Oh Brother… Interventions For Siblings of Chronically Ill Children

When a child is diagnosed with a chronic illness it is heartbreaking for everyone involved , especially the imediate family . Within this blog I’ am going to explore the common issues and psychological damage which can occur to siblings when trying to adapt.(Derouin & Jesse , 1996 ) found that the presence of a chronically ill sibling can have a profound effect on the remaining healthy siblings .(Williams , 1997 )  exposed through a meta analysis of studies that 60 percent of children with a chronically ill sibling were at an increased risk for developing adverse psychological problems then children with healthy brothers and sisters (Lobato & Kao , 2002 ).This could be due to the fact that the dynamics within the family drastically change upon a diagnosis of a chronical illness, the parents time and emotional efforts are tied up with helping the ill child and often what occurs is that the other children in the family are over looked, (Murray 1998).To contribute to this it has also been found that parents are less tolerant towards their healthy children ( Foster et al , 2001 ),as the correspondance that the children have with their parents is often neggetive due to the overwhelming stress the family is in .

However it is not just negative effects which have been reported from studies concerning chronically ill siblings .(Murray ,1998) , found that the healthy siblings could develop effective coping strategies, increased mental maturation and alongside this develop an understanding and ability to empathise with others more competently  .

The effects of having a chronically ill sibling vary amongst people , because of indivdual differences which effect mental processes .These differences include : developmental level , gender , birth order , birth spacing and the severity of the condition of the sibling ,(Thibodeau ,1988). Controversially the spacing between the siblings has profound effects on the psychological damage which can be caused : the closer the children are in age is directly related to an increase in psychological damage .It has also been found that older sisters and younger brothers are the most effected as they show higher levels of behavioural problems .

So it is obvious that there is a margin for damaging effects to siblings of chronically ill children , the question is how can these effects be limited .Gursky, (2007) claims that educational interventions can limit the stress and anxiety of children with siblings who have been hospitalised . The study used 50 participants who were children visiting their siblings on a children’s ward . The participants were split into one of two conditions : a control group who did not receive an educational intervention and an experimental group which did .The educational intervention was administered by proffesional health care administors who had recieved training and had the relevant experience to sensitively conduct the intervention . The intervention itself focussed on educating the child about their brothers or sisters illness , and what it entailed .The level of information dispensed to the child was inline with their mental age . The study found that those who had recieved an educational intervention measured as having decreased levels of stress and anxiety preceding the experiment .

However one area of concern within this field of research is ethics ,with regards to how the information about the child’s stress and anxiety levels is accumulated. As if the questions are particularly stressfull this could be potentially damaging to the children involved  , a made up example of an insensitive question could be :’how does your sisters illness make you feel,’ these kind of questions could be upsetting and as a consequence  have a profound impact on the chronically ill child and the participant . For example most of the experimental methods used in this kind of research ,obtain information from participants by interviewing or administering questionnaires , this could potentially be damaging for the family : as it brings attention too quite negative issues and puts emphasis on the child’s illness which is unfair . Therefore it is imperative that the researcher has integrity and gains fully informed consent.

 

References

The Effect of Educational Interventions with Siblings of
Hospitalized Children
Barbara Gursky, MA, CCLS 2007

Outcomes of a nursing intervention for siblings of chronically ill children: a pilot study.

Williams PD, Hanson S, Karlin R, Ridder L, Liebergen A, Olson J, Barnard MU, Tobin-Rommelhart S.

The Pursuit of Happiness …

 What is happiness ?According to (Diener 1984 , 1994 ), happiness is the cognitive and objective evaluation of ones life , it is described in terms of there being a presence of possitivity and an absence of negativity .Happiness is a complex , subjective and very illusive concept , its base is very much dependant on our physiological makeup , e.g hormones , but also it is a product of the enviroment we experience. Coleman 1988 believes social capital to be a significant predictor of happiness , social capital being defined by (Leung 2002) to be : an individuals resources accumulated through inter personal attitudes that help to develop a strong social network and ties between an individual and their community  .However this is not the sole contributor to adult happiness and well being , certain researchers champion different variables as the prominent factor.

