanner Klein Kelly Mayo McCrae Luria Loftus Lorenz Maslow Neisser Norman Morton Milgram Milner Mead Potter Plomin Piaget Pinker Penfield Pavlov Tajfel Sperry Skinner Saywitz Spears Rogers Triesman Turner Tulving Tooby Taylor Thorndike Weiskrantz Vrij Aldert Warrington Watson Vygotsky Tversky Wundt Zimbardo Whiten Wetherell You can check your answers against ours You can check your answers against ours You can check your answers against ours You can check your answers against ours You can check your answers against ours

Map Node Icon: PLOMIN.jpg Plomin url anchor

Views:  FIGURES, TIME LINE

Reference Node Icon: PLOMIN.jpg  url anchor

Note Node Plomin, Robert url anchor

Reference Node Icon: blue-16.png Natural url anchor

Natural. A number of psychologists have been influenced by the natural sciences, either in terms of early training in one of these disciplines, or because the development of their ideas has been influenced by particular models and methodologies employed by these sciences. Major branches of the natural sciences are disciplines such as: • Physics - which studies the principles underlying energy, the structure of matter, and interactions between the fundamental constituents of matter (e.g. quarks). • Chemistry - the science studying the composition, study and properties of substances and their transformations. For example, chemistry discovered that water consists of a combination of the elements oxygen and hydrogen, expressed in the formula H2O. • Biology - the study of life, i.e. any organism to which the term living can be applied. Looks at animals, plants, bacteria and viruses, as well as their interactions. More specialized branches (that have influenced some of the eminent people represented on this CD-ROM, such as Darwin) include: • Botany: the branch of biology dealing with the study of plants, e.g. study of plant structure and function, their geographical distribution and how they can classified. • Natural History: a somewhat old fashioned term these days (though found in the name of the famous Natural History Museum in London), it refers to the study of natural objects (plants, animals, insects etc.), particularly in the field. • Entomology: the scientific study of insects (their classification, ecology, physiology etc.) • Geology: a branch of earth sciences, focusing on research into the structure, origin and composition of the solid part of the earth (e.g. rocks). • Ethology: studies animal societies in their natural surroundings, providing insights into animal social behaviour. Although caution is needed against overly simplistic explanations of the complexities of human social behaviour in terms of animal studies, it can be argued that there are genuine parallels between at least some aspects of human and animal social behaviour, particularly with chimpanzees and bonobos. url anchor
Views:  PERSPECTIVES, Crick, Plomin, Watson

Reference Node Icon: yellow-16.png Nature-nurture in 50's and 60's  url anchor

The nature-nurture debate (1955 – present day). Between the mid 1950s and the early 1980s one of the main debates that dominated psychology was nature-nurture. The crux of the nature-nurture debate was the degree to which human attributes, particularly intelligence and personality, were determined by either genetic factors (nature) or environmental factors (nurture). This nature-nurture debate was particularly fierce in the area of intelligence, following the publication, and subsequent criticism, of Sir Cyril Burt's results from his study of the intelligence quotients (IQ) of separated twins. Over many years Burt claimed to have studied 58 pairs of monozygotic (MZ – from the same ovum) twins (popularly referred to as 'identical'). This was a larger number than any other researcher had been able to obtain. For that reason, Burt's claims that the IQs of separated MZ twins were more alike than those of dizygotic (DZ – 'non-identical') twins reared together was very influential in supporting claims that intelligence is largely inherited. However, it was later alleged that Burt at worst fabricated his results, and at best behaved in a 'dishonest manner' because he did not find as many separated twins as he had claimed. The debunking of Burt's results even became the leading article on the front cover of an issue of the Sunday Times in 1976 and Burt was posthumously discredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS). The nature-nurture debate over intelligence generated a public debate between a leading hereditarian (someone who believes that intelligence is largely inherited) – Hans Eysenck – and the environmentalist who had first uncovered problems in Burt's reported statistics (Leon Kamin). This was published in 1981 in a book titled Intelligence: the battle for the mind. The debate has rumbled on since with publications such as The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) and with various defences of Burt's conclusions and data. Few psychologists now argue for only one side of the nature-nurture debate. This is partly because most now accept that both genetic inheritance and environment play some part in all human psychological processes. The successful mapping of human genes in the Human Genome project has contributed new evidence to discussions of the heritability of psychological characteristics. However, the debate in psychology is now more one of the relative contributions of nature and nurture, and the specific mechanisms of interaction, than one of absolute dichotomies. Written by: Course Team url anchor
Views:  CONTEXTS, Eysenck, Plomin, Pinker, Sperry

