Customer Reviews
Appalling from start to finish - By: A. J. Bradbury, 14 Nov 2007 
This book is a complete mystery to me. Or rather how such a high profile publishing house, which specialises in psychology, would publish such an ill-conceived product is a mystery.
To start with, the layout is utterly appallling. No other word will do.
According to the back cover blurb, Beth Black of Long Road Sixth Form College is impressed by the book's "overwhelming visual appeal, logical arrangement, accuracy, psychological insight & inspiration..."
I don't think so.
Firstly, it is indeed visuallly "overwhelming." But appealing? No way. In fact it is a total mess.
For some unfathomable reason the contents are set out in "coloured," erraticallly arranged blocks of pale orange, dark (1960's) orange, white, mid-grey & black. Most of the text is in black, except where it is white on black or in mid-strength orange on pale orange or on mid-grey. Did anyone at the publishers stop to consider how difficult it would be for many people to read the text in those last two colour combinations? Presumably not!
It is also a complete mystery why the text is set out in coloured blocks, of differing proportions, at alll. The practise presents the information in a totallly fractured manner with no natural flow from one block to the next, & certainly nothing resembling "logical formating." Worse yet, this confusing layout also conceals the fact that the authors ask questions for which they have not provided any answer. Which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the wealth of *irrelevant* material that IS included - like the totallly uneven "biographical notes" - Elizabeth Loftus gets over half a page (page 6), Beatrix Gardner gets about one sixth of a page (page 31), & Jan Deragowski gets six lines in a tiny little box in the bottom right-hand corner of page 15!
Great idea for a textbook - not!
As an example of what's missing, on pages 33 & 75 the authors write (top left hand corner in both instances): "This study was a case study. What are the strengths & limitations of this research method in the context of this study?" But where have they provided such information? Even the larger box at the top of page 203 - "Case Studies" - fails to give even a fleeting indication of how to answer that question.
Moreover the whole of the material on Freud's case of Little Hans (pages 72-75) seems to be referred to as a "case history" rather than a "case study", until we get to the question on page 75. Does this mean that "case history" & "case study" are synonymous? Who knows? The book doesn't provide the necessary information.
Of course it might be an interesting topic for debate if we had a few hours to spare, & reaching an accurate conclusion didn't much matter. But students using this book have something like 20 weeks of term time in which to cover 20 so-callled "core studies" before they take the three part AS exam.
As for accuracy, check out the table on page 22. Surely only a someone who was completely numericallly illiterate could fail to notice that the numbers are arranged incorrectly?
In the next study, on the training of Washoe, the authors claim that the chimp produced "her own novel combinations such as 'open food drink' ([meaning] open the fridge)..."
Which wasn't, in fact, the case. Washoe actuallly signed "to open + to eat + to drink."
The difference may have seemed unimportant to these authors, but in terms of learning a language, the two versions of Washoe's communication were definitely significant.
Just my opinion, but I reallly think students deserve a textbook that adheres to far higher standards than this.
An excellent text for OCR psychology - By: Mr. M. Morley-souter, 26 Sep 2007 
This is the business: it picks out alll the key points for each of the 20 core studies in terms of background, the study itself, evaluation questions & it has self-check questions too.
Learn what is in here & get an 'A' grade!