In a survey conducted by (Batcho , Nave & Dapin 2010), found that an individuals perception of their own childhood had a significant correlation with their well being as an adult . However one of the criticism of the procedure used in this piece of research is that it used retrospective methods whereby partcipants were asked to recall memories from their childhood, the issue with this is that memory is very vunerable and that many of us will remember our childhood in a romanticized, idealist form (Stern 1992 ).Thus this questions the reliability of the results found , however with this aside there is other research which supports these claims of a relationship between childhood happiness and adult happiness.

When i was scouring the databases for predictors and contributors towards general happiness i came across a study that thought religion would be a powerful contributor, but there results found it to not have a significant relationship .The study by (Francis ,Ziebertz & Lewis 2003) used a sample of 331 students who completed a German edition of the Oxford Happiness Inventory and the francis scale of attitude towards christianity , the study found no relationship between happiness and religion .However this studies validity may have been effected by the sample :they were all students from the same university , it is possible the sample was struggling from cohort effects .Would the results have been different and found a relationship between the two variables if the researchers had used a more varied sample?

Friendship was a variable which was found to be of the upmost signifiucance when it came to reported levels of happiness.Research published in a book called :’ journal of happiness studies ‘  which unsuprisingly investigated the relationship between : happiness, personality and number of friends .The study found that friendship quality predicted the onset of happiness above and beyond the effects of personality and number of friends .However in studies like this can you ever really determine the direction of influence, ( what variable causes the other) , were the people miserable to begin with , then acquired friends and were happier , or were the people happy to begin with and then the quality of their friendships improved their happiness ?

To conclude , the happy scholars cannot point out all the variables which make a happy person. Could this be because none of us are the same and we all have different things which motivate us and cause us to feel happy . However there are common variables such as quality of friendship and social capital , these variables are likely to effect our degree of happiness to some extent.

(Diener 1984 , 1994 )

(Leung 2002)

(Batcho , Nave & Dapin 2010)

(Stern 1992 )

(Francis ,Ziebertz & Lewis 2003)

Exercise as a Treatment For Depression ?

According to the Global Burden of Disease Study , Moderate Major Depressive Dissorder is second in ranking for diseases which cause premature death or disability .The first on their list is Ischemic heart disease . There is no question that there is effective treatments out there for depression , anti depressant drugs being one of them .However anti depressants are not for everyone to the extent that in extreme cases they can be responsible for causing suicide in some users (Hans Jurgen Moller 2006).It has also been found that the majority of people suffering from MDD do not actively source help and this could be for a number of reasons, such as they are scared of being labelled by society .They may also be in denial of their condition .For what ever reason, only 23 percent of those diagnosed with MDD  seek treatment , the remainder of the population do not .So the question in hand is what can we recommend to self medicate those suffering from MDD who do not want to seek formal treatment . . .

