October 2011 Archives

We all know how awkward it can be when we give the thumbs up signal to someone who believes that the thumbs up is an insult, or wave hello to someone who believes we're telling them to go away, or the often too common misperception of yes for no and no for yes; the list is endless! But how much more embarrassing when we're trying to make a move on someone...and we cross cultural barriers of flirting? In a world where the majority of our communication is non-verbal, doesn't it seem ironic that we spend no time learning 'the language' of our gestures? Why don't universities offer something like FLIRT1001? How can we teach French, Spanish, German, Russian, Arabic, etc. and forget to learn the non-verbal language? Seems ironic, right? I've personally never been in a more uncomfortable situation than when I'm in Egypt and the men stare me down; it's not unfamiliar to find someone staring at you to get your attention...my friends here joke about 'raping someone with your eyes,' but in Egypt, it's totally normal! But when you remove yourself and travel across the world, you find that the cultural and acceptable norms of flirting couldn't be more diverse! This article captures it all too well! But how valid and reliable are these claims? Can we oversimplify actions of attraction to definition? Although we could evaluate these claims with the scientific principles of thinking, I personally believe that of the six (falsifiability, replicability, rival hypotheses, Occam's Razor, correlation versus causation, and extraordinary claims), the most important is replicability . This series of videos (Part 1 and Part 2) there are specific rules to follow! But we must find the replicability of these findings; we need a larger sample size and descriptive approaches because these tendencies of human communication, I believe, can't be generalized within the lab; they must be observed! So what do you guys think? Ever been any place and found yourself confused because of flirting habits?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-women-who-live-together-menstruate-together

If you are a lady you have probably heard somewhere that if you spend a lot of time with another woman your menstrual cycles will "sync up" and that means you will have someone to share tampons and groans with every month. This wonderful phenomenon is called menstrual synchrony. Psychologist Martha McClintock who in 1971 started studying women in UK dormitories coined the term menstrual synchrony. In her initial study she found that women who spent more time together reportedly began to sync up periods. McClintock believed that pheromones influenced cycle length but a study by Zhengwei Yang and Jeffery C. Schank found that McClintock had the women in her study use the recall method to collect data in her interviews and they also found other data collection errors. This along with a host of other studies done since has found that women don't synchronize their menstrual cycles.
So why is relevant to psychology? In reading this article I found that McClintock's experiment wasn't replicable, she should have done the experiment more than one before basing more research off it (confirmation bias?!). But honestly, after more experiments in the same vain, people have found Occam's Razor to be true in this situation. If women are spending a lot of time together it is obvious that they will have their periods at the same time at some point.

One major concept in psychology is infantile amnesia. Infantile amnesia is the idea that most of us have no recollection of our memories throughout many of our early ears. Memories such as playing with other children, watching our favorite television shows, or even more prominent events, such as a relative passing away, or moving across the country are entirely gone. Few of us recall events before two or three years of age, memories before that age are unreliable. No one knows exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but it might be related to the fact that the hippocampus, which plays a major role in long-term memory, is only partially developed in children. Therefore, before the age of two or three, we might not even posses the basic brain functions we need to retain those memories. Often times, this concept is highly correlated to false memories. Many people may feel that they experienced something at an early age, but really didn't. For example, there was a study by Braun, Ellis, and Loftus Palmer, where they asked participants if they ever saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland as a child. Sixteen percent of the participants said they remembered meeting and shaking hands with him, some even remembered him saying, "What's up Doc?". The funny things is Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, so there was no way that memory was correct.

Amnesia is defined as loss of memory due usually to brain injury, shock, fatigue, repression, or illness. When I here amnesia I always think that someone has lost all sort of memory of oneself and everything from the past. According to the textbook there are two types of amnesia, which are retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is when we lose some memories of our past, but not as all movies portray it to be. Anterograde amnesia is when we lose the ability to form new memories. I am sure everyone has either heard or seen the movie Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne ultimatum. These films is based on a guy named James Bourne a former CIA assassin suffering from extreme memory loss. This guy had different identities through out his life as he worked for the CIA. He some how found a way to get away of the life of being an assassin, but the CIA still tries to track him, for reasons Bourne can't remember at all. So through out these movies He gets pieces of his memory back to solve the mystery. It seems that this movie shows the many misconceptions made about amnesia. Movies generalize amnesia as loss of all memory even of who they are, but that generalized amnesia is exceedingly rare. It is important to have amnesia explained in better terms to lessen the misconceptions. It would be better to have a way to know more about things than just relating it to movies we watch.

One of the things that seemed fascinating to me in chapter 8 was the description about how infants learn how to communicate. I never thought about how quick and important their developments at an early age are.

The auditory systems of the unborn infants develop by the fifth month of pregnancy and they can identify the voice of their mother and recognize their native language. This recognition was tested by measuring how much the infants sucked on the pacifier when they heard the mother's native language and an unfamiliar language. It was apparent for the researchers that there was more sucking when the baby heard the mother's native language even when a complete stranger was speaking.

As the infants continue to develop they begin to babble. The babbling, which refers to meaningless intentional vocalization, is important because the babies begin to use their vocal cords to familiarize themselves with the phonemes of their native language. It also helps them to fine-tune the vocal tracts and the ears to adjust to their own language.

This video from YouTube shows us what looks like a meaningful conversation between two infants. Before reading the chapter I would've just said "That's so cute!", but now I see this as quite an impressive phenomenon!
VIDEO HERE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY

Also it was interesting to find out that comprehension of the speech occurs actually way earlier than the production of it in infants. The production occurs at about the age of one, but comprehension could happen months in advance. The growth of the vocabulary grows gradually, but later on the rate increases and by the time the child goes to kindergarten he or she may know several thousand words.
In addition, an important milestone in speech development occurs when the kids move from one word sentences to using several words at once. More syntactic rules continue to develop during early years of school.

Nearly everyone has important memories from their childhoods that they recall with great detail due to their significance. However, most of us fail to remember the majority of our memories from our early childhood. For example, try to think of your earliest memory. Difficult isn't it? The explanation for our failure to remember much of our childhood is called childhood amnesia. For example, I often have a hard time remembering things from my childhood that one would assume to be extremely significant, such as the personalities of deceased relatives, the layout of my old house, or even the names of my closest kindergarten friends.

There is also the phenomenon of false memories, and this is often highly correlated with early childhood "memories". These false memories are memories of things that never happened, but that we believe happened. For example, there is a famous study in which psychologists asked subjects to recall meeting Bugs Bunny at Disney World, and many did agree that they remembered meeting Bugs with extreme detail. However, this would be impossible because Bugs is not a Disney character. I also have the false memory of believing I had the stomach flu during elementary school one fall. However, the truth is that I went on a road trip to South Dakota.

Childhood memories have always been difficult to recall, due to childhood amnesia, and there are also memories that we strongly believe occurred that are nothing more than figments of our imaginations. Try to experiment by asking yourself to recall certain memories from your early childhood, especially memories that you are uncertain of, and then checking the accuracy of those memories with parents or other adult individuals who were there. After experimenting with this you may be surprised by which memories are actually based off of past events.

http://www.hookedonphonics.com/our-approach

As a kid, whenever I would turn on the TV, I would inevitably see a commercial for hooked on phonics. When I was seven, all that I saw was kids having fun and reading books; and the fact that they were on television instantly caused me to ask my parents if we could buy it. Unfortunately, I never got to experience hooked on phonics, but now, looking back on how phonics is crucial to learning how to read, I wonder whether there would have been any difference in my reading development if I had focused more on phonics at an earlier age. Phonics, or phonetic decomposition, is the strategy that involves sounding out words by drawing correspondences between printed letters and sounds. Phonics along with whole word recognition are crucial to reading and it becoming an automatic response. Along with sounding out words, one of the additional aspects of phonics that makes it so successful is that there is repetition. This is an aspect of classical conditioning because they are constantly reinforcing the elements of reading so that children get conditioned to read. The concept of phonics played a very important role in my development as a reader, and I am sure many others as well. Whenever I was stumped by a word I was always told to "sound it out", and in most instances it worked. As years went on, I became familiar with more words and was able to recognize them more readily and using phonics became second nature to me.

