The Psychologist, May 2011

psychologistthe

may 2011vol 24 no 5

The menopauseBeverley Ayers, Mark Forshawand Myra Hunter look at lessonslearned from a global outlook

‘they flash upon that inward eye’ 340teaching happiness 344interview with Alan Baddeley 354creativity in the curriculum 356

£5 or free to members of The British Psychological Society

letters 322big picture centre

careers 380looking back 392

Incorporating Psychologist Appointments

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vol 24 no 5 may 2011

Managing Editor Jon SuttonAssistant EditorPeter Dillon-Hooper Production Mike Thompson Staff journalistChristian Jarrett Editorial Assistants Debbie JamesBen Watson

The Psychologist and Digest PolicyCommitteeDavid Lavallee (Chair),Nik Chmiel, OliviaCraig, Helen Galliard,Jeremy Horwood,Catherine Loveday,Stephen McGlynn,Sheelagh Strawbridge,Henck van Bilsen,Peter Wright, andAssociate Editors

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© Copyright for all published material is heldby The British Psychological Society, unlessspecifically stated otherwise. Authors,illustrators and photographers may use theirown material elsewhere after publicationwithout permission. The Society asks that thefollowing note be included in any such use:‘First published in The Psychologist, vol. no. anddate. Published by The British PsychologicalSociety – see www.thepsychologist.org.uk.’ Asthe Society is a party to the Copyright LicensingAgency (CLA) agreement, articles in ThePsychologist may be photocopied by licensedinstitutional libraries for academic/teachingpurposes. No permission is required.Permission is required and a reasonable feecharged for commercial use of articles by athird party. Please apply to the Society inwriting. The publishers have endeavoured totrace the copyright holders of all illustrations inthis publication. If we have unwittingly infringedcopyright, we will be pleased, on being satisfiedas to the owner’s title, to pay an appropriate fee.

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Welcome to The Psychologist, the monthly publication of The British PsychologicalSociety. It provides a forum for communication, discussion and controversy among allmembers of the Society, and aims to fulfil the main object of the Royal Charter, ‘to promote the advancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pure and applied’. It is supported by www.thepsychologist.org.uk, where you can view this month’s issue,search the archive, listen, debate, contribute, subscribe, advertise, and more.

Associate Editors Articles Vaughan Bell, Kate Cavanagh, HarrietGross, Marc Jones, Rebecca Knibb, Charlie Lewis,Wendy Morgan, Tom Stafford, Miles Thomas,Monica Whitty, Barry Winter

Conferences Sarah Haywood

International Nigel Foreman, Asifa Majid

Interviews Nigel Hunt, Lance Workman

History of Psychology Julie Perks

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may 2011vol 24 no 5

The menopausal woman may not be ‘an unstable oestrogen starved’woman responsible for ‘untoldmisery’ as sixties gynaecologistRobert Wilson would have had usbelieve. But viewed through the lensof Western biomedical science, ‘thechange’ is still a time of pooremotional and physical health. Yetrural Greek women and those in theMayan culture report few problemsduring the menopause transition. As Beverley Ayers, Mark Forshawand Myra Hunter say on p.348,between biological and culturalunderstandings of menopause thereis a gulf that psychologists are wellplaced to explore.

Elsewhere, allow me to highlighttwo relatively new additions to ThePsychologist which I feel are goingfrom strength to strength. Our ‘Bigpicture’ centrespread is a strikingimage on some interesting work: I hope it will adorn psychologists’walls across the land. ‘Looking back’(p.392) is a fascinating detectivestory on the hunt for ‘Little Albert’,one of psychology’s most enduringmysteries; and there’s plenty of goodnews for members in ‘Society’.Happy reading, and tweet yourthoughts on the issue @psychmag.

Dr Jon Sutton

THE ISSUE

‘They flash upon that inward eye’Emily A. Holmes, Ella L. James, SimonE. Blackwell and Susie Hales look atmental imagery in the lab and the clinic

Teaching happiness – A brave newworld?Maggi Evans on well-being initiativesand whose vision is being pushed

The memory manAlan Baddeley talks to Lance Workmanabout Bertrand Russell, Neanderthalsand working memory

Creativity in the curriculumDominic Upton and Douglas A.Bernstein offer a framework

letters 322diagnostic dangers; census and anti-cuts march; Eysenck; and more

media 336

340

344

356

354

controversy over unusual teaching methods, with Mark Sergeant

society 366a day in the life of the Society President;more online journals for members;Society Twitter feeds; publicengagement grants; research interestsdatabase; new Society website; well-being consultation; and more

380

340

348

356

Jamie Durrance talks about her work at Rowan House; Kirsty Golden gives a view of the Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner role; and all the latest vacancies

looking back 392

new voices 390

a seven-year search for psychology’s lost boy, Little Albert, by Hall P. Beck, with Gary Irons

Marc Smith asks whether A-level psychology fails both boys and the discipline in the latest of our articles by first-time Psychologist authors

one on one 396…with Sam Cartwright-Hatton

news and digest 328expert witness immunity lost; nappy curriculum; kids behaving badly; regrets;Psychology for All report; nuggets from the Society’s Research Digest; and more

book reviews 362a Rough Guide to Psychology from ThePsychologist journalist and ResearchDigest editor; media and youth;psychometric theory; and more

careers and psychologist appointments

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The menopause Beverley N. Ayers, Mark J.Forshaw and Myra S. Hunterlook at lessons learned from a global outlook

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328 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

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‘Nappy curriculum’ softened

Expert witnesses will no longer beimmune from litigation brought againstthem in civil courts by their clients. Thechange in law follows a UK SupremeCourt decision, announced in March,which was triggered by a case involvinga clinical psychologist.

A man struck and injured by a car –the appellant – had been diagnosed assuffering PTSD by his psychologist,liability had been accepted by the driver,and damages were due to be awarded.However, the psychologist subsequentlysigned a joint agreement with the driver’spsychiatrist, who was acting as an expertfor the defence, in which they bothagreed the man had exaggerated hissymptoms – he therefore receivedsignificantly reduced damages. Becauseof this, the appellant attempted to suehis psychologist for negligence – a casethat was thrown out because of expertwitness immunity. The man appealed,the case went to the Supreme Court, andthe law has now been changed.

Professor Graham Davies of theUniversity of Leicester is on the BritishPsychological Society’s Advisory Groupon Expert Witnesses. ‘This narrowdecision by the Supreme Court removesat a stroke the 400-year-old immunitywhich experts haveenjoyed in our courts,’he told us. ‘Though theexpert in the caseappeared clearly atfault in ignoring thecontent of their ownreport in signing up to a joint report, thewholesale removal of immunity runs a serious risk thatpsychologists and otherexperts could be thesubject of formalcomplaints or time-consuming litigation bydisappointed clients, as

emphasised by the minority opinion on the court.’

In related news, the LawCommission has publishedrecommendations and a draft Bill

Expert witness immunity lost

A review of the Early YearsFoundation Stage (EYFS,nicknamed the ‘nappycurriculum’), commissionedby the Coalition governmentlast summer, hasrecommended that the schemebe radically slimmed downand made more flexible.

The EYFS was launched by the previous government in September 2008, setting outa compulsory framework fornursery staff and childminders to assess thedevelopment of youngchildren in England aged up to five years. With a 112-pageguidance document and 69developmental milestones,critics argued the scheme wasintrusive and overlycomplicated.

The vast majority ofparents and professionalssurveyed for the new review in fact said the EYFS wassuccessful, but 30 per cent also

said there was too muchpaperwork andbureaucracy.

Led by Dame ClareTickell, Chief Executive of Action for Children, the review suggestsrevising down the numberof early learning goals tojust 17, and proposes anew focus on three primeareas: personal, social andemotional development;communication andlanguage; and physicaldevelopment.

‘It has been apparent fromthe start of the review that theEYFS has had a positiveoverall impact on children inearly years settings,’ Tickellsaid, but she added: ‘Thecurrent EYFS is cumbersome,repetitive and unnecessarilybureaucratic. And it isn’t doingenough to engage parents intheir child’s development or tomake sure children are starting

school with the basic skillsthey need to be ready to learn.’

Professor Trisha Maynard,Director of the Centre forResearch into Children,Families and Communities at Canterbury Christ ChurchUniversity, told us she broadly welcomed the newrecommendations, particularlythe recommendation for theguidance to be simplified sothat it is accessible to all those

who work with children. ‘Iwelcome, also, the recognitionof the vital role played byparents and carers as partnersin young children’s learning;the significance of youngchildren’s personal, social andemotional development; theappropriateness of a play-based approach to learning;and the importance of highlyqualified staff who, sensitivelyand skilfully, are able to extend

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regarding the admissibility of expertevidence in courts in England andWales. These developments follow a consultation that started in 2009, to which the BPS was a contributor.

The main thrust of the draft Bill isthat a new test should be established toensure that expert evidence is reliableand impartial. According to Professor

Davies, specificfeatures of the draftBill consistent withthe Society’ssubmission includea recommendationthat judges shouldbe more proactivein ensuring thatexpert witnessesare not lured awayfrom their areas ofexpertise undercross-examination,and that judgesshould be givennew powers toconsult withexternal experts to help them

determine whetherexpert evidence is reliable or not.

Professor Jane Ireland, head of theBPS Advisory Group on ExpertWitnesses, said the draft Bill is verywelcome, especially since the Englishlegal system has lagged behind other

countries on this issue. ‘If the Bill comesto fruition as it is hoped, then it will forthe first time more clearly assist judgesin what makes good “psychologicalscience” versus either “specialisedknowledge” or “junk science”,’ saidIreland, who holds positions at theUniversity of Central Lancashire, MerseyCare NHS Trust High Security and ÅboAkademi University, Finland. ‘The latter[junk science] has unfortunately enjoyedsome presence in the admissibility ofevidence from experts. More attention iscertainly being given to the admissibilityand quality of expert evidence, with thejudiciary also currently funding a studyinto the quality of expert psychologicalassessments.’

What about the implications forSociety members who work as expertwitnesses? ‘Experts need to keep a sharpfocus on the importance of this Bill anduse it to assess the quality of themeasures that they are applying in Courtso that they do not mislead the Courtinto a judgment that is later appealed ormay lead to the expert beingdisciplined,’ Ireland advised. ‘Expertscarry considerable weight in a numberof cases and their methods will at last beopen to more detailed scrutiny prior toits admission.’ CJI Access the draft Bill at

tinyurl.com/3rfv3qp; further informationon the Supreme Court decision attinyurl.com/3e8ccvz


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Comenius ethos lives onBritish Psychological Societymember and Spearman Medalwinner Dr Emily Holmes hasbeen selected as one of the twowinners of the Comenius EarlyCareer Psychologist Award 2011.

The award was given to theEuropean Federation ofPsychologists’ Associations(EFPA) by the Union ofPsychologists’ Associations of theCzech Republic, to be awarded toa young psychologist fromEurope who has made an original contributionto psychology as a science and profession.

The selection committee noted: ‘Dr Holmesis one of the foremost researchers in trauma,cognitive and emotional processing, andmemory… Her distinctive theoreticalcontribution has been to link the limited fieldof imagery and cognitive psychology to the rich

clinical and experiential material ofemotional memories followingtrauma.’

Dr Holmes told The Psychologist:‘I am very honoured to receive thisaward from the European Federationof Psychologists’ Associations and forthe support of the BPS. It comes as a real encouragement for my team’sresearch in experimental

psychopathology. Interestingly,Comenius was a theorist and

practitioner from the 1600s in the area ofeducation research and learning. Our workseeking to better understand and modifypsychopathology embraces “learning” in thedomain of emotional processes, and it isexciting to see that the ethos of combiningtheory and practice is still strong four centurieson!’ JSI See p.340 for an article from Dr Holmes

MEMORY CLINIC PRIZE The Croydon Memory Clinic, part of SouthLondon and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust(SLaM), has won an award for the bestevidence-based psychosocial intervention forpeople with dementia and their caregivers.The service’s clinical director Professor SubeBanerjee was presented with the award atthe Annual International Conference ofAlzheimer's Disease International (ADI) heldin Toronto in March. The Clinic involves familymembers in its rapid assessment anddiagnosis and also provides support andadvice to patients and their carers. SLaMhave also just launched a new DevelopmentalNeuropsychological Service for children,which will be accepting a wide range ofreferrals including for neurodevelopmentaldisorders like ADHD, acquired brain injurycases, and memory, attention and languageproblems with an unknown cause. CJ

PUT YOURSELF ON THESCIENCE MAPThe Science Council is calling people who are using science, maths, engineering ortechnology as the foundation for their workor career to come out and help them showjust how much science is used every day allover the UK, and the amazing range ofdifferent jobs there are out there. You can putyourself on the ‘Hidden Science Map’ atwww.hiddensciencemap.org, launched aspart of 2011 National Science andEngineering Week.

young children’s play, thinkingand understanding,’ she said.

However, Maynard, who ischair of the Association forthe Professional Developmentof Early Years Educators, alsohad some concerns –particularly in relation toassessment being tied to earlylearning goals anddevelopmental milestones,albeit that the list of these hasbeen slimmed down. ‘This islikely to constrainpractitioners’ thinking andpractice in a way that a focuson young children’s interestsand capabilities would not,’she said. ‘Importantly, it doesnot capture the complex andnon-linear nature of youngchildren’s development andlearning.’ CJI Access the review:

tinyurl.com/6xcbka7


‘Three years ago, my site manager was put on the Christmasparty list of the local glaziers’, said Geoff Allen, Headteacher at Westfield School in Bucks. ‘That’s not a joke. I had to dosomething – I could not watch any more of my staff beingseriously injured. But this stuff works, it really works.’

Allen was speaking at ‘Kids behaving badly: Howneuroscience can help’, an event in Whitehall organised by the Learning Skills Foundation and Centre for EducationalNeuroscience. The two bodies are working together to raise theprofile of research and provide a bridge to practical application,and it was heartening to hear such positive reactions from thoseon the ‘front line’.

The first talk had come from Essi Viding, Reader inDevelopmental Psychopathology at University College Londonand the Centre for Educational Neuroscience. She showed howcharting the neurocognitive profile of different subtypes ofchildren with antisocial behaviour may give important clues forintervention. Of particular interest are those children displayingcallous-unemotional (CU) traits: a lack of empathy and remorse,and a shallow and insincere affect. Antisocial children who donot display CU traits may be impulsive, learn from ‘time out’anger management training and are heavily influenced byparenting style. But CU kids are more premeditated, severe andpersistent in their antisocial behaviour, show little link toparenting style and do not benefit from ‘time out’. As Geoff Allenwould say later, ‘a few years ago our approaches were often notmore subtle than a chapter in a Dickens novel – if you are niceto people they’ll be nice to you. But these children don’t give a monkey’s. They don’t want a reciprocal relationship, they wantto be in control. We learnt not to use those approaches.’

So what’s going on in the brains of these children? We mighthave known that the pesky amygdala would be implicated: itseems to be getting a bad press in all sorts of areas these days.

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Lost loves and unfulfilling relationshipshave come top of the list in a US survey ofpeople’s regrets. Women were particularlylikely to mention romantic regrets; menmore often focused on career or education

(Social Psychologicaland Personality Science:tinyurl.com/436u55d).

Mike Morrison atthe University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign and Neal

Roese at NorthwesternUniversity used random

telephone dialling to interview arepresentative sample of 370 adults (207women). A finding that contrasted withearlier research, nearly all of whichdepended on student samples, was that

regrets about things done and regretsabout missed opportunities were equallyprevalent, rather than the former beingcited more often. Regrets involvinginaction tended to be longer-lasting butregrets involving actions were moreintense.

Another novel detail was that people’sstated regrets were associated with theirlife circumstances – for example,participants who lacked a highereducation or a romantic relationshiptended to have regrets in those areas.Also, those with high levels of educationhad the most career-related regrets.‘Apparently, the more education obtained,the more acute may be the sensitivity toaspiration and fulfilment,’ the researcherssaid. CJ

Kids behaving badlyJon Sutton reports from Whitehall

TROUBLESOME TEENSResearchers at the University of Cambridge have performed thelargest ever study to look at the brain structure of teenagersdiagnosed with conduct disorder (American Journal of Psychiatry:tinyurl.com/63exz4l).

Graeme Fairchild and colleagues at the University of Cambridgescanned the brains of 65 male teenagers (average age 18 years) witha conduct disorder diagnosis and 27 male, age-matched teenagecontrols. The results, published online in March, found reducedamygdala volume in teenagers with conduct disorder, but nodifferences in brain structure according to age of onset of thedisorder.

The amygdala result matches findings using functional brainscans and the presentation of fearful faces (see ‘Kids behaving badly’report), but the lack of correlations between brain structure and ageof onset undermines a popular theory in the field (the developmentaltaxonomic theory), which proposes the condition consists of twosubtypes – an early-onset version associated with neuralabnormalities, and a later-onset version triggered by peer influence.

The study also uncovered a correlation between insula volumeand severity of conduct disorder. Given previous research on thefunction of the insula, this anomaly is possibly associated with a diminished ability to process other people’s emotions and aninsensitivity to punishment. Reduced volume was also observed in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, involved in executive control andreasoning about other people’s mental states.

In contrast to previous research, no correlation was observedbetween amygdala volume and callous/unemotional traits. But therewas a positive correlation between these traits and increased volumeof caudate nucleus and ventral striatum – perhaps reflecting agreater sensitivity to reward in these teenagers.

‘Our results…support the proposal that both forms of conductdisorder [early- and later-onset] may stem from dysfunction in neuralcircuits involved in emotion processing, contrary to the developmentaltaxonomic theory,’ the researchers said. CJ

Not too few to mention REGULATION PLANS Current plans for the statutory regulation of counselling and psychotherapy by theHealth Professions Council – the same bodythat regulates practitioner psychologists –are in doubt following the publication of aDepartment of Health paper in February.

