Psychological Research
Psych in Real Life: Brain Imaging and Messy Science
Learning Objectives
- Describe replication and its importance to psychology
This is a little difficult for a psychologist to ask, but here goes: when you think of a “science” which one of these is more likely to come to mind: physics or psychology?
We suspect you chose “physics” (though we don’t have the data, so maybe not!).
Despite the higher “status” of physics and chemistry in the world of science over psychology, good scientific reasoning is just as important in psychology. Valid logic, careful methodology, strong results, and empirically supported conclusions should be sought after regardless of the topic area.
We would like to you to exercise your scientific reasoning using the example below. Read the passage “Watching TV is Related to Math Ability” and answer a few questions afterwards.
Watching TV is Related to Math Ability
Television is often criticized for having a negative impact on our youth. Everything from aggressive behavior to obesity in children seems to be blamed on their television viewing habits. On the other hand, TV also provides us with much of our news and entertainment, and has become a major source of education for children, with shows like Sesame Street teaching children to count and say the alphabet.
Recently, researchers Ian McAtee and Leo Geraci at Harvard University did some research to examine if TV watching might have beneficial effects on cognition. The approach was fairly simple. Children between the ages of 12-14 were either asked to watch a television sitcom or do arithmetic problems, and while they were doing these activities, images of their brains were recorded using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). This technique measures the flow of blood to specific parts of the brain during performance, allowing scientists to create images of the areas that are activated during cognition.
Results revealed that similar areas of the parietal lobes were active during TV watching (the red area of the brain image on the top) and during arithmetic solving (the red area of the brain image on the bottom). This area of the brain has been implicated in other research as being important for abstract thought, suggesting that both TV watching and arithmetic processing may have beneficial effects on cognition. “We were somewhat surprised that TV watching would activate brain areas involved in higher-order thought processes because TV watching is typically considered a passive activity,” said McAtee. Added Geraci, “The next step is to see what specific content on the TV show led to the pattern of activation that mimicked math performance, so we need to better understand that aspect of the data. We also need to compare TV watching to other types of cognitive skills, like reading comprehension and writing.” Although this is only the beginning to this type of research, these findings certainly question the accepted wisdom that the “idiot box” is harm