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Abnormal Psychology

Decent Essays

In 2008, in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Scott R. Carlson of the University of British Columbia and William G. Iacono of the University of Minnesota reported their findings on a study entitled “Deviant P300 Amplitude Development in Males Is Associated with Paternal Externalizing Psychopathology”. The study explored individuals from different paternal groups and labeled these individuals as low-risk, intermediate-risk, and severe-risk for a variety of psychological disorders based on the degree to which their fathers used/abused substances, alcohol and/or had other abnormal psychological behaviors such as adult antisocial behavior. After recording data about the fathers and their offspring, the researchers conducted tests on the …show more content…

There were also two factors considered within the rotated heads test: there was an easy portion, where the nose was facing up, therefore an ear image to the right of the nose was on the right side of the head and vice versa, and there was a hard portion, where the nose was facing down, therefore an ear image to the right of the nose would actually be on the left side of the head. Furthermore, the researchers had a neutral stimulus where an image with no nose or ear was presented to the participant. To gather data brain during this test, the researchers placed multiple attachments to a participant’s head and conducted electroencephalographic (EEG) tests to determine P300 wave amplitude during the rotated heads test. P300 levels generally spike in response to a familiar stimulus, which is a piece of prior information that the researchers knew and used to analyze and evaluate the data they collected on each of the test subjects from the three different paternal risk level groups. The purpose of the study was to evaluate any potential connections between paternal psychopathology or alcohol/substance dependence and similar behavioral patterns of potential psychological or substance abuse disorders in offspring. The study used P300 amplitude as an operational definition of internalized psychological occurrences and compared it to externalized psychopathology and substance abuse in father-offspring data. Data from an independent (x-axis)

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