The Command Paper EnablingExcellence Autonomy and Accountability forHealthcare Workers, Social Workers andSocial Care Workers outlines the CoalitionGovernment’s plans to reduce the costs ofregulation in health and social care,including devolving greater autonomy toexisting regulators, increasing theiraccountability, and encouraging mergers.The document also proposes thatprofessions not yet under statutoryregulation should instead be encouraged to form voluntary registers.



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Viding and colleagues,as well as other researchgroups, have foundlower amygdala activityto fearful emotionalfaces in adolescents withCU traits, as comparedwith healthy comparisonadolescents and thosewith ADHD. Childrenwith high levels of CUalso focus less on thecritical eye region when they process fear – could this be at theroot of their problems with emotional reactivity? Other researchlooked at the prefrontal cortex, finding abnormal activity whenpunished during a trial, along with increased grey mattersuggestive of a maturational delay. All of this research suggests a neural basis for why antisocial children with CU lack empathyfor others’ distress, make poor behavioural choices and havedifficulty learning from their mistakes. Importantly, it leads to a very different intervention approach compared with thattraditionally used with emotional behaviour disordered children,becoming more about instant rewards for good behaviour –a focus on what good behaviour ‘gets the child’ – and less aboutrelying on empathy.

Next up was Norah Frederickson, Professor of EducationalPsychology at UCL and CEN, and Senior EducationalPsychologist for Buckinghamshire County Council. She pointedto a new Green Paper Support and Aspiration: A New Approach toSpecial Educational Needs and Disability, which states: ‘We wantto ensure that assessments of SEN and any assessments ofchildren displaying challenging behaviour, by any professional,identify the root causes of the behaviour rather than focus on the

symptoms.’ So are the characteristics associatedwith CU traits considered in planning bullyingprevention and intervention programmes? Notaccording to Frederickson. Those seeking to utilise awareness of the distress caused and engageempathy are doomed to fail with CU children,‘zero tolerance’ sanctions have little impact onthose who are unable to learn from punishment,and skills training runs the risk of giving skilled

social manipulators further ammunition. Surveillance and incentives, said Frederickson,

have the best chance with CU children. In WestfieldPrimary, staff trained by educational psychologist Laura Warrenand led by senior teacher Tara Deakes have introduced strategiesthat include short targets for good behaviour with immediaterewards; ‘emotional thermometers’ to help children recognise theimpact of their emotions on their body and readiness to term;and SMART thought chains to encourage accurate, helpful andsocially desirable cognitions. Externalising problems (conduct,aggression, hyperactivity) are down significantly in the high CUgroup.

For anyone feeling uncomfortable about a focus on brain and biology, discussant Uta Frith (Institute of CognitiveNeuroscience) had a simple and confident message: ‘We do muchbetter for some children in recognising the biological bases oftheir behaviour.’ And from Geoff Allen’s passionate perspective,befitting a headteacher: ‘What this team has done has allowed meto employ another teacher rather than replacing windows.’

IN DOUBT‘A system of assured

voluntary registration is a moreproportionate way of balancingthe desire to drive up thequality of the workforce withthe Coalition Government’sintention to avoid introducingregulation with its associatedcosts wherever possible,’ theCommand Paper says.

In a joint statement, theBritish Psychoanalytic Council(BPC) and the UK Council forPsychotherapy (UKCP)welcomed the new proposals:‘BPC and UKCP now wish towork with CHRE [the Council for Healthcare RegulatoryExcellence, the body which will

accredit voluntary registers] tohelp develop a robust, credibleand flexible regulatoryframework based on thegovernment’s proposals forassured voluntary registration.’

However, the CommandPaper does also say that ‘thereare limitations to the model ofassurance for some groups ofworkers and, particularly forself-employed practitioners,there may be no team oremployer present… In a limitednumber of cases therefore,statutory regulation may be the only way of effectivelymitigating against risks topeople using services…’ CJ

THE GUANTANAMO WAYThere was confusion last month over whether or not Larry James –the army psychologist who, it is alleged, failed to intervene toprevent abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – had beenappointed to a White House task force called ‘Enhancing thePsychological Well-Being of The Military Family’. It was reported inMarch that James, now based at Wright State University, claimed ina recent e-mail circular that he’d been appointed by Michelle Obamato the task force and would be meeting with her and others at theWhite House. According to the respected online magazine Salon,however, the White House made contact to deny that James hadbeen appointed, and to clarify that he would not be attending theWhite House meeting.

In a related development in April, a New York court heard thecase against another army psychologist, Dr John Leso, who standsaccused of designing abusive interrogation techniques used atGuantanamo. The case arrived at the court at the request of the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Centre for Justice andAccountability, after the New York State Office of ProfessionalDiscipline chose not to investigate the complaints made againstLeso, stating that incidents at Guantanamo were beyond its remit. As we went to press, the judge Saliann Scarpulla had yet to rule. The Wall Street Journal reported that she empathised with thehuman rights advocates but also quoted her as saying she wasunsure ‘the judicial process is the right way to do this’. CJ


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While there may have been a timewhen psychologists preferred to

keep the mysterious secrets of the mind to themselves, the current climate is quitethe opposite, with psychologists beingcalled on to comment on anything fromthe meaning of Katie Price’sbody language to thedevastating psychologicaleffects of a natural disaster.With funding cuts allaround us and anincreasing emphasis onimpact, there has neverbeen a time when publicengagement withpsychology has felt so vitalto the health anddevelopment of ourprofession. It was thereforevery exciting to see that thesecond Psychology For All

event was once again a sell-out. As GerryMulhern explained in his welcomingaddress, this is our chance to share ourscience with the general public and tostimulate an interest and awareness in themany ways in which psychology

contributes to society.

Luck Richard Wiseman kickedoff his keynote addresswith a simple but slicklydelivered magic trick,generating an enthusiasticapplause accompanied by akind of nervous buzz. ‘Ah, Ican smell your disbelief!’,Wiseman quipped but went on to reassure us that wewere right to be sceptical

because what we see in our

mind’s eye is often not what’s really there.He explained that it was a chance sight ofan illusion in a psychology textbook thatconvinced him in his teens he wanted tolearn more about how to unpack themysteries of perception. Wisemancontinues to be intrigued and fascinatedby the way in which context can fool ourbrain, and he illustrated this with an arrayof brilliant and entertaining illusions anda little more magic.

What did this have to do with ‘TheLuck Factor’ – the title of his talk? Well,according to Wiseman, a very similarperceptual mechanism is behind whysome of us consider ourselves lucky andsome unlucky. Again, context iseverything. Our notion of whether we’relucky or unlucky, says Wiseman, is all todo with where our attentional spotlightlies, the extent to which we spotopportunities and the context in

Sharing the secrets of the mindCatherine Loveday (University of Westminster) reports from ‘Psychology For All’, the Society’s public engagement event organised by the BPS London and Home Counties Branch

How trusting are you? Ros Searle and Volker Patent (Open University)asked the audience to examine their own propensity for trust, using apsychometric tool. They went on to facilitate an assessment of mutualtrust among delegates and to show how this might be experienced inreal-life scenarios, such as when changing jobs.

Presenting a workshop on ‘The secret life of happy and productiveworkplaces’, Sarah Lewis asked the audience to think back to theaspects of the best place they had ever worked, and discuss this inpairs. Her own take gave 10 aspects that make for positive and happyworkplaces, including authentic leaders, reward-rich environmentsand using our strengths.

Nash Popovic, an author, counsellor and lecturer at the Universityof East London, led an engaging workshop about ‘pub psychology’, an approach based on ideas from coaching psychology, positivepsychology and the personal synthesis model. Pub psychology startedafter the Psychology for All conference in 2009 and involves weeklydrop-in sessions in a pub focusing on a different subject each week, for example self-esteem, worrying or relationships. Popovic gave us a glimpse into the sessions by giving an entertaining example of a taskin a session based on lying.

The scope and aims of neuropsychology were the subject ofCatherine Loveday and Trudi Edginton’s (University of Westminster)fascinating lecture on how brain injury can help us to understand themechanics of the mind. Loveday used a series of well-known historicalexamples, such as Paul Broca’s patient ‘Tan’ and Phineas Gage, toshow early evidence of brain modularity: the notion that different areasof the brain have specific functions. These classic case studiesprovided a foundation for Loveday to explain our more contemporaryunderstanding of the links between structure and function, but shealso used examples from her own practice to elaborate on this and toraise awareness of the widespread causes and day-to-day effects of

brain injury. Loveday concluded on a hopeful note with some insightinto current approaches for rehabilitation, including reference to herown work with SenseCam, a camera that automatically takes regularpictures that can later help to trigger episodic memories [seeFebruary’s ‘Big picture’].

Loveday took to the podium again after lunch with a presentationthat outlined the biological and cognitive changes that happen to thebrain as it ages and some of the ways in which we can protect againstthis. While it is true that many neurons die or become dysfunctional,the good news, Loveday pointed out, is that the brain is capable of‘plasticity’, a remodelling of synaptic connections and even growth ofsome new neurons, throughout life and on into old age. She explainedthat although some cognitive decline is inevitable, there are manyabilities that are spared and continue to grow, most notably those thatare used the most. Physical health and regular exercise were cited asgood ways to keep the brain and mind in good shape, along withpsychological well-being. She also explained that keeping the mindactive and employing specific cognitive strategies can all minimise orreverse the effects of age.

Miles Thomas gave an interesting and engaging presentation usingpsychology to describe the experience of wine. Thomas was able toclearly give a context and history of wine, bringing psychologicaltheories and models to the world of wine. Studies were described thathave shown how consumers are primed to enjoy a product more by itbeing described as more expensive and how fMRI scanning has beenused to show this is a physiological effect. He recognised that winebuying can be a self-conscious experience and gave some useful tipson wine tasting and buying which were well received by the audience.

Louise MarshallBPS London and Home Counties Committee Member

Educational Psychologist, Southend-on-Sea

Louise Marshall with more from Psychology For All

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which we place events that happen to us.A person caught in a raid and shot in thearm might consider themselves lucky tohave only been shot in the arm ratherthan the heart, while a £4m lottery winnerthat Wiseman interviewed during hisresearch considered himself unluckybecause he’d had to split the £8m prizewith another winner! This highlyentertaining and informative lectureclosed with Wiseman providing practicalsuggestions on how to make our ownluck.

Love and lustWiseman was followed in the mainauditorium by Lisa Matthewman, whoattempted to unravel the mysteries of loveand lust. She began by defining love anddebunking some of the love myths beforemoving on to explain Sternberg’s theorythat love is a combination of intimacy,passion and commitment.

Matthewman addressed the role of hormones and neurotransmitters,describing these as the ‘love brigade’ that underlie many of the emotional and physical aspects of love and lust. Sheexplained how these fluctuate throughoutthe days, weeks, months and evendecades, suggesting that each periodbrings its own rewards and challenges in terms of love-making. The lectureconcluded with a discussion around thecompatability of love and sexual stylesand an illustration of how this can feedinto relationship coaching.

StressRona Moss-Morris gave an excellentbalanced and informed overview of therole that stress plays in illness, explaininghow social and psychological factorsinfluence our physiology via theautonomic nervous system andhypothalamic pituitary axis. She outlineda number of landmark studies in the area,

showing that daily hasslesand longer-term stressors, aswell as perceived stress, eachinfluence different aspects ofillness development andrecovery.

Moss-Morris concludedon a positive note, suggestingthat management of stressand social support can bothprovide significant buffers.

Body languageThe event closed with Geoff

Beattie’s keynote address ‘Getthe edge: Understanding the

body’s little secrets’, which was so popularthat a video link to a second auditoriumhad to be activated. Beattie began bychallenging some of the morestereotypical ways of reading bodylanguage, such as those presented byAllan Pease in his book Body Language(1991). He used his own research to arguethat bodily communication cannot beeasily interpreted from static picturesbecause the real meaning lies in thedynamics and micro-expressions, thesmall fleeting changes. For example, a genuine smile has bilateral symmetrywith gradual onset and a slow fade; a fakesmile tends to be asymmetrical and tofade abruptly. A fascinating clip of GordonBrown ‘smiling’ at Tony Blairdemonstrated this perfectly and alsoillustrated Brown’s use of ‘self-adaptors’ –small strokes to the face that are used asself-comforting gestures.

Beattie also stunned the audience byshowing us how the change in use of self-adaptors revealed the point at whichCharles Ingram began to allegedly cheaton Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

Beattie went on to discuss his more recent interest in hand and arm movements as an integral part ofcommunication, showing us that speechand gesture are significantly morepowerful in combination than either on their own. Again he used clips toelegantly demonstrate how subtledifferences in use of gesture can give awaylying behaviour and how unnatural useof gesture in advertisements makes usdistrust the actor or character.

Beattie rounded off this verycompelling lecture by showing thatconsistency between speech and gesturesupports our memory of what has beencommunicated, a finding that has manyapplications.

All in all, a great day for the 450attendees. For another view, see the boxon the opposite page.

info For more, see www.bps.org.uk/funds

Funding bodies should e-mail news toElizabeth Beech on [email protected] forpossible inclusion

FUNDING NEWSThe MRC invites proposals for high-quality,innovative medical research that increasesthe current knowledge base of CFS/ME.Areas that may be of particular relevance to psychology include cognitive symptoms –including short-term memory and thinking,difficulties with concentration and attentionspan and impaired information processing;fatigue; pain and sleep disorders. Proposalsmust involve partnerships between CFS/MEresearchers and leading investigatorsworking in relevant areas that are new to theCFS/ME field. Closing date: 7 June 2011. I http://bit.ly/gLchDo

The second round of the Digging into Data Challenge has been launched. Thischallenges researchers to think about thechanging nature of research methods andhow to use advanced computation anddigitised scientific resources to expand howresearch is undertaken. The first roundcreated enormous interest in theinternational research community and led to eight cutting-edge projects being funded.Four additional funders have joined theChallenge for round two, including researchbodies in the US, UK, Netherlands andCanada. Applications deadline:16 June 2011.I http://bit.ly/hVz7zt

The European Commission is offeringInternational Outgoing Fellowships forCareer Development, designed to giveEuropean researchers the opportunity to be trained and acquire new knowledge in a high-level organisation active in researchoutside Europe. Closing date: 22 June 2011.I http://bit.ly/fKLAyk

Breast Cancer Campaign has fundingavailable for innovative, world-class researchin the UK and Ireland. Applications in allaspects of breast cancer research arewelcome, included prevention – the impact of diet and lifestyle on risk, psychosocialsciences and palliative care. Project grantsprovide funding of up to £65K for researchproposals of relevance to breast cancer thatexpect to lead to a significant advance ofunderstanding of breast cancer and itsimpact. PhD studentships are alsoavailable – application for these should bemade by the potential supervisor. Closingdate for both schemes is 1 July 2011. I http://bit.ly/eEsuvR

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Imagine you’re in a room withfour people, one is lip-snarlingangry, the others are calm.Could the angry individualactually be the more rationaldecision maker? A new studysuggests so, because they’ll beless prone to the confirmationbias – our tendency to seek outinformation that supports ourexisting views.

Maia Young and hercolleagues had 97 undergradstake part in what they thoughtwere two separate experiments.The first involved them eitherrecalling and writing about atime they’d been exceptionallyangry (this was designed tomake them angry), or a timethey’d been sad, or aboutmundane events.

Next, all the participantsread an introduction to thedebate about whether hands-free kits make speaking on amobile phone while driving anysafer. All participants had beenchosen because pre-study theybelieved that they do. They werethen presented with one-sentence summaries of eightarticles, either for or against thehands-free idea. Theparticipants had to choose fiveof these articles to read in full.

Which participants tended to choose to read more articlescritical of hands-free kits andtherefore contrary to their ownposition? It was those who’dearlier been made to feel angry.What’s more, when theparticipants’ attitudes were re-tested at the study end, it wasthe angry participants who’dshifted more from their originalposition on the debate.

These findings weresupported in a follow-up duringthe 2008 presidential election.Once again, participantsprovoked into feeling angrytended to choose to readarticles that ran counter to their original position (be thatfavouring Obama or McCain).Another detail was that thiseffect of anger was entirelyexplained by what theresearchers called a ‘movingagainst’ tendency, measured byparticipants’ agreement, afterthe anger induction, withstatements like ‘I wanted toassault something or someone’.

Young and her team saidtheir results are an example of anger leading to a cognitivepattern characterised by lessbias. ‘Although the hypothesisdisconfirming behaviour thatanger produces may well be anaggressive act, meant to moveor fight against the opposition’sopinion,’ they said, ‘its result isto provide those who feel angrywith better information.’

The researchers concededthat it’s unrealistic to makepeople angry as a way toimprove their decision making.However, they said that in awork meeting, if someone isangry, they might be the onebest placed to play the role ofdevil’s advocate. ‘Byencouraging angry groupmembers to select informationnecessary for group discussion,’the researchers explained, ‘thegroup as a whole may get thebenefit of being exposed todiverse views and, as a result,achieve a more balancedperspective.’

How anger can make us more rationalIn the January issue of Cognition and Emotion

Doing homeworkThe beneficial effect of homework on pupils’ subsequentacademic grades has been shown before. It’s somewhatsurprising, therefore, how little research has looked at howteenagers feel about homework, where they do it and who theydo it with. Hayal Zackar and her team have made a start.

The researchers asked 331 school pupils (aged 11 to 18) inthe USA to wear for one week a special watch that beeped eighttimes a day at random intervals. When the watch went off, theteenagers had to fill out a brief form indicating what they weredoing, who they were with and how they felt. This process,known as the experience sampling method, captured a total of 1315 homework episodes in various places.

