Course: Research Methods in Psychology: Using Animal Models to Understand Human Behaviour

Nature or nurture? A little bit of both? More of one or the other? Professor Giorgio Vallortigara, a professor and researcher at the University of Trento, often asks this question …

When we talk about using animal models in research, there’s a lot to discuss, and it can be quite polarising. So I’ve asked for the help of Professor Anna Wilkinson, …

Wolpe (1952, 1958) developed an animal model of anxiety disorders and a treatment to cure them based on studies with laboratory animals. Reducing fear in cats through exposure In these …

The concepts of unpredictability and uncontrollability as potential causes of distress and psychopathology have improved our comprehension of many psychopathologies. In particular, unpredictability and uncontrollability are crucial concepts for one …

Ivan Pavlov (1927) and his colleagues were some of the pioneers in the study of psychopathology using animal models. Investigating neurotic behaviour There are two important experiments in the study …

Smell something fishy? In this video, we’ll look into something quite interesting (and not exactly fishy): fish and their role in understanding dyscalculia. As was mentioned in the last step, …

Today, we will enter the fascinating world of numerical abilities and the contribution of fish in the study of mathematical disabilities. Numerical systems Several studies have shown that humans have …

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder marked by cognitive and behavioural impairment, and it greatly interferes with social and occupational functioning. Unfortunately, it is an incurable disease with a …

In the last step, we asked the question: “How did psychologists demonstrate these simple but robust mechanisms of learning?” To answer this question we need to go back to 1913, …

Did you know that our perception is an active interpretation of reality? We aren’t just passive decoders–it’s quite the opposite, in fact. We start from sensory information reaching the sensory …

Now that we’ve covered the first category of behavioural tests, let’s move on to the second: training procedures. In training procedures, subjects are taught an explicit rule to see whether …

Let’s discuss the first category of behavioural tests. Free-choice tests entail observing how a subject (in this case, an animal) behaves in the presence of a biologically-relevant stimulus. In free-choice …

By the time a human is born, much of the wiring of the nervous system is in place. However, throughout our life span, we still have the ability to rearrange …

Now that you’ve better understood animal contribution on the mechanisms of learning, let’s hear from an expert in the field. Michael Beran is a professor of psychology and the co-director …

In the next video steps, we’ll be focusing on visual illusion studies, starting with the Delboeuf Illusion. Visual illusion studies are not only cool and interesting, but they are also …