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In the cognitive psychology element of the AS we look at the case study of Washoe by Gardner and Gardner investigating if it is possible for a chimp to learn sign language like humans. This has been an argument going on for a long time in psychology as it could have implications and bring [...]

An interesting article over at psychcentral has identified a study looking into the sexual behaviour of adolescents and what variables effect is.
“… A study conducted in August 2006 examined longitudinal data from a survey of 5,401 Scottish teenagers. The researchers led by Daniel Wight of the Medical Research Council, Social and Public Health Sciences Unit [...]

Here is the second PSYlent, our weekly overview of those stories that I think are pretty interesting in psychology but don’t really apply to the OCR specification. Seems a shame to miss out on them just because I can’t get them to fit into the specifications. So, here are those studies that would [...]

Recently there has been a flurry of articles on addiction, the reasons why we become addicted and why do we continue to abuse these substances; be it alcohol, gambling or even love (there was a very interesting article about being addicted to love by Prof Mark Griffiths in a recent Psychology Review – and on [...]

In the Developmental Psychology unit of the AS we look at a longitudinal study of children who have been maternally deprived (Hodges and Tizard). Prior to the Hodges and Tizard study it was thought (mainly as a result of Bowlby’s research) that those children who were maternally deprived as children would become affectionless psychopaths.
John [...]

Here is the first of a what is going to be a weekly overview of those stories that I think are pretty interesting in psychology but don’t really apply to the OCR specification. Seems a shame to miss out on them just because I can’t get them to fit into the specifications. So, here are [...]

Studying the brain has always been problematic as there were few ways of investigating what part of the brain was functioning at a particular time. Over the last few decades many different types of brain scans have been developed (MRI, PET, MEG) which mean that we no longer have to wait for a [...]

In the Crime module in psychology of the courtroom we look at what factors influence juries decisions and one of the studies that I use is the Castello et al. study which looks at how the attractiveness of a defendant in relation to that of the plaintiff may be a variable in a guilty verdict [...]

UPDATE: If you’re wanting the Spec 2008 studies see here.
Here I will try to collate all of the full text original articles for the 20 core studies in the AS course. If you know where I can find a publicly available copy of any of the missing ones please let me know. :)
Also, I am [...]

Autism is a developmental disorder that we investigate in the first year with Simon Baron-Cohen. One of the impairments that some autistic people were thought to have was an in-ability to interpret emotions from facial expressions and many studies have provided support for this thesis. However, autistic children are able to interpret the mental state [...]