The results suggested a developmental trend in the wayteens view their homework. Middle school pupils (average age13 years) reported similar levels of concentration regardless ofwhere they did their homework – be that at home, in class, atschool (not in class) – whilst overall they enjoyed doinghomework more away from home. High school pupils (averageage 16) showed a different pattern, experiencing more interestand enjoyment of homework when at home.

Another distinction arosefor company. Middleschoolers preferred doingtheir homework with theirpeers whereas highschoolers experienced higherconcentration and enjoymentwhen doing homework alone.One caveat to this findingrelated to parents – olderpupils were happier withtheir parents being involvedthan were the youngerpupils.

There were also somegender differences.Generally, girls foundhomework at home, alone,more stressful than boys, but found homework lessstressful than boys whenwith their friends. There was

also one specific ‘age by gender’ interaction, with high schoolgirls not liking doing homework alone (whereas the generaltrend with age was for high-schoolers to prefer working alone).

The study has several limitations and should be seen as apreliminary effort. For example, the sample were mainlymiddle and upper-middle class. Also, although this is a newlypublished study, the data were actually collected 10 years ago.The explosion in internet tools and distractions could well havechanged how teens do their homework, although theresearchers say there’s no evidence that pupils are doing lesshomework today than they were before.

‘It is important for educators, parents, and others who workwith adolescents to know about probable variations inadolescents’ experience of homework so that they can betterplan for and help adolescents to structure their homework,’ the researchers concluded. ‘Given the importance of fostering a homework habit for academic success in high school andbeyond, it is necessary to understand adolescents’ perspectivesabout this important activity.’

DIGE

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In the March issue of the Journal ofApplied Developmental Psychology



digest

No one really knows how orwhere in the brain our sense oftime is enacted. One suggestionis that the pulses of an ‘internalpacemaker’ are based on bodilyfeedback, and in particular theheart-beat. Consistent with thisis a recent brain-imaging studythat showed activity in theinsular (a brain regionassociated with representinginternal bodily states) roselinearly as people paid attentionto time intervals. Now abehavioural study by KarinMeissner and Marc Wittmannhas built on these findings byshowing that people who aremore sensitive to their ownheart-beat are also better atjudging time intervals.

Participants listened toauditory tones of either 8, 14, or20 seconds duration. After eachone, they heard a second toneand had to press a button whenthey thought its durationmatched the first. Counting was forbidden during the taskand a secondary, number-basedmemory task helped enforcethis rule. Heart-beat perceptionaccuracy was measured

separately and simply involvedparticipants counting their ownheart-beats over periods of 25,35, 45 and 60 seconds.

Participants who were morein tune with their heart-beatsalso tended to perform better at the time estimation task. A further detail is thatphysiological measures takenduring the encoding part of thetask showed that as time wenton, the participants’ heart-rateslowed progressively, and theirskin conductance (i.e. amount of sweat on the skin) reduced.Moreover, the rate of change ina participant’s heart-rate (butnot skin conductance) waslinked with the accuracy of theirsubsequent time estimates.

‘Processing of interoceptivesignals [i.e. of internal bodilystates] in the brain mightcontribute to our sense of time,’Meissner and Wittmannconcluded. The new findingsbuild on past research showingthat drug-induced speeding orslowing of the autonomicnervous system (includingheart-rate) affects people’sestimation of time intervals.

Psychologists investigating thewell-being of patients with anacquired brain injury (ABI) havedocumented a curiousphenomenon, whereby themore serious a person’s braininjury, the higher their self-reported life-satisfaction.

With the help of the charityHeadway UK, Janelle Jones andher colleagues recruited 630people (aged 9 to 81) with anacquired brain injury. Most hadsustained their injuries fromroad accidents, with othercauses including stroke andfalls. Based on the time they’dspent in a coma, the majority ofthe participants’ injuries werejudged to be moderate to severe.

Participants answered abrief, 20-item questionnaireabout their sense of identity,their social support,relationship changes since theirinjury, and their life-satisfaction.Having a strong sense ofidentity, seeing oneself as a survivor, having plenty ofsocial support and improvedrelationships were allindependently related to higherlife satisfaction. These differentfactors also influenced eachother. ‘It is likely that personalidentity and social networksupport factors operate in acyclical way,’ the researcherssaid, ‘whereby becomingpersonally stronger fromeffectively relying on socialsupport also makes individualsmore likely to continue to seekout social support and, in thatway, to develop social capital.’

Perhaps the most curiousfinding was that participantswho’d sustained more seriousinjuries tended to report being

more satisfied with their lives.This association was mediatedby the social and identityfactors – that is, participantswho’d sustained a more seriousinjury also tended to identifymore strongly as a survivor, andto have more social support andimproved relationships.

Perhaps the more seriouslyinjured participants might nothave complete insight into theirlives? The authors doubt this isthe case, in part because of thelogic of the results, with identityand social support mediatingthe higher life-satisfactionamong these participants.

‘Sustaining a head injurydoes not always lead to adeterioration in one’s quality oflife,’ the researchers concluded.‘Data from this study serves totell a coherent story about theway in which the quality of life of those who experience ABIscan be enhanced by thepersonal and social “identitywork” that these injuries requirethem to perform. …Nietzsche,then, was correct to observethat that which does not kill uscan make us stronger.’

This material is taken from www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog, and is written by itseditor Dr Christian Jarrett. Visit the blog for full coverage including references andlinks, additional current reports, an archive, comment and more. Also, do visit ournew Occupational Digest at www.occdigest.org.uk and follow @occdigest.

Subscribe by RSS or e-mail at www.researchdigest.org.uk/blog

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Body clockIn the March issue of Biological Psychology

That which does not kill us…In the March issue of Psychology and Health

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336 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

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The Media page iscoordinated by the Society’sMedia and PressCommittee, with the aim of

promoting and discussingpsychology in the media. Ifyou would like to contribute,please contact the ‘Media’

page coordinating editor,Fiona Jones (Chair, Mediaand Press Committee), [email protected]

it is very unlikely that Professor Baileydecided to deliberately run thedemonstration in order to get mediaattention, and he has gone as far asstating that ‘I have not enjoyed the press,because I have assumed that reporterswill sensationalise what happened andwill not provide my side’.

President Schapiro promised to‘investigate fully the specifics of thisincident, and also clarify what constitutesappropriate pedagogy, both in thisinstance and in the future’. This raises an important issue of issue academicfreedom, debated in the studentnewspaper at NU (tinyurl.com/3nrmldl).In an editorial, The Daily Northwesternsays that Schapiro is perfectly within hisrights to make a critical statement to themedia, is under no obligation to defendProfessor Bailey in the press and is also

within his rights to order ProfessorBailey’s teaching to be investigated.However, the editorial argues thatNU should not be able to dictatewhat Professor Bailey, or indeedany other member of staff, teaches:‘NU professors must have thepower to exercise academicfreedom and teach even the mostcontroversial viewpoints in theirresearch fields’. This, they warn,would set a dangerous precedentof control over what materialshould, and can, be taught. This issue of academic freedom

has recently been addressed by the BritishPsychological Society over the decision tohave Professor Ken Zucker deliver akeynote address at the Division ofClinical Psychology (DCP) AnnualConference. Professor Zucker is seen bysome as a controversial figure in the fieldof sex and sexuality research, and hasbeen the focus of criticism and protest inthe past. While the DCP is aware of thecontroversy surrounding ProfessorZucker, they felt it was important topublicly debate his views.

It is beyond the scope of this article to assess the appropriateness of eitherProfessor Bailey’s teaching activities or the research of Professor Zucker, thoughthese issues should be explored anddebated in other forums. It is howeverappropriate to echo the argument thatopen and free debate should lie at theheart of academia. In the age of socialnetworks and rolling media coverage, it is perhaps appropriate that academicsshould bear potential media fallout inmind. Indeed, as we go to press, newsbreaks of another US academic who hasallegedly hired strippers to perform lapdances in a seminar on business ethics(tinyurl.com/vbadidea).

On 21 February Professor J. MichaelBailey held a slightly unusual lecture

and practical demonstration as part of hispopular human sexuality class atNorthwestern University (NU). ProfessorBailey invited Ken Melvoin-Berg topresent material on ‘networking for kinkypeople’. During this presentation, one ofMelvoin-Berg’s associates, Faith Kroll, wasstimulated to orgasm in front of a class ofstudents by what has been described as amotorised sex toy. ‘I was more than happyto,’ she said. ‘We had fun with it. I’m anexhibitionist.’ Jim Marcus, one of theother presenters in the session, insisted‘what we did was not designed to titillatepeople, but to educate people,’ and notedthat there was an accompanyingdiscussion on safety and consent issues.

Such lectures and demonstrations area regular feature of Professor Bailey’shuman sexuality class, and cover a widerange of topics. Professor Bailey stated:‘This year, for example, we have had a panel of gay men speaking about their sex lives, a transsexual performer, twoconvicted sex offenders, an expert infemale sexual health and sexual pleasure,a plastic surgeon, a swinging couple.’ Headded: ‘The students find the events to bequite valuable, typically, because engagingreal people in conversation providesuseful examples and extensions ofconcepts students learn about intraditional academic ways.’

Attendance at these after-classdemonstrations and lectures are purelyvoluntary and, in the case of the 21February demonstration, the studentswere repeatedly warned in advance that itwould be explicit. Of the 567 students inthe class, around 100 decided to attendthe after-class activities and, according toProfessor Bailey, ‘Student feedback for thisevent…was uniformly positive’.

It was, perhaps, inevitable though thatword of this unusual class would reach

the attention of the wider press, given the number of students who could havespread the word via social networkingsites such as Facebook. A number ofblogs and online news forums also pickedup coverage soon after the event, andsome even compared the event, in a light-hearted manner, to the sex educationscene from Monty Python’s The Meaningof Life, where JohnCleese delivers a‘practicaldemonstration’ ofintercourse to a class.

The demo has,however, caused somedegree of controversywithin NU as well asbeing picked up byother media outlets inthe US and aroundthe world (seetinyurl.com/4g9ulu6).Morton Schapiro, thePresident of NU, also issued a formalstatement outlining that ‘Many membersof the Northwestern community aredisturbed by what took place on ourcampus. So am I.’

This contrasts with some mediaoutlets reporting that initial responsesfrom NU administrators to ProfessorBailey’s activities were ‘approving butcautious’ (tinyurl.com/4lwgnc8).Although it would be wrong to suggestthat negative media attention is theprimary cause of the concern nowexpressed by NU, it could possibly be a contributing factor.

This is also not the first time thatProfessor Bailey has courted controversywith his teaching and research activities.His 2003 book The Man Who Would BeQueen caused heated debate within someparts of the transsexual community(tinyurl.com/3mt65r6). Based on thenegative issues generated by this book

Let’s talk about sex Mark Sergeant on an unusual demonstration, and the media’s role in the fallout


360 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

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At Stirling University, Scotland, postgraduate studentEmma Scott-Smith is researching how art can be used asa tool to stimulate critical discussion about individuals’daily experiences of mental illness.

The research project, ‘the Artivism Intervention’,combines art, activism and awareness raising. ‘I’m using Conscientisation,’ Scott-Smith tells us, ‘a conceptdeveloped by Freire whilst reading Marx. It can helpmental health participants to become aware of social,psychological and political conditions that can oppressdisadvantaged groups.’

Experiences of mental illness can be difficult toexpress into words, so the Artivism Intervention allowsindividuals to use a visual narrative alongside discussionto express their experiences of mental illness on canvas.This particular artwork is entitled ‘Pressure’ by an

Artivism workshop member, Zack.‘The work expressed his feeling of being watched and judged bysociety, weighed down bytreatments and medicalprofessionals,’ says Scott-Smith.

The art workshops took placein a local mental health and artssupport group. ‘The ArtivismIntervention allowed me to workwith people experiencing mentalillness during an initial three-month period of art workshops once a week. Thisculminated in a six-week exhibition of participants’artwork to the public. The exhibition aimed to raiseawareness and insight into individuals’ experiences

of mental illness, their daily discrimination people face.’I Find out more by contacting

on [email protected]

The artivism intImage by Zack, for a project by Emma Scott-Scritical psychologist. E-mail [email protected]

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daily experiences from thece.’

acting Emma Scott-Smith [email protected].

nterventioncott-Smith, visual artist and communitybps.org.uk to feature in ‘Big picture’.

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Andrikoula, M. & Prevelic, G. (2009).Menopausal hot flushes revisited.Climacteric, 12, 3–15.

Avis, N.E., Crawford, S.L. & McKinley,S.M. (1997). Psychosocial behaviouraland health factors related tomenopause symptomatology.Womens Health, 3, 2, 103–120.

Avis, N.E. & McKinlay, S.M. (1991). Alongitudinal analysis of women’sattitudes toward the menopause:

Results from the MassachusettsWomen’s Health Study. Maturitas, 13,1, 65–79.

Avis, N.E., Stellato, R., Crawford, S. et al.(2001). Is there a menopausalsyndrome? Menopausal status andsymptoms across racial/ethnicgroups. Social Science and Medicine,52, 345–356.

Ayers, B., Forshaw, M. & Hunter, M.(2010). The impact of attitudes

towards the menopause on women'ssymptom experience: A systematicreview. Maturitas, 65, 28–36.

Ayers, B., Mann, E. & Hunter, M.S. (2011).A randomised control trial ofcognitive behavioural therapy forwomen with problematicmenopausal hot flushes: MENOS 2trial protocol. BMJ Open,doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2010-000047

Beyene, Y. (1989). From Menarche to

menopause: Reproductive lives ofpeasant women in two cultures.Albany, NY: State University of NewYork Press.

Bromberger, J.T., Schott, L.L., Kravitz,H.M. et al. (2010). Longitudinalchange in reproductive hormonesand depressive symptoms across themenopausal transition. Archives ofGeneral Psychiatry, 67, 6, 598–607.

Chedraui, P., Aguirre, W., Calle, A. et al.

Menopause is experienced byapproximately half the populationand represents an opportunity forpsychologists to examine thepsychological and social factorsthat influence perceptions of bodilychanges. There is considerablecultural variation in the experienceof menopause – what role doattitudes, cognitions, behaviours,lifestyle and socio-economic factorsplay in this? In particular, what arethe psychological factors affectingwomen’s perceptions of hot flushesand night sweats? And might a newcognitive behavioural interventionbenefit the 15–20 per cent ofwomen who have problematicmenopausal symptoms?

In his book Feminine Forever, Brooklyngynaecologist Robert Wilson (1966)argued that the menopausal woman

was ‘an unstable oestrogen starved’woman who is responsible for ‘untoldmisery of alcoholism, drug addiction,divorce and broken homes’. This beliefmight seem extreme to our 21st-centuryminds, but Western biomedical sciencestill promotes a view of menopause as a time of poor emotional and physicalhealth.

However, the cessation ofmenstruation does not occur in isolation– it takes place within a gradual processof physiological change, occurringalongside age and developmental changes,and within varied psychosocial andcultural contexts. Perhaps not surprisingly,many Western women tend to report arange of physical and emotional symptomsat the time of the menopause: hot flushes,night sweats, irregular and/or heavyperiods, depression, headaches, insomnia,anxiety and weight gain. However, apartfrom menstrual changes, only hot flushesand night sweats have been clearlyassociated with the menopause andalterations in hormone levels (lowering ofoestrogen levels). Many women in Westerncultures report such symptoms, but theyare not so common in, for example, India,Japan and China (Freeman & Sherif,2007). Japanese women in particular, tendto report headaches, chilliness andshoulder stiffness as the most troublesomemenopausal symptoms. Interestingly, ruralGreek women and women in the Mayanculture have been found to report fewproblems during the menopause transition

other than monthly menstrual cyclechanges (Beyene, 1989). In fact,menopause can be a positive event forsome women, particularly when it comeswith a positive change in social roles andstatus (Flint, 1975).

Since women experience relativelysimilar endocrine changes at menopause, a biological perspective suggests thatsymptoms should be universal. Yet thereare marked differences in experience ofmenopause in anthropological studies.Somewhere between biological andcultural understandings of menopausethere is a gulf that psychologists are wellplaced to explore.

A changing sociocultural historyThe menopause transition is aninteresting example of a biopsychosocialprocess in that the majority of womenexperience some physiological changes,which may be influenced by a range ofpsychological, social and cultural factors.This makes menopause an important areafor psychological research. For example,psychologists have been interested in thesocial and cultural meanings ofmenopause; that is, the way in whichmenopause is discussed and constructedby society and how this impacts uponexperience of the menopause.

In the 19th century, Westernpsychiatry dominated thinking onmenopause, and it was considered a timeof emotional vulnerability with womenlosing emotional control and exhibiting‘hysterical’ behaviour. In the 20th century,the medical approach took hold andcentred on gynaecology; menopausebecame an ‘oestrogen deficiency disease’,akin to diabetes, and with a whole host of physical and emotional sequelae, whichcould be treated with hormone therapy.Late 20th-century and early 21st-centurythinking moved towards possible long-term health risks associated withmenopause, such as increased risks ofdepression, heart disease, osteoporosis,cognitive impairment and even dementia.

These biological/medical meanings of

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Avis, E., Brockwell, S. & Colvin, A. (2005).A universal menopausal syndrome?American Journal of Medicine, 118,37s–46s.

Ayers, B., Forshaw, M. & Hunter, M.(2010). The impact of attitudestowards the menopause on women'ssymptom experience: A systematicreview. Maturitas, 65, 28–36.

Hunter, M.S. & Rendall, M. (2007). Bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspectives onmenopause. Best Practice & ResearchClinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 21,2, 261–274.

Why do Japanese women report fewermenopausal symptoms (hot flushes andnight sweats) than North American andEuropean women?

