Maguire et al. 2000

Question 1

Aim:

Answer 1

Whether the brains of London taxi drivers would be somehow different as a result of their exceptional knowledge of the city

Question 2

Sample

Answer 2

16 right-handed male London taxi drivers

Question 3

Procedure

Answer 3

Taxi drivers’ MRI scans were compared with the MRI scans of 50 right-handed males who did not drive taxis from an MRI database which had scans from a variety of ages (so that it would not be a confounding variable). Single blind study as well researcher did not know if she was looking at the scan of the taxi driver or a control.

VBM and pixel counting was used to measure the density of grey matter in the brain.

Question 4

Results

Answer 4

Posterior hippocampus of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to the control subjects but the anterior hippocampi were significantly smaller. Furthermore, VBM showed that the volume of the posterior hippocampus correlated with the amount of time spent as a driver.

Question 5

Findings

Answer 5

Posterior hippocampus is involved when previously learned spatial information is used, whereas the anterior hippocampal region may be more involving in encoding.

Question 6

2 pros, 2 cons

Answer 6

MRI and VBM used allowing for increased construct validity.

Single blind design eliminating researcher bias

Quasi experiment no random allocation reducing internal validity

Bidirectional ambiguity