Biological Casey Et Al Flashcards
Aim of the study
To find out weather ability to delay gratification was a constant personality trait
To investigate whether people who were low delayers on the marshmallow test at age 4 and who got a low self control scores in the psychometric tests in their 20/30s who would make more errors on a go no go test when the stimuli was ‘hot’
What was the method of the test
Longitudinal study, quasi experiment
What was the two experimental designs?
Independent measures design-high vs low delayers
Repeated measures design-age
What is the IV and DV?
IV- high vs low delayers and the age of participants
DV- time taken to respond, the number of errors made and brain activity
How many participants were used?
At the beginning 562 participants-4 years old
When they were 20 years old- it lowered to 155 participants
When they were 30- it decreased to 135
At the end of the study it decreased to only 59!
Where did the study take place?
Stanford university nursery
What sampling method was used?
Opportunity and self selected sample
What happened in experiment 1?
Shown a male or female photo and had to press the button every time that gender was seen ‘go’ each photo is a trial there are 60 trials per ‘run’ each photo
Each photo only appears for half a second and a pause of 1 second
How many gos are there?
120
How many no gos are there?
40
How many runs do each participant do?
2 one ‘hot’ and one ‘cool’
How many people participated in experiment 2?
27 out of 59
BUT! One was excluded for poor performance leaving 26
What happened in experiment 2?
FMRI scans
ONLY!! Hot task was used as the cool task had shown no difference
What were the results of experiment 1?
No difference in response times or on the accuracy of the go trials
Small but no significant difference in the no go trials
What was the false alarm rate of the cool trials?
9.96%