Exercise is an answer according to a study by (Andrea L Dunn et al 2003),the study found that exercise is proven to reduce the symptoms of MDD .The researchers ran a 2×2 factorial design with a placebo control group ,to monitor the effects exercise had on participants ratings on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression , known as the H.R.S.D .The study used participants aged 18-45 who had scored moderatly to severly on the H.R.S.D scale.The participants were randomly allocated to one of four exercise groups , the four groups differentiated in the intensity and frequency of exercise they did , ranging from low level exercise to frequent high intensity exercise .The participants exercised on their own in a lab to control for confounding extraneous variables such as : an increase in mood as a result of social interaction and not as a result of the type and length of exercise they were doing .The primary outcome measure was the change in the levels derived from the H.R.S.D scale , these measurements were monitored from baseline to 12 weeks .The study reported that the public health advised dose of exercise is an effective mono treatment for that of moderte M.D.D .As those in the high intensity exercise group reported a 50 percent reduction in Baseline H.R.S.D. However when one looks at the conclusions drawn from the study described above, it is hard not to find fault . Firstly i feel this study suffers very much from interpretter bias in regards to the conclusions drawn , it only stated how effective the high intensity exercise was on reducing the levels of depression on the H.R.S.D scale , it did not include the success level of the remaining three groups which begs the question was their any change in those groups .The second thought is that within this experiment it would have been virtually impossible and not to mention unethical for the researcher to have controlled for confounding variables because of the nature of what they were measuring  (depression)  and its complexities.The study was highly controlled in the sense that exercise was performed in the lab ,however the study could not control for other variables which will have occurred outside of the lab settings. These unknown confounding variables presumably made a massive impact on the dependent variable and because of these confounding variables it is very hard to identify a direction of influence. factors which could have influenced the dependent variable are : were the participants on medication of any kind such as antidepressants (the study dosent include information about this ), were the participants starting or ending any personal relationships, were the partcipants taking on any new experiences (activities ,hobbies ) which were unrelated to exercise but could have potentially effected mood ? All of these factors could have effected their H.R.S.D reading and so the grand conclusion that exercise is a monotreatment for M.D.D is really very naive and reductionist . The experiment used a participant sample of 80 , this is a relatively small sample to draw inferential statistics from , also were the sample biased in any way ,this is in regards to the researchers sampling method ,were they all from the same town ? what was the distribution of ages were they grouped around a certain age e.t.c ? As factors like this would have greatly effected the external validity ,David Sears (1986) reviewed the concept of age in relation to psychological processes and found age to have a robust effect  .But what i find most alarming about this study is the claims and glorification of exercise.The concept that exercise is a proven mono treatment for those suffering with moderate to severe M.D.D  is a very reductionist and potentially dangerous claim . Exercise should be recommended to those who are healthy enough to carry it out and used as a factor of a holistic recovery program ,but i believe that it is wrong to call it a mono treatment, in fact i believe it is wrong to call anything a mono treatment . Thus bringing into question of where the backing and funding of this research came and to who it is actually benefiting .What i mean by this is if the funding came from a company involved in the fitness business looking to extend their client bases ,then really it is a very biased report. Take a look at the following link and tell me what you think about the nature of this report.In conclusion there really is no question about the science behind exercise and the effect it has on the brain , however i do not believe that it is the don when it comes to treating such complex conditions like depression. 

Exercise Treatment for Depression
Efficacy and Dose Response
Andrea L. Dunn, PhD, Madhukar H. Trivedi, MD, James B. Kampert, PhD, Camillia G. Clark, PhD,
Heather O. Chambliss, PhD

David Sears (1986)

(Hans Jurgen Moller 2006)

Nature or Nurture , You Decide !

Psychology is a serious player in terms of its ability to identify social problems from observations and then predict what the consequences of this behavior will be from analysis .Then subsequently generalize this to the vast population . Admittedly this is done with the support of loud evidence , however when it comes to some psychologists views of the effect of childhood on our adult well being it is hard not to find the related articles incredibly reductionist and one sided. Is it fair to argue that because a child experiences bad parenting or maybe even no parenting that when they mature into adulthood they will experience emotional suppression and sensitive responses to stress due to emotional neglect in infancy ( Gerhardt 2009 ).Gerhardt who is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist , makes many arguments on the value of early infant experiences in relation to our personalities and mental well being in adulthood  , these arguments are based on the concept that the orbitofrontal cortex the area of the brain responsible for emotional intelligence , which allows one to recognise social cues and identify feelings develops almost exclusively in infancy . Gerhardt then goes onto argue the nuturist approach, that this part of the brain develops from experience of interactions with care givers and that this experience brings with it emotional regulation.

