2.1 Analysing text Some people find it easy to use diagrams in their studies. But I realise that there are others who don't take to diagrams at all enthusiastically. If this is how you feel, please read what follows, as I am convinced that everyone can get something from using diagrams to help their thinking. However, if after working through these sections, you still believe that diagramming as an aid to studying is ‘not for you’, then don't force yourself into an approach that doesn't suit y
2.1 A lack of insight? One of the curious things about learning to write essays is that you are seldom offered much insight into what you might be setting out to produce. You know only too well what your essays look like and what your tutor says about them, but you don't know what else you might have done. For instance, you have very little idea what other people's essays are like and what comments they get back. Perhaps you are told your essay ought to be ‘more structured’ or ‘less subjectiveâ€
1.3.1 What evidence are we reading? Social scientists use particular methods to gather qualitative evidence, from observation to interview, but they also use autobiographical accounts, journalism, and other documentary material to flesh out and add meaning to statistics. As with reading numbers, reading textual evidence requires us to practise, to set time aside to learn how to do it, and to understand the conventions of writing which operate in the different forms of writing we encounter. One of the main pr
1.2.7 Summary What we must do to understand numbers as they are used as evidence in social science is to practise and so become familiar with them, and to understand the conventions which determine how they are used. Sets of numerical data can be presented in many ways, as tables, bar charts, pie charts or line graphs. These are just different ways of trying to represent or make a picture of numbers. Which is used is largely a matter of which best shows
1.2.6 Stage 4: Extracting the information When you are absolutely sure that you know what the diagram or table is all about, start to look for patterns, for discrepancies, for peaks and troughs, for anything unusual. Diagrams and tables are highly patterned information, and they often tell a relatively simple story underneath. Don't get bogged down in the relationship between individual numbers, but look to see whether one relationship is like another, or whether one set of numbers stands out significantly from the rest. Introduction Social scientists collect evidence to support their claims and theories in different ways. Such evidence is crucial to the practice of social science and to the production of social scientific knowledge. You may be aware of the idea of active reading, which is about reading with the aim of understanding and grasping something: a definition, an argument, a piece of evidence. What that suggests is that active reading is about reading and thinking at the same time. In References 3.2 Consciousness of the body Phenomenological theorists distinguish between the subjective body (as lived and experienced) and the objective body (as observed and scientifically investigated). These are not two different bodies as such (phenomenologists pride themselves on overcoming dualisms!); rather they are different facets of our experience and consciousness. The body-subject, or subjective body, is the body-as-it-is-lived. I do not simply possess a body; I am my body (Merleau-Ponty, 1962 References 3.1 Introduction The binding of features emerges as being a very significant process when displays are brief, because there is so little time in which to unite them. With normal viewing, such as when you examine the letters and words on this page, it is not obvious to introspection that binding is taking place. However, if, as explained above, it is a necessary precursor to conscious awareness, the process must also occur when we examine long-lived visual displays. Researchers have attempted to demonstrate th 2.6 Summary of Section 2 The results of the visual attention experiments we have considered can be interpreted as follows. Attention can be directed selectively towards different areas of the visual field, without the need to re-focus. The inability to report much detail from brief, masked visual displays appears to be linked to the need to assemble the various information components. The visual information is captured in parallel, but assemb 2.5 Masking and attention Before I summarise the material in this section, and we move on to consider attentional processes with clearly-seen displays, it would be appropriate to consider the relevance of the masking studies to the issue of attention. We began the whole subject by enquiring about the fate of material which was, in principle, available for processing, but happened not to be at the focus of attention. Somehow we have moved into a different enquiry, concerning the fate of material that a participant was 2.4 Rapid serial visual presentation It has been known for a long time that backward masking can act in one of two ways: integration and interruption (Turvey, 1973). When the SOA between target and mask is very short, integration occurs; that is, the two items are perceived as one, with the result that the target is difficult to report, just as when one word is written over another. Of more interest is masking by interruption, which is the type we have been considering in the previous section. It occurs at longer S 1.1 Introduction To cover some of the concept of attention (we have only a unit, and there are whole books on the subject) I shall follow an approximately historical sequence, showing how generations of psychologists have tackled the issues and gradually refined and developed their theories. You will discover that initially there seemed to them to be only one role for attention, but that gradually it has been implicated in an ever-widening range of mental processes. As we work through the subject, two basic i Introduction For many of us the concept of attention may have rather negative connotations. At school we were told to pay attention, making us all too aware that it was not possible to listen to the teacher while at the same time being lost in more interesting thoughts. Neither does it seem possible to listen effectively to two different things at the same time. How many parents with young children would love to be able to do that! One could be excused for feeling that evolution has let us down by failing References 2.7 Reflecting on explanations of ‘abnormal’ development: the case of dyslexia We can draw the following general conclusions about cognitive and biological explanations of abnormality from the material presented above. Both cognitive and biological accounts of dyslexia are offered as theories which explain the behavioural difficulties that are observed. While some theories may dominate accounts of a given condition (e.g. the phonological deficit hypothesis), and may result in influencing the nature of interventions, they are sti 2.3.4 Lateralisation It has long been suspected that unusual patterns of cerebral lateralisation (i.e. the ‘division of labour’ between left and right hemispheres of the brain) may have some connection with dyslexia. Early researchers noticed an apparent excess of left-handedness in children with specific reading difficulties (and their relatives). However, most dyslexic people are in fact right-handed, and most left-handed people are not dyslexic. Nonetheless, large-scale analyses of the research find 3.6 Different paradigms and different methods These different methods alert us to the fact that psychology is not just one enterprise, but a series of interlocking enterprises in which psychologists have different views about the best ways to try to understand or explain people and their behaviour and experience. These are arguments about epistemology; that is, what questions to ask, what sort of evidence to look for, what sort of criteria to use to evaluate explanations, and what sort of methods to use. All knowledge and al 2.3.2 Inner experiences A second kind of data is people's inner experiences, including their feelings, beliefs and motives. These cannot be directly seen from the outside; they remain private unless freely spoken about or expressed in some other way. Examples of these inner experiences include feelings, thoughts, images, representations, dreams, fantasies, beliefs and motivations or reasons. These are only accessible to others via verbal or written reports or as inferred from behaviours such as non-verbal communicat