Has anyone forgot what you were about to say or what you were thinking in a split second? This happens so many times with busy and fast-paced society we live in. What we are thinking in our head does not last forever: we're not going to remember all the details on what we were thinking at a certain moment. If it is your later plan, someone's phone number or address, your homework, it doesn't matter. You can blame all of this spacing-out to your memories. When you attempt to or remember something that comes to your mind, you pulled it out from your long-term memory box which could potentially last forever. But how could you forget what you are supposed to remember for a long time? Is every long-term memory intertwined with your short-term memory? I would like to believe so. If you cannot remember what you were thinking about, it is obvious you were able to remember something for a certain amount of time, long or short; but there may be a problem with the short-term memory, which only lasts about 20 seconds or shorter. How do you forget something that you have remembered for a long time in matter of seconds? This is something that I always wanted to know about but just logically did not make sense in any ways.

Amnesia seems to show its face quite often within the plot of computer role playing games, appearing in Fallout: New Vegas, Baldur's Gate II, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and (not surprisingly) Amnesia: The Dark Descent. In each of the examples above the main character is struck with a case of retrograde amnesia, meaning that they can't remember parts, or, in some cases, all of their memories before the start of the game. While in the real world retrograde amnesia doesn't occur nearly as often as anterograde amnesia, which is the loss of short term memory, in the games it helps the plot move along fairly well, while anterograde amnesia would produce a much less coherent plot as the character would forget what he is doing every couple of seconds.

In particular the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent has amnesia right at the center of its plot as one would guess from its name. The character, Daniel, wakes up in a spooky mansion remembering only his name, where he lives, and that some terrible creature from another dimension is haunting him. The plot then moves along as he discovers notes that he wrote to himself before he induced the amnesia in himself. These notes will often trigger flash backs where parts of his memory comes back to him. In this case Daniel has lost the ability to use his episodic memory in that he cannot recall specific events in his life, but he can still figure out how to light torches, read, open doors, etc... which implies that his semantic memory and procedural memory were unaffected by what every process brought about the amnesia.

As mentioned before Daniel often recalls parts of his lost memory after being prompted by notes to himself or locations in the game. This implies that whatever memory was lost to him might not be permanently lost but rather "hid" by the brain due to hide traumatic events. While this was self induced on Daniel's part, this does have a basis in the real world as there are cases of people that have suffered form dissociative amnesia which is caused by the brain blocking attempts to recall the memory due to its traumatic nature.

While amnesia as it is presented in video games is not a truly accurate representation of how it works in the real world I would expect it to hang around in the plots of these games, as it leaves it up to the player to fill in the back story or allows the game to slowly reveal the past to increase the level of immersion experienced by the player.

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Because of majoring in Retail Merchandising, I am really interested in Higher-Order Conditioning and I will discuss this concept in detail using a successful retail brand - Abercrombie&Fitch as an example. Higher-Order Conditioning is a form of learning in which a stimulus was previously neutral is paired with a conditioned stimulus to produce the same conditioned response as the conditioned stimulus. The products that consumers would choose to purchase depend on previous shopping experience or stimuli the brand provided, so Higher-Order Conditioning play an important role on building a brand image. Take Abercrombie & Fitch as an example, one of the most important factors that makes A&F become so successful is a host of new stimuli that A&F provided besides classical conditioning. To begin with, a lot of people are familiar with the special smell when entering in A&F store and the fragrance smells attractive, invigorating, warm and exciting, thus every time you smell A&F perfume on somebody, we will know that he must be wearing A&F style and associate the feelings that A&F fragrance bring to us with this person. In addition, A&F advertisements are well applied the concept of Higher-Order Conditioning. Models on A&F advertisements are all beautiful women or handsome men who present sexually attractive poses and they look strong, energetic, sexy and fashionable which are images A&F want to impress the consumers with, thus A&F achieved great popularity because many consumers unconsciously thought they are sexually attractive just like the models after purchasing A&F products. I am still wondering about, from commercial perspective, how close does a brand succeed correlate to Higher-Order Conditioning and how much efforts retailers should focus on utilizing Higher-Order Conditioning in their advertisements?

Being from a Mexican decent much of my family speaks only Spanish forcing me to learn it fluently since birth. My mother says that I learned both Spanish and English around the same time not one after the other making me fall under being "bilingual." Bilingual is defined as both fluent and proficient in reading, writing, speaking and understanding two distinct languages. Bilingual is to be able to communicate with others who are native speakers of the language.
It is important because understanding how people learn more than one language, aids in becoming bilingual. By being bilingual, trilingual or knowing many languages we are able to understand other cultures and connect with multiple groups of people instead of simply one. It helps us to understand not only the history of our own country or ethnic background but also that of many backgrounds.
The main question I have, is why is it easier for a person who speaks more than one language to learn another language, than it is for a person who speaks one? What in the brain makes it simpler for the mind to learn? Another question is why there is not a great influence of learning more than one language in the United States as there is on learning the "core subjects?"

When reading through the material, one topic that interested me was the idea of infantile amnesia. This is the term given for fact that humans do not have any memories before the age of three or four years old. Personally this is in line with my first memory, which was of a party for my fourth birthday. This idea explains that although some people claim to have their first memory before the age of two, these memories are almost always either false memories that actually did not occur, or memories that actually have taken place, but later in person's life. Evidence for these finds include the brain structure and development of an infant not having the capability to support memory function. It has been shown that the hippocampus plays a crucial role in the ability to perform long-term memory. In infants the hippocampus is only partially developed making it likely that we do not have the ability to support maintaining and storing memories. Other theories state that infants do not have an understanding of a "self", making it impossible to store memories in any meaningful way.
These findings give insight to contradict the theories and ideas of certain belief systems. One theory that was reviewed in the book was a belief maintained by people who believe in scientology. The theory states that many people remember stressful and degrading conversations that took place while a person is still a fetus. The believe that these conversations are thought to cause depression and low self-esteem later in life. The findings from infantile amnesia state that this is actually impossible.

In our text beginning on page 277 the authors introduce us to a very controversial issue regarding repressing and recovering memories. One side argues that some memories, such as sexual abuse or traumatic events are repressed and then recovered some time later. The other side of the argument sites the fact that there has been very little proof or evidence to help solidify the theory that people suppress and then accurately recall the memories in question. They also site the growing example that painful memories actually are "remembered too well."

What I would like to talk about is how important it is to use skepticism and avoid ineffective strategies such as hypnotism. However, we should keep an open mind and do not simply dismiss people who may have memories and periferal evidence to support those memories.

In a recent case, Cathy Olson vs. William Holden, Cathy Olson was awarded 10 million dollars (The highest amount ever awarded in the St. Cloud district) for damages involving repressed memories of sexual abuse. You may be skeptical at first, but I think people need a little more background. Not only had William Holden been sent to Jail for a case involving Cathy Olson when she was only 14 (for only two years), but he had several violations. Cathy Olson did not have any contact with him until only a year ago (nearly 30 years) at a family meeting. She claimed that upon seeing him that she remember additional violations. After speaking with syblings who had also been involved in the past incident, they confirmed her newly recovered memories. And not only family members testified, but old friends who she had not been in contact also came forward to confirm her story.

Some might argue that it was a plot for money, but what most people are unaware of was that when Cathy Olson initially contacted a lawyer, her only goal was to send him back to jail for the additional crimes. However, because he had already served jail time for that particular involvement, he could not go back to jail. Her only option was to pursue a civil law suit, in which the goal was money. The next thing that most people don't realize is that Cathy Olson will most likely never see any of that money. Most will go to her lawyer, and a the majority (7.5 million) in putative damages, meaning not for Olson.

In this case, in my opinion, the evidence favors the idea of recovered memories. I think that it is always important to have evidence to back up any claim or memory, and if they are logically invalidated they should be disregarded accordingly. However, if there is evidence, as is the case here, they should be considered relevant, to say the least.

You can read the full article here:

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/03/william_holden_10_million_sex_abuse_victim.php

Classical conditioning can be defined as a form of learning in which animals come to respond to a previously neutral stimulus that had been paired with another stimulus that elicits an automatic response. In simpler terms, a being responds to a stimulus that used to have no effect until it is now paired with another stimulus. Operant conditioning is learning controlled by the consequences of the organism's behavior. Here is a helpful video to distinguish the two http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99sWFCNoJTE.

In classical conditioning a subject reacts to a something because it is paired with another stimulus that is closely related to it, such as seeing lightening then preparing to hear thunder. Advertising is a great example of classical conditioning put to use. Here is an ad that demonstrates classical conditioning. The viewer is supposed to learn a connection with physical activity and drinking gatorade to rehydrate.

In operant conditioning the consequences of our behavior determine our future actions. Instead of the target behavior being elicited automatically, as in classical conditioning, it is given voluntarily. There are two key concepts involved with the "rewards" of one's behavior; reinforcement, which is an outcome or consequence of a behavior that strengthens the probability of the behavior. There is also punishment, where an outcome or consequence of a behavior weakens the probability of that behavior happening again.

