A2 Psychology Eating Behaviour Workbook

Name_________________________

Form__________________________

Mark Ryman, Clare Teasdale, Vicki Varney 2014

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How Unit 3 is assessed

1 hr 30mins exam = 25% of the total A level marks

Three sectionsQuestion 1 -: Biological rhythms and sleep

Question 5-: Eating behaviour Question 3-: Relationships

*Within these topics you are expected to show an understanding of issues, debates and approaches, demonstrating how this is relevant within the topic

areas.

Introduction

We will be working through this booklet in lesson time, it can also be used as a revision aid nearer to the exam. Inside this booklet are resources that have been designed to help you to understand and revise eating behaviour psychology. Three different areas are covered;

Ø Eating behaviour Ø Biological explanations of eating behaviourØ Eating disorders

The booklet also contains a list of the specification requirements which you can use as a checklist to monitor your progress. Past exam questions have also been included so you know what to expect, some of these will be completed during lesson time.

These are useful sites which may help you with your revision; some of them have been used within the booklet.

1 http://psyonline.org.uk/ 2 http://web.aqa.org.uk/qual/gce/psychology_a_A2_new.php 3 http://www.psychexchange.co.uk/videos/

When preparing resources, the following textbook has been used:

Ÿ Cardwell, M. & Flannagan, C. (2009) Psychology A2: The Complete Companion. (Second Edition) Folens Limited.

Ÿ Comer, R,J. (2001) Abnormal Psychology (Fourth Edition) Worth Publishers: New York. Ÿ Gross, R. & Rolls, G. (2009) AQA (A) Psychology for A2. Hodder Education.

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How is your work assessed?

AO1 – knowledge and understanding of psychology (as a science) and of how science works.

AO2 – Application of knowledge and understanding of psychology and of how science works: analysis and evaluation of knowledge and processes; application of scientific knowledge and processes to unfamiliar situations, including issues; assessment of the validity, reliability and credibility of scientific information. AO3 – How science works. Psychology candidates should be able to describe ethical, safe and skilful practical techniques and processes; know how to make, record and communicate reliable and valid observations and measurements; analyse, interpret, explain and evaluate methodology, results and impact of their own and others’ investigative activities.

It is appropriate and workable to incorporate approaches, issues and debates into your answers (marks for free!!). In order for you to reach the higher bands you have to effectively reference such material. The AO3 marks are likely to be accessed through methodological analysis and evaluation of studies.

The assessment for learning cycle

Teacher sets task

Student performs task

Teacher / student / peer marks task

Systematised feedback on task

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Follow-up work

The systematised feedback will: Relate to how your work will be marked in the external

examinations Be a system that you can understand Provide feedback that is development

Key Term GlossaryUsing information from the lessons, you will need to fill in the following table over this half of the term with

definitions for the following:Key Term Definition

1. Social learning

2. Restraint theory

3. Role of denial

4. Homeostasis

5. Lateral hypothalamus (LH)

6. Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)

7. EEA

8. Sociocultural explanations

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9. Evolutionary explanations

10. Dieting

11. Taste Aversion

12. Psychological explanations

13. Hunger

14. Anorexia Nervosa

15. Biological explanations

16. Free will

17. Determinism

18. Satiety

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Topic 1: Attitudes to food and eating behaviour

The social learning theory claims that observing others and their attitudes to food shapes our own attitudes and behaviour towards food. A01 - Parental modeling – parents attitudes affect their children, as the parents control the types of food eaten within the home. Brown and Ogden (2004) found consistent correlations between parents and their children in terms of snack food, eating motivations and body dissatisfaction.

What is your favourite food?___________________________________________Why is it your favourite food? __________________________________________

A02 – Meyer and Gast (2008) surveyed 10-12year old boy and girls and found a significant positive correlation between peer influence and disordered eating. Showing that peers can also have an impact on eating behaviour.

A01- Media- MacIntyre et al (1998) found that the media has an impact on what people eat and their attitudes to certain food. Researchers have found that eating behaviours are limited by personal circumstances like age and family income. Knowledge about healthy eating is very much influenced by the media and the messages it presents.

Task 1: Find out about the ministry of food experiment that Jamie Oliver was involved with, in 2008. How does it relate to attitudes to food and eating?

Evaluate the social learning explanation of attitudes to food.

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Task 2: What does the media tell us?

As a class we are going to analyse 3 television advertisements on fast food. Before we do that, what is a content analysis? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ How will carrying out a content analysis on fast food adverts help us to explore how the media portrays attitudes about this type of food?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Task:You need to create a content analysis using both newspaper and television adverts. As part of your conclusion you should link your findings with those of MacIntyre (1998) and Ogden (2007).

