intro.psych (Psyco 105) Discussion

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Can the results be generalized beyone the context of the study?

intro.psych (Psyco 105) Discussion: Group 2 Discussion Group: Reading the Research-DID: Can the results be generalized beyone the context of the study?

By Admin on Thursday, November 12, 1998 - 10:40 am:

In particular, can we learn anything about normal memory by studying memory in clinical populations? Why or why not?

This discussion is for marks.

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By Angela on Sunday, November 22, 1998 - 01:29 pm:

We can learn a bit from this. We can use this information to understand that in some cases of DID there is interpersonality amnesia, and that can help people who are treating these people. They can understand that its "normal" for personalities to be completely seperated from one another. It also helps to understand why P1 can do a task but P4 can't do it at all.

By Daki on Sunday, November 22, 1998 - 10:02 pm:

Although this study is very limited, I still believe that it can help us better understand memory in normal people. For example, we can see that in patients suffering from DID, inerpersonality amnesia is seen in some cases, whereas there is some evidence that it doesn't occur in some tests. This proves interesting in the fact that it might give us new insight on perhaps how our brains consolidate memory, depending on what type of task (word-stem completion tasks vs. picture-fragment completion tasks). Furthermore, I wonder if interpersonality prming is some form of memory consolidation, in which different personalities have access to some parts of the brain, but not others. That is, each personality may have be able to "share a part of the brain (say, the hippocampus), but only one personality at a time may have access to a different organ (such as the frontal cortex, where memory may be stored).Since the study is using subjects who suffer from a disease that isn't quite well known, it is very difficult to determine what to do with the information gathered. But it dose show that there is a difference in interpersonality memory within implicit memory tests.

By Angela on Tuesday, November 24, 1998 - 01:33 pm:

I think that David realy brings up whats important about studies. Also that in general studying memory for any clinical study is important. One it helps all of us to see how their memory works. Two it tells us what damage, mental or physical, can do to memory. That helps to undersand how normal brain functions work.

By Daki on Tuesday, November 24, 1998 - 02:25 pm:

As mentioned ealrier, the unique situation ofpeople suffering from this disease allows researchers to find a better understanding of how memory really works. Studies are aimed at studying the brain as a whole, figuring out which part of the brain ineracts with other parts. It gets very confusing and difficult to approach memory this way. But if we choose to look at patients whose brains are "shared" by multiple personalities, researchers might be able to break down the steps into "bite-sized" chunks of information that can be easily understood, rather than trying to figure everything out at once. One could argue (from the results that is) that for people suffering from DID atleast, are able to remember pictures more easily than words. Why? Perhaps the information from pictures of objects are more important to the brain, and should be shared with all personalities, where as words, are not essential to the person's survival. For example a picture of an apple(nourishment) is more important for survival than a word that says "apple." Another explanation (as mentioned above) is that perhaps the part of the brain that controls object information is shared by all personalities (or has mutual access to that part of the brain), whereas the part of the brain that controls word identification can only be accessed by one personality at a time.

By Rubina on Wednesday, November 25, 1998 - 09:42 am:

I personally think that we can learn a lot about normal memory by studying memory in clinical procedures. It enables you to see the differences in the normal memory and for example a DID patient. It gives you a new insight to see the way different brains function. It helps us understand how the personalities differ amoungst one another and in between other personalities. It's interesting to see which common stem words or which picture fragments are shared in memory, and to research on why certain things trigger the memory and certain words/images don't. This proves how the brain stores memory or else how it consilidate's memory. What Dave mentioned makes a lot of sense in this last paragraph on how the brain might take some things to be more important than others therefore it brings up the same word stem or picture fragmentation because it is interpreted as important and therefore it doesn't matter what personality state it is in.

By Rubina on Wednesday, November 25, 1998 - 10:00 am:

I just wrote such a long paragraph and then pressed back so it's all gone. Anyways I'll try to sum it up again. I was saying that I personally think that we can learn a lot about normal memory from studying clinical memory. We learn to understand memory differently. After analyzing the clinical memory it makes you realize the differences with a normal memory and clinical memory because you see the differences whereas normally you might not of even recognized the differences. It mekes us understand that maybe some things are more importans to the brain then otheres therefore it interprets each word stem differently and each image differently. Some words might be more important to a person and that is the reason why it doesn't matter what personality state he/she is in he/she will still think of the same word just because it holds some meaning to the person. It's intersting to see hoe some personalities have access to some areas of the brain and some don't and they vary from personality to personality.