Surely everybody has had the frustrating experience of knowing the answer to something, but just weren't able to spit it out. "What's that animal called that lives in Australia that is really weird with a bill and swims in the water?" You know you know the answer, you just can't manage to get it out of your brain. "P......pl..... ugh I know this!"
This experience, as we learned in chapter 7, is called the "Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon." It occurs when we learn and "store" a piece of information, but we just can't "retrieve" it. Most people are able to describe certain things about the word, such as the letter it starts with or how many syllables it has, they just can't tell you what the word is. After the word is told to them they most likely will respond with something along the lines of "AH! I knew that! It was on the tip of my tongue!"
Here is a video that explores the idea of this phenomenon:

In the video, the point is made that the more time we spend in the "tip-of-the-tongue" state, the more likely we are to repeat that behavior later on. This can be a problem for people and as suggested in the video, it is better to just look up the answer rather than trying over and over. The longer you remain in state, the more you are teaching yourself to repeat it the next time the question is asked.
I would be interested to find out more about why this happens and what parts of the brain are involved. I will have to do more research when I have the time!

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/hash/f4/13/procrastination_habit_0.jpg

As you can see from the time that I wrote this article that I procrastinated until the last minute to write this blog. It is something that you can ask almost any college or high school student about and they will tell they have done it at some time. The definition of Procrastination is: The habit of putting tasks off to the last possible minute. It is something we all do and it is important to understand the key causes of Procrastination so we can avoid it.
The first thing you should avoid is stress. When people feel stressed or worried, this limits your ability to work productively. Procrastination in this case actually tries to work for you because it is acting as a coping mechanism. An easy way to avoid stress is to just leave more time to relax and have fun. This can in turn allow you to be more calm and get more done. The second one is being Overwhelmed. Your mind just thinks you have to much to do so it procrastinates when you least want it to.The best way to get over this is to stop, reassess your priorities and simplify. A third problem to procrastination is just being lazy. People don't want to get off there butts to do things and the more they sit and don't do anything, that harder it will be to actually do it. A way to get over this is simple, just get up and do it. Also another thing you can do is just get more exercise. This can increase your energy levels and allow you to be more engaged. A fourth problem many people encounter is poor time management. Many college kids get there social lives and school work mixed together and before they know it they are falling behind. A good counter fight for this is to use a timebox method. Work on some homework hard and strong for 30 minutes but then after that time is up, offer yourself a reward. This can increase your ability to work hard and then you can sometimes even end up working harder and longer than you anticipated.
These are some main signs of Procrastination and some ways to counter them so next time I or anyone else says "ill do it later", think about how to beat it and don't fall prey to the Procrastination problem.

Punishment is defined as "and outcome or consequence of a behavior that weakens the probability of the behavior". By that definition it sounds appealing since using it would theoretically remove unwanted behavior from children, even in school. Yet according to research done by BF Skinner, punishment has many negative effects.

There are two types of punishment: positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive punishment is where a stimulus is administered in attempt to remove the likelihood the behavior would repeat, for example getting a spanking. Negative punishment is where a stimulus is removed to reduce the unwanted behavior like taking away a child's favorite toy. The research done by BF Skinner, punishment shows what behavior not to do, it never reinforces the desired behavior. It is also known to cause children to be more subversive, and likely to model the punishment on others. If this is the case, why is corporal punishment , the deliberate infliction of pain, still legal to be used in schools in 21 states? The following video is short news story on the issue.

The video describes that in 21 states, spanking students with a wooden paddle, agess as young as three, is an acceptable form of punishment to be used in public schools. Teachers were even quoted on its effectiveness in teaching the right behavior yet the research has clearly shown that children that are physically abused are more likely to model that behavior and become abusers as adults. Why is this still in our schools?

In the film "Fifty First Dates", actress Drew Barrymore plays the role of Lucy Whitmore. Lucy went pineapple picking for her father's birthday and got into car accident that greatly affected her life. She was diagnosed with a fictional form of anterograde amnesia which refuses her to obtain any new information. Lucy can recall memories up until the day of the accident but the capacity is not present to form new memories. I have always wondered if this scenario was possible and believed that it was make-believe for a dramatic Hollywood production. After learning more about memory, similar types of amnesia do exist.
This type of amnesia relates to an individual by the name of Henry Molaison. H.M. is mentioned in Scott Lilienfeld's text Psychology who suffered from epileptic seizures. In the 1953, surgeons removed parts of his temporal lobes and also the hippocampi. The result of the surgery was a case of anterograde amnesia which was more severe than Lucy's case. Both individuals were unable to retain new information of daily experiences. For example, when asked the current date, they would state the date of the incident, such as the car accident or surgery. H.M. was unaware that he solved the same jigsaw puzzles, and Lucy unknowingly performed the same tasks every single day.
In the film, Lucy was brought to the attention of an extremely severe case of anterograde amnesia. In the link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqi1xo658NE, Lucy examines a lesser degree of her diagnosis. Tom can only recall memories for no more than ten seconds. A real life scenario of this case happened to Clive Wearing. Lilienfeld mentions that Clive's hippocampi were destroyed by the herpes virus. He is unable to retain memories longer than thirty seconds and cannot recognize numerous individuals. For example, when his wife appears, he shows intimate affection as if he hasn't seen her in years.

Lilienfeld, Scott. Psychology. 2nd ed. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 265-266. Print.

Great discoveries are sometimes made by accidents. This is certainly the case when it comes to Pavlov's area of psychology known as classical conditioning. Ivan Pavlov, the pioneer of classical conditioning, was originally experimenting with dogs to better understand their digestive pattern. in feeding the dogs, Pavlov noticed that the dogs began to salivate even before they received the food. This observation is what led to the discovery of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning involves pairing a naturally occurring stimulus(unconditioned stimulus) and response(unconditioned response) chain with a different stimulus(conditioned stimulus) in the hopes of eliciting similar responses(conditioned response). In his experiment, Pavlov noticed that the sight of food automatically caused the dogs to start drooling so he began pairing a metronome with the arrival of food. Soon, just the sound of the metronome was enough to make the dogs drool. This link provides a video of a reenactment of Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment.

I find memory to be a fascinating feature of the human brain. Memory is the retention of information over time. I have always wondered what it is in our brain that makes certain memory last a lifetime while other things can only last a few seconds. Wouldn't it be great if everything you read from your textbook and heard in lectures was retained in your brain and never forgotten? If you could access any kind of memory at anytime, school and life itself would be a breeze.

In an article I found there are many prescription drugs to help people suffering from attention disorders. But there are few drugs that can improve overall memory for normal people. However there is a memory pharmaceuticals experimental drug, MEM 1414. This drug is in phase one of testing safety on people. MEM 1414 acts as antagonist on a special enzyme in your brain that creates new memories. Although this drug is specifically designed for people suffering from Dementia and Alzheimer's it can be used on people to improve memory.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50302

MEM 1414 reminds me a film that I have recently seen called Limitless. Limitless is about a man who takes an unknown drug that helps him access any information in his life that he has ever seen, read or heard. He becomes a genius that makes millions in investment banking. Does Limitless portray the future of memory drugs to come?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOLqNOfzus4

From the case of Paul Ingram, we learned a real life example of how false memory affects people's life. Another story that was briefly described in the textbook (page 276) is the case of Ronald Cotton. In this case, Jennifer Thompson was raped as a college student. When she was choosing her rapist from a photo and voice line up, she choose Ronald Cotton both times. Cotton was convicted guilty for this crime. In prison, Cotton met Booby Poole who grew up in the same area as him and looked similar to him, then Cotton found out that Poole was in for rape. Poole first denied raping Thompson, but later admitted to it to another inmate. With this new evidence, Cotton protested the verdict and received a new trial. In this new trial, Thompson identified Cotton as her rapist and Poole innocent. Cotton was sentenced for two life sentences. When Cotton heard about the O.J. Simpson case, he requested another trial with DNA evidence since he was already serving two life sentences he had nothing to loose. This time Cotton was innocent and Poole was convicted of the rape. Ronald Cotton was a victim of false memory. There were multiple reasons of why Thompson chose Cotton as her rapist, but the most important being that Cotton worked in a restaurant new Thompson's home; therefore she would have seen his face before. Also when Thompson participated in the photo line up, she was basically looking at men and one was her rapist, so she chose a person most similar to what she remembered. This case helped free 235 innocent people from crimes they were accused for with DNA evidence. Also, this case showed how eyewitnesses are unreliable and highly persuaded. The main reason is because if a witness takes longer than 10 to 15 seconds then the witness is most likely using something other than recognition memory. This case is another example of how false memory can affect people's lives.

