Work for Mrs Watson - 29th November

Apologies all - I am ill and not in today.

Please could you have a go a this sheet - you need to know about the issues involved with identifying and diagnosing schizophrenia (you will see that there are many). There is a web-link on the sheet and some questions to aid you in making notes. The textbook covers this well - see pages 317-324 or thereabouts.

To have thorough notes you need to fully answer every question on the sheet. Any problems, send me an email.

Relationships - review of evolutionary theories and look ahead to economic theories

In today's lesson we reviewed the evolutionary theories which use the concept of sexual selection (behaviour which leads to successful reproduction, and offspring which will themselves reproduce successfully) to explain differences in male and female reproductive behaviour. There is lots of overlap here with the evolutionary aspects of gender we've already looked at - Parental Investment Theory and Sexual Strategies can be used for both.

Here is the presentation we looked at for the evolutionary theories.

You need to know some research studies that show there are differences between male and female reproductive behaviour, and some that can be used to support these theories (Clark & Hatfield, Buss & Schmidt).

The other theories we briefly looked at are dealing with a different set of questions: why do relationships form between some pairs of people but not between others? What factors lead to two people moving beyond casual 'dating' to become an established couple? Why do some relationships break up while others are maintained?

You need to know two theories of the formation of relationships - use the Filter Model and Reward / Need theory. Here's a presentation.

For the maintenance of relationships there are four different theories, but they are all similar to the simple idea of reward / need, and are given the general term 'economic theories' because they use the idea of a 'balance sheet'. Here's a presentation on them.

Work for Mr Lawrence - Tuesday 22nd November

I'm not back to school yet I'm afraid, but am confident I will be in time for our lesson on Thursday. We will then review the Evolutionary approach's explanations for human reproductive behaviour, and will look at theories of the formation and maintenance of relationships (the first section in your textbook).

Read this, and make notes on the Filter Model, and Reward/Need Theory of relationship formation.

Reward/need is basically the behavioural approach applied to relationships - a relationship forms if the needs of both parties are met, and they are rewarded for spending time together, with primary reinforcers (hopefully just food on the first date) and secondary reinforcers (laughing at each other's jokes, compliments on hair etc). This idea is developed into a theory of the maintenance of relationships (having got together, will the couple stay together?), called Social Exchange Theory. This basic idea (that costs as well as rewards need to be taken into account) is adopted by other so-called 'economic' theories. Read about these and make brief notes on the following:

Social Exchange Theory
Interdependence Theory
Investment Model
Equity Theory

Work for Mr Lawrence - Monday 21st November

I'm afraid I'm not going to be in school today - I have a sore throat and a bad head.

Make notes from the section in your textbook on Sexual Selection and Human Reproductive behaviour - if you can in time for our lesson tomorrow which I expect to be back for.

You need outlines of the methods and findings of studies which show there are differences in sexual behaviour and mate choice preferences between human males and females, and ideas as to how you can evaluate these (e.g. in terms of sample bias, culture bias, participant reactivity). These include the research by Clark and Hatfield (into enthusiasm for casual sex) and Buss (into differences in sexual jealousy) which we looked at briefly as part of the Gender topic.

You also need to make sure you can explain how Parental Investment Theory and Sexual Strategies Theory explain each of these differences. Sexual Strategies isn't really an alternative to PIT - more of an update which suggests that both sexes could benefit from 'cheating', and adopting different 'strategies' for reproduction at different times.

Once again the key debates, which should feature in your notes, are reductionism and Nature vs Nurture - make sure you can see how to use these to evaluate the theories.

Relationships - Sexual Selection and Human Reproductive Behaviour

Here is the presentation from today's lesson.

Final sleep essay

Outline and evaluate restoration theory as an explanation for the function of sleep (8 + 16 marks)

Due in to me by Tuesday 29th November

Insomnia

Apologies - insomnia ppt is here

Narcolepsy & sleepwalking

A fairly easy topic to finish off the sleep module. Don't forget to make use of the diathesis-stress model in your explanation of narcolepsy.

The powerpoint is here.

Psychological Androgeny and Gender Dysphoria

A final essay for Gender - to be handwritten in no more than 30 minutes but you can use notes - just get ready before you start!

a) Discuss explanations of psychological androgyny (4 + 6 marks)
b) Discuss explanastions of gender dysphoria (5 + 10 marks)

For Monday 21st November.

Here is the presentation on Androgyny and Gender Dysphoria. Note the spelling of androgyny, which was wrong on the title slide of the presentation! When evaluating these issues, think about which material you can use from the rest of the topic. Gender dysphoria in particular allows you to bring in lots of issues related to the biological/evolutionary and social learning approaches, as these are the two ways of explaining it.

A2 reports

Student information entry sheet is here.

The Cognitive Developmental Approach to Gender

Hopefully we all agree that nature and nurture are both important in the development of gender identiy, role and behaviour, but how and when do children acquire information about their own gender and associated behaviours? Developmental psychologists study how the way children think changes and, er, develops, and this impacts on their gender role.

In this video young Ernest Lawrence participates in a couple of 'conservation' experiments. Typically for a three year old, he apparently lacks the cognitive ability to understand that cuperficial changes don't affect the underlying nature of things.


In this video we chat about gender, and his answers suggest that while he has definitly reached Kohlberg's first stage - gender identity - he is only starting to acquire gender stability and definitely doesn't have gender consistency.


Here is the presentation on Kohlberg's theory of Gender Constancy. The fact that children move through these three stages, at approximately these ages, is well supported by evidence. Kohlberg's controversial idea was that children need to reach the stage of gender consistency before they start to actively acquire information about behaviours associated with their own gender.

Theories of sleep

We've discussed sleep a lot - now we move on to WHY we sleep. Evolutionary accounts include energy saving and predator avoidance - these are satisfactory up to a point. Restoration accounts are similarly overly simplistic but straightforward - we sleep to restore our body and brains after the demands of the day. The ppts are here and here.

We also looked into the dangerous world of sleep deprivation.