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intro.psych (Psyco 105) Discussion: Group 2 Discussion Group: Reading the Research-DID: Are the conclusions important?
By Admin on Thursday, November 12, 1998 - 10:43 am:
Tie your discussion together here; use your discussion of previous questions to argure whether or not the conclusions are important.
I;m not really sure. Toi be honest I'm still not sure of why the researchs is being done. Perhaps I"m missing something?
This question seems to be very similar to the one asking whether or not the results can begeneralized beyond the study. I believe that the conclusions are important, since any new information is good information. Again, the study is limited by its participants (i.e are people suffering from DID, yet are able to switch from one personality to another at will), in that the results are only valid for those people. However, information on how different types of implicit memory tests may or may not show interpersonality priming give us insight into how normal brains may work, with regards to implicit memory.
Conclusions are very important because they summarize the whole article. As Dave said that there are only DID people being studied so therefore the study is limited.
I think its interesting that the subjects showed implicit memory amnesia. What does this say about DID? The conclusions in this case are important to recognize that the research brought up more questions. I think its interesting that they brought up the idea of faking persomnalites. I know a lot of people are very suspicious about this illness. I have even wondered about things when I see people who do have DID. When we watched the film, I wondered that as well. I also think that its interesting that the idea of implicit memory not being shared is very weird. If a subject can push forward one personality, conciously, why doesn't the new personality pick up on information from the original? It seems weird to me thats all. I would like to see more research done on this aspect. (even though I wonder about the ethics involved in encoraging the switching of personalities while not in a theriputic setting)
I just got back from my pharacology class, and we reviewed in detail, the disease schizophrenia. The one thing that I thought I'd share is that statistically, the cost of treating patients with mental illnesses, directly or inderectly, comes to roughly 100 billion dollars a year! wow, that's a lot of money. It sure would be a shame if some of that money was going towards people who were faking mental illnesses, when the money could be going towards people who really need it. I totally agree with angela with the fact that studies like these can be used to test patients and diagnose them properly.
Wow, cool idea! J I think that thats a great point. I also think it would be interesting to do a follow up study to this one. When it is determined what the situation was that brought on DID in each case, it would be interesting what specifically the trauma was to see if certain traumas bring on certain memory patterns and certain levels of interpersonality amnesia. Also you can intergrate using people who have no control over their personalities and then look at their traumas as well. However, I think that the changing between personalities is something that may come from the level of treatment thats involved.
It seems awkward to me how the participants can switch from personality to personality when asked to do so. Even Anglea mentiones why the next personality doesn't pick up on the personality before, I wonder about that too. I think more research should be done in that area. I think that what Angela's point was about determining if they will have memory elapses or not if they were to bring upon a memory elapse from a certain trauma. I don't think this is very ethical it could traumitize them even more and possibly even make the situation worse
Is the research important?
This discussion is for marks.
Back to the Discussion Section
By Angela on Sunday, November 22, 1998 - 01:31 pm:
By Daki on Sunday, November 22, 1998 - 10:24 pm:
By Rubina on Monday, November 23, 1998 - 03:18 am:
By Angela on Tuesday, November 24, 1998 - 01:14 pm:
By Daki on Tuesday, November 24, 1998 - 02:47 pm:
I'm glad that the incidence of people with DID is low, because I'ms sure it must very hard to live with (I have trouble living with my brothers at home, imagine living with other "people" inside your own head!). But hopefully, the information gathered from studying people with this disease is to get a better understanding of how memory works and how we might be able to "fix" some mental illnesses, including DID.
Again, I believe that because of their unique circumstances, studying people with DID can give us importnant information as to how and what are brain does in the presence of different stimuli, whether its data-driven, or free association. If you think about it, there are very few other illnesses (I can't think of any others) that can give you access to a person's brain through alternative personalities, which in effect, allows a researcher to see how amnesia is produced, and why. In a normal person, people forget things when other types of information is brought in, causing the previous information to be either lost (if it is not important), or remembered(if it is important). In the same way, researchers can study people with DID; and instead of bombarding the same person with information to see how memory works (like say, short-term memory), a different "person" (or atleast, a different personality) can be used, giving that researcher a new aspect (or angle if you will) on studying memory. I realize that it would be difficult to complete the same study with DID patients that could not switch from personality to personality, but I would think that the study could be better improved if they were closely monitored and the same tests were then administered. This would give the study more validity in the fact that there would be more patients, and thus larger test group. More importantly however, I think this might be more useful to determine if there are any discreptancies between DID patients that can switch personalities at will, and those who canno. Perhaps by being able to switch personlities at will, the brainpurposely induces interpersonality amnesia for the sake of the other personality. For example, if a person is being abused badly, the personality who has to endure the pain and abuse would not want the other personality to know what happened, in a sense protecting the other personality. But, this might not be the same for people who have no control over the other personalities. I don't know whether or not this is true however...just another one of my wacky ideas ;)
By Angela on Tuesday, November 24, 1998 - 08:54 pm:
By Rubina on Wednesday, November 25, 1998 - 10:12 am:
By Patricia on Thursday, November 26, 1998 - 04:16 pm:
You brought up two possible benefits of this reaearch which I thought were good observations. It is possible that this research could enlighten us about the organization of memory and memory processes (you mentioned consolidation).This research might also contribute to the issue of how psychologically traumatic events may influence the brain (how does it adapt?).
Are the measures appropriate for addressing the research questions?
You are right that there was no measure of explicit recall for the picture items first shown to P1. Some of the same items were shown to P2 but P2 was not asked to recall any of the pictures P1 might have seen. How might this have added to the study?
Can the results be generalized beyond the context of the study?
You made some good comments about what this study might tell us about the functionning of and access to different parts of the brain. You also mentionned the problem of possible emotional meaning being attached to the individual words used as stimuli. We could see this as a general problem inherent to all research (and one that is difficult to control for). Individuals with DID may have very strong emotions attached to some words due to the trauma they may have experienced in their past. It seems the authors attempted to use neutral stimuli, but we can never know what is each individual's personal experience with that word.
Are the conclusions important?
Good synopsis of previous comments. You also brought up the issue of ethical procedures for DID patients to make sure they are not emotionally harmed. I think this was a good point.
Overall, your discussion was very coherent and you connected your ideas well throughout the four questions. This was a complicated article which you handled well.
Grade = 3+