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The menopause Beverley N. Ayers, Mark J. Forshaw and Myra S. Hunter look at lessons learnedfrom a global outlook

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menopause served to increase fear of the consequences of menopause if leftuntreated, and were fuelled by thepromotion of hormone treatments. We would argue that these negativestereotypes can influence today’s women in their attitudes towards menopause andsubsequently their experience of it. Therehave been – and still are – polarisedtheories and approaches to menopause andmiddle-aged women, from biomedical andgynaecological to psychiatry andpsychological to psychosocial and feministtheories (Hunter & Rendall, 2007). Eachapproach suggests different perspectivesand quite different treatments for womenwho have troublesome menopausalsymptoms.

Until recently, hormone replacementtherapy (HRT) was the main treatment for menopausal symptoms in mostWestern countries. HRT is central to thebiological/medical model and boasts a 75per cent reduction in hot flushes and nightsweats. However, the publication of large

prospective trials of HRT such as the USWomen’s Health Initiative (Rossouw et al.,2002), and the UK-based WISDOM trial(Women’s International Study on longDuration Oestrogen after Menopause:Vickers et al., 2007) suggest small butincreased risks of breast cancer and strokeon taking HRT, and the initial hopes forprevention of cardiovascular risks have not been supported. In 2004 the UKCommittee on Safety of Medicines (CSM)issued guidance stating that hormonetherapy use should be restricted to thetreatment of symptoms and the lowestdose should be used for shortest possibleduration. Consequently there has sincebeen a decline in the use of HRT from 30to 10 per cent between 2002 and 2004(Menon et al., 2007).

The results of such trials and theconsiderable variation in experience of themenopause, both within and betweencultures, have challenged the biomedicalmodel. As a result there has been increasedinterest in the psychological and

sociocultural aspects of menopause, andincreased awareness of the need for safeand effective treatments for womenseeking help for menopausal symptomswho often prefer non-hormonalinterventions.

How can we explain culturaldifferences?Cross-cultural research is difficult to carryout but there is increasing evidence that a range of culture-related factors, such aslifestyle (smoking, diet, exercise andreproductive history), socio-economicstatus, body mass index, mood, climateand cognitions (attributions of symptomsto the menopause, beliefs and attitudestowards menopause) might explaincultural variations in reports ofmenopausal symptoms (Andrikoula &Prevelic, 2009; Avis et al., 2001; Freeman& Sherif, 2007; Hunter, Gupta et al.,2009).

Some of these factors are thought to directly influence menopause-relatedphysiology, but further research is needed.For example, Japanese women may reportfewer hot flushes because they have a diethigh in soy (which includesphytoestrogens) (Freeman & Sherif,2007). Within the literature there areconflicting views on the relationshipbetween body mass index (BMI) and hotflushes, with some studies suggesting aprotective effect of body fat, others thereverse, and some finding no associations(Andrikoula & Prevelic, 2009; Chedraui et al., 2007; Freeman et al., 2001; Schwinglet al., 1994; Whiteman et al., 2003).However more recently, Thurston et al.(2009) have found that body fat gainsduring the menopause transition, ratherthan high or low BMI, were associatedwith hot flush symptoms. Women whosmoke and have sedentary lifestyles havebeen found to report more menopausalsymptoms. Reproductive history may alsobe relevant; for example, in the Mayanculture women marry between the ages of14 and 18 years, have many children andfew repetitive menstrual cycles. Mayan


menopause

(2007). Risk factors related to thepresence and severity of hot flushesin mid-aged Ecuadorian women.Maturitas, 65, 4, 378–382.

Cooper, I.A. (2007). The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis: Cortisol,DHEA and mental and behaviouralfunction. In A. Steptoe (Ed.)Depression and physical illness(pp.280–298). Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Dennerstein, L., Guthrie, J.R., Clark, M.et al. (2004). A population-basedstudy of depressed mood in middle-aged Australian-born women.Menopause, 11(5), 563–568.

Flint, M. (1975). The menopause: Rewardor punishment? Psychosomatics,16(4), 161–163.

Freeman, E.W., Sammel, M.D., Grisso,J.A. et al. (2001). Hot flashes in thelate reproductive years: Risk factors

for African American and Caucasianwomen. Journal of Women’s Health &Gender-Based Medicine, 10(1), 67–76.

Freeman, E.W., Sammel, M.D., Lin, H. etal. (2005). The role of anxiety andhormonal changes in menopausalhot flashes. Menopause, 12(3),258–266.

Freeman, E. & Sherif, K. (2007).Prevalence of hot flushes and nightsweats around the world. Climacteric,

10, 197–214.Hunter, M.S., Coventry, S., Hamed, H. et

al. (2009). Evaluation of a groupcognitive behavioural intervention forwomen suffering from menopausalsymptoms following breast cancertreatment. Psychooncology, 18,560–563.

Hunter, M.S. Coventry, S. Mendes, N. &Grunfeld, E.A. (2009). Menopausalsymptoms following breast cancer

Japanese women may report fewer hot flushes because they have a diet high in soy


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women usually enter themenopause in their early tomid 40s, which is about 10years earlier than women inthe UK and North America(Beyene, 1989).

The relationship betweendepressed mood, menopauseand hot flushes is complex; in general, some studies havefound a slight increase indepressed mood whichsubsides after the menopause,while other studies find nochange. Importantly, depressedmood is more stronglyassociated with life events andstresses than hormone changes(Bromberger et al., 2010).Nevertheless, women who aredepressed tend to report hotflushes as more problematic –but the causal direction isunclear (Hunter & Mann,2010). There is evidencesuggesting that early abuseand neglect has an effect onlater hot flush reporting(Thurston et al., 2008). Thiscould be explained by theinfluence of early adverseexperiences on thehypothalamic–pituitary axis,which has been shown to affectcortisol and diurnal rhythm ofcortisol levels (Cooper, 2007).Anxiety before the menopause isassociated with the presence and severityof hot flushes; women with moderate orhigh anxiety levels were three and fivetimes more likely to report hot flushesthan women in the normal anxiety range(Freeman et al., 2005).

In a study comparing Caucasian andAsian women living in the UK and inDelhi, peri– and postmenopausal womenwere interviewed about their experience of menopause, lifestyle and health. Asianwomen and Caucasian women living inthe UK reported the greatest number ofhot flushes while Asian women living inDelhi reported the least flushes. Country

of residence and anxiety best predicted hotflushes overall; and poor general health,anxiety and less acculturation predictedhot flushes within the UK Asian group(MAHWIS study: Hunter, Gupta et al.,2009). The Study of Women’s HealthAcross the Nation (Avis et al., 2001)compared women living in the US from a range of ethnic communities; AfricanAmerican and Hispanic women reportedmost hot flushes, Japanese and Chineseethnicity the least, and Caucasian womenfell in between. These ethnic differenceswere partly explained by lifestyle factors,such as obesity, smoking, alcoholconsumption and acculturation, and

by socio-economic factors.Could climate also influence the

experience of hot flushes and nightsweats? Sievert and Flanagan (2005)suggested that women who live in seasonalclimates may have a greater frequency ofhot flushes due to the variations intemperature. This idea supportsphysiological theories of a greatersensitivity to temperature changes inmenopausal women experiencing hotflushes. An international study is inprogress to examine the impact of climate,altitude and temperature upon experienceof menopause and will hopefully answerthis question.

treatment: A qualitative investigationof cognitive and behaviouralresponses. Maturitas, 63(4), 336–340.

Hunter, M.S., Gupta, P., Papitsch-Clark,A. & Sturdee, D.W. (2009). Mid–agedhealth in women from the Indiansubcontinent (MAHWIS): A furtherquantitative and qualitativeinvestigation of experience ofmenopause in UK Asian women,compared to UK Caucasian women

and women living in Delhi.Climacteric, 12(1), 26–37.

Hunter, M.S. & Liao, K.L.M. (1996).Evaluation of a four-session cognitivebehavioural intervention formenopausal hot flushes. BritishJournal of Health Psychology, 1,113–125.

Hunter, M.S. & Mann, E. (2010). Acognitive model of menopausal hotflushes and night sweats. Journal of

Psychosomatic Research, 69, 491–501.Hunter, M.S. & O’Dea, I. (1997).

Menopause: Bodily changes andmultiple meanings. In J. Ussher (Ed.)Body talk. London: Routledge.

Hunter, M.S. & Rendall, M. (2007). Bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspectiveson menopause. Best Practice &Research in Clinical Obstetrics andGynaecology, 21(2), 261–274.

Hunter, M.S., Smith, M. & Ayers, B. (in

press). The Hot Flush BehaviourScale (HFBehS): A measure ofbehavioural reactions to menopausalhot flushes and night sweats.Menopause.

Mann, E., Smith, M., Hellier, J. & Hunter,M.S. (2011). A randomised controltrial of a cognitive behaviouralintervention for women who havemenopausal symptoms followingbreast cancer treatment (MENOS 1):

Figure 1: A cognitive model of hot flushes and night sweats



menopause

Cultural attitudes and meanings of menopause may also influence howwomen perceive or report symptoms;for example, the extent to whichmenopause is seen as a medicalcondition versus a naturalphenomenon, or whether mid-liferepresents positive or negative socialchanges within a society. Rural Greekwomen have been found to reportmenopausal symptoms as not verytroublesome and tend not to seekmedical help. Non-European and non-European-American women tend tohave more favourable attitudes andexpectations of menopause and theyreport fewer hot flushes. Early studiessuggest the benefits of menopause insome cultures include freedom fromsocietal taboos and restrictionsassociated with menstruation as well asfreedom from the burdens of repeatedpregnancies, which can be dangerousand stressful due to a lack of medicalfacilities (Beyene, 1989; Flint, 1975).Furthermore, menopause in manydeveloping countries tends not to beregarded as a medical problem and thusmight be accepted with less focus on‘symptoms’ and more as a natural partof life or ‘God’s will’ (Hunter, Gupta et

al., 2009). There are also culturaldifferences in the attributions of differenttypes of symptoms to the menopause. For example, in the MAHWIS study Asian women commonly attributed visual changes (becoming short-sighted in middle age) to the menopause as well asweight gain and high blood pressure, whilewhite British women attributed tirednessand mood changes to the menopause, inaddition to hot flushes.

In Western societies women tend to be valued for their physical and sexualattractiveness, reproductive capacity andyouthfulness. Ageing is often viewednegatively among women and widersociety. To add to this there is a generalbelief that women going throughmenopause inevitably become depressed,irritable and moody, yet there is noconclusive evidence to support this

(Dennerstein et al., 2004). In a recentsystematic review, Ayers et al. (2010)concluded that there is a relationshipbetween attitudes and experience, butfurther research is needed. Two prospectivestudies show that negative attitudes beforemenopause predict depressed mood andhot flushes during the menopause,suggesting that negative attitudes towardsmenopause can affect symptom experience– a self-fulfilling prophecy (Avis &McKinlay, 1991; Avis et al., 1997).

Yet, for many women, menopause is a time for reflection – a natural process orlife transition. Hunter and O’Dea (1997)interviewed British women on theirexperiences and beliefs about menopauseand found they had positive, neutral andnegative reactions. Women reported thatthey were pleased that they no longer hadto deal with periods, premenstrualproblems or fear of pregnancy, suggestingmenopause was a relief rather than a senseof loss. Women were fairly neutral aboutthe ending of reproductive capacity feelingthat this had been dealt with in the 10years before. They also spoke aboutnegative aspects of menopause such asdealing with problematic hot flushes andnight sweats and the general consequencesof ageing. However, a common theme wasa concern about the unknown and a fear of‘falling apart’ and‘letting yourself go’during themenopause, whichappeared to draw onnegative socialdiscourses of ‘declineand decay’.

In summary, thecultural variation in experience ofmenopause might be partly explained bythe social meanings of menopause, whichinfluence beliefs and attitudes as well ashealthcare services. Women with negativestereotypes of menopausal women andnegative beliefs about menopause may fare worse as they move through themenopause transition. But in addition,lifestyle and the social and economiccontext should not be overlooked and

health promotion aimed at smokingcessation and avoiding weight increasesduring the menopause warrant furtherresearch.

Hot flushes and night sweatsDuring the past 20 years psychologistshave begun to examine the cognitive andemotional consequences of hot flushesand night sweats and to developinterventions to ameliorate them.Cognitive reactions to menopausalsymptoms have been examined, leadingto the development of the Hot FlushBeliefs Scale (HFBS) (Rendall et al., 2008)with three main subscales based on factoranalysis: I beliefs about hot flushes in a social

context;I beliefs about coping and control over

hot flushes; and I beliefs about night sweats and sleep.

Beliefs related to the social context weremost commonly mentioned: womendescribed negative self-beliefs aboutappearance, attractiveness in socialsituations, resulting in embarrassmentand shame – for example, ‘during a flushI feel stupid, embarrassed, incompetent,unattractive’ – which were associated with

higher levels of distress.Common behaviouralstrategies included avoidingsocial situations, coveringthe face and using fans orwipes (Hunter, Coventry,Mendes et al., 2009;

Hunter et al., in press). Smith et al. (in press) went on

to examine the validity of these beliefs. In a survey of younger men and women’sbeliefs about women showing signs ofredness or sweating in a work context,they gained evidence that did not supportthe menopausal women’s fears. Whilethese younger men and women did holdgenerally more negative stereotypedbeliefs about menopause and itsconsequences, they had fairly neutral or positive reactions to their work

“for many women,menopause is a time forreflection”

Trial protocol. BMC Cancer,doi:10.1186/1471-2407-11-44

Menon, U., Burnell, M., Sharma, A. et al.(2007). Decline in women usinghormone replacement therapy atrecruitment to a large screening trialin the UK. Menopause: Journal of theNorth American Menopause Society,14(3), 462–467.

Rendall, M., Simonds, L.M. & Hunter,M.S. (2008). The Hot Flush Beliefs

Scale: A tool for assessing thoughtsand beliefs associated with theexperience of menopausal hotflushes and night sweats. Maturitas,60(2), 158–169.

Rossouw, J.E., Anderson, G.L., Prentice,R.L. et al. (2002). Risks and benefitsof oestrogen plus progestin inhealthy postmenopausal women:Principal results from the Women’sHealth Initiative randomised

controlled trial. Journal of theAmerican Medical Association, 288,321–333.

Schwingl, P.J., Hulka, B.S. & Harlow,S.D. (1994). Risk factors formenopausal hot flashes. Obstetrics &Gynecology, 84(1), 29–34.

Sievert, L.L. & Flanagan, E.K. (2005).Geographical distribution of hot flashfrequencies: Considering climaticinfluences. American Journal of

Physical Anthropology, 128, 437–443. Smith, M.J., Mann, E., Mirza, A. &

Hunter, M.S. (in press) Men andwomen’s perceptions of hot flusheswithin social situations. Behaviouraland Cognitive Psychotherapy.

Thurston, R., Bromberger, J., Chang, Y. etal. (2008). Childhood abuse orneglect is associated with increasedvasomotor symptom reportingamong midlife women. Menopause,


colleagues. In fact, younger peopleattributed a range of causes to visible hot flush symptoms (signs of redness and sweating) that were not confined to menopause; for example they could be due to health problems, emotions,physical exertion, body temperature andenvironmental factors. Also, youngerpeople did not report negative reactionsto women with signs of flushing. Thesefindings suggest the social anxieties ofmenopausal women may beoverestimating the extent to which peoplecan identify their menopausalstatus/symptoms. Smith et al. suggest thatthis evidence can be used in cognitivetherapy interventions with menopausalwomen, which might alleviate theirdistress and reduce socialavoidance.

A cognitive model of hotflushes and night sweats,developed by Hunter andMann (2010), describeshow a range ofpsychological factors mightinfluence the perception andappraisal of hot flushes andnight sweats – see Figure 1.The model draws upontheories of symptomperception, self-regulationtheory and cognitivebehavioural models, andsuggests that biological, psychological,social and cultural factors are linked indetermining a women’s menopauseexperience.

A menopausal woman might perceivethe physical sensations of a hot flush,attribute them to the menopause bydeciding it is a menopausal hot flush (as opposed to another explanation, such as just being hot) and appraise it as troublesome or not before takingbehavioural actions. The model suggestsareas for future research and suggests howpsychological interventions might targetparticular pathways in the hot flushprocess. For example, depressed mood and negative beliefs are associated withproblem rating – the extent to which hot

flushes are seen as bothersome orproblematic – and problem rating isstrongly associated with help seeking.Thus cognitive factors may have animportant role in whether women seekhelp for their hot flushes and night sweats.

What can psychologists do tohelp menopausal women?The model was designed to identifyfactors that might be the focus ofinterventions to help women deal withhot flushes and night sweats. A cognitivebehavioural treatment has been developedwith promising outcomes, suggesting a40–50 per cent reduction in hot flushesand their problem ratings. This is based

on either individualcognitive behaviouraltherapy (CBT) of foursessions (Hunter & Liao,1996) or group CBT of sixsessions (Hunter, Coventry,Hamed et al., 2009). TheCBT approach is psycho-educational with individualtreatment goals and a focuson cognitive andbehavioural changes. Thistreatment is now beingtested in two randomised

control trials (Ayers et al.2011; Mann et al., 2011). One

is for breast cancer patients who havedeveloped menopausal symptomsfollowing breast cancer treatment, and the other is for well women from thelocal community. The aim of theintervention is to help women tounderstand the factors affecting hotflushes and night sweats, to reducetriggers and stress, and to use pacedbreathing and cognitive and behaviouralstrategies to deal with hot flushes, nightsweats and sleep.

The futureCross-cultural research has challengedthe idea that menopause is a universalphenomenon, suggesting it is fluid and

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15(1), 16.Thurston, R.C., Sowers, M.F.R.,

Sternfeld, B. et al. (2009). Gains inbody fat and vasomotor symptomreporting over the menopausaltransition. The Study of Women’sHealth Across the Nation. AmericanJournal of Epidemiology, 170(6),766–774.