Adverts analysed:

Key terms measured

Trends discovered

Conclusion

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Cultural influences

TaskTo help you to form an introduction to cultural factors, read the following extract and

write a summary conclusion below.

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Summary Conclusion______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

KEY RESEARCH- Complete the table

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A01 A02 (studies)Powell and Khan (1995) found that body dissatisfaction and related eating concerns as well as disorders such as bulimia nervosa are more characteristic of white women than black or Asian women

Story et al 1995 found in a sample of American students that higher social class, was related to lower rates of weight control behaviour and greater satisfaction with weight.

Mood

A01 -Mood and eating behaviour -Binge eating- Davis et al (1988) found that 1 hour before a binge individuals that were bulimic had more negative mood states than 1 hour before a normal snack or meal. This same relationship between low mood and binge eating appears to hold for sub clinical populations below the threshold diagnosis.

What did Wegner et al in 2002 find? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What did Garg et al in 2001 find when investigating low mood and comfort eating. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A02-Studies have found that low mood precedes episodes of binge eating suggesting that low mood and the onset of binge eating is linked. Binge eating offers immediate gratification, but as many studies report a drop in mood immediately after the binge. It is unclear why a binge eating episode might be reinforcing.

Can chocolate influence our mood? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Topic 2: Explanations for the success or failure of dietingIt has been estimated that at any one time 40 per cent of the female population is trying to lose weight, usually by dieting. A multi-million pound dieting industry has

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grown up over the last 20 years, advertising various diets and strategies guaranteed to help you to lose weight. This industry is built for women and girls, but why?

Task: Research these different diets, finding out what type of diet it is and whether you think it will result in success or failure giving reasons for your answer.

Atkins Weight Watchers The Zone Diet

Restraint theory key study: Herman and Mack (1975)

Read the following study and complete the conclusion and evaluation.Conclusion

Methodological issues

Ethical issues

The boundary modelHerman and Polivy (1984) developed the boundary model in an attempt to explain

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why dieting may lead to over eating. The model suggests that hunger keeps intake of food above a minimum and satiety (satisfaction of hunger) works to keep intake below some maximum level. Dieters have a larger range between hunger and satiety levels, it takes them longer to feel hungry and take more food to satisfy. Draw out the diagram on pg.86 to illustrate.

Restrained eaters have a self imposed desired intake, once they have gone over the boundary they continue to eat until they reach satiety beyond the maximum level imposed as part of the diet. A02 -Commentary Q.1) Discuss the implications for obesity treatment using the restraint theory. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Q.2) Why does the restraint theory have limited relevance? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The role of denial Research in cognitive psychology has suggested that attempting to deny a thought

can make it more prominent. Wegner et al (1987) demonstrated this when he asked participants not to think about a white bear, they thought more about a white bear compared to those told to think of a white bear.

The whole process of dieting involved deciding not to eat certain foods or not to eat them as often ( e.g. chocolate, cake and biscuits). According to the theory of ironic processes of mental control, food which is denied often becomes more attractive.

A02 – Soetens et al (2006) supported the theory of ironic processes. Participants were divided into two different groups. The disinhibited restrained group (try to eat less but often over eat) used more thought suppression than the other groups and showed more of a rebound effect (thought more about food) afterwards. What does

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this show?

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Neural mechanisms in eating and satiationHumans need food to sustain life and have an inbuilt physiological system to deal with hunger and satiation (satisfaction of

those needs).

Neural Mechanisms in Eating and Satiation

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Homeostasis

Homeostasis and eatingHomeostasis and eating

systemsThe lateral

hypothalamusThe ventromedial

hypothalamusDamage to the ventromedial hypothalamus

Neural control of cognitive factorsThe amygdala

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The inferior prefrontal cortex

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Evolutionary explanations for food preference The environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA). EEA refers to the environment that the species first evolved. It is believed that humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies, diets would therefore consist of plants and animals that existed within that environment. Why would evolutionary psychologists believed that humans developed a preference for fatty foods? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A02 – Gibson and Wardle (2001) found that calorie-rich foods (potatoes and bananas) were more likely to be chosen by children, demonstrating an evolved preference for foods high in calories.

