Work for 30th November - Mrs Watson

As we won't have a lesson on Wednesday 30th, here is the work that you need to do:

Please could you have a go a this sheet - you need to know about the issues involved with identifying and diagnosing schizophrenia (you will see that there are many). There is a web-link on the sheet and some questions to aid you in making notes. The textbook covers this well - see pages 317-324 or thereabouts.

To have thorough notes you need to fully answer every question on the sheet. Any problems, send me an email.

Relationships - evolutionary theories

In today's lesson we started our Relationships topic by looking at the evolutionary theories which use the concept of sexual selection (behaviour which leads to successful reproduction, and offspring which will themselves reproduce successfully) to explain differences in male and female reproductive behaviour. There is lots of overlap here with the evolutionary aspects of gender we've already looked at - Parental Investment Theory and Sexual Strategies can be used for both.

Here is the presentation we looked at for sexual selection and differences in reproductive behaviour between males and females.

Here is a presentation looking at for the evolutionary theories, Parental Investment Theory and Sexual Strategies, which explain these differences.

You need to know some research studies that show there are differences between male and female reproductive behaviour, and some that can be used to support these theories (Clark & Hatfield, Buss & Schmidt).

Bring notes to next Thursday's lesson which cover the following:

• Describe and evaluate Parental Investment Theory as an explanation for human reproductive behaviour. 
• Describe and evaluate Sexual Strategies Theory. 
• Critically compare these two theories. 
• Evaluate sociobiological explanations in terms of nature/nurture, reductionism, determinism and psychology as a science.

Approaches to psychopathology

Today we started the unit 4 psychopathology section. Find the specification content here. We will be studying schizophrenia but need to start with a review of the models of abnormality from AS. You need to make notes on this from the textbook, which covers this very thoroughly on pages 317 & 318.

Powerpoint from James/Ben/Robin/Kema/Meg is here.

Please can other groups email their powerpoints to me so I can post them here as well.

Psychological Androgyny and Gender Dysphoria

A final essay for Gender - to be handwritten in no more than 30 minutes but you can use notes - just get ready before you start!

a) Discuss explanations of psychological androgyny (4 + 6 marks)
b) Discuss explanastions of gender dysphoria (5 + 10 marks)

For Thursday 24th November.

Here is the presentation on Androgyny and Gender Dysphoria. When evaluating these issues, think about which material you can use from the rest of the topic. Gender dysphoria in particular allows you to bring in lots of issues related to the biological/evolutionary and social learning approaches, as these are the two ways of explaining it.

Work for Mr Lawrence - Thursday 17th November

I'm afraid our lesson on Thursday afternoon is cancelled as I need to go with Y12 to the 'Safe Drive Stay Alive' event with them. Any Y13s who didn't attend last year should come to - coaches from Gypsy Lane at the start of Lesson 4.

Work to be completed for Friday's double lesson:

Review your notes on Kohlberg's Gender Constancy theory and Martin and Halverson's Gender Schema Theory for a little test on these.

Read your textbook's short section on Androgyny and Gender Dysphoria, and answer the following questions in note form:

1. What is androgyny?
2. How did Bem's Sex Role Inventory measure it?
3. Why did she argue that androgyny is psychologically healthy?
4. What is the evidence that this is the case?
5. What is gender dysphoria?
6. What is the biological explanation for this?
7. What is the social learning explanation?

Final sleep essay

Outline and evaluate restoration theory as an explanation for the function of sleep (8 + 16 marks)

Due in to me by Wednesday 30th November

Narcolepsy & sleepwalking

A fairly easy topic to finish off the sleep module. Don't forget to make use of the diathesis-stress model in your explanation of narcolepsy.

The powerpoint is here.

Biosocial timed essay

In case you missed it, we did a timed essay last Thursday:
'Outline and evaluate one of more biosocial explanations for gender development' 9 + 16 marks. 30 minutes writing time only if you still need to do this.

Insomnia

Today's powerpoint is here - lots of new terms that all sound similar but have slightly different meanings. The important point with insomnia is to determine whether it is primary or secondary - this is vital for treatment.

A2 long reports

Student information entry sheet is here.

The Cognitive Developmental Approach to Gender

Hopefully we all agree that nature and nurture are both important in the development of gender identiy, role and behaviour, but how and when do children acquire information about their own gender and associated behaviours? Developmental psychologists study how the way children think changes and, er, develops, and this impacts on their gender role.

In this video young Ernest Lawrence participates in a couple of 'conservation' experiments. Typically for a three year old, he apparently lacks the cognitive ability to understand that cuperficial changes don't affect the underlying nature of things.


In this video we chat about gender, and his answers suggest that while he has definitly reached Kohlberg's first stage - gender identity - he is only starting to acquire gender stability and definitely doesn't have gender consistency.


Here is the presentation on Kohlberg's theory of Gender Constancy. The fact that children move through these three stages, at approximately these ages, is well supported by evidence. Kohlberg's controversial idea was that children need to reach the stage of gender consistency before they start to actively acquire information about behaviours associated with their own gender.

Here is the presentation on Gender Schema Theory. This suggests that children acquire schemas - sets of general information - relating to gender as young as two years, and that these affect what they learn from their environment.

The Biosocial Approach to Gender

The answer to the question 'nature or nurture?' is almost always 'both', but this poses another important question; 'how exactly do the two interact?' The Biosocial approach essentially says that the main factors shaping our gender behaviour are the 'nurture' processes of the Social Learning approach (see previous post), but that biological differences need to be taken into account. These lead to children being labelled as male or female, and society 'interprets' these differences and 'constructs' (this kind of approach is called 'social constructionist') ideas about gender. These then lead parents / peers / the media / schools to reinforce and model appropriate behaviours.

Here is the presentation from the lesson.

We will have a timed essay on the biosocial approach next Thursday 10th November.

Theories of sleep

We've discussed sleep a lot - now we move on to WHY we sleep. Evolutionary accounts include energy saving and predator avoidance - these are satisfactory up to a point. Restoration accounts are similarly overly simplistic but straightforward - we sleep to restore our body and brains after the demands of the day. The ppts are here and here.

We also looked into the dangerous world of sleep deprivation.