Vickers, M.R., Martin, J., Meade, T.W. &the WISDOM study team. (2007).

The Women’s International Study ofLong-Duration Oestrogen afterMenopause (WISDOM). BMCWomens Health, 7, 2,doi:10.1186/1472-6874-7-2

Whiteman, M., Staropoli, C., Benedict, J.et al. (2003). Risk factors for hotflashes in midlife women. Journal ofWomen's Health, 12(5), 459–472.

Wilson, R.A. (1966). Feminine forever.New York: Evans.

Beverley N. Ayersis in the Department ofPsychology, Institute ofPsychiatry (at Guy’s), King'sCollege [email protected]

I Mark J. Forshawis in the Centre for Health Psychology,Staffordshire University [email protected]

I Myra S. Hunteris in the Department of Psychology,Institute of Psychiatry (at Guy’s), King'sCollege [email protected]

a product of biological, psychological,social and cultural factors. This resonateswell with the claims made by manyfeminist commentators of previousdecades. Biologically, something happensto women, but the experience is sodiverse that rather than uniting womenacross the globe, menopause serves todemonstrate how varied the perceptionsof physical changes can be. While themajority of women experience themenopause as a relatively neutral event,women, living in Western countries tendto report more symptoms. We argue thatmenopause is an important life stage forpsychologists to consider, as a largenumber of women seek help during themenopause transition for healtheducation, information, and advice aswell as for treatment for problematic hotflushes and night sweats. It is importantthat health professionals are aware of theinfluences of menopause beliefs, lifestyleand cultural traditions and are able toprovide women with balanced, evidence-based information to enable them tomake informed choices.

There is still a lot of research to bedone. Cultural differences in menopauseexperience are still not clearly understood,nor are the precise causes of hot flushesand night sweats. It is hoped the results of the cognitive behavioural interventionstudies will provide further direction forthe development of non-medicalinterventions to enable women to have a choice when dealing with troublesomemenopausal symptoms. Health educationabout menopause is still needed to activelychallenge the combination of thebiological/medical model and a degree ofageism and sexism in Western cultures andto promote a bio-psycho-social-culturalapproach to this stage of life.



Calling out fornew voicesWhen someone is making waves in psychology in years to come, we want to be able to say theypublished their first piece in The Psychologist. So we have introduced a section, ’new voices’, whichwill give space to new talent and original perspectives.

We are looking for sole-authored pieces by those who have not had a full article published inThe Psychologist before. The only other criteria will be that the articles should engage and informour large and diverse audience, be written exclusively for The Psychologist, and be no more than1800 words. The emphasis is on unearthing new writing talent, within and about psychology.

The successful authors will reach an audience of 48,000 psychologists in print, and many moreonline. And as if that wasn’t enough, the best contributors to ‘new voices’ will receive freemembership of the Society for a year if eligible.

So get writing! Discuss ideas or submit your work to [email protected]. And if you are oneof our more senior readers, perhaps you know of someone who would be ideal for ‘new voices’: do let us know.

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think that the buffer is essentially apassive multidimensional store and thatthe binding goes on elsewhere, possiblyin a number of different brain areas. Thephonological loop, which is probably themost widely investigated part, certainlyties in with systems that have evolved forunderstanding language and generatingspeech. Similarly with the visual spatialsketch pad, there’s a lot of work onfractionating it, understanding in muchmore detail how information is stored by looking at the neurobiologicalunderpinning. In terms of the centralexecutive, the whole issue of attentionand how it’s controlled is a massive one,and progress is being made in manydirections. I think our model of workingmemory provides a framework that’ssufficiently broad that it helps hold areastogether. The basic model is not too hardto understand, but potentially it’sexpandable. I think that’s why it’ssurvived.

These separate systems that you’veworked out were very theoretical whenyou first came up with them 30 years

ago. Can we tie these into specificparts of the brain today?Well, yes and no – there is controversyabout the evidence. Initially the lesionevidence and the neuroimaging evidencelooked reasonably strong with thephonological loop being in the lefthemisphere around about Wernicke’s areafor storage and further forward aroundBroca’s area for articulatory rehearsal. Alsoa visual spatial system involving at leastthree areas appears to be in the right

I’d like to begin with two basicquestions – what led you into

psychology and how did you becomeinterested specifically in memory?I actually applied to Cambridge to dogeography and didn’t get in, so I started to think again. I was interested inphilosophy, but didn’t think I’d be able toearn a living as a philosopher. BertrandRussell said that if he was starting againhe would probably be a psychologist so I thought, ‘why not?’ I borrowed somebooks and when I asked around I was toldthe best place was UCL, so I applied andgot an interview. By this time I’d read a number of books and was intrigued byone called Listening with the Third Ear:The Inner Experiences of a Psychoanalyst. I thought that’s what I’d really like to do,but when interviewed at UCL I was toocautious to admit that I wanted to be apsychoanalyst and declared an interest inexperimental psychology’. To my surpriseit turned out that I was much moreinterested in experimental psychologythan psychoanalysis, and that’s continuedto be the case.

Why memory? When I graduated I went to the States for a year hoping,when I returned, to do research on partialreinforcement in rats. But when I cameback the whole behaviourist enterprisewas largely in ruins. The big controversybetween Hull and Tolman had apparentlybeen abandoned as a draw and everybodymoved on to do something else. Onreturn, I didn’t have a PhD place, and the only job I could get was as a hospitalporter and later as a secondary modernschool teacher – with no trainingwhatsoever! Then a job cropped up at the Medical Research Council AppliedPsychology Unit in Cambridge. They hada project funded by the Post Office on thedesign of postal codes and so I starteddoing research on memory.

So it was happenstance really. Movingforward, one of the things you’re bestknown for of course is the Baddeleyand Hitch model of working memory.

How do you think that changed the waywe now think about memory?I think what we did was to move awayfrom the idea of a limited short-termmemory that was largely verbal tosomething that was much broader, andthat was essentially concerned withhelping us cope with cognitive problems.So we moved from a simple verbal store to a three component store that was runby an attentional executive and that wasassisted by a visual spatial storage systemand a verbal storage system. Thatstructure was just guess work, but weseem to have guessed well because thethree components are still in there 30odd years later – although now with afourth component, the ‘episodic buffer’.

Your model with Graham Hitch has a central executive controlling ‘slave’systems. People sometimes have a problem with the term ‘slave’?This is presumably because peopledon’t like the idea of slavery. The term was borrowed from electronicengineering, but I tend to avoid theterm now. Even the phonological loop,which is probably the most slavish ofthe three, can be used to controlbehaviour, the sort of thing that Luriaemphasised, in using self-instruction as a means of controlling action. But we can certainly say that the centralexecutive is dominant, controlling andusing the verbal and visual storagesystems, while the episodic bufferallows information from lots of sourcesto be combined into amultidimensional code.

Cognitive models seem to evolve. Has your model for working memorychanged much in recent years?Well it has as far as the episodic buffer is concerned. I think that the bufferunderpins conscious awareness. I used to think that it was a system for activelybinding the information. Richard Allen,Graham Hitch and I have been doing aseries of experiments on this, and we now

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The memory man Alan Baddeley talks to Lance Workman about Bertrand Russell, Neanderthals and working memory

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hemisphere, probably occipital for themore visual aspects, parietal for the morespatial, depending heavily with thecentral executive on frontal areas. Butattempts to further localise have led toless clarity, and if you look at attemptedmeta-analyses combining results frommany studies, then they tend to be a bit‘plum puddingy’ – a bit messy. I think it’sbecause of the unreliability of currentneuroimaging methods. So there arecertainly broad areas that are involved,but it’s much more likely that, rather thana specific area, there are networks. In thecase of the phonological loop, forexample, there are broad white-matterpathways that join together several areasthat are involved in the phonologicalloop. At the moment we can structurallyimage these pathways but we can’t dofunctional imaging on their operation.

People like to think that when there’s a paradigm shift, as there was withworking memory, this comes aboutthrough a blinding insight – that youwake up in the middle of the night orwhatever and it’s there. Was it like that

for you?No, it was fairly slowlychipping away. But in the end I suppose the model camereasonably quickly. Grahamand I got a three-year grant to look at the relationshipbetween long- and short-termmemory just at a time whenpeople were abandoning thestudy of short-term memorybecause the concept wasrunning into problems. One ofthe problems was that patientswho seemed to have a veryimpaired short-term memory,with a digit span of only one or two, nevertheless could havepreserved long-term memory.The problem is that short-termmemory was assumed to be a crucial stage in feeding long-term memory, so such patientsought to have been amnesic

as well. They were not. Similarly, if short-term memory acted as a

working memory, the patients ought to bevirtually demented because of problemswith complex cognition. In fact they werefine. One of them worked as a secretary,another a taxi driver and one of them rana shop. They had very specific deficitsthat were inconsistent with the old ideathat short-term memory simply feedslong-term memory. So what we decided to do was to split short-term memory intovarious components, proposing a verbalcomponent, a visual spatial one, and

clearly it needed some sort of attentionalcontroller. We reckoned these three werethe minimum needed. As we wereworking on the model I was contacted by Gordon Bower who edited a ratherinfluential annual series, inviting me towrite a chapter for it. We hesitatedbecause we thought we didn’t reallyunderstand the model yet, but it seemedtoo good an opportunity to miss so wethought ‘oh what the hell let’s go for it!’Which is just as well, because we stilldon’t fully understand the model!

It’s certainly created a huge amount of research since. As well as workingmemory one of things you’ve looked atis the effects of changing pressure ondivers. I’ve done a bit of scuba myselfand I’d be interested in what happens.Well, it depends what you’re breathing.I’m sure as a diver you know that if youbreathe air much below 30 metres you get drunk! I started out because I was an amateur diver with the CambridgeUniversity underwater exploration group,which organised an Easter dive off theWelsh coast and a summer expedition. I thought I might look at nitrogennarcosis as I’d seen a paper by a couple of US Navy people doing work on manualdexterity at a pressure at 30 metres in a dry pressure chamber. They found therewas an impairment, and so I persuadedthe director of the Medical ResearchCouncil unit I was working in, DonaldBroadbent, to give me a couple of extraweeks holiday and a little bit of fundingto go out and run an experimentunderwater at sea. We got a much biggereffect than the US Navy dry land studyhad done. But why? It turned outeventually, after a few more divingholidays, that the crucial difference wasfear. The initial dives had been into theblue in the middle of Famagusta Bay inCyprus with divers who weren’t used todiving to 30 metres in the open sea andwere very anxious. We replicated theanxiety effect off the Scottish coast whichis much more anxiety-provoking than theMediterranean, but a rather less temptingexperimental environment!

You’re also associated with work onageing and memory. There’s lots ofgizmos you can buy to train your brainas you get older. Do you think any ofthese really help?There is growing evidence to suggest thatcertain carefully designed and monitoredprogrammes can improve workingmemory performance in ways thatgeneralise. However there appears to belittle evidence that most of the gizmosadvertised for so called brain training

help very much. In the case of long-termmemory, I know of no convincingevidence that training programmes helpthe memory itself. People can, however,be taught useful strategies, although theseare often quite hard work, and it isusually easier to write things down or usereminders.

Is there nothing we get better at as weget older?The content of semantic memory keepsgoing up so as you get older you know a few more words, though you don’tretrieve them so quickly. Recognitionvocabulary keeps climbing, but not muchelse.

I’d like to finish by coming back tosomething interesting I read recentlyabout working memory – I read that itis now claimed that this is what sets usapart from the Neanderthals. Can youtell me something about this idea?There was an article in Science recentlydiscussing the proposal that workingmemory may have been the differencebetween the survival of Homo sapiens andthe extinction of Neanderthals. It hadbeen proposed by a psychologist, FredCoolidge, and a paleoanthropologist, Tom Wynn who were interested in whymodern humans had survived whileNeanderthals hadn’t. They came up witha whole series of examples of evidence forcognitively demanding activities achievedby early Homo sapiens but not byNeanderthals. They suggested that theone capacity needed for all of these wasworking memory. There might well besomething in this, but it’s difficult togather more direct evidence for the claim.

I guess the evidence has to be quiteindirect – like looking at artefacts?That’s exactly right. You have to start bylooking at what the two groups did anddidn’t produce in terms of artefacts, thenworking backwards as to what they couldand couldn’t do in terms of cognitiveprocesses. They decided on the basis of this that Neanderthals may well havelacked working memory and that this was what allowed us to succeed instead of them.

If it turned out that working memorywas an important step in our evolutionand that it is the thing that sets usapart from the Neanderthals, howwould that make you feel?I’d be happy – but I don’t know that I would ever be convinced because theevidence has to be so indirect. But I’mdelighted that people find the modeluseful.


interview

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362 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

Shining a torch into themental nooks and cranniesThe saying goes that almost all of us psychologists took up the subject because of thedesire ‘to know about ourselves’ and that after only a few weeks into the first term, thisnonsense goes right out of our heads. Instead we are excruciatingly embarrassed to ever

have had such a silly idea about the rigorous, empirical study ofmind, brain and behaviour. Only the uncool non-scientific versionsof psychology, the psychobabble type, would pretend to be able to reveal our innermost being. Christian Jarrett hasturned the tables. He has succeeded in shaking off the cobwebsover a well-kept secret, namely, that cool scientific psychologycan do this much better. So, we don’t need to be embarrassed any more, but can embrace the refreshing idea that rigorous,respectable academic psychology can shine a torch into the‘crooks and nannies’ of our mental life.

Jarrett has a brilliant track record as science journalist in theblogosphere. He unerringly picks those nuggets of informationfrom the thousands of currently published papers that containstreaks of gold. Like his many other followers, I have long beenimpressed at how he manages to dig out the really interestingbits. It has to be admitted that among the thousands ofpublications in psychology, there are always only a very few thatdeserve to attract attention. Yet, all these bits make up a steadystream of information. Moreover, this stream flows in a landscapethat has shape and form, and this is where the Rough Guide leadsyou to explore. The landscape of the mind offers surprisingvistas, and there are signposts to future explorations. Like anyproper guide it gives warnings as well as recommendations.

Some of Jarrett’s most intriguing sections are about the new advances in linking mind andbrain. He does not shrink from discussing notorious critiques of neuroimaging, or fromdebates about such controversial topics as ‘nudge’, gender differences, intelligencetesting, false memories and false confessions.

Because this book is disarmingly appealing to the deep desire to know ourselves itfollows a nice and logical path from what psychology offers about your own mind, and this includes emotions, to what it can tell about personal relationships, to the socialpsychological phenomena that are among the most important insights gained bypsychologists. For example, stereotype threat, altruism, persuasion and compliance areall soundly discussed in the context of the groundbreaking experiments that establishedthem as topics of further study. But what is so appealing in this book is that you are giveneveryday context; for instance, what happens when we are shopping, working with others,doing sports, learning in the classroom. As obligatory in any ‘know yourself’ book thereare also excellent short sections on mental disorders and their treatments.

This book presents psychology today ‘in a nutshell’, and it is almost frighteningly up todate. But then this is what you should expect of a Rough Guide that is properly researched.This guide tells readers about the outstanding discoveries made by explorers ofpsychology in an extremely engaging way. It invites travellers to consider thesediscoveries not only with due wonder but also healthy scepticism. The invitation to followup with recommended readings is well judged. You should be able to find the primaryreferences using Google Scholar and PubMed; but besides these there are other sourcesof information on the web, notably in blogs, and these you have to explore by yourself.

If I had to help a young person choose the subject they should study I would not makeany direct suggestions, but if I was convinced they should take up psychology, I wouldsimply recommend this book. The rest would follow.

I Penguin; 2011; Pb £11.99Reviewed by Uta Frith who is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience,University College London

For your chance to win a copy of The Rough Guide to Psychology, simply follow @psychmag on Twitter.

Comprehensive surveyMedia and Youth: ADevelopmental PerspectiveSteven J. Kirsh

The impact of media on youthhas long been a contentiousissue. As Steven J. Kirsh makesclear, there have been scaresfor as long as there have beenworried parents. Along withviolent video games, we couldcite skinny models encouraginganorexia, predators lurking ininternet chatrooms, andchildren’s academic potentialwilting under the glare of allthose screens.

Kirsh’s objective is neitherto create nor dispel such fears.Rather, he provides a clear-headed and admirablycomprehensive survey of theavailable evidence, discussinghow youth consume media andhow it affects them bothpositively and negatively as theygrow up.

A diverse range of topics are addressed from adevelopmental perspective,giving readers a good groundingin theory and findings alike.With his lucid writing style,clearly structured chapters and a slew of rather endearingpersonal anecdotes, Kirschmakes a labyrinthine subjectremarkably navigable. Hereveals that the areas mostinfluenced by media are notnecessarily what we mightthink.

Media and Youth: ADevelopmental Perspective hasmuch to offer both inside andoutside an academic context.

I Wiley-Blackwell; 2010; Pb £25.99Reviewed by Abi Millar who isa Science Journalismpostgraduate at City University

The Rough Guide toPsychologyChristian Jarrett

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book reviews

A wealth of materialWiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood CognitiveDevelopment (2nd edn)Usha Goswami (Ed.)

This is an authoritative,comprehensive and cutting-edge account of psychologicaltheory and research onchildren’s cognitive developmentfrom infants to earlyadolescence. Written by a castof world leading academics, thishandbook provides a singlevolume resource that covers allthe major topics. The material is organised into sections eachwith a useful introduction, whichprovides an important thread ofcontextual coherence across thebook.

This second edition reflectsthe significant developmentswithin the field arising from thelatest cognitiveneuropsychological research.New data about the connectionsbetween neural mechanismsand children’s learning isconsidered in relation to topicsas diverse as memory, spatialdevelopment and theory ofmind, leading to new insightsand explanatory frameworks forcognitive development. A themethat runs through many of these

accounts is the incrediblelearning power and plasticity ofthe infant brain and its superblyadapted capacity for learningthrough experience.