Meat- Humans began to include meat in their diets due to the decline in quality plant foods caused by receding forests. Fossil evidence suggests that animals based founds such as animal liver, kidney and brains may have been part of the daily diet of hunter-gatherer groups. Milton (2008) claims that without animals, it’s unlikely that humans would have developed into active intelligent species. A02- what did Cordian et al argue? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Taste Aversion – Bait shyness was discovered by farmers trying to get rid of rats. They found that it was difficult to kill the rats using poison because they would only take a small amount of any new food and if they became ill they would avoid it. Garcia et al (1995) found that rats that have been made ill through radiation shortly after eating saccharin developed an aversion to it. Seligman (1970) claimed that different species evolved different learning abilities, he called this biological preparedness, these associations would then help the individual to survive.

What is the medicine affect? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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The evolution cartoonComplete the following based on the evolutionary approach

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Anorexia Nervosa

Find out what the clinical characteristics of AN according to the DSM- IV-TR these headings will help you.

1. Anxiety ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Weight ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Body-image distortion ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4. Amenorrhea ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

AN Case Study Highlight any of the clinical symptoms of AN in the case study on Janet.

Janet Caldwell was five feet, two inches tall and weighed 62 pounds….. Janet began dieting at the age of 12 when she weighed 115 pounds and was chided by her family and friends for being for being “pudgy” She continued to restrict her food intake over a two-year period, and as she grew thinner, her parents became increasingly more concerned about her eating behaviour.

Janet felt that her weight problem began at the time of puberty. She said that her family and friends supported her efforts to achieve a ten pound weight loss when she first began dieting at the age of 12. Janet did not go on any special kind of diet. Instead, she restricted her food intake at meals, generally cut down on carbs and protein intake, tended to eat a lot of salads, and completely stopped snacking between meals. At first, she was quite pleased with her progressive weight reduction, and she was able to ignore her feelings of hunger by remembering the weight loss goal she had set for herself. However, each time she had lost the number of pounds she had set for her goal she decided to lose a few more pounds. Therefore she continued to set new weight goals for herself. In this manner, her weight dropped from 115 pounds to 88 pounds during the first year of her weight loss regime.

Janet felt that, in her second year of dieting, her weight loss had continued beyond her control. She became convinced that there was something inside of her that would not let her gain weight. Janet commented that although there had been occasions over the past few years when she had been fairly ‘down’ or unhappy, she still felt driven to keep on dieting. As a result, she frequently went for walks, ran errands for her family, and spent a great deal of time cleaning her room and keeping it in a meticulously neat and unaltered arrangement.

When Janet’s weight loss continued beyond the first yea, her parents insisted that she their family doctor, and Mrs Caldwell accompanied Janet to her appointment. The doctor was quite alarmed at Janet’s appearance and prescribed a high calorie diet. Janet said that her mother spent a great deal of time pleading with her to eat, and Mrs Caldwell planned various types of meals that she thought would be appealing to Janet. Mrs Caldwell also talked a great deal to Janet about the importance of good nutrition. Mr Caldwell, on the other hand, became quite impatient with these discussions and tended to order Janet to eat. Janet would then try to eat something, but often became tearful and ran out of the room because she could not swallow

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the food she had been ordered to eat. The youngster said that she often responded to her parents’ entreaties that she eat by telling them that she indeed had eaten but they had not seen he do so. She often listed foods that she said she had consumed which in fact she had flushed down the toilet. She estimated that she only was eating about 300 calories a day. (Leon, 1984, pp. 179-184)

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Psychological explanations of ANUsing p92 and 93 of the textbook complete the following

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Cultural ideals and the media

Links with previous research

Ethnicity and peer influence

Links with previous research

Links with previous research

Personality

Biological explanations of AN

Name of topic Outline of theory (A01) Conflicting evidence (low A02)

IDA (High A02)

NeurotransmittersSeroton

NeurotransmittersDopamine

NeurodevelopmentPregnancy and birth

complications

NeurodevelopmentSeason of birth

Evolutionary Explanation

The reproductive suppression hypothesis

Evolutionary Explanations

The ‘adapted to flee’ hypothesis (AFFH) 1

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Evolutionary Explanations

The ‘adapted to flee’ hypothesis (AFFH) 2

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Topic Area Progress CheckerHighlight how you feel about each section of the specification.

Green = Feel Confident able to answer a questionAmber = Almost there but I need to spend some more time on this/need help

from teacherRed = I have no idea, I couldn’t complete a question.

Progress Check November

Progress Check December

Progress Check January

Eating behaviour

Factors influencing attitudes to food and eating behaviour, for example cultural influences, mood and health concerns.

Explanations for the success or failure of dieting.

Biological explanations of eating behaviour

The role of neural mechanisms involved in controlling eating and satiation.

Evolutionary explanations of food preference.

Eating disorders

Psychological explanations of one eating disorder, for example, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, obesity.

Biological explanations, including neural and evolutionary explanations of one eating disorder, for example, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, obesity.

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