Classifying abnormality
There are advantages and disadvantages inherent in attempting to classify the different forms of abnormal. behaviour. One potential advantage is that, if different types of abnormality have different causes, then we may be able to understand more about the various syndromes by studying a number of people with a specific problem and looking for similarities, for instance in their history, behaviour, or physiology. By studying many people who had panic attacks it was noticed that they tended to interpret their bodily sensations during an attack as signs of impending catastrophe: breathlessness was taken as a sign of impending suffocation; a pounding heart suggested imminent heart attack. Further research has shown that these catastrophic interpretations play a central role in panic attacks.
Reklam
Part of the difficulty in defining abnormality is that each person's history as well as their current situation contributes to the way they think, feel, and act (behave), and this should be taken into account. For instance, a particular behaviour may have reflected an adaptive response in an earlier environment. A child who learns to avoid punishment or criticism by keeping quiet may be showing behaviour that is functional in those circumstances. However, if the reticence persists into adulthood, then it may prevent that person forming close and confiding relationships. The process here may be normal, and initially adaptive, but it may result later in behaviour which is maladaptive, interfering with the ability to relate well to others, and causes distress.
A long-term study of children with very high IQs found that some became very successful adults but others did not, with no differences in IQ between the two groups. There were, however, great differences in motivation: the more successful individuals had much more ambition and drive to succeed.
Can intelligence be increased?
A question that is of greater practical use is whether intelligence can be enhanced by environmental influences. Even minimal interventions such as giving high quality nutritional supplements to children in developing countries can enhance IQ scores possibly through their effect on general health and, thus, on factors such as energy, concentration, and attention. There is also evidence showing that the amount of parental attention a child receives affects its IQ-this may explain why first-born children have slightly higher IQs than their siblings, because the first child usually gets more attention. Many studies have investigated whether various 'brain training' programmes can enhance IQ, and although they do enhance performance on certain tasks, there is little evidence that this effect generalizes to other tasks or persists once the training is discontinued, so it seems more of a 'practice effect' than any real enhancement of intelligence.
Goal setting has been shown to improve performance in 90 per cent of the relevant studies, and it is especially likely to do so under the following conditions: people accept the goals set, they are informed about their progress, they are rewarded for achieving goals, they have the ability to reach them, and they are appropriately supported and encouraged by those in charge.
Reklam