Subsequent chaptersconsider the development ofcore cognitive functions, such as imitation, categorisation,concept development and causalreasoning, and broader aspectsof development, such asreading, mathematicalunderstanding, scientificthinking, moral reasoning, aswell as executive functioningand language development. A final section critically reviewsestablished theories (i.e. Piagetand Vygotsky) while alsointroducing newer theoreticalframeworks, such asinformation processing andneuroconstructivism.

This handbook bringstogether such a wealth ofmaterial to constitute possiblythe single best reference book in its subject area and, as such,should serve as a key text foradvanced students, researchersand practitioners.

I Wiley-Blackwell; 2010; £120.00Reviewed by Paul Riddickwho is Senior EducationalPsychologist, Leicester City

New autism theory The Passionate Mind: HowPeople with Autism LearnWendy Lawson

Wendy Lawson writespassionately about how hercognitive theory of autism –selective attention andassociated cognition in autism(SAACA) – fills the gaps left byother theorists.

Lawson argues that‘neurotypical’ individuals accessand process information in apolytropic way; attention canshift between multiple topics orchannels. Conversely, autismspectrum (AS) individuals aremonotropic in their approach;attention occupies a single topicor direction. This ‘attentiontunnel’ is determined by theindividual’s interest, and isproposed to connect to thesensory motor loop to create a specific cognitive style.Lawson believes that a betterunderstanding of this allows for personalised interventionsto be successful.

Unfortunately, little evidenceexists to support her theory.Lawson cites anecdotalevidence or re-interprets theexisting literature, butrecognises the weaknesses ofthis approach, calling forresearchers to test her theory. I would second this, as whatSAACA cleverly does is providea simple yet comprehensivetheory of cognitive style inautism – one that is interestingand warrants further attention.

I Jessica Kingsley; 2011; Pb £15.99Reviewed by LéonieMcDonald who is a clinicalpsychologist with SuffolkCommunity Healthcare

Passes the testIntroduction to PsychometricTheoryTenko Raykov & George A.Marcoulides

This book is a wide-rangingintroductory text topsychometric theory, coveringlatent variable models such asexploratory and confirmatoryfactor analysis, generalisabilitytheory, and item responsetheory. The mixture of writtenaccounts, equations, softwarecommands (including code forseveral packages such asMPlus, SPSS, and R), andsoftware outputs is highlycommendable. This mixedapproach does a good job of‘mentoring’ you from studydesign all the way to analysingand interpreting your data.

The book easily passes the‘Did I wish I had used this bookduring my PhD?’ test, and someof the more advanced chapters(e.g. regarding item responsetheory) have dropped severalpennies for me. The writingitself can be a little difficult,quite dense and featuringseveral over-long and (to me, at least) baffling sentences. The book does assume basicstatistical knowledge, andpotential readers should beaware that, with only 318 pages,it’s a whistle-stop tour. Havingrecourse to fuller treatments of the material is likely to bebeneficial for those less giftedsouls such as myself.

I Routledge; 2010; Hb £44.95Reviewed by Chris Beeleywho is with the Institute ofMental Health, NottinghamshireHealthcare NHS Trust

just

in Sample titles just in:Zen and the Art of Consciousness Susan BlackmoreDream Life: An Experimental Memoir J. Allan HobsonPositive Psychology at Work Sarah LewisApplied Psychology Graham DaveyCulture and Cognition: Evolutionary Perspectives Bradley Franks

For a full list of books available for review and information onreviewing for The Psychologist, see www.bps.org.uk/books

Send books for potential review to The Psychologist, 48 Princess Road East, Leicester LE1 7DR

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366 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

This month I thought I would say somethingabout my work on behalf of the Society. I had intended to comment on the apparent

unraveling of the government’s policy on tuitionfees. However, the issue continues to developand we will know more about the extent of theshambles in a month’s time.

So, instead, have you ever wondered what a day in the life of a BPS President is like? Takethe months of April and May which admittedlyare among the more intensive. By the time thiscolumn appears, I will have attended theBiennial Meeting of the Society for Researchin Child Development in Montreal. As wellas being there as part of my day job as anacademic, I am delighted also to have beeninvited to represent the Society at twoevents in Montreal. The first is an invitationto speak at a symposium on internationalresearch collaboration in developmentalscience and is the direct result of havingmet the symposium convener, ProfessorOscar Barbarin, at the General Assembly of the International Union of PsychologicalScience earlier this year. The second is aninvitation to a Wiley-Blackwell round tableon developmental psychology where I havebeen asked to contribute to a discussion onthe theme of ‘Putting research into practice’.This is the second such round table in aplanned series by Wiley-Blackwell, and I waspleased to have attended the first in Melbourneearlier in the year.

Next, after a day to get over jet lag, I willhave travelled to Southampton to attend theAGM of the Wessex Branch, to give an invitedlecture and to chat with the Branch committeeover dinner. For me, the opportunity to visitmember networks has been one of the mostenjoyable aspects of the presidency and I amlooking forward to my visit to Wessex. Thefollowing week will see me attending theSociety’s annual meeting with the HealthProfessions Council in London. Later that sameweek I will be off to another member network,this time much closer to home. I look forward to speaking at the Annual Conference of theNorthern Ireland Branch where I first becameactively involved in the Society. After a shortrespite I will be off to Brussels for two days torepresent the Society at the Presidents’ Councilof the European Federation of Psychologists’Associations (EFPA).

Almost as soon as I get back from Brussels,

and just as the May Psychologist pops throughletter boxes, it’s off to the Society’s showcaseevent, our Annual Conference in Glasgow. Onday one I will open the conference, introduceour first keynote speaker, the eminent ProfessorElizabeth Loftus, and attend a civic reception atGlasgow City Chambers hosted by the GlasgowCity Council. That evening, I will say a fewwords at the BPS and Wiley-Blackwellpublishing partnership celebration. Day two will see my Presidential Address followed by theSociety’s Awards Ceremony where I will present

awards to ninehighly deservingrecipients. Thatevening, ProfessorKen Brown, Chairof StandingConferenceCommittee, and I will each say a few words at ourAwards Gala Dinnerbefore attendingother social events.I am pleased to say

that we will also havean opportunity toremember andcelebrate our late

colleague and friend Liz Campbell in her homecity.

Lest you think I may be indolent during any spare time, there is much routine Societybusiness to see to as well – mopping up afterMarch Board of Trustees and preparing thebusiness for the May board, responding tomembers enquiries and comments, dealing with invitations from other societies and publicbodies, and reacting to a host of unanticipatedmatters. If I have one niggle, it is that muchactivity is concentrated towards the end of thepresidential office, perhaps inevitably, since thestart of the term of office has shifted to lateJune.

Throughout the year I have been struck bythe significance placed on the presence of thePresident at events, both within the Society and outwith. Particularly salient has been theconsistently warm reception I have receivedinternationally, reflecting the esteem in whichthe Society is held. The quality and extent ofour international engagement remains apersonal priority.

President’s columnGerry MulhernContact Gerry Mulhern via the Society’s Leicester office, or e-mail: [email protected]

…a day to get over jet lag

PresidentDr Gerry Mulhern

President Elect Professor Noel Sheehy

Vice President Sue Gardner

Honorary General SecretaryProfessor Pam Maras

Honorary TreasurerDr Richard Mallows

Chair, Membership Standards BoardDr Peter Banister

Chair, Psychology Education BoardProfessor Dorothy Miell

Chair, Research BoardProfessor Judi Ellis

Chair, Publications andCommunications BoardDr Graham Powell

Chair, Professional Practice BoardDr Carole Allan

The Society has offices in Belfast,Cardiff, Glasgow and London, aswell as the main office inLeicester. All enquiries should be addressed to the Leicesteroffice (see inside front cover foraddress).

The British PsychologicalSocietywas founded in 1901, andincorporated by Royal Charter in1965. Its object is ‘to promote theadvancement and diffusion of a knowledge of psychology pureand applied and especially topromote the efficiency andusefulness of Members of theSociety by setting up a highstandard of professionaleducation and knowledge’.Extract from The Charter

The BritishPsychologicalSociety

SOCI

ETY

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society

Measuring national well-beingThe Society has responded to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) consultationregarding the measurement of nationalwell-being. The Prime Minister, whoannounced the policy in November lastyear, wants the results to complementtraditional indicators of national success,such as GDP, to provide a ‘general pictureof how life is improving’.

The ONS wants to stimulate a series of debates among experts and the general public to get an ideaof what we mean by well-being, whataspects of life should be included inthe measurement and how the resultsshould be used. Peter Kinderman,Chair of the Division of ClinicalPsychology, prepared a response onbehalf of the Society. It concluded:‘The ONS programme to measure thenation’s well-being is a very positive,but very complex, exercise. To planGovernment policy purely oneconomic indicators such as GDPseems inadequate, so thedevelopment of an additional indexof well-being is wise.

‘But it’s a complex exercise. Well-being necessitates a focus on a widerange of domains of human life,including areas such as relationships,autonomy, and “meaning andpurpose”. Measuring these isdifficult. Well-being also has bothsubjective (“I feel happy with...”)aspects and objective elements –suicide rates, literacy rates, divorcerates, crime figures, environmentalpollution indicators, etc.’

The response suggests that theexpertise of psychologists could beused more effectively: ‘…there arewell established approaches tomeasuring subjective factors like this,including psychometric propertiessuch as confirming factorial stabilityand reliability of measurement;psychologists have long-standingexperience and expertise tocontribute in this domain.’

The Society response expressed a preference for a single index ofwell-being, ‘based on a measure ofsubjective well-being assessed in acoherent fashion across core domains,plus objective indicators for a numberof the factors shown by research tohave significant impact on well-being’.

However, the response cautionsthat the resulting index will need to

be used with care. ‘We would also sound a note of caution in advocating [its] use as the sole mechanism for evaluation,especially for government policy:variations in people’s self-reported well-being should only be considered alongsidemore tailored, specific evaluation ofpolicies, and the validity of the measure

should be fully tested and validated beforeit is used in this way.’

Ben Watson

I The full response can be seen attinyurl.com/3gho5ej and other responsesfrom the general public have beenpublished at tinyurl.com/3wagpeu

ALLOTMENTS WILL HELP A LOT OF MENA horticultural project formen who are at risk ofdepression and possiblesuicide was launched thisspring in Barking andDagenham with the supportof a British PsychologicalSociety public engagementgrant and the North EastLondon NHS FoundationTrust.

The project, ‘Young atheart’, aims to improve themental and physical health of socially isolated men byinvolving them in regulargardening sessions andmonthly support meetings.The project will feature inRadio 4’s All in the Mind withClaudia Hammond, who willalso follow its progress laterin the summer.

‘Young at heart’ aims to build on the history ofallotment gardening inBarking and Dagenham,which makes this anacceptable method to engagemen who may not otherwiseaccess services for emotional

support. Men are less likelythan women to seek help foremotional issues and they areless likely to be diagnosedwith anxiety or depressionbut they are three times morelikely to successfully taketheir own lives.

Chartered ClinicalPsychologist Dr VictoriaWinson, leading the project,said ‘There are some 58,000adult men in Barking andDagenham and if youestimate that one in four ofthis population may sufferfrom mental health problemsthis would result a highnumber of men experiencingsome form of emotionalproblem, the majority ofwhom will not access formalor informal treatment orsupport. Social isolation andexclusion is a known riskfactor for poor mental health.Allotments often have astrong sense of communityand are places where peoplefrom a wide range ofbackgrounds come together

and provide an ideal place to challenge social isolation.Many thanks to the BritishPsychological Society and the North East London NHSFoundation Trust withoutwhose support this projectwouldn’t have been possible.’

The project was funded by the British PsychologicalSociety’s 2010 ‘Sharing ourScience: Psychology in Action’public engagement grants.Each year the Societyprovides grants forsustainable activities thatdemonstrate the benefits of psychology to the public.

The 2011 grants are nowopen with £40,000 availableto Society members – allapplications will beconsidered, but we areparticularly keen to hearfrom sport and exercisepsychology projects. Theclosing date for applicationsis 1 July.I For more information

please visitwww.bps.org.uk/grants


Further to the announcement in Februaryof free access for Society members to allBPS journals and a selection of 32 otherWiley Blackwell journals, we are pleasedto announce two further developments(and more to come), significantlywidening the range of free resourcesavailable to all members.

BJP archive issues from 1904First, we are delighted to announce thatthe archive issues for the British Journal of Psychology have now been published on the Wiley Online Library. All BPSmembers will be able to read articles from Volume 1 Part 1 (published in 1904) as a benefit of membership viawww.bps.org.uk/journals. Societymembers will be some of the first peoplewho will be able to access the breadth anddepth of research published over the last102 volumes of the journal online.

Peter Mitchell, current British Journalof Psychology Editor, commented: ‘The100-year archive of the British Journal of Psychology contains groundbreakingarticles by the world’s most influentialresearchers. The backfile provides anoutstanding resource that allows theseimportant articles to be easily accessible to a wide audience. This will insure thatthe fine legacy of the British Journal ofPsychology will continue to influence our discipline during the 21st century.’

Wiley-Blackwell is working with theSociety on digitising the archive issues for all Society journals, and we lookforward to alerting members to their

availability as soonas we can.

EBSCOAs part of theSociety’s ongoingcommitment toenhance thebenefits ofmembership, a trialarrangement hasbeen set up withEBSCO giving allmembers free access to the Psychology & Behavioral Sciences (PBSC) journalsdatabase. PBSC currently contains 540full-text peer-reviewed journals, plus 23other full-text titles, all indexed andabstracted. Members of all grades,including student members, can now gainunrestricted access to the collection fromwithin the BPS website members’ area. In addition to an extensive coverage inpsychology, the collection includes titlesin anthropology, psychiatry, observationaland experimental methods, and mentalprocesses.

The interface with PBSC is viaEBSCOhost, an intuitive resource thatoffers various ways of searching thedatabase – including basic and moreadvanced options. It is also very simple to create a personalised ‘My EBSCOhost’,which will allow setting preferences,saving search history, bookmarking,creating alerts, and much more.

The trial officially runs from 1 May for six months, though unofficially access

began to be available in early April.Towards the end of the trial period,an assessment will be made based on both the level of usage and thespread of usage across membershipcategories. A decision will then bemade on whether it is worth whileentering into a longer-term centrallyfunded arrangement with EBSCO.

Society President Gerry Mulhernsaid: ‘Throughout my term of office I have received regular requests from

members for free access to as wide a range of journals as possible. This is

a welcome development and a clearexample of the Society’s willingness to invest significant resources to meetmembers’ needs. During the trial, I wouldurge members to demonstrate demand forthe database. Use it or lose it!’

To access PBSC go towww.bps.org.uk/ebsco – you will need to enter your membership number andpassword if not already logged on as a member. From there a link takes youstraight to the EBSCOhost search page.There is also a link to EBSCO supportpages, where you can find out more aboutusing the system through online tutorials,FAQs, etc. We will also be offering liveonline tutorials to help members get thebest out of EBSCOhost. Dates and timeshave yet to be arranged but will beannounced via the e-mail MemberUpdate. I For information on all library resources

currently available to members of theBritish Psychological Society, go towww.bps.org.uk/resources


society

A Chartered Occupational Psychologist is among a number of leading figures in thechemical engineering sector to be named one of IChemE’s first Associate Fellows.

Ronny Lardner – who is also the Director of The Keil Centre, Edinburgh – and 10others received the new membership grade, which has been introduced to recogniseprofessionally qualified individuals without a formal chemical engineering qualification,who hold senior positions in the chemical, biochemical or process engineeringindustries.

Lardner told The Psychologist: ‘It’s good to see the results of yet more successfulcollaboration between British Psychological Society members and other professions to address real-world problems being recognised… Early in my career I completed theSheffield University MSc Occupational Psychology course – this was around the timethat the Cullen Report into the Piper Alpha disaster was published. One of the causalfactors of this disaster was poor communication at shift handover. I decided to completemy MSc project on how to improve this important aspect of 24-hour operations in thenuclear industry. I published the results in the IChemE magazine and that was the startof a 20-year involvement with IChemE and its members.’

More online journals for members

Chemical engineers NEW SOCIETYWEBSITE – UPDATEA detailed project plan for the launch of thefirst phase of the new BPS website has beenagreed. The initial launch will focus on themain website, with the migration of otherBPS subsites and communities to follow insubsequent phases, which will startimmediately after main site launch. The newwebsite will be demonstrated at the AnnualConference in May, with the full launchexpected shortly afterwards. I For more information visit:

www.bps.org.uk/webproject; for anyenquiries or suggestions, contact:[email protected]


368 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

society

CONSULTATIONS NEWSMaking an impactThe Society responded to the Implementation of Autism Strategyconsultation in October last year, and we were very pleased to hearthat a number of points from that response were noted by theDepartment of Health and helped shape the final guidance. Thefollowing aspects of the guidance, in particular, reflectrecommendations made by the Society: I it has been made clear that local authorities should appoint a local

lead commissioner;I a description of the two types of training covered by the guidance

has been included, and the discussions relating to these two areasof training have been separated out;

I it has been noted that autism awareness training should not beseen as a 'one-off’;

I it has been made clear that those completing assessments of needwith people with autism are skilled;

I a more definitive statement about carers assessments has beenincluded.

In addition to the above, we were pleased that the Society is noted asone of the key partners that the Department of Health has committedto working with in order to improve the quality of autism awarenesstraining. The full report and final guidance are available from ourwebsite (www.bps.org.uk/consult).

We have also heard this month that Society responses havehelped shape the updated NICE Chronic Obstructive PulmonaryDisease Guidance and the Scottish Government’s Self-directedSupport Strategy.