Poole is on the left, and Cotton on the right.

(http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-4848039.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody)

I found the idea of "false memories" really interesting. I defined false memories as the way we remember thing vividly and our brain summarize what it understood in that particular situation which could be different from what actually happened. The factors which believe to cause false memories are inaccurate perception, inferences, similarity, and misattributions of familiarity. (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/False_memory)

I believe that this finding that memory could be false and not operate like videos cameras is important because it gives the authority a chance to reconsider before they pledged someone guilty base on someone else memory. I am sure that these false of memories had put many innocent people in jail before. One example for that is George Franklin, a man who was accused by his daughter of murder. The daughter later said that she repressed the memories out of fear. George is free after spending six years in prison because there is not enough evidences and the DNA proved him from the charges. Our memories are very easily tricked so I believe it is better not to put an innocent people suffer what they did not do. below is the videos about George's trail.

A video below is showing the overall ideas of false memories and some experiments that has been proved that memories could be false sometime.

As I was reading the textbook, something really stuck out to me. I read that there is a gene that only one percent of the population has which allows them to sleep for six or less hours a night and still feel rested. And I think I know someone who has this gene. My boyfriend, Shaun, goes to bed at around the same time every night, and about five or six hours later wakes up without an alarm clock feeling totally rested and starts his day (which usually drives me crazy because unlike him, I need a good 9 hours to feel truly rested). For a long time I yelled at him and told him to get more rest and that it was unhealthy to get so little sleep, but after being called a cackling hen a few times and him explaining to me that he actually feels rested, I dropped the issue and decided not to think about it anymore. (Don't worry, I found other things to nag about.) But then, as I was reading the textbook and I learned that there are actually people who need way less sleep than most people, I was stunned.
I was really interested in this idea, not only because apparently my boyfriend is a mutant, but also because I thought that this could perhaps lead to other medical studies that help people who need more sleep or people who don't feel rested after they sleep, like me. I read this article, which talked about exactly that. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/research/14sleep.html The article quotes Ying-Hui Fu, professor of Neurology at the University of California, "We know sleep is necessary for life, but we know so little about sleep," which I thought was dead-on. The book talks about that idea too, that we sleep for a third of our lives, and yet scientists know very little about what actually goes on when we sleep and dream. But the most important part of this article is the second to last paragraph, which states, "The real benefit of the research will come if and when the mutation is identified in other individuals. That could lead to new discoveries about sleep timing and duration, and possibly new treatments for sleep disorders." I know I would love to be able to sleep for as little time as my boyfriend does and still be able to function.

The gambler's fallacy is an interesting phenomenon. It is the fallacy of assuming that short-term deviations from probability will be corrected in the short term. For example someone who is buying into the gambler's fallacy, when faced with nine coin flips that land on heads, will predict that the next coin flip will result in a tails. This is because they assume a tails is "due". After all, it is extremely unlikely that a flipped coin will land on heads ten times in a row. However, this is an incorrect assumption. The previous nine coin flips do not have any effect on the next coin flip. The gambler's fallacy can also be applied to other situations. One situation that I am guilty of using it in is fantasy football.

I selected Chris Johnson, a talented running back, with my first round pick in my 2011 fantasy football draft. Even though Johnson had been holding out throughout training camp, I assumed he would have enough time to get conditioned before the start of the regular season. However, he performed badly in week one. In week two, the same thing happened. I was about to bench him, until I saw an article online that said Chris Johnson was "due" for a big game because he had been underperforming in previous weeks. Sadly, I agreed with the article and kept starting him. So far this year, he has not had a big game. This is one example of falling prey to the gambler's fallacy.

Article: http://www.fantasycouch.com/2011/09/fantasy-football-trades-buy-low-sell-high-2011/

When we started talking about false memories in our discussion sections, I was absolutely fascinated. It really made me think about how malleable the mind is. It also made me wonder that if someone tried to do this to me, would I believe it? I like to think that I wouldn't, but I know that there is a pretty good chance that I might fall for it. As seen in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il0u2s_WGXA), roughly 25% of those studied fell for this trick. I also found it strange that even when they made up a more specific story about spilling punch on people at a wedding, roughly 25% of people still believed that it happened.

I also found this image funny:

All in all, this is a very bizarre topic that I would love to learn more about. How much do false memories impact our day to day lives?

In Chapter 6 of our book we learn about narcolepsy, the disorder characterized by the rapid and often unexpected onset of sleep. While reading about it, I saw the picture of a dog that had narcolepsy and I was interested to see if their was any differences in people and dogs that are narcoleptic. I watched a couple of YouTube videos of dogs with narcolepsy and this one interested me the most: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbmbQkX7czo&feature=related

This narcoleptic poodle has similar episodes as humans, for example, being excited or surprised make them both fall asleep for a short few seconds. However, when watching this video it brought to my attention that most dogs are constantly going through excitement no matter what they are doing. I never thought about the fact that unlike humans, a dogs excitement goes through the roof when they are about to eat. This poodle has to be pet constantly so he is somewhat distracted from his excitement just so he can't eat. I would assume that many narcoleptic people can get through eating a meal, however some people do get excited about food!

The video also says that narcolepsy is very rare in dogs and that very little is known about dog narcolepsy. In fact, they are giving this dog human antidepressants. Fortunately for dogs the only negative is that they can live a normal dog life. Humans on the other hand have many disadvantages to live a normal life. Some narcoleptic people are forbidden from driving, it's hard for them to maintain a job, and other daily activities that affect what these people can do.

The human brain is a complex machine made up of several important parts that control pretty much all of our every day functions. However, what happens when a part of the brain is damaged or destroyed? In essence, our brain has several different departments that are associated with different functions. The frontal lobe is associated with reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving. The parietal love is associated with movement, orientation, recognition, and perception of stimuli. The occipital love is associated with visual processing, and the temporal love is associated with perception, memory, and speech. Clearly, any damage to any part of the brain could completely alter one's ability to "function," in general terms.
There are certain types of brain injuries, but one in particular is noted as the split-brain effect. This is a term that describes the severance of the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. This can occur when there is damage to the tissue, and often times doctors will perform a procedure called a corpus callosotomy, a procedure used to help alleviate seizures. Why is this important? Let us review some more. The left part of the brain is responsible for speech and contains what is known as Broca's area (speech production) and Wernicke's area (speech comprehension). A person with a split-brain, when shown an image in his or her left visual field won't be able to vocally say or explain what he or she has seen. The person can, however, pick up and show recognition of an object with their left hand, since that hand is controlled by the right side of the brain.

Here is a link to an interesting video that goes into more detail about split-brain procedures and their experiments.

Classical Conditioning is simply a form of learning in which animals come to respond to a previously neutral stimulus that had been paired with another stimulus which made the animal have a automatic response. The most successful study is one done on dogs because it exemplifies classical conditioning in the best way. There are four keys conditions in classical conditioning, two stimuli and two responses. There is the Unconditioned Stimulus, a stimulus that elicits an automatic response, and then there is the unconditioned response, the elicited response by the unconditioned Stimulus. Also there is the Conditioned Stimulus which is a previously neutral stimulus that comes to elicit a Conditioned response. This an important finding because this shows that a previously neutral stimulus if paired with a unconditioned stimulus could eventually lead that neutral stimulus to become an unconditioned stimulus. This is an astonishing concept that is has led to many other test that proves classical conditioning is a way to see how our mind works.

In my life I have experienced classical conditioning as a child in school when the bell rings in school to signal the end of the day. I use to respond to the bell the same way all the time and that is to get up and leave my seat to go to my locker. So when the bell malfunctioned one day and rang to early I got up and started leaving the classroom and so did other students and even the teacher was about to let us go if there wasn't an announcement telling us that it wasn't time to leave yet. This showed just how closely tied together the bell and the response of get up was for everyone at school. In this case the Unconditioned stimulus was the end of the day and the unconditioned response was to get up out of my seat. Conditioned stimulus was the bell and the conditioned response was to get up out of my seat.

Have you ever had a friend claim an idea that you came up with as their own? And once confronted they seem convinced that the idea was indeed theirs? If so, you've witnessed cryptomnesia. Cryptomnesia is defined as when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. Though it can be frustrating, the person experiencing it genuinely sees the memory as an original creation of their own. Whether it is a song, joke, thought, or an idea, when cryptomnesia strikes, the person will assume ownership of it.