The nature nurture debate has come along way since its birth , the question has transformed from which aspect ( nature or nurture ) are are personalities soley products of , it is a more a question of which one is more predominant in certain areas.The degree of genetic determination vary s from dimension to another , such as the colour of our eyes and hair , that has been determined by genetics but other subtler questions such as will i suffer from depression because of my genes are harder to answer .The grey area in this type of research is separating the two variables : hereditory predisposition and the enviroment.This is because most research into the impact of our genes on our personalities has to be conducted within families , and families usually share the same enviroment so it is hard to decipher what is influencing what , we can only really do this when there are cases of identical twins which have been separated at birth and this is very rare .Lets be honest sister act the film isn’t an everyday occurrence and to conduct an experiment whereby twins are separated at birth is pretty heinous. So what we are left with is this conundrum , where does nature begin and the environment stop ?

References

Rachel Altamirano 2009 evaluation and summary of

Sue Gerhardt, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes
a Baby’s Brain (2009)

The Mechanics of Play Ground Bullying and How it can Effect Emotional Development

Ahhh let us all think back and reminisce nostalgically over our primary school days : recorder lessons (is that even a real instrument ?) ,long assemblies , teachers who rarely wore deodrant and playtime .The chances are ,that 30 percent of us do not recall these as ‘the best days of our lives’ , and the reason : bullying.

Bullying is a multifaceted universal problem which is not just restricted to human beings ,it is very much a part of the animal kingdom too.It could be argued that bullying is just  a product of evolution , in that we as human beings are pack animals and in order to survive we must forge our social status and ranking amongst our peers , no one wants to be seen as the weak link ? Bullying seems to be most consistent and frequent within schools .This could be for a number of reasons, Sentse et al ( 2007 )conducted a study into group dissimilarity in involvement in bullying. The study highlighted that the environment within the classroom was very representative of the  degree to which bullying occurred .The study had a vast sample and used 2,578 participants ,both female and male from 109 middle schools .Multi-level analysis was used on the data from the examination of group and individual effects , the study found that there is a very strong possitive correlation between pro social behaviors and the degree of peer acceptance , this of course makes sense and is what you expect to find .However controversially, the study also concluded that anti social class room behavior such as aggression can rate favorably with  peers ,and these children are often referred to by others as their ‘best friend’ .Despite this though ,if a child shows anti social behaviors and is with drawn then others do not rate them highly on peer preference scales .Sense et al concluded that classroom norms are the biggest factor in predicting the volume of bullying which occurs .Where bullying is the social norm the perpetrayers are favoured by their peers however in classrooms where bullying is not socially normative the bullies are viewed unfavorably by their peers .

So if a child is unfortunate enough to be the target of bullying in school what effect can this have on their development ? Coie and Dodge (1983 ) researched this area and found that peer rejection in childhood is a significant predictor of later social maladjustment.Longitundinal and self report methods were used to obtain this data , this methodolgy is very popular when researching child devolpment .Longitundinal studies are broken down into either follow forward or follow bacward design .The follow bacwards catergory can be very unrealiable and misleading because it involves using participants who have shown maladjustment in adulthood and the researcher trys to work back through their lives in an effort to pinpoint a common denominator which could have been the reason for the onset of this maladjustment .However there are just as many problems with the follow forward method in longitundinal design where participants are monitored as they mature, problems with colecting data occur when participants drop out or move away.Unfortunatly nothing can be done about this and it wastes alot of time and efforts ,the studies are also very expensive just because of the ammount of time they take to run and and also demand a high level of commitment from everyone involved.

The ethics of this kind of research could also be questioned , within the sentse et al study part of the data was gained by asking the school children who they lease liked out of their class ,arguably this is encouraging the alientation of these pupils ,creating an enviroment whereby the children feel that disengaging and alienating other children is exceptable.What makes it worse is that this could be very damaging to all of the participants social devolopment .Another issue with research in this topic is defining terms ,what constitues bullying? The experiment Sentse et al conducted did not use opertaional definitions of what behaviours they were assessing . As this researh had no operational definitions , the validity of research must be questioned along with other studies like it ,as what one experimentor may class as banter another may catergorise as bullying.