Consultations responsesThe Society submitted responses to 10 consultations during March.Full details are available from our website (see above).

In the response to Developing the Healthcare Workforce,recommendations were made in the areas of education and training(including commissioning), representation of psychology, researchfunding and respectful cross-collaboration between clinicians andmanagers.

The Bailey Review, which expressed concern over the pressureson children to grow up to quickly, was welcomed by the Society. Ourresponse noted that this is a multilayered area with many interactingfactors, and that applied psychological experience and opinion shouldbe married with the available research.

The eight other responses were:I Breaking the Cycle (Green Paper) (Ministry of Justice)I Head Injury (NICE-review)I Healthy Lives, Healthy People (White Paper) (Department of Health)I Mental Health & Wellbeing (Department of Health, Social Services

& Public Safety, Northern Ireland)I Alcohol Problems Screening (UK National Screening Committee)I Autism in CYP (NICE-guidance)I Brain & CNS Cancer Measures (Department of Health)I New Indicators for QOF (NICE-QOF)

The preparation and submission of the Society’s responses toconsultations are coordinated by the Consultations Response Team(CRT). All those holding at least graduate membership are eligible tocontribute and all interest is warmly welcomed. Please contact the CRTfor further information ([email protected]; 0116 252 9508).

Research interests

Forensic testing

Official TwitterThe British PsychologicalSociety now has an officialTwitter feed – @BPSOfficial. Itwill be used to tweet newsabout Society events andpublications, aswell as news andweblinks likely tointerest members.

A number ofother Twitter feedsare flourishingwithin the Society, including:The Psychologist

@psychmagConferences Team

@BPSConferenceBPS Journals @bpsjournalsDivision of Occupational

Psychology @occpsychukDivision of Clinical Psychology

@DCPinfoStudent Members Group

@bpsstudentsPsychology Postgraduate

Affairs Group @psypagOccupational Digest

@occdigestResearch Digest

@researchdigest

The Research Digest has also compiled a list ofpsychologists who tweet –www.tinyurl.com/psychologistswhotweet2.

Sign up and follow atwww.twitter.com.

The Society has launched an updated database of UK academicresearch interests. The database is intended to be used forkeyword searches to facilitate research collaborations, to identifysuitable reviewers for Research Council grant proposals, toidentify possible PhD supervisors, to identify where research in specific areas is being conducted, and so on. It is not limited to Society members and includes any academics in the UK.

Professor Judi Ellis, Chair of the Society’s Research Board,said: ‘We have utilised publicly available information fromuniversity websites and are not publishing individual e-mailaddresses (although we have these within the database records to use to contact entrants for admin reasons). We also consultedwith the Association of Heads of Psychology Departments priorto embarking on this project to ensure that Heads of Departmentswere content with this database being established.’I See www.bps.org.uk/researchinterests to use the database or

submit your details for inclusion.

The Committee on Test Standards (CTS) and the Executive of the Division of Forensic Psychology invite all Graduate andChartered Members to respond to a consultation on standards in testing in forensic contexts.

CTS proposes three levels of certification of test users’competence as Assistant Test Users undertaking testadministration, operating under the supervision of a Test User(Level 1), as Test Users trained as competent test users ofability/aptitude and personality tests (Level 2) and as Specialistsin Test Use (Level 3). This is the second phase of thisconsultation and follows the first stage which closed on 31/12/10.I The consultation opens on 3 May and closes on 3 August 2011 at

www.bps.org.uk/dfp/psychologists/cts-consultation


taught by a male teacher, at least inprimary school (Skelton, 2007): while 38per cent of secondary schools teachers aremen, the proportion is significantly lowerin primary schools. Evidence in supportof such suggestions remains tenuous, andit is perhaps more likely that a number offactors converge to disadvantage boyswithin the educational system.

A female pursuit?The past few years have seen an increasein interest in the merits and problemssurrounding A-level psychology (e.g.Smith, 2010). To some extent, pre-tertiaryeducation in psychology has feltmarginalised by higher education, withuniversities continuing to insist that A-level psychology provides aninappropriate grounding for degree levelstudies in psychology (Jarrett, 2010).

Other factors may work to furtherdisadvantage those boys who do choosepsychology at A-level. Rowley andDelgarno (2010) surveyed A-levelpsychology teachers in an attempt tobetter understand who they were andwhat they thought about their subject.According to their study, nearly 30 percent of psychology teachers in schools donot hold a first degree in psychology and,perhaps more interestingly, nearly 80 percent of those who responded to thesurvey were female, significantly higherthan the 62 per cent of female teachers in secondary schools generally.

Such a significant gender imbalancecreates the impression of psychologybeing a wholly female pursuit and aninappropriate choice for a boy, rather than the inclusive pursuit favoured by thepsychology community. This can be seenfurther in the choice of topics at A2 level(the second year of the A-level). Takingthe most popular examinationspecification as their yardstick, theAssessment and Qualifications Alliancespecification A (AQA A), Rowley andDelgarno discovered that the mostpopular topics chosen by teachers andheads of department at A2 were (in order

Few boys do psychology; and thosewho do, don’t do it very well. A-levelpsychology is now the fourth most

popular A-level with nearly 55,000 youngpeople having entered for the exam in2010 – not bad for a subject that attractedonly 275 candidates when the first examwas sat back in 1972. Recent years haveseen a huge explosion of interest in A-level psychology, and it has now become a serious topic for investigation by theacademic community, with articles on thefuture of A-level psychology (Smith,2010) and its popularity (Walker, 2010),not to mention several articles in ThePsychologist (September 2010 and October2007). However, few have turned theirattention to a potentially damagingpattern: the near total exclusion of boysand the severe underachievement of thoseboys who dare to adopt the role of the‘rogue male’ (Sanders et al., 2009).

Figures published by the Joint Councilfor Qualifications, a body representing themain exam boards in the UK, state that54,940 students sat psychology A-levelexams in June 2010. Of these 14,802 weremale while a staggering 40,138 werefemale. The pattern is similar to that ofpsychology in Higher Education, where in 2006/7 the ratio of males to femaleswas 1:4 (Sanders et al., 2009). Thissuggests that psychology is very much a female discipline.

Even more disconcerting than thegender imbalance in participation is thenotable imbalance in performancebetween male and female candidates in

A-level psychology. In 2010 5.2 per centof females obtained the newly introducedA* grade (awarded to students achievingan overall A grade with a 90 per cent passrate in the second year of studies) whilethe number of boys achieving this covetedaccolade stood at just 2.8 per cent. In fact,between 2005 and 2010, malesconsistently underperformed in relation tofemales by a significant margin.

Such a pattern of maleunderperformance is now common withinprimary and secondary education. It hasbeen described as a moral panic (Smith,2003), with the issue being addressed atlength over the past decade or so (e.g.Epstein et al., 1998). The phenomenonappears to be global rather than localised(e.g. Majzub & Rais, 2010), and despiteconsiderable research (e.g. Francis, 1999)and a number of initiatives, the trend formale underachievement (or femaleoverachievement) appears to continueunabated.

Recently it has been stronglysuggested that continually informing boysthat girls do better may actually activateand reinforce the stereotype in some boys(Hartley, 2010). Indeed maleunderachievement could be the result ofautomatic social behaviour whereeducational professionals areunconsciously teaching boys how to fail,rather than reinforcing strategies moregeared towards achievement. The femaledomination of the teaching profession hasalso led some to suggest that boys mayengage more appropriately with learning if

390 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

Banister, P. (2003). Impact of post-16qualifications on the undergraduatecurriculum: Views from heads ofpsychology departments. In C.McGuinness (Ed.) Post-16qualifications in psychology. Leicester:British Psychological Society.

Elwood, J. (1995). Undermining genderstereotypes: Examination andcoursework performance in the UK at16. Assessment in Education:

Principles, policy and practice, 2,283–303.

Epstein, D., Elwood, J., Hey, V. & Maw J.(Eds.) (1998). Failing boys? Issues ingender and achievement. OpenUniversity Press.

Francis, B. (1999). Lads, lasses and (New)labour: 14–16-year-old students’responses to the ‘laddish behaviourand boys’ underachievement’ debate.British Journal of Sociology of

Education, 20, 355–371.Hartley, B. (2010, 2 September). Girls

believe they are better than boys by theage of four. Paper presented at theBritish Education ResearchConference.

Jarrett, C. (2010). The journey toundergraduate psychology. ThePsychologist, 23, 714–716.

Maras, P. & Bradshaw, V. (2007). A-levelpsychology: Exploring the views of

pre-tertiary psychology teachers.University of Greenwich, UK.

Majzub, R.M. & Rais, M.M. (2010). Boys’Underachievement: Causes andStrategies. Procedia Social andBehavioral Sciences 2, 3160–3164.

Rowley, M. & Delgarno, E.L. (2010). A-level psychology teachers: Who arethey and what do they think aboutpsychology as a subject and adiscipline? Psychology Teaching

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Failing boys, failingpsychologyMarc Smith with the latest in our series for budding writers (see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices for more information)

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of preference) relationships, biologicalrhythms, sleep and dreaming and pro-and anti-social behaviour. While othertopics were chosen (e.g. cognitivedevelopment and perception) theseremained in the minority while some(language and thought) failed to make anappearance. These results lend weight toprevious accusations (e.g. Banister, 2003;Smith, 2010) that thebiological and thecognitive aspects ofpsychology are beingneglected, an argumentproffered by universities in the case for rejecting A-level psychology as a pre-requisite forundergraduate study. It isworth noting that in therecent revision to the A-level syllabus some topicshave been withdrawnwhile others have beenaltered; however, the topthree remain almost intact,and it can be assumed thattheir popularity is likely toremain high. It could be argued that non-specialists shy away from topics with amore ‘traditional science’ feel, and plumpfor topics they feel will engage theirmainly female student base.

Boys do scienceAlthough A-level psychology has beenclassified as a science since 2008, boysappear to be more attracted to traditionalscience-based subjects. In 2010, 44 percent of biology candidates were male,significantly higher than the 27 per centfor psychology (boys outnumber girls inboth physics and chemistry; however,girls still achieve higher grades but by a very small margin). In addition, whileboys underperformed by an average of13.5 per cent (between 2005 and 2009)against girls in psychology, in biology thisdifference stood at only 3.4 per cent overthe same period, suggesting that not onlyare more boys choosing biology, they are

also more successful at it than boys whochoose psychology. Interestingly boys alsorepresent the majority in physicaleducation and sports science, with verylittle difference between genders in termsof achievement. These subjects generallyinclude a significant amount ofpsychology including studies ofpersonality and motivation, areas that

form only a veryminor part of mostpsychologyspecifications.

Despite the re-classification ofA-level psychologyit appears thatstudents themselvesdoubt or areunaware ofpsychology’sscientificcredentials. Marasand Bradshaw(2007) found that

only 62 per cent ofteachers surveyedthought that

psychology is a science. However, Rowleyand Delgarno found that, just three yearslater, 87 per cent of psychology teachersagreed with the proposition thatpsychology is a science. Despite this more favourable position the teachers in Rowley and Delgarno’s sample ratedchemistry, physics, biology and geology as more scientific than psychology. This,according to Rowley and Delgarno, raisessome interesting questions about teachers’judgements concerning the nature ofscience and what makes a disciplinescientific. This may be compoundedwhen considering the large number ofpsychology teachers without a sciencebackground (or a psychology degree) and the significant number of psychologyteachers who also teach sociology – ofthose without a psychology degree inRowley and Delgarno’s sample, around a quarter were sociologists.

Boys choose science and do well at it;those boys who choose psychology tend


new voices

Review, 16, 54–61. Sanders, L., Sander, P. & Mercer, J. (2009).

Rogue males? Approaches to studyand academic performance of malepsychology students. PsychologyTeaching Review, 15, 3–17.

Skelton, C. (2007). Gender, policy and initialteacher training. Gender and Education,19, 677–690.

Smith, E. (2003). Failing boys and moralpanics. British Journal of Educational

Studies, 51, 282–295.Smith, M. (2010). A-level psychology: Is

there a way forward? PsychologyTeaching Review, 16, 33–37.

Stewart, W. (2010, 18 June). Exams forboys, exams for girls. TimesEducational Supplement.tinyurl.com/32xyq6e

Walker, K. (2010). Explaining the popularityof psychology at A-level. PsychologyTeaching Review, 16, 45–53.

Marc Smith is a CharteredPsychologist and A-level psychology [email protected]

to underachieve significantly. Boys arealso more likely to choose fact-basedsubjects, such as economics, businessstudies and maths, and do well at these.Whilst the A-level psychologyspecifications allow for the study of topicsincluding visual perception and cognition,many teachers appear to be choosingtopics that best suit their ownbackground, perhaps leading to a socialpsychological bias that may disadvantagethe boys in their class due to thespeculative nature of the topics.Subsequently schools are less likely topromote psychology as a science andmore likely to classify it as a socialscience like sociology, where the genderimbalance is even more noticeable. Boysthen find themselves the minority in asubject perceived as female; issues ofparticipation, therefore, appear directlylinked to issues of performance. Teachersmay have changed their view concerningthe scientific nature of psychology, butthis hasn’t manifested itself in a change in direction towards a more scientific A-level, a change that could work towardsbreaking the cycle.

It has been suggested that boys can be placed at an advantage through theimplementation of an exam-only syllabus,and AQA intends to roll out a series ofgender-specific GCSE scienceprogrammes as early as September 2011(Stewart, 2010), claiming that boys dobetter at exams while girls are better atcoursework. However, the removal of thecoursework element from psychology in2008 appears to have done little to rectifythe gender imbalance. According toElwood (1995), coursework plays only a minimal role in achievement differencesbetween the genders and a larger role isplayed by teacher and pupil expectationsas well as syllabus content.

Such a situation can only deter boys from choosing psychology anddisadvantage those who choose to be partof the minority. With so little researchconducted into the area, however, it maybe some time before the picture becomesclearer. All that can be said for now is thatwhile the popularity of A-levelpsychology is a cause for celebration,those issues that plague the subjectcontinue to the detriment of those whostudy it – particularly boys.

Near total exclusion of boys

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2 March and 16 March 1919. Adding 12 months 21 days, the age of the lastassessment, to the birth date indicatedthat data collection concluded between 23 March and 6 April, 1920. The processby which these dates were derived is morefully described elsewhere (Beck et al.,2009).

We had learned a great deal aboutAlbert. Now came the most difficult partof our inquiry: finding an individualwhose characteristics matched Albert’sattributes.

Traces of AlbertWe searched archives for the investigators’notes, drafts of the study and otherpertinent documents, but found no cluesas to Albert’s or his mother’s identity. Anattempt to locate Watson’s private paperswas particularly maddening. Watson(Buckley, 1989) burned these documentslate in his life, declaring ‘When you aredead you are all dead’ (p.182). We willnever know what historical treasures hedestroyed that day.

Efforts to uncover patient andemployee records at Hopkins wereequally futile. With no private papers, nopatient records, and no employee recordsto guide us, we were without direction. At this point, we could only confirm whyprevious attempts to find Albert hadfailed.

If I had thought through theimplications of theinformation Watson andRayner provided, I wouldhave known where to lookfor Albert on the initial dayof our inquiry. Two of the

first facts we learned werethat the investigation was

performed during the winter of 1919/20and that Albert and his mother lived onthe Hopkins campus. In 1920 a censuswas conducted throughout the US. If acensus was taken at Hopkins then itmight include Albert’s mother andperhaps Albert.

On 2 January 1920 a census taker

In 1920 the British Psychological Societyinvited John Broadus Watson to addressa symposium on behaviourism

(Watson, 1920). Watson was disappointedthat his university was unable to fund hiscrossing. This article provides newinformation about a study Watson wouldmost likely have presented to the Societyhad his monetary circumstances beenmore favourable.

In the winter of 1919/20, Watson andhis graduate assistant, Rosalie AlbertaRayner, attempted to condition a babyboy, Albert B., to fear a white laboratoryrat (Watson & Rayner, 1920). They laterreported that the child’s fear generalised to other furry objects. The ‘Little Albert’investigation was the last published studyof Watson’s academic career. Watson andRayner became embroiled in a scandalousaffair, culminating in his divorce anddismissal from Johns Hopkins.

Despite its methodologicalshortcomings and questionable ethics(Cornwell & Hobbs, 1976; Samelson,1980), the attempted conditioning ofAlbert is a staple in psychology textbooksand one of the most influentialinvestigations in the discipline. Thecontinuing appeal of Watson and Rayner’sresearch is not solely due to theimportance of their purported findings.Much of the fascination with the study is attributable to Albert himself.

After the last day of testing, Albert lefthis home on the Johns Hopkins campus.His disappearance created one of thegreatest mysteries in the history of

psychology. ‘Whatever happened to LittleAlbert?’ is a question that has intriguedgenerations of students and professionalpsychologists (Harris, 1979). This articleis a detective story summarising theefforts of my co-authors, my students andmyself to resolve a 90-year-old cold case.

What was known about Albert From Watson’s writings we learned thatAlbert’s mother was a wet nurse in theHarriet Lane Home, a paediatric facilityon the Hopkins campus. She and her sonlived at Harriet Lane for most of the boy’sfirst year. Watson and Rayner reportedthat Albert was tested at 8 months 26days, 11 months 3 days, 11 months 10days, 11 months 15 days, 11 months 20days, and 12 months 21 days of age. Itwas also known that Albert was a maleCaucasian. Though useful, thisinformation had notled other researchers(e.g. Resnick, 1974)to Albert. Newevidence was clearlyneeded if we hoped toidentify Watson’sfamous participant.

