Research Question
This study will follow the principles and definition of sensitization of the revised habituation model of desensitization, the dual-process habituation theory (Watt, 1979). Community violence exposure, risk taking, and decision making are concepts that low income, minority adolescents can be faced with frequently and deserves further investigation in research literature. The research questions are as follows:
Could adolescents become desensitized to community violence with results in their brain activity?
I hypothesize that adolescents can be desensitized to community violence. Brain activation for people who are desensitized would be different than non-densentized people, such as less amygdala activation. Their sensitization will grow at first and then decay to desensitization (Watt, …show more content…
One includes an experiment where adolescents will have to process a fearful community violence situation compared to a neutral community situation. Adolescents will be exposed to community violent situations from popular new movies that they have not yet seen in order for researchers to see if their brain has activation in the amygdala. These community violent situations will be based off of the questions related to community violence (e.g. there is a question about being chased and there may be a scene where a character in a movie is being chased). Adolescents will also view movie scenes that show a neutral situation for comparison and happy scenes versus neutral as well. This study is similar to fearful faces studies. The second experiment is comparing adolescents’ brain response to fearful faces and neutral faces (and then happy and neutral faces) to draw comparisons to the previous task and their processing of fear in a more researched context (Breiter et al., 1996). These experiments looking at fear and happy emotions and situations will be done simultaneous as to avoid order
This study will follow the principles and definition of sensitization of the revised habituation model of desensitization, the dual-process habituation theory (Watt, 1979). Community violence exposure, risk taking, and decision making are concepts that low income, minority adolescents can be faced with frequently and deserves further investigation in research literature. The research questions are as follows:
Could adolescents become desensitized to community violence with results in their brain activity?
I hypothesize that adolescents can be desensitized to community violence. Brain activation for people who are desensitized would be different than non-densentized people, such as less amygdala activation. Their sensitization will grow at first and then decay to desensitization (Watt, …show more content…
One includes an experiment where adolescents will have to process a fearful community violence situation compared to a neutral community situation. Adolescents will be exposed to community violent situations from popular new movies that they have not yet seen in order for researchers to see if their brain has activation in the amygdala. These community violent situations will be based off of the questions related to community violence (e.g. there is a question about being chased and there may be a scene where a character in a movie is being chased). Adolescents will also view movie scenes that show a neutral situation for comparison and happy scenes versus neutral as well. This study is similar to fearful faces studies. The second experiment is comparing adolescents’ brain response to fearful faces and neutral faces (and then happy and neutral faces) to draw comparisons to the previous task and their processing of fear in a more researched context (Breiter et al., 1996). These experiments looking at fear and happy emotions and situations will be done simultaneous as to avoid order