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intro.psych (Psyco 105) Discussion: Group 3 Discussion Group: Reading the Research-DID: Are the conclusions important?
By Admin on Thursday, November 12, 1998 - 10:44 am:
Tie your discussion together here; use your discussion of previous questions to argure whether or not the conclusions are important.
What I find most interesting in terms of the conclusions is that implicit memory is personality-specific-the more personality-specific the task, the less leakage there is among personalities. Other than that, I found the research article very hard to understand, including the conclusions.
These results are very limited. They are limited to mostly female (8:1) DID patients who can switch their peronalities at will. The researchers say "virtually all patients with ... (DID) manifest interpersonality amnesia" yet they don't mention the number of people with DID that can switch their personalities at will.
DO you think maybe because there are so many variances in DID and therefore there is very little research? DID is a small scale disorder not very publicized. I think that this is very important, " Testing memory implicitly is a necessary but not sufficient condition for demonstrating transfer of informationfrom one personatlity state to another." They are not claiming to have miracle results just a litle step in figuring out this unusually complex disorder. More later...
Is this research important?
This discussion is for marks.
Back to the Discussion Section
By Jene on Monday, November 23, 1998 - 02:02 pm:
By Montresor on Monday, November 23, 1998 - 02:37 pm:
The researchers try to make the conclusions look important by saying things like "Though considered a hallmark of ... DID, interpersonality amnesia has to date attracted little empirical attention." But if this empirical evidence is not valid, then maybe that's why the research hasn't been done.
More later...
By Mollyc on Tuesday, November 24, 1998 - 11:53 am:
By Patricia on Thursday, November 26, 1998 - 04:39 pm:
Great comments on brain and memory function. As a group, you could have explored this a little more.
Are the measures appropriate for addressing the research questions?
Very detailed description of the methods but it was not clear if you understood the intent behind them.
You are right that using only patients who could switch could limit the generalizability.
Can the results be generalized beyond the context of this study?
This question needed more input. It was not thoroughly discussed.
Are the conclusions important?
Again, some thoughtful comments on the limitations of the study given the authors did not tell us the ratio of DID patients who could switch to those who could not. Another good observation was how the variations in DID patients can hamper researchers arriving at conclusive findings.
This was a complicated article. At times, I was not sure you understood thoroughly the rationale underlying the tasks and the implications of the results but you touched on some good points.
Grade = 2+