In addition to written descriptions, amovie that Watson (1923) made of Albertand other infants provided a criticalinformation source. By concurrentlyexamining the investigators’ write-up, themovie and Watson’s correspondence withPresident Goodnow of Johns Hopkins wedetermined that Albert was born between

392 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

Beck, H.P., Levinson, S. & Irons, G. (2009).Finding Little Albert. AmericanPsychologist, 64, 605–614.

Buckley, K.W. (1989). Mechanical man: JohnBroadus Watson and the beginnings ofbehaviorism. New York: Guilford.

Cornwell, D. & Hobbs, S. (1976, 18March).The strange saga of littleAlbert. New Society, pp.602–604.

Deaths: Mrs. Flora Belle Brashears.(1924, 24 May). The Frederick Post, p.5.

Department of Health and MentalHygiene, Division of Vital Records(Birth Record, BC) (1919). BabyMerritte, 70288, 02/25/04/006.Maryland State Archives (MSAT310–230), Annapolis, MD.

Department of Health Bureau of VitalStatistics (Death Record Counties)(1925). Douglas Merritte, CarrollCounty, 10 May 1925. Maryland StateArchives (MSA S1179, MdHR 50, 259-

375, 2/56/62(1), Annapolis, MD.Harris, B. (1979). Whatever happened to

little Albert? American Psychologist,34, 151–160.

Hemans, F. (189-?). The poetical works ofMrs. Hemans. New York: Thomas Y.Crowell.

Howland, J. (1912–1913). The HarrietLane Home for Invalid Children,Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, 1,115–121.

Jones, M.C. (1924). A laboratory study offear: The case of Peter. PedagogicalSeminary, 31, 308–315.

Park, E.A. (1957). [Records of the HarrietLane Home]. Collection Harriet LaneHome [Series 4b]. The Alan MasonChesney Medical Archives of TheJohns Hopkins Medical Institutions,Baltimore, MD.

Park, E.A. (n.d.). The Howland period from1912 to 1926. [Records of the Harriet

refe

renc

es

“It was a very emotionalmoment when Garyphoned.”

LOOK

ING

BACK

Finding Little Albert Hall P. Beck, with Gary Irons, reports on a seven-year search for psychology’s lost boy

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believe that Arvilla was unmarried? Oneof my most trusted students was assignedto investigate.

The breakthrough came when sheentered ‘Arvilla Irons’ into a genealogicaldatabase. Suddenly, the ancestors anddescendents of the foster motherappeared across her screen. Arvilla’sgrandson, Larry Irons, left an e-mailaddress so relatives might contact him. I responded, describing the importance of Albert to psychology, and requestingfurther contact.

Meeting the Irons familyIt was a very emotional moment whenGary, Larry’s brother, phoned. Garyconfirmed that Arvilla worked at theHarriet Lane Home and that she gavebirth to a boy on 9 March 1919. I learnedfrom Gary that Arvilla named her son,Douglas.

Could Douglas be Little Albert?Descriptions of the Harriet Lane Home(Howland, 1912–1913; Park, 1957) andblueprints of the facility suggest that therewere never many, probably no more thanfour in-residence wet nurses at any time.Douglas was certainly at Hopkins whenAlbert was tested, but was he Albert orAlbert’s nursery mate?

What is the likelihood that a HarrietLane Home wet nurse would give birth to a male between 2 March and 16March? To better record my ownreasoning, I made my assumptionsexplicit. If half the babies were male and births were randomly distributedthroughout the year, then the probabilitythat the child would be male and born inthis period would be 1 in 52 (1/2 x 1/26).Although my assumptions were estimates,the calculations definitely showed that itwas unlikely that anyone other thanAlbert would share these attributes.

The strongest argument againstDouglas is his name. Why did Watson notrefer to the baby as Douglas? As we willsee, Arvilla was reluctant to share aspectsof her personal life. Although it ispossible that Arvilla requested anonymity,

recorded the names of 379 personsresiding on the Hopkins campus (US Bureau of the Census, 1920). I downloaded a copy of the census, but did not have time to study it. I waspacking for Germany to conduct a seriesof human–computer interaction studies.

The census provides a clueI incorrectly assumed that my work inEurope would delay the search for Albert.However, the next step on the road toAlbert would not be taken by travelling toan American archive but by journeying toGranada, Spain. There, at the 2005European Congress ofPsychology, I met myfuture co-author DrSharman Levinson,who was then aprofessor at theUniversity of Angers,France. We discovereda mutual interest inWatson’s career. Afterthe conference, I mailed Levinsoncopies of manyhistorical documentsthat my students haddigitised.

Her attention wascaught by the census.No one under 14-years-old was listedeven though Watsonand other sourcesindicate that childrenwere living on campus.Almost everyone onthe census was single, divorced orwidowed, so it is reasonable to speculatethat the census taker never asked aboutchildren.

Neither were any wet nurses includedon the census. Three women, PearlBarger, Ethel Carter, and Arvilla Merritte,however, were listed as ‘foster mothers’.Foster mother is an occupationencompassing a variety of activitiesinvolving the maternal care of another’s

child. Levinson’s discovery of the fostermothers gave our inquiry new direction,but did not constitute proof that thesewomen were wet nurses. After returningto the United States, my students and I set out to discover whether Pearl Barger,Ethel Carter, and Arvilla Merritte werelactating during the winter of 1919/20.

Our attention initially focused onPearl Barger. Could Albert B. be AlbertBarger? Several hundred hours were spentsearching death certificates, marriagelicences, birth records and otherdocuments in the Maryland StateArchives. These efforts failed to produceevidence of Pearl’s motherhood.

Ethel Cartergave birth on 26August 1920 atHopkins. She couldhave been a wetnurse and probablyknew Albert. Ethel,however, was notAlbert’s mother.She was a blackwoman and herchild was a female.

Arvilla Merrittewas a 22-year-oldCaucasian. On 9March 1919, shedelivered a boy(‘Baby Merritte’) on the Hopkinscampus(Department of

Health and MentalHygiene, 1919). Thefather was listed asWilliam Merritte.

Further searches for Arvilla Merritteyielded no additional information. LikeAlbert and Pearl, she had disappeared.For months, Levinson, my students and I searched for clues, finally noticing thatan unknown individual had jotted downArvilla’s maiden name on the birth record:‘Irons’. Maiden names were not typicallyincluded on these documents, so I askedmyself: What motivated someone to addit to this record? Did the record keeper


looking back

Lane Home]. Collection Harriet LaneHome [Series 4b]. The Alan MasonChesney Medical Archives of TheJohns Hopkins Medical Institutions,Baltimore, MD.

Resnick, J.H. (1974). In pursuit of Albert.Professional Psychology, 5, 112–113.

Samelson, F. (1980). J.B. Watson’s LittleAlbert, Cyril Burt’s twins, and theneed for a critical science. AmericanPsychologist, 35, 619–625.

US Bureau of the Census (1920). JohnsHopkins Hospital, Maryland. In 14thCensus of the United States, 1920(Enumeration District 82, Sheet 4A;Roll: T625_661). Retrieved 29 June2009 from Ancestry Library database.

Watson, J.B. (1920, 30 March). [Letter toFrank J. Goodnow]. The FerdinandHamburger, Jr., Archives of The JohnsHopkins University (Record Group02.001/Office of the President /Series

1/File 115 (Department of Psychology)1920–1921).

Watson, J.B. (Writer/Director) (1923).Experimental investigation of babies[Motion picture]. (Distributed by C. H.Stoelting Co., Chicago, IL).

Watson, J.B. & Rayner, R. (1920).Conditioned emotional reactions.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3,1–14.

John Broadus Watson


a more probable explanation is thatWatson did not know the baby’s name. In 1920 Hopkins was a very stratifiedsocial environment (Park, n.d.).Interactions between professors and wetnurses were almost solely restricted toprofessional matters.

But why call the child Albert B.? At the 2008 meeting of the SoutheasternPsychological Association, I asked theeminent Watson scholar, Charles Brewerthat question. He reminded me thatWatson was named after a prominentBaptist minister, John Albert Broadus.

Naming Albert for his own namesakemight not have been Watson’s onlyplayful use of names. John and Rosaliemarried soon after Watson’s divorce. Theyhad two children, William and James.Perhaps it is coincidence, but it isinteresting that Watson greatly admiredhis predecessor, the philosopher-psychologist, William James.

Arvilla’s storyIn the early 20th century, the Irons familymoved from New Jersey to rural Amelia,Virginia, about 64 km west of Richmond.On 18 December 1915, Arvilla, age 17,gave birth to Maurice Irons: the fatherwas not recorded. Maurice eventuallyfathered Larry, Gary and five sisters.

In 1918 Arvilla became pregnantagain. Later that year or in early 1919, she moved to Baltimore, leaving herparents to raise Maurice. Before givingbirth, she lived in the Baltimore Home forFallen and Friendless Women, a Christianfacility 1.1 km from the Hopkins campus.

Arvilla went to work at Harriet Laneshortly after Douglas’ birth. In the early1920s, she and Douglas left Hopkins and moved into the home of RaymondBrashears, a farmer in the area of MountAiry, Maryland. Raymond’s wife, Flora,was very ill; she needed help fulfilling herdomestic duties and caring for her youngdaughter. Flora succumbed to meningitison 15 May 1924 (‘Deaths: Mrs. FloraBelle Brashears’, 1924).

In 1926 Arvilla married Wilbur Hood. Thirteen years later, a daughter,Gwendolyn, was born to the couple.‘Hoody’ and Arvilla grew apart afterGwendolyn’s birth and divorced in the1940s. Arvilla’s senior years were healthyand vigorous. She died in 1988, leavingbehind a trunk containing her mostprecious possessions, the landmarks ofher life.

Following her mother’s funeral,Gwendolyn discovered two photographicportraits in the trunk. One was ofMaurice when he was four or five yearsold. The second was of a baby she did not

recognise. Puzzled, Gwendolyn asked if Gary knew who the child was.

Many years before, Gary hadinadvertently come across the open trunk. He questioned his mother aboutthe portraits. She told him that one childwas his father and the other was Douglas.Gwendolyn was understandably upset tolearn about Douglas. Her mother nevertold her that she had a second brother.

Comparing the portrait and filmI asked Gary if he would send me a photograph of the portrait. To obtain a better image, he removed the oldpicture from its glass-covered frame. On the back was the address of thephotographic studio. It was located lessthan 3 km from Hopkins.

After the portrait arrived, severalcolleagues compared Douglas’ photographto stills of Albert made from the Watsonmovie. No one saw any featuresindicating that the two boys could not be the same person. Therefore, I felt thata more expert assessment was justified.

The principal shortcoming with thephotographic evidence was that we didnot know Douglas’ age when the portraitwas taken. Babies’ facial features rapidlychange making positive identificationimpossible. The quality of Watson’s moviewas another problem. Albert’s eyes looklike black dots; it was not possible todetermine where the eye sockets beganand ended. Enlarging stills from themovie brought forth some features, butthe resolution was poor. Although wecould not confirm that the two boys werethe same individual, a disconfirmationmight be possible. In other words, thebaby’s features might be so different thatthey could not be the same individual.

Money is no object if you have none.When in need, I have always dependedupon the kindness of scientists. Friendscalled friends and I was eventually put incontact with Dr William Rodriguez of theArmed Forces Institute of Pathology. Hegraciously consented to compareDouglas’s portrait with a number of stillsof Albert.

As expected, Rodriguez (personalcommunication, 13 June 2008) noted that the fast rate of tissue growth duringinfancy precluded a definitiveidentification of Albert. He thenaddressed the question: Did thephotographic evidence reveal thatDouglas and Albert were different people?

My examination using a simplifiedcross sectional ratio comparisonappears to suggest that one cannotexclude the subject in question aspossibly being baby Albert. There are

certainly facial similarities basedupon my observations even takinginto account the differentialchronological age of the subjectsdepicted. In conclusion the twophotographs could be the sameindividual (personal communication,13 June, 2008).

Although visual and biometriccomparisons found a resemblance, if thesole evidence were the photographs, wewould not claim that Douglas was Albert.Fortunately, the photographic data can beevaluated in conjunction with otherfindings to determine the likelihood thatDouglas was Little Albert.

ConclusionAfter seven years of investigation, we discovered an individual, DouglasMerritte, who shared many characteristicswith Little Albert. Our findings aresummarised as follows: I Watson and Rayner tested Albert

during the winter of 1919/20.Douglas’ mother, Arvilla, resided onthe Hopkins campus on 2 January1920.

I Watson and Rayner tell us thatAlbert’s mother was employed at theHarriet Lane Home. According tofamily history, Arvilla worked at theHarriet Lane Home.

I Albert’s mother was a wet nurse.Arvilla gave birth on 9 March 1919and was listed as a foster mother onthe 1920 Hopkins census. She couldhave served as a wet nurse.

I Documents suggest that there wereprobably no more than four wetnurses residing in the Harriet LaneHome at any one time. Thus, Arvillais one of very few women who couldhave been Albert’s mother.

I Douglas was born on the Hopkinscampus and cared for by his motherafter she left the hospital. Therefore, it is very likely that Douglas lived oncampus with his mother during thewinter of 1919/20.

I If Douglas lived with Arvilla, then he,like Albert, spent almost his entirefirst year at Harriet Lane.

I Like Albert, Douglas left Hopkinsduring the early 1920s.

I By jointly considering Watson andRayner’s article, the film, and Watson’scorrespondence with Goodnow, wedetermined that Albert was bornbetween 2 March and 16 March 1919.Douglas was born on 9 March 1919.

I Albert and Douglas were Caucasianmales.

I Visual inspection and biometric

394 vol 24 no 5 may 2011

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looking back

analyses of the Douglasportrait and Little Albertfilm find ‘facialsimilarities’. No featureswere so different as toindicate that Douglas andAlbert could not be thesame individual.

Although some of theseattributes are shared by morethan one person, theprobability that the completeset applies to anyone exceptAlbert is very small. Theavailable evidence stronglysupports the proposition thatDouglas Merritte is LittleAlbert. After 90 years,psychology’s lost boy has comehome.

EpilogueGary, his wife, Helen, and I set flowers on Arvilla’s grave.Then we drove several miles to the Church of the Brethren.Beside the church is a smallwell-kept cemetery. I followedGary to a modest-sizedtombstone. It read, ‘Douglas,Son of Arvilla Merritte, March9, 1919 to May 10, 1925.’Below his name, wereinscribed lines from a FeliciaHemans poem (189-?, p.331).

The sunbeam’s smile, thezephyr’s breath,All that it knew from birthto death.

Standing beside Douglas’grave, my prevailing feelingwas one of loneliness. Douglasnever grew up; our search waslonger than the child’s life. Thequest, which had for so longbeen a part of my life, wasover. I put flowers beside mylittle friend and said goodbye.

Whatever happened toLittle Douglas? We may neverknow if he experienced anylong-term negativeconsequences from hisconditioning. We did discover that hishealth deteriorated after leaving theHarriet Lane Home. His death certificate(Department of Health Bureau of VitalStatistics, 1925) states that Douglas diedfrom hydrocephalus and convulsions.

To conclude that Douglas’s storyended in a rural Maryland graveyardoverlooks much of the significance of hislife. Although we found no indication

that Watson and Rayner’s proceduresprovoked criticism in the 1920s,Douglas’s treatment now exemplifies theneed for an ethical code to protect therights of participants. All behaviourtherapies trace their lineage to MaryCover Jones’s (1924) counterconditioningof Peter, a follow-up to the Albertinvestigation. Watson and Rayner’s simplestudy of fear acquisition and

generalisation encouraged thedevelopment of effective treatments forphobias and an array of other behaviouralproblems.

I Hall P. Beck is at the Appalachian StateUniversity, Boone, North [email protected]

I Gary Irons lives in Finksburg, Maryland

Why are we drawn to Little Albert?It can be argued that discovering Little Albert’s identity is not important. It will not alter the impact ofbehaviourism on psychology. Finding Douglas will not change how we conduct therapy, train intellectuallychallenged individuals, conduct computer-assisted instruction, etc. Yet many people do find the discoveryof the identity of Albert significant or at least interesting. So why does Little Albert have such magnetism?Here are a few things which may have contributed to Albert’s popularity.I What happened to Little Albert is a mystery. People love mysteries. Nevertheless, that fact alone

cannot fully account for the interest Albert generates. What happened to the many other babies thatWatson tested is also a mystery and no one to my knowledge has attempted to locate them.

I There is a lack of closure. The Watson and Rayner study was never completed. The original plan wasto decondition Albert.Unfortunately, he leftHopkins on the last day of testing.

I Many people believe thatAlbert was mistreated.Certainly, by modernstandards, establishing a fear in an infant isethically questionable.Not removing the fearmakes matters far worse.People want to know ifAlbert suffered any long-term negativeconsequences as a resultof his conditioning.

I For many psychologists,the Little Albert study isone of the firstinvestigations that theylearn about. We tend tovalue those earlyexperiences that broughtus into the discipline. It is remarkable how many people have told me in vivid detail about the firsttime they heard of the Albert study.

I We know Albert’s name. Whether intentional or not, giving the baby a name was a publicitymasterstroke. It would be much harder for people to emotionally relate to the child if he was not givena name or called Baby A, Baby 32, or the like.

I Albert was a baby. Many people are simply interested in and protective of babies. Babies bring outpowerful emotional responses.

These six factors account for some of Albert’s magic. This list, however, cannot fully explain the little boy’scontinued appeal. Albert has transcended his role as a participant and become an integral member of ourpsychological family.

Albert’s fame is widespread. As much as Pavlov’s dogs, and Skinner’s pigeons, Albert is the face thatpsychology shows the general public. A more important, and often ignored role, is that stories, like that ofAlbert, are part of our collective memory. Our identification as psychologists is predicated upon aknowledge and appreciation of our mutual history.


The Psychologist, May 2011

Documents

Transcript of The Psychologist, May 2011