The evidence that being a victim of bullying as a child has multiple effects on development is loud ,which is why more research really should be conducted into why children bully so that strong interventions can be implemented which (without wanting to sound reductionist or to over simplify the maturation process of children) ,could mean that individuals avoid certain disorders in later adult life .

References 

Sentse et al (2007) Person–Group Dissimilarity in Involvement in Bullying

and Its Relation with Social Status.

Parker and Asher (1987) Peer Rejection in Childhood ( Cambridge studies in social and emotional development)

Colour Preferences Between the Sexes !

How humans experience, perceive and favouritise Colour is a widely debated topic in psychology, essentially because empirically researching it is problematic .Regardless of this problem there has been an abundance of research surrounding it ,such research which includes looking into a discussion of colour aesthetics and examining why people like certain colours ( Hulbert and Lung 2007 ), additionally research into colour preference between the sexes has also been carried out by the same authors.They were intrigued into why it is so common that:’ little girls differ from little boys in preferring pink’ .The study’s main hypothesis was to examine : the two fundamental neural dimensions that underlie colour coding in the human visual system and to investigate whether this difference is incurred by sex specific behaviors which through evolution have made this irregularity in preference between the sexes .The study which claims to offer : a biological component of sex differences in colour preference ,is by its nature speculative and is open to scrutiny .Considering that in the study’s title it uses the term ‘biological component’ ,i think that that is a misrepresentation of what the study actually measured and by including the word biological in the title the researchers new that there work would be taken more seriously .The study’s procedure used a very basic design which did not measure empirically,it was a computer task where participants had to pick their favorite colour out of those provided on the screen,the results were then statistically analysed .The experiment was vulnerable to many floors ,such as the participants getting bored with the task and randomly clicking any colour regardless of whether it was their favorite and so the results may not have been measuring colour preference between the sexes.The researchers found that ‘females prefer colours with a reddish contrast against the background where as males prefer the opposite’ .These results could have been highly influenced by the participants.There was a sub group of participants who were chinease,the colour red in china is thoght to bring luck and so surely that would have changed the results because many of the participants would have picked red for that reason and not the explanation which the researchers offered.The researchers believed that the female participants preferred reddish coulours because of sex specific functional specializations in the evolutionary devision of labour ,basically what they meant by that is that girls prefer red because in the hunter gatherer days women would have had to pick ripe red fruits and through evolution women have become more sensitive to these colours,then men because they would have played the role as hunter and they would not have needed to identify with such colours.  The explanation of these findings are whimsical and are not supported by evidence .The authors interpret the results subjectively and manipulate them into the conclusions they want and then generalize this to the rest of the population.

The media is highly influential when it comes to publicizing the work of psychologists,and often report findings as causational and not  correlational which is what they are .This can be dangerous as false information is being released to the public which can mean that individuals change their behavior as a direct response to this information .This can have negative ,jeparadous results.The Times newspaper made a report based loosely on the findings of this study,however they embellished the truth to a degree where the information that was being released was essentially lies.The article said that the reason that men prefer blue is because of mans deep roots back to the hunter gatherer times where they would have searched for water ,and if the water was blue it is more likely to be clean.At no point in the original journal was this ever said and so by making such statements it harms the reputation of the scientists and the trust the public has for scientists.The media report made the same conclusions to that of the journal ,however it is hard to stomach because arguably both reports are not based on science,they are speculative and subjective !