As you can imagine, aside from causing a small argument between friends, this can be the hidden cause in many cases of plagiarism. Because of this, cryptomnesia is also sometimes referred to as inadvertent plagiarism. As our class text mentions, cryptomnesia can even be used as a legal defense in court on such a case. The Newsweek article, "You Didn't Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did", delves deeper into this very topic. A link to this article can be found here:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/07/06/you-didn-t-plagiarize-your-unconscious-did.html

This brings me to wonder about some very scary/puzzling thoughts. How often does cryptomnesia occur without it being realized? When was the last time my subconscious deceived me? Is there any way to avoid it?

Growing up, I always loved languages, and speech. I thought that the different ways people said things, and how many different languages there are in the world was extraordinary. I always felt very lucky to have grown up speaking two languages mostly because I feel that being fluent in two enabled me to understand how languages work better, or as the Lilienfeld text says, I have "heightened metalinquistic insight".

Having spoken both Vietnamese and English at home really let me see how language affects the way that you think, and perceive things because I was able to understand language from an English speaker's point of view, and talk to my parents about how they view things as their most dominant language is Vietnamese. There are a lot of influences that each culture brings to the language. For example, in Vietnamese, you are often more formal when talking to people whereas in English, it's very easy to start talking in a more casual way with someone without coming off as impolite.

What I would like to know though are the effects that people have when they begin to learn more languages, becoming multilingual, and learn more about the cultures behind those languages. How does it affect them psychologically, and how does it change the way they view the world? Furthermore, what makes it possible for people to become multilingual, and to be so proficient in those languages that they make such few mistakes? Along with speaking Vietnamese and English fluently, I've had five years of French courses, and one year of Italian courses, and sometimes I can't even keep them separate!

A few years ago, I watched a documentary called The Boy With the Incredible Brain about a man named David Tammet, a British writer who was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at the age of 25. As a savant, he once stated that he can speak 9 languages, and in the documentary, he was shown to have learned conversational Icelandic within a week. He is even now currently creating his own language called Mänti! Of course, his situation is a bit different than other people who are multilingual, but his story is fascinating in the sense that you can't help but wonder how his mind must work.

Despite all these questions, if I know one thing for sure, without language, we'd all be lost.

Shaping is when we give rewards for a behavior that is close to the behavior we are looking for. This is also called "shaping by successsive approximations". Basically this is a technique in the type of conditioning called operant conditioning. It is a way of teaching an organism something to do. This type of conditioning and type of technique is used in many different types of instances. I think that the place we see this most is with children. For example, when a child is learning how to write letters they are not perfect, the B might look like a D and their R's might be backwards, yet we reward the effort of this behavior with stickers and praise from teachers and parents. Also take childrens' sporting events. At a tee ball game everyone gets praised, whether they hit the ball or not. This is also an example of shaping. We reward the child for making backwards R's because they are close to R's and we reward them for swinging at the ball instead of hitting it because it is the next logical thing that will happen if they continue that action. I think that one of the most effective teaching techniques is shaping because when people recieve a reward for a certain behavior they want to keep doing it and the old adage does ring true "practice makes perfect."

I am a victim of forgetting things at a very short span of time. So often I have the tendency of going to the place where I thought of the event or object and in most of the cases I remember what it is I was thinking about. Often I would get up to take out a book from my bag, but by the time I reach my closet, which in fact is only a matter of seconds, I forget what did I come there for. Thus I return to my desk, the same location where I thought of getting a book, and in most cases I remember what exactly it was that I was getting. I had never put much thought into this action until now when I learned about encoding specificity and state-dependent learning. I simply followed this method just because it worked best for me; never analyzing the reason as to why going back to the same location where I had encoded that thought to retrieve it.

Encoding specificity is the phenomenon of remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve the information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded them. Therefore it may be true that students would perform better if their academic tests are given in the same room that they are taught the subject, as the various elements of the room such as the space, podium, or a poster would remind them of the topics that were taught in that lecture hall as it would be the same location as when the memory was encoded.

State-dependent learning is a psychologically phenomenon of encoding specificity. Superior retrieval of memories when the organism is in the same physiological or psychological state as it was during encoding. Therefore taking my personal example, going to the "actual" place where I had encoded that thought helps me retrieve it; thus going back to my desk, the same physiological environment helps me remember the event I had thought of. Apart from physiological state, people can retrieve memories through facing the same psychological state. Sometimes it's encouraged or thought of as handy when patients "relive their trauma" as it helps them to retrieve memories of the trauma that they had unconsciously suppressed. In a more easy and day to day example, we are encouraged to remain calm and devoid of anxiousness as it truly help us to remember our text more. Applying this theory, when we are learning our materials for the test we aren't in a panic state and hopefully not anxious at all, we are learning it in a calm state, thus maintaining this emotional state helps us retrieve the memories of the text easily as we have kept the same state of affairs as when we had encoded the text for the test.

So do you think going back to the same place or to the same emotional state truly helps us to retrieve memories? And last but not the least how we wish we had this...

One of the ideas that brought up memories from my childhood was simply Classical Conditioning. The processes are pretty simple, and I'm sure that we all know them by now. When i was a little kid I had a dog named Timber.

The funny thing about Timber is the fact that he was so afraid of any loud noise. This shows classical conditioning because when he was a puppy, we were at a parade and a tractor backfired right next to him and scared him. Ever since that day, any loud noise, especially thunder would scare him. He then learned to associate rain, and other signs of a storm with the feeling he got when there were loud noises and would hide in our bath tub. His fear was elicited through classical conditioning, and I had never thought about it that way until now. I am curious as to whether this fear could have been conditioned out of him?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpoLxEN54ho

The main focus of chapter six was to teach us about different models of learning. It is debatable that the most important of these models is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is one of the first models of learning to be explained. Classical conditioning was first discovered by a Russian psychologist named Ivan Pavlov. In his experiment, Pavlov would display a piece of meat for a dog to see. He would then observe how the dog salivated when it saw the meat. Then, Pavlov paired the piece of meat with a metronome. Every time he showed the meat to the dog, he would turn the metronome on. The dog would hear the sound and then see the meat; then he would salivate. After a while, the dog would salivate every time he heard the metronome, even if he did not see the meat. The dog had been conditioned to do this. The meat had become was an unconditioned stimulus, which is a stimulus that causes an automatic response. The metronome had become a conditioned stimulus, which is a stimulus that has been conditioned to cause a response. The salivation became a conditioned response. The dog had been conditioned to salivate every time he heard the conditioned stimulus. Classical conditioning shapes a person or animal to have them respond to previously neutral stimuli that have been paired with another stimulus. This process is called acquisition. However, these responses are not always permanent. A person can get rid of the response through extinction. This happens when we repeatedly present the conditioned stimulus alone. The response gradually fades. This is not always a permanent thing though. Sometimes a person may experience spontaneous recovery. This is when the conditioned response that is thought to be extinct, appears when we see the conditioned stimulus. Most of the time the response is smaller in magnitude. People are classically conditioned to do things every day. It is one of the most important, as well as most used models of learning.

In Chapter 6, Learning, we were introduced to several cognitive models of learning. One model was observational learning. According to this model, we learn by watching others. It is a form of latent learning because it allows us to learn without reinforcement. We simply watch someone else perform a task or behavior, we see the reinforcement he or she receives, and we learn from it.

Mirror neurons, located in the prefrontal cortex, become activated when we watch someone else do something. An example in the book is when we see an athlete sustain an injury. When the athlete winces in pain, we also wince. Mirror neurons can explain why fans get so excited and involved in a game. The mirror neurons that correspond to motor areas are becoming activated.

Mirror neurons have also been implicated in empathy and autism. We can experience empathy when we are able to take the perspective of someone else. If we see someone get hurt, like the athlete example in the previous paragraph, we "feel his pain." Our mirror neurons are activated and we can imagine what he just experienced as if we experienced it as well. A lack of empathy, or a deficit in the ability to understand another's perspective, has been associated with autism. Perhaps people with autism have abnormalities in their mirror neurons, which inhibit their perspective taking abilities. Currently, it is just a correlation, not a cause.

The discovery of mirror neurons may allow for many new developments in how we learn and for more understanding of autism.

Now most women would probably think having a "first date" everyday for the rest of their lives would keep their relationship new and exciting. To Lucy, played by Drew Barrymore, she is just living a normal day in which she meets a new man. Henry Roth, played by Adam Sandler, met Lucy at a cafe while eating breakfast. He starts chatting her up thinking he's found the perfect girl until the cafe owner comes over and begins yelling at him to leave the girl alone. Lucy has condition that she herself isn't even aware of. Lucy suffers from anterograde amnesia (which is called Goldfield's syndrome in the movie), which by definition means she can no longer create new memories. She remembers her past and things like her name, her family, how to speak and eat and how to drive a car, but she will essentially live the same day over and over again. Her father and brother spend their lives making sure that Lucy stays oblivious to her condition, by recreating the day of the accident, which leaves her without a short term memory, everyday.