Reference Node Icon: green-16.png Genetic url anchor

Genetic research. Human genetic research involves the study of inherited human characteristics. In the context of DSE212, the focus is particularly on possible insights into the origins of our psychological characteristics, including possible disorders (e.g. schizophrenia). The relationship between our genes and our individual psychology is not a simple one – there are complex interactions between different genes themselves, and between genes and the environment. The whole debate about the relative importance of biological and social explanations of human behaviour is a vigorous one within the social sciences generally. There are two main categories of genetic research – statistical and molecular – and these are described below in more detail: Statistical genetics. There are a number of different aspects of statistical genetics. Epidemiology involves the study of the distribution and origins of disease using statistical methods. Similar approaches can be used to estimate the genetic contribution to particular human disorders (or talents). In many cases, a particular genetic background doesn't provide 100% of the explanation for why a particular disorder occurs. Rather the genetic background gives rise to a stronger or weaker predisposition, which may be triggered by particular environmental or psychological factors. Statistical genetics may also be able to identify combinations of genetic and environmental risk factors that show there are particular subgroups of the general population who are at increased risk of a particular disorder.\nMolecular genetics. This method focuses on analysing the biochemistry underlying genes, and how this emerging knowledge can help increase understanding of human health and disease. Key aspects of the biochemistry of genes involve looking at how they are able to replicate and be transmitted, often in terms of the chemistry of the 'nucleic acids' DNA and RNA. The Human Genome Project is a major undertaking in a number of laboratories (particularly in the USA and Britain) to examine the location of every human gene and to examine the chemical structure of each gene, in order to find out the role the gene may play in affecting health and disease. url anchor
Views:  METHODS, Eysenck, McCrae, Plomin

Note Node My new research includes a study of all twins born in England during 1994-96, which focuses on developmental problems in language, cognition and behaviour. I also continue to work on several other large longitudinal twin and adoption studies of behavioural development throughout the life span. url anchor

Note Node Written by: Robert Plomin url anchor

Note Node These discoveries came from studying environmental influences in the context of genetically sensitive designs such as twin and adoption designs. The first finding is that environmental influences operate in a surprising way: They do not make two children growing up in a family similar to one another. url anchor

Note Node The theme that has dominated my research is bringing together genetic and environmental research str ategies to study behavioural development. My PhD dissertation and early research was on the development of temperament and I soon became interested in cognitive development as well. url anchor

Note Node I became interested in behavioural genetics in psychology graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin (1970-1974). A good feature of the course was its requirement of broad interdisciplinary training during the first two years. One of the required courses was behavioural genetics. url anchor

Note Node During the past decade my interest has increasingly turned toward harnessing the power of molecular genetics to identify genes for psychological traits in order to advance our understanding of the developmental interplay between genes and environment. url anchor

Note Node Behavioural genetic research in these areas has shown that nature as well as nurture contributes to the development of individual differences. I think that we no longer need studies that merely ask whether genetics is important because genetics seems to be important throughout psychology. url anchor

Note Node Although I had had no previous interest or knowledge of the topic (behavioural genetics was not taug ht anywhere else in the world at that time), the topic grabbed me in part because I could see that it provided new and powerful explanations for psychology. url anchor

Note Node The second finding, often called 'the nature of nurture', is that environmental measures widely used in psychology such as measures of parenting and life events are substantially influenced by genetic factors. Although this finding sounds bizarre at first, what it means is that people select, modify and create environments correlated with their genetic propensities. url anchor

Note Node My first position (1974) was at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the only research establishment of its kind, with a joint appointment in the Department of Psychology. url anchor

Note Node It is important now to go beyond this rudimentary issue and to use genetic research strategies to ask more interesting questions about matters such as the developmental interface between nature and nurture. For example, two of the most important discoveries from behavioural genetics are about nurture rather than nature. url anchor

Note Node In 1994, I came to the Institute of Psychiatry in London as an MRC Research Professor to help Professor Sir Michael Rutter launch an interdisciplinary centre called the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre which follows the same theme of bringing together genetic and environmental influences in development. url anchor

Top