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Showing posts from June, 2020

Understanding Classical Conditioning as a Form of Learning for A-level Psychology

I, Jyotika Varmani, tutor students of Psychology at all levels. I reside in Mumbai and tutor students online. You can contact me personally on my e-mail id jyotikapsychology@gmail.com or call/message me on 9892507784 for enquiries. --- The studies presented at the A-levels are often misinterpreted by students as being the core content in and of themselves. They are not. They are rather, means of understanding underlying theories and research methods. Therefore, students must absolutely avoid becoming so focused on the content of the studies that they lose sight of what they are actually set to learn in the curriculum. In today's post, I explain the psychological process of classical conditioning which is presented in the curriculum by means of the case study of button phobia conducted by Saavedra and Silvermann in 2002 . The other psychological concept illustrated through this study is that of phobia and if you would like me to do a post on that as well, do comment below. The pr

Some Pointers for Writing Short Answers in Psychology

I, Jyotika Varmani, tutor students of Psychology at all levels. I reside in Mumbai and tutor students online. You can contact me personally on my e-mail id jyotikapsychology@gmail.com or call/message me on 9892507784 for enquiries. --- Writing tiny-looking short notes appears to be an easy task. But in reality, when it comes  to a subject like psychology in which abundant information is available, condensing that information into a precise and relevant answer is a confusing task. Let's take a look at how an answer can be made as informative as possible in a mere 100 words: Q. Describe the role of the hippocampus in memory. Ans. The hippocampus, located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain plays a key role in the consolidation of memory . The case study of H.M. by Dr. Milner showed that only bilateral damage to the hippocampus results in a severe loss of memory suggesting that hippocampi in both hemispheres co-ordinate for keeping long-term memories intact. The later case st

Interpreting Logistic Regression Output from R

I, Jyotika Varmani, tutor students of Psychology at all levels. I reside in Mumbai and tutor students online. You can contact me personally on my e-mail id jyotikapsychology@gmail.com or call/message me on 9892507784 for enquiries. --- R is being popularly taught across statistical courses. Psychology curriculi across universities are quickly catching up with this trend. R, though very versatile, is a software that is not as user-friendly as some other ones commonly available. Therefore, students ought to take out the time for understanding the input and output mechanisms of this software. In this post, I share with you the interpretation of a sample output generated from the software - that of logistic regression for which R is commonly employed. ----- Call: glm(formula = pass_fail~memory, family=binomial()) Deviance Residuals: Min          1Q              Median      3Q            Max   -1.68396   -0.38195    -0.16492    -0.05671  2.48238 Coefficients:                      E

Explanation and Evaluation of the Caspi et.al. (2003) 5-HTT Gene Study for IB Psychology

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Identifying Independent Variables - A Foundational Lesson for A-Level Psychology Students

I, Jyotika Varmani, tutor students of Psychology at all levels. I reside in Mumbai and tutor students online. You can contact me personally on my e-mail id jyotikapsychology@gmail.com or call/message me on 9892507784 for enquiries. --- Year after year, assessments of AS and A psychology papers reveal this one striking issue - students fail to identify the independent variable in novel research stimuli presented to them. Expectedly, this inability is further reflected in their failure to correctly formulate an independent variable in the answer which requires them to design a study of their own. Since the ability to identify the independent variable is so fundamental to the AS and A levels, in the present post, I present you with a detailed but easy, illustrated conceptual understanding of the same; followed by a few exercises for you to sharpen your skills: What is an independent variable? Let's begin with what a variable is. A variable is anything that changes from time to time