When Henry meets her, his first reaction is to put her out of his memory and never look back, but somehow he can't leave her behind. And he begins to court her, and takes her on their "first date," everyday. At one point, he has her make a video to herself, explaining the accident and who Henry is so she can wake up and have a normal day instead of her family having to recreate the same day everyday. Now, the use of amnesia is good for ticket sales but is hardly 100% scientific fact.

In the movie, Henry is told that Lucy lost her ability to create new memories after a terrible car accident. Often times, memory loss doesn't occur do it a head injury. It more often occurs after surgery, stroke or brain infection. Also,the movie maintains that "Lucy's slate is wiped clean" every evening while she sleeps. Scientifically, this claim has many wholes. Sleep can improve one's memory so it's weird that sleep causes her memory loss. Also, anterograde amnesia is a complete loss of memory transfer from short term to long term, so it's not possible for her to function normally like she does in the movie. Just because she watches a video of herself explaining what's going on doesn't mean she'll remember it in 20 minutes.

This movie was a popular movie, partly because Adam and Drew are very popular actors and also because it's a great story, however there is absolutely no scientific basis to make the claims that the movie does. Amnesia is a very popular aspect in mainstream movies. Blockbuster movies like 50 First Dates, The Notebook and The Bourne Ultimatum all center around incorrect use of amnesia.

This widely controversial concept is when people recall events that did not occur. This mainly seems to happen to children because they are more likely to confuse fantasy with reality. Most children cling to their false memories even if authority figures tell them they are wrong, which shows us that these memories can be very convincing. This concept can also cause problems when children are repeatedly questioned. If a child is suspected of being abused and officers question this child about this abuse repeatedly, children may give investigators the answers they're seeking, even if these answers are wrong. For this reason, I find this concept of false memories to be important. People can be put in jail for years for a crime they did not commit. George Franklin is a very good example of the dangers of false memories.

George Franklin was wrongly accused of the murder of a young girl. Franklin's daughter, Eileen, testified that she had recovered a 20 year old memory that her father killed her childhood friend. She said that she had "repressed" this memory out of fear; however, Eileen's sister said that Eileen's recovered memory had followed hypnosis. Therefore, Eileen's memory was probably completely false, and was not credible evidence. Franklin was sentenced to jail for life, but was released after six years. Eileen's credibility was also questioned when she accused her father of another murder, and eventually DNA evidence cleared him. After hearing this story, I feel one important question comes to mind. Do we need to consider this concept of false memories more often (especially during trials)?

We are all aware that watching violence can impact a person negatively but the question is can that turn a child from sweet to rough? There have been studies they have said that children watching violence on TV tend to be more aggressive than children that don't. What these findings fail to address is that a third variable may be involved concerning why these children are aggressive. Violence alone cant be the determining factor on the cause of aggression. Children that have more aggressiveness in them will possibly watch more violent programs. Researchers have used longitudinal designs to support their thesis that more violent programs induce more aggression in children. Other studies down showed two different groups of children violent presentations and non violent ones, it was proven that there was a causal link but not a direct causation. Just because violence proceeds aggression does not mean that is the cause. Despite the fact that field studies, correlational studies, longitudinal studies, and laboratory studies have been done it is still a controversial issue about whether violence is the exact cause of aggression.

In the video above, the woman is suffering from what is called transient global amnesia. This is a sudden and temporary loss of memory which is usually seen in middle-aged to elderly people, usually after some sort of trauma and lasts anywhere from a few minutes to many hours. The common symptoms are that the person is unable to form new memories or recall recent events and re-asking of the same question (like in the video when the woman kept asking what the date was).

Despite what you have probably seen in the movies or on TV, this type of amnesia, and certainly most types of amnesia, do not cause a person to completely forget who they are. In fact, in this type of amnesia you can remember most of your friends and family but simply can not remember more recent events or possibly events that have happened up to a year in the past (like in the video when the woman forgets about her past birthday party). Fortunately for people who have suffered transient global amnesia, the long-term effects are seemingly harmless. The lapse in memory usually lasts for only a short amount of time and afterwards your memory is just fine. And luckily for everyone, transient global amnesia is very rare.

There are several types of amnesia which include:
• Anterograde amnesia - Inability to remember ongoing events after the incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia

• Retrograde amnesia - Inability to remember events that occurred before the incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia

• Emotional/hysterical amnesia - Memory loss caused by psychological trauma; usually a temporary condition

• Lacunar amnesia - Inability to remember a specific event

• Korsakoff syndrome - Memory loss caused by chronic alcoholism

• Posthypnotic amnesia - Memory loss sustained from a hypnotic state; can include inability to recall events that occurred during hypnosis or information stored in long-term memory
(http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/neurological-conditions/amnesia.htm)

These other types of amnesia can come with more serious effects, like permanent memory loss, so it is important that doctors know how to differentiate from the different types.

Memory is a very complex idea, which is not fully understood. Memory is defined to be the retention of information over time. Memory is the ability to recall everything that you can recall, such as, birthdays, phone numbers, and your first kiss. The idea that everyone has their own version of reality is a mind-boggling thought. Just pick out any random person and think about how they have their own personalized memories. A portion of this person's memories, however, probably never happened and are instead false implications of the mind to fill in the blurred out parts of their memories. Our memory has certain time spans where the memory is processed and stored or discarded, but only a portion of the memory is stored, leading to the blurry spots of memory. If you try to tell someone their memories are wrong, they will probably put up a fight due to some biases, such as belief perseverance. This whole idea of false memories, called a memory illusion, brings up many issues. Police used to rely on the word of crime victims, to pick the criminal out of a line up. The fact is that in a calm state, let alone a state of fear such as during a crime, memories are skewed yet we rely on them to enforce the law. Most people believe their memories are spot on, but some people have had false memories implemented in their minds by other people. The case of Paul Ingram shows how susceptible memories are. The daughter of Paul falsely "remembered" being molested by her respectable father when a pastor told her that she had been. The father was tricked into forming his own memories of the event, which never happened, as well. This all shows how, in certain cases, memories lack in validity. This is a serious concern in many ways. A main way this is a concern is that every person is molded into who they are based on the life they live and the memories which accompany it. The possibility that many memories, including yours, may be false is a scary thought indeed.

We must remember that what we see on TV isn't always the truth and that there is little evidence that this would be the likely outcome of listening to a recorded tape during sleep.

Imagine yourself sitting in a noisy, crowded room. There are people sitting and standing everywhere, and each person seems to be carrying on a different conversation. You are also carrying on a conversation, when all of the sudden you here that your name was said. You turn around and you recall what that person was talking about seconds before they said your name, even though you were paying attention to the conversation that you were having. This is sensory memory in all of its glory.

Sensory memory in the true sense of the term a very short-term buffer memory where senses store what they have received before any cognitive processing within the brain occurs. It is a very short buffer; essentially lasting for 0.5 to 3 seconds. Imagine this type of memory as "scenic", being that it lasts for a short amount of time but has quite large capacity.

There are several types of sensory memory, essentially one for every sense as its name states. All of these types of sensory memory are essential to "get the whole picture" within ones memory. The sensory store is the window to short-term memory and long-term memory. So the next time you happen to hear your name in a crowded room, rub your hand on your head and say "thanks" to your sensory memory.

I believe that the idea of false memory is a very important concept to know about. False memory can be caused by many factors that impair our ability to remember what correctly happened. This concept could and has had a huge impact on people's lives.
Sometimes people are made to do a suggestive memory technique, which is a process of encouraging people to remember memories that may or may not have happened. False memory is also made up of crytomnesia, which is when people fail to distinguish that their idea came from someone else. Another way false memory can be created is during a traumatic experience. For example, if you were a cashier and someone came in and robbed you with a gun, you may forget what their face looked like because you were so focused on the gun at the time.
False memories can be very detrimental to people's lives. One example of this is the Paul Ingram case that we all had to read for our discussion sections. False memories that his daughters had, caused Ingram to be put in jail for rape. Another example is the Jennifer Thompson case of 1984. She was a college student that was raped and she falsely accused Ronald Cotton as the rapist. DNA tests then showed that Bobby Poole was the actual rapist and Cotton was released after serving 11 years in prison. This is a prime example of how false memories can damage a person's life. Jennifer must have been so focused on this traumatic rape that her memory of Bobby's face had become unclear.

