Casey's study

Question 1

What was the aim of Casey’s study?

Answer 1

To find out whether people who had difficulties delaying gratification at the age of 4 would still have difficulties 40 years later

Question 2

What was the sample of Casey’s study?

Answer 2

For age 40 - 59 44 year olds - 27 low delayers and 32 high delayers

Question 3

What were the four tasks in Casey’s study?

Answer 3

‘Cool’ tasks - neutral female and male faces
- female go - male no-go
- Male go - Female no-go
‘Hot’ tasks - happy and fearful faces
-Happy go - fearful no-go
- Fearful go - Happy no-go

Question 4

What did participants have to do in Casey’s study?

Answer 4

press the button on the ‘Go’ parts of the tasks , but hold back for the ‘no-go’ parts.

Question 5

Why were happy faces chosen to test delayed gratification?

Answer 5

studies have show that the adult human brain finds happy faces alluring

Question 6

Who were the high delayers and the low delayers?

Answer 6

high delayers - able to delay gratification in the Marshmallow test at the age of 4
low delayers - not been good at delaying gratification at the age of four

Question 7

What was the marshmallow test?

Answer 7

Mischel - children told they could eat one marshmallow now, or wait for about 15 minutes and have two
Sample of 4 year olds in the 1960s - over 500

Question 8

What were the behavioural findings of Casey’s study?

Answer 8

Cold tasks - high and low delayers showed no difference
Hot task - low delayers made more errors - but not statistically significant (p = 0.11)
High delayers made similar numbers of errors on both tasks
Low delayers made significantly more errors on the hot task than they did the cool task (P=0.005)

Question 9

What was the aim of Casey’s Neurobiological part of the study?

Answer 9

Casey wanted to see if there is a brain-based explanation for the ability to delay gratification

Question 10

What was the sample of Casey’s Neurobiological study?

Answer 10

Of the 59 participants from the first study, 27 took part in the second. 11 low delayers and 15 high delayers

Question 11

What was the procedure of the Neurobiological part of casey’s study?

Answer 11

Participants repeated the Go-NO-Go task, this time they did it whilst inside an fMRI scanner

Question 12

What were the neurobiological findings of Casey’s study?

Answer 12

when low delayers saw the happy faces they had less activity than the high-delayers in their inferior frontal gyrus (involved in regulating our behaviour) and had more activity in their ventral striatum (part of the limbic system and associated with rewards)

Question 13

What did Casey conclude about the neurobiological findings?

Answer 13

Differences between people in their ability to show self-control and delay gratification can be related to neurobiological differences

Question 14

How does Casey’s study relate to the nature-nurture debate?

Answer 14

Nature - predominantly - Shows a stability in ability or inability to resits temptation over time
Nurture - By the age of 4, you could have learnt how to resist temptation from your environment - possible to develop inventions to help resist temptation - such as cooling strategies

Question 15

How does Casey’s study relate to the free-will - determinism debate?

Answer 15

Determinism - biological - because differences in brain activity mean some can more easily resist temptation than others
free-will - if we can choose strategies like cooling techniques to help us resist temptation

Question 16

How does Casey’s study relate to the Individual-situational debate?

Answer 16

Individual - predominantly - Internal physiological difference that a person’s ability to resist temptation
Situational - Could have been influences before the age of 4 - we don’t know

Question 17

How does Casey’s study relate to the social sensitivity debate?

Answer 17

labelling people as low delayers - suggests they have reduced life chances - biological characteristic which is difficult to change as it is a stable trait
However, there are things you can teach people to help - cooling techniques

Question 18

How does Casey’s study relate to the reductionism-holism debate?

Answer 18

Reductionist - predominantly - only look at a articular aspect of the brain - reducing a complex behaviour to that scenario and to those areas of the brain - no environmental factors

Question 19

How does Casey’s study relate to the biological area?

Answer 19

Looks at physiological explanations for behaviour - specific areas of the brain that affect our ability to resist temptation

Question 20

How does Casey’s study relate to Ethnocentrism?

Answer 20

Only in the US - a capitalist society - but biological so could be species specific

Question 21

How does Casey’s study relate to the psychology as a science debate?

Answer 21

Controlled lab experiment - objective, falsifiable
But not replicable as it is longitudinal?

Question 22

How does Casey’s study relate to relaibility?

Answer 22

Internal - Not really replicable as it is longitudinal - many also did the first experiment at home - but was very controlled
External - Reduction of sample size - from 562 to 26

Question 23

How does Casey’s study relate to validity?

Answer 23

Population - an issue as only 4 female low delayers in final sample
Ecological - Go/no-go tasks not a way of resisting temptation in the real world - in fMRI scanner

Question 24

What are two similarities between Sperry and Casey’s studies?

Answer 24

controlled lab based experiments - use of tachistoscope and objective MRI
Difficult to replicate either - commissurotomies not done often - long longitudinal study

Question 25

What are two differences between Sperry and Casey’s studies?

Answer 25

length of time - Snapshot vs longitudinal
Generalisability of sample - typical participants vs all A-typical

Question 26

How did Casey’s study change our understanding of regions of the brain?

Answer 26

Tells us about other areas of the brain than just corpus callosum
Casey looks at inferior frontal Gurus and ventral striatum
Looks at other ways to research brain areas - using fMRI

Question 27

How didn’t Casey’s study change our understanding of regions of the brain?

Answer 27

Both still lacked ecological validity - we don’t know about the regions of the brain in real life settings

Question 28

How did Casey’s study change our understanding of Individual diversity?

Answer 28

Casey shows there are individual consistent stable traits in a typical sample