Reference:

Anya C.Hulbert and Yazhu Ling (2007)

Rosenhans’ Contribution, or Lack Thereof, To the Field of Psychiatry

I think by now we will all be well acquainted with the work of David Rosenhan ,who is an expert in both law and psychology, with the majority of his work being published in prestigious science journals ,amongst these study’s include : ‘Power and Inter group Perception Between Public Defenders and District Attorneys ‘ (1997),’Note Taking can Aid Juror Recall ‘ (1994) . However Rosenhan is probably most famous for his study on ‘Being Sane in Insane Places’ (1973),the study is controversial in parts because of the generalizations and false perceptions it casts on the operation of psychiatric hospitals.

According to Spitzer (1975) the prestige of the journal which the study was printed in is implicit for the success of the work,people are less likely to challenge a scientific journal then they are a Wikipedia page or the equivilant to that at the time of publication because scientific journals are trustworthy.The public accepted the generalizations made to be equitable , arguably this study is pseudoscience pretending to be science.The only real complaint which rosenhan would be justified in making is that they didn’t identify sanity in a sane person acting mentally ill ,not that they diagnosed the patients with schizophrenia.If anything the result of diagnosing the pseudo patients with schizophrenia is an accolade to how well the system is working.After all the pseudo patients did approach the hospital,this would suggest that they were experiencing a certain degree of distress.Additionally they reported hearing voices that were saying words like : empty and hollow,Rosenhan believes there to be no literature on these syptoms and feels that the psychiatrists should have noticed that these are existentational symptoms ,however they are sypmtoms non the less and it would be neglect if the psychiatrists were to ignore this.We as readers also do not know about the situation which occured in the psychiatrists room when diagnoses were occuring,the psychiatrists are bound to have asked more questions then simply what are your syptoms,the pseudo patients must have been very convincing and expanded on their condition.The details of this expansion we do not know,however it is biased for Rosenhan to disclude this literature from his report,because  his whole conclusions are drawn from the concept that the pseudopatients were admitted so easily.

Rosenhan claims that once with in the hospital the pseudopatients returned back to their regular behaviour and the hospital staff failed to notice this because of a larger problem with society in realtion to labelling stigmas however it could be argued that this is not accurate.That the pseudo patients did not return back to normal because surely if you are to be sectioned or admitted to a psychiatric hospital and you are genuinly mentally healthy the first thing you would do would be to let the staff now by verbally informing them of your healthy condition.However the pseudopatients failed to do this and so the absence of resistants towards their situation actually could be interpreted by health care workers as them being legitmatly ill.

Mental Health Stigmas

Mental health stigmas can be increasingly detrimental to the success of an indivdual who has a psychiatric dissorder.The term stigma derides from the greek concept of recognising characteristics in a person which are not favourable ,essentially stigmas are prejudice ,uniformed discriminatory schools of thinking,which have devastating consequences for the subject.Such as :limiting their job oppotuinites,restricting where they can live and also more controversially limiting the care they recieve for their condition.Additionally stigmas are a multifaceted beast,which componants are:label avoidance,self stigma,public stigma,and structural stigma.The componants all neggetively correlate with the indivduals self efficacy and self esteem.So really it is not suprising when those with a psychiatric dissorder do not seek out the help and care which they need because they evaluate that the cost of this will far outweigh the benefits .Which is why it is so important that methods and interventions are put in place to begin to deflate mental health stigmas.

One method of deflation is protest,whereby members of the public go out and make verbal and visual protests in order to educate those with discriminatory views of mental health,one piece of research has shown this to be an effective method (Wahl 1995),however furthur research has indicated that there may be a neggetive effect of protetsing known as ,’attitude rebound’,this is the concept that members of the public do not like to be told what to think and so neggetive attitudes manifest deeper because of this annoyance(Corrigan et al 1994).

Another intervention is thought to be the publication of educational programmes directed at the general public which offer a more informed view point about those with psychiatric disorders,research has shown that these videos improves attitudes towards mental health(Corrigan et al 1999 and Penn et al 1994).