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For years and years, the slightest thought of visiting the dentist has sent a feeling of uneasiness into the hearts of many. The associations of pain, discomfort, and dislike for the dentist at work have created a bad rep for the dental business ever since the days of no Novocain. What many people have yet to realize is that the dental industry has been working incredibly hard to help reduce the factors that create fear in patients by applying the concepts of conditioning.

By unraveling the Two-Process theory, we can take a closer look at why people hold such bias against dentists.

First of all, the Two-Process theory is a combination of classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In this case, the classically conditioned stimulus, visiting the dentist, gets paired with the unconditioned stimulus of a bad experience, whether it be the extracting of a tooth, a root canal, or even just a story from someone a person knows who has had a bad experience. The dentist is then linked with a sense of fear because people do not want harm to come to them, especially in their mouth where there are a lot of nerve endings.

In order to reduce the unpleasant feeling, a person may avoid the dentist for as long as possible, which is a bad idea because they are Operantly negatively reinforcing the feelings. This many times only leads to more and more problems with going to the clinic, even when they are in dire need of dental attention.

I know that as a child myself, I was terrified when the dentist brought out the giant needle to numb my mouth, it seemed like it was a foot long. I was even so afraid of the dentist as a child that I had to be medical sedated for them to work on me. After that episode I was brought to a child specialist and that's where I saw the change.

Dentists and dental hygienists were actually using certain techniques to calm down children before working on them. They were conditioning the children with positive reinforcement. The more the children behaved and remained calm, the more rewards they would get for their behavior, teaching the children that going to the dentist and getting regular checkups comes with two perks: healthy teeth and the occasional toy or trinket. Some clinics also have movies that play on the ceiling to distract the children and the walls are painted with whimsical designs, all further enforcing the positive environment of a dentist's office.

If only this would work on the older generation that had to deal with the not so ideal conditions of dentists' offices before the discovery of dental anxiety was recorded. That generation has a large number of elderly folks who are afraid of the dentist because all through their lives it was a deeply rooted fact that going to the dentist involved pain, and a lot of it. Hopefully the dental profession will continue to make all levels of dental care at all ages safe and worry free by applying more concepts of psychology to the field of work.

Imagine being able to recall every moment of every single day of your life. For 10 people in the world, this imagination is reality. Our text books talks about one woman who goes by the name J.P. that has an extremely rare condition called hyperthymestic syndrome. She remembers the events of each day of her life since she was 14 years old. But is this syndrome a special gift or a nightmare? Different people with this syndrome have different ideas. I found a very informative 60 minutes clip that is kind of lengthy (13 and a half minutes) but is definitely worth the time to watch.

The clip talks with three women out of ten in the world that have this rare condition. While two of the women love their special gift, J.P., the women mention in the textbook, calls it a mixed blessing. She says she sometimes wishes she wasn't stuck with all the bad memories of her life. Mary Lou Henner, on the other hand, says that she enjoys having all her mistakes in her memories because they are life lessons she will never forget.
So what is going on in the brains of all these people? Brain scans show that something called the caudate nucleus is up to seven times larger in these people than in most human beings. Researchers are not yet sure what this means, but they sure have high hopes. There has been talk of these findings leading to a cure for Alzheimer's disease or other memory disorders. Hopefully we will see even more people with this newly discovered "disease" come forward so that the world will be able to benefit from it.

Have you ever eaten something then got sick from it then never it ever again? If so, then you have experienced CTA. conditioned taste aversion. It is when you have had bad experience with food and because of that, you never eat it again since the food has caused you to become sick the first time you eaten it. CTA occurs in 3 ways, it only takes one try, delay between CS & UCS, and only sick when see that specific product in which that made you sick but not sick when you see similar products.

Here is a link to a video that demonstrate CTA : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLYw_g4F8lg

I chosen to blog about CTA because l too, have experienced CTA. In this case, it was McDonald. I had eaten McDonald 3x and gotten sick all those times. At first, I thought it was probably the place/ area = unclean or something, then in a different type of location I tried again, and I got sick. This time I thought that it was the weather and that time of the year to be sick. Then sometimes has gone by, I went in for some McDonalds, and I got sick again. So after the 3rd time getting sick, I quit going to McDonald. Yes, it only takes 1 try to activate CTA, but I was in denial that McDonald can't possibly make me sick because other similar food didn't. It was just too weird to explain and I was willingly stubborn to try for 3x to be actually convince. Now, I understand why I can't stand McDonald's food, it's because of CTA. I think it's important to know what is happening to your body or mentality. So, you won't turn out like me, getting myself sick 3x; knowing/ understanding CTA can save you from illness.

What's your CTA experience?

Long-term memory is our relatively enduring store of information, meaning that it outlasts the event that has occurred. It is the store of information that includes the facts, experiences and skills we have acquired over our lifetimes. In short, long-term memory ties together the past with the present, and its capacity is essentially unlimited. It lasts a very long time as well. There are also different varieties of long-term memory, including explicit and implicit. Explicit long-term memory, which is the intentional use of memory, is broken down into to subcategories. Episodic is knowing or remembering specific instances in one's life, and semantic is when one just knows certain information, but one does not remember learning it. Implicit long-term memory, what one may not know, is broken down into two subcategories as well. Procedural is our memory for how to do things, and an example is tying one's shoes or driving a car. Priming is our ability to identify a stimulus more easily or quickly after we have encountered similar stimuli.
A good example of long-term memory is the primacy effect. This is if one is given a list of words or letters to memorize, one would remember the first items on the list. This YouTube clip demonstrates the primacy effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfsPcXk4p6w

One girl does several different motions with her arms, followed by another girl who attempts to imitate the first girl. She goes through the first 5 or 6 motions and then does not remember the rest. This is a good example of the primacy effect because the girl remembers the arm motions from the beginning, but she does not remember the second half. If she were to remember the second half better than the first half, then she would have demonstrated the recency effect, which is linked to short-term memory.

Imagine being able to recall every moment of every single day of your life. For 10 people in the world, this imagination is reality. Our textbooks talks about one woman who goes by the name J.P. that has an extremely rare condition called hyperthymestic syndrome. She remembers the events of each day of her life since she was 14 years old. But is this syndrome a special gift or a nightmare? Different people with this syndrome have different ideas. I found a very informative 60 minutes clip that is kind of lengthy (13 and a half minutes) but is definitely worth the time to watch.

The clip talks with three women out of ten in the world that have this rare condition. While two of the women love their special gift, J.P., the women mention in the textbook, calls it a mixed blessing. She says she sometimes wishes she wasn't stuck with all the bad memories of her life. Mary Lou Henner, on the other hand, says that she enjoys having all her mistakes in her memories because they are life lessons she will never forget.
So what is going on in the brains of all these people? Brain scans show that something called the caudate nucleus is up to seven times larger in these people than in most human beings. Researchers are not yet sure what this means, but they sure have high hopes. There has been talk of these findings leading to a cure for Alzheimer's disease or other memory disorders. Hopefully we will see even more people with this newly discovered "disease" come forward so that the world will be able to benefit from it.

There are four parts in classical conditioning, which is unconditioned stimulus (US), unconditioned response (UR), conditioned stimulus (CS), and conditioned response (CR). How are these four parts working? Firstly, US causes UR automatically. As the example Pavlov came up with is that food causes the salivation of dog. Secondly, Before US, we add CS, and repeat the sequence of CS and US, we will find that there exists CR. We still use the example of Pavlov, before the food stimulus, we add metronome before food, and we repeat of process of metronome and food several times, the result is when the metronome is ringing, then the dog drool, which shows CS causes CR directly.

The reason I think this concept is important is because it is used widely in our daily life. For example, advertisement maker is intent to give potential customers CS of their products through the US of the advertisement.

As the example showed in the video, the boy hates the music and he used classical conditioning method to make his 4 years old sister hate the music, too. In this case, the CS is the bad music, the US is squirt bottle. The boy played the music, and used the squirt bottle to spray water on her sister's head. He repeated this process several times. The UR and the CR is that the girl shouted. Although at last the boy did not spray water, while hearing the music, the girl still shouted. In the end, the girl hated that bad music.

When I studied this concept, I was wondering whether the process of CS causes CR directly would last for a long time. After studied the concept of extinction, I understood that the CR decreases, and gradually disappears, if the CS is repeated alone.

