If you have ever wondered how acute your vision is, how you experience pain, or how you can most effectively study, you have raised a question that is most appropriately answered by an experimental psychologist. Experimental psychology is the branch of psychology that studies the process of sensing, perceiving, learning, and thinking about the world.
The work of experimental psychologist overlaps that done by biopsychologists, as well as that done in other branches of psychology. Actually, the term “experimental psychologist” is somewhat misleading, since psychologist in every branch use experimental techniques, and experimental psychologist do not limit themselves to only experimental methods.
Several subspecialities have grown out of experimental psychology and have become central parts of the field in their own right. For example, cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that specializes in the study of higher mental processes, including thinking, language, memory, problem solving, knowing, reasoning, judging, and decision making. Covering a wide swath of human behavior, cognitive psychologists have, for instance, identified more efficient ways of remembering and better strategies for solving problems involving logic.
Source:
Robert S. Feldman. Understanding Psychology. McGraw Hill, 1990
First Described in the late 1800s, anorexia nervosa, or voluntary self-starvation. Remained a rare disorder until the 1960s when the incidence began to increase steadily. Brunch’s now classic observational paper delineated the basic problem of young women fighting for personal control in a stifling family environment. These young women were “perfect”, according to the standards of their high society families,but had never been given the freedom to develop a sense of self. They were subconsciously rebelling the only way they could-by not eating. Originally thought to be a disease limited to white, upper-class women in western societies, it is now spreading into other races, socioeconomic classes, and throughout the developed world. The prevalence in the United States is now estimated to be 0.7 to 1% of young women. Onset has a bimodal distribution; the first peak occurring at 13 to 14 years and the second at 17 to 18 years.
Source: Debra A. Krummel, Penny M. Kris-Etherthon. Nutrition in Women's Health. Aspen Publishers, 1996.
Bulimia, the ingestion and subsequent purging of copious amounts of food, has been part of human society, sporadically, since the Roman orgies. In the 1960’ it re-emerged as a dissolution of primary anorexia. When an anorexic patient could no longer sustain her rigid self-denial, she gave in to her desire to eat but then vomited to maintain her low body weight.By 1980, bulimia had appeared singularly with enough frequency to warrant a separate classification in DSM-III. Now bulimia is estimated to affect 4 to 10% of adolescent and college-aged women with some estimates rising as high as 19 to 20%. It is also on the rise in men. However, it is a disease based in feelings of shame, insecurity and inadequately, so the best estimates probably fall short of the true magnitude of the problem. Sub clinical bulimia is much more prevalent. Binge eating was reported by 65 to 69% of female undergraduates in surveys, but is estimates to affect up to 80% of collegiate women.
Bulimia nervosa is defined by five characteristics, all of which must be present for the diagnosis. If only the bingeing behavior is present, in the absence of purging, the provisional diagnosis of binge-eating disorder may be given. The validity of this classification as a completely separate entity is still under investigation and hotly debated.
Diagnostic Criteria for Bulimia Nervosa
1.Recurrent episodes of binge eating. An episode of binge eating is characterized by both of following:
·Eating, in a discrete period of tike (e.g. within any 2 hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than most people would eat during a similar period of time and under similar circumstances.
·A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g. a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating)
2.Recurrent inappropriate compensatory behavior in order to prevent weight gain, such as self induced vomiting; misuse of laxatives, diuretics, enemas, or other medications; fasting; or excessive exercise.
3.The binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviors both occur, on average at least twice a week for 3 months.
4.Self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape and weight.
5.The disturbance does not occur exclusively during episodes of anorexia nervosa.
Specify type:
Purging type: during the current episode of bulimia nervosa, the person has regularly engaged in self induces vomiting or the misuse of laxatives, diuretics or enemas.
Nonpurging type: during the current episode of bulimia nervosa, the person has used other inappropriate compensatory behaviors, such as fasting or excessive exercise, but has not regularly engaged in self-induced vomiting of the misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas.
Source:
Debra A. Krummel, Penny M. Kris-Etherton. Nutrition in Women's Health. Aspen Publishers, 1996.