More worringly through research into possible interventions through surveys ,have highlighted that many health care proffessionals which work in positions of dispensing psychiatric care,also share the same discriminatory attitudes,(Schulze 2007).Evidently this could be perpetuating the situation,which is why training for these positions must be policed and warranted to make sure that what is being taught does not fuel this stigma

Evidently mental health stigmas are not going to diaspear over night because they are unfortunately deeply enshrouded into the attitudes of many,however much can be done to deflate this stigma and bring attitudes forward  .

Poppulation Mental Health ,Cohen,Neal ,Galea , Sandro (2011) published by Routledge,chapter 6

Expertise and What Effect It Has On Inductive Reasoning?

Firstly we must identify what Inductive reasoning is so that we can answer the question.Inductive reasoning is where the human brain observes several plausible observations and then translates these observations into a general rule.Science moves forward using this method,it observes the known and uses that information to predict the unknown.It is an objective method because its conclusions are gained from repeated observations instead of conjecture however it is arguably just an assumption.Yet it is a very strong assumption because the evidence has not been falsified. Evan Heit (2000) offers a simple example of inductive reasoning :Goldfish thrive in sunlight,therefore tunas thrive in sunlight.The First part of information is taken to be true, the brain then uses this original information to evaluate whether the conclusion would be true.Inductive reasoning can be strengthened by:repeated observations and there being a greater diversity within these observations also when the first premises are backed by an expert.

There has been some interesting research done on what effect expertise has on inductive reasoning.Mainly looking into when adults acquire expertise on certain subjects and what effect this has on their cognitive processing .It is quite a basic assumption that differences in knowledge will effect the way people interpret observations and thus draw conclusions.The basic assumption that people with a higher level of expertise will draw more successful inductive reasoning seems to be a fair premise?

A  study by Cole ,Medin ,and Smith(1997) which looked at experts inductive reasoning,found some interesting results.The study used two groups ,experts and non experts.The experts in the study were Itzaj Mayans who lived in the rain forest ,the participants in the first group had excellent knowledge regarding local plants and animals ,the control group of american college students did not have any expertise on the subject.Both groups were told to assume that all black vultures are susceptible to a particular disease ,they were asked whether they thought that all black vultures would be susceptible to this disease.The tribe members disagreed ,however the american students believed this to be true,thus inferring a relationship between the knowledge of an individual and their ability to engage in successful inductive reasoning.

Arguably this study has many variables which could be influencing the two groups inductive reasoning .However it does offer an interesting insight into the concept that expertise does have an impact on inductive reasoning, this could be furthered by more research into what other things could effect our inductive reasoning.Essentially leading us to understand a little bit more about the brains complex cognition’s .

References:

Aiden Feeney,Evan Heit (2000) Inductive Reasoning,Experimental,Devolopmental and Computational Approaches.Cambridge.

Evan Heit (2007)Cambridge handbook of computational psychology,Cambridge University Press.

Why We Use Statistics in Psychological research

Statistics are the foundations in which psychology stands on ,psychological research which lacks statistical backing is merely an uninformed assumption,entirely based on intuition and common sense . There are several reasons why we use statistics in psychological research : it helps to prove or disprove theories/hypothesis and it provides firm evidence regarding cause and effect relationships,statistical evidence is also very hard to refute .However what is not so obvious is that there are many pitfalls within statistical analysis which can directly effect the outcome of psychological research. Such as: failing to orchestrate an appropriate sample which represents the target population , the results can also be manipulated in the favor of the researcher to prove their hypothesis.Another shortcoming of statistical research is that psychology is based on the acceptance that the i.v has effected the d.v. in some way ,however statistical analysis can hide the concept that the two groups may have been inherently different to begin with . Furthermore  statistics are widely being used inappropriately creating misleading results,the problem then grows when other research is done based on the results of the previous ,this is known as the file drawer problem .  Despite all this, raw data produced in psychological research would be unexplained if we did not analyse it using statistics .