As a child, I remember my parents always trying to make me eat different and healthy foods. But, like most kids between the ages of 7-10 years old, I hated anything more complicated than Mac'n'Cheese or anything that was green (i.e. vegetables). Now most of those different and healthy foods I thoroughly enjoy eating. However, there are still a few, very specific, foods that I cannot make myself eat to this day. This is because these foods tasted so bad to me, or by coincidence of illness, that when I ate them I immediately became nauseous. One example is a bad Nutrigrain bar I had. I remember taking a bite and tasting this horrible flavor that reminded me of the smell of our family pet's dog food. To this day I cannot eat one of those bars. This is an example of a Conditioned Taste Aversion. Conditioned Taste Aversions (CTA's) are unique in that they contradict "classical conditioning" with responses to uncontrolled and controlled stimuli in three major ways (according to the Lilienfield textbook).
1. The CTA only requires one trial to develop a CS and UCS pairing.
2. The delay between CS and UCS can be as long as 6-8 hours.
3. The CTA's tend to be very specific, with little or no stimulus generalization.
The first major contradiction explains why I simply have not been able will myself to eat another Nutrigrain bar since that incident. The second contradiction was not as much of a factor in this example, though it has been proven true. The third contradiction explains why I can still eat other nutrition bars without getting sick, I just cannot eat a Nutrigrain bar.
Though CTA's contradict "classical conditioning" it makes sense why they are what they are. For instance, the textbook states that it could be a survival trait passed down from our ancestors. The objective was to avoid food poisoning, which can take only one trial to inflict harm and possibly death, so any attempt at "classical conditioning" would fail terribly. Thankfully, it is much easier to manage which food items are safe to eat and not safe to eat.

Starting with a test, please draw only one line to split the graph below into two triangles.

Think about it, the answer is at the end of this entry.

We are good at developing one strategy to solve the similar problems. For most of the time, it is quiet economic on both time and efforts for us. But sometimes, we just neglect other possible solutions for a new problem, which can be more convenient. We call this phenomenon a mental set.

An interesting anecdote in my hometown about mental set happens in a factory. The owner of a factory found that his automatic assembly line sometimes packed the boxes with no product inside. So he just asked an engineering company for help. The company sent its talent engineer to design a complex system with infrared detectors to filter the empty boxes and refill them. But unfortunately, this solution was rejected. Because the worker in the factory just came up with another solution: setting a large fan at the end of the assembly line. So all the empty boxes were just blew away by the fan. Obviously, the fan is much cheaper than the complex filtering system. The engineer was blocked by the mental set, his specialty.

The similar events happened around us. And my solution for them is simple and straight-forward: every time I meet with a new problem, I'll try to share it with my friends of different backgrounds of knowledge. Because people have different mental sets. In sum, we will have multiple alternatives with the best solution.

Many people think simply when they solve the problems. They usually have one solution to a problem because they don't think of other alternative ways to solve it. Functional fixedness happens when we experience difficulty in thinking about something only in term of its functionality rather than we can use it for another purpose. Functional fixedness is cognitive bias that limits a person uses an object in the way that is traditionally used. We became "fixated" in conventional use of object.
Functional fixedness is introduced by Karl Duncker. To prove this concept, he designed an experiment called "Duncker's Candle Problem" which he had a board, candle, bunches of matches, a box of tacks and he told experimentees to mount candle on the wall. Do you know a way to solve this problem? At first, when I look at a problem, I didn't know how to solve a problem because I thought that box only uses to hold the tacks. I actually fixated on the box's functionality and didn't think other alternative ways to use the box. After two or three minutes, I realized that the box can be used to hold handle and the box can mount to the wall using tacks. After that, we can burn candle to allow wax dripped down candle so that the candle can stuck inside the box. Therefore, we can burn candle safely.
The Duncker's Candle Problem is important because it shows that we have limited ability to solve a problem. For example, do you need scissors, hammer, paper but you don't have anything of these around you? What should you do? Do you find any alternative ways to arrange things to allow it to cut somethings, pound a nail, or write something on? I sometimes run into a problem when I need a paperweight but I only have ruler with me. I can't see ruler as a paperweight because ruler always uses to measure a length of an object. Functional fixedness is also a problem when NASA try to invent new pen that allows astronauts to write upside down in space but Russians use pencils for it and it saves them a ton of dollar. Another question that I may have for this concept is "Can functional fixedness happen to non-technological people (people haven't experienced of using any kind of tools)? What role does functional fixedness play in their society?

Funny examples of functional fixedness that I have found on youtube

Do you know more than one language? Around the world there are many people
that know more than one language. They travel and go abroad to study so
they can practice these different languages. Those people are bilingual.
That means that you are able to speak, understand and comprehend two
languages. It's clear that you will dominate your primary language more
than the other, but the fact of knowing two languages is awesome. Your
primary language is the one that you have learned first, almost always in
your home with your parents. The second language is the one that you learn
for example in your school or also in your home. It depends if your parents
are bilingual or not.

I consider myself as bilingual. My primary language is Spanish and my
second language is English. Currently, I'm an exchange student at the
University of Minnesota. It has been an experience of enrichment because it
has helped me to dominate my English language. I think that being bilingual
is an advantage because it is a tool for communication, knowledge, and a
connection with others. Also, it keeps the brain exercising and allows you
to explore new horizons through language.

The video below show you the diversity of languages around the world. Also,
it is clear that bilingualism is a passport to the world. Don't you think
knowing more than one language and understand people from other parts of
the world are awesome and interesting?

Before I came to college I had no experiences interacting with deaf people. I fell into the trap of common misconceptions about sign language. I thought people who had to sign weren't as smart, and that they had to use only a few signs to try and communicate, but that all changed when I came here. I enrolled into an American Sign Language class and I immediately found out that almost all of my previous knowledge about sign language was wrong.

Sign language is just like all other languages. It allows the people using it to clearly express what they are trying to say in great detail. This blew me away. How could you communicate complex ideas or concepts through signs? I came to learn that ASL is similar to English because it uses some of the same components like morphemes and syntax.

Another misconception that I learned is that sign language isn't universal all over the world. It has dialects and certain types of slang just like spoken language does. Yes there are some signs that are universal all over the world, but just like English differs from Spanish, American Sign Language is different from French Sign Language.

The biggest thing about ASL that has changed the way I think about all language in general is the fact that in ASL there are ways to communicate concepts and ideas that are simply not possible to translate into English or any spoken language in general. It opens up a door into a whole different world and way to look at the world.

A great book that you can read to give you an idea of what I'm talking about is Deaf Again: An Inside Look, which will open up the world of ASL to you.

Also, I have attached a video that shows how great ASL can be to learn and how important it is to deaf children.

Drugs are at the center of attention for high school and college aged students because of their popularity and dangerous side effects. The most common drugs in the United States are stimulants, such as tobacco, and hallucinogenics, such as marijuana. There are many different drugs, and many of them have different side effects, but they are all dangerous because they impair judgement, rev up the nervous system, or produce alterations in perception, mood, and thoughts. Drugs are so dangerous because an overdose or the use of some drugs over a long period of time can lead to serious brain damage or even death.

Because of the dangerous side effects of drugs, most of these drugs are illegal in the United States. The only drug listed above that is not illegal is tobacco, and this drug is heavily taxed to encourage people to not buy it. People should be aware of the dangers of drugs to better protect themselves from the dangers they carry. Below is an example of what the abuse of drugs can do to a person over time.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/__zoKJ77EvEc/TW0vH5n69DI/AAAAAAAAL3I/yCi8VCFMzOI/drug-abuse17%5B2%5D.jpg

For those of you who have seen the movie Eurotrip, I bet you know exactly which clip I'm about to show. But first I should explain how I am connecting to this to psychology. We read about the "placebo effect" in our textbooks in chapter 2. The textbook states, "The placebo effect is improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement." Personally I think this definition can be modified to include any change noticed or felt simply due to the expectation that a change will occur. If someone is handed a pill that supposedly cures nausea, but are told that pill may cause them to be dizzy and lightheaded, that person may take it and report that they feel dizzy and lightheaded, even if they just took a placebo pill.
A placebo is commonly used to test drug efficacy when a new drug is developed. Most of these studies are "double-blind" meaning there is a control group that receives a placebo, an experimental group that receives the actual drug, and neither the participants nor the researcher knows which group is which.
In the case of the video I chose there is no actual research being done, but the two main people are a perfect example of the placebo effect. I suggest watching the video before I explain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdhSChKX2zI
For those of you who have never seen Eurotrip, in this scene, the two characters shown are twin brother and sister and they are in Amsterdam at a bakery eating brownies. Clearly they think that since they are in Amsterdam, the brownies that they are eating have marijuana in them. They thought they were feeling under the influence until the baker told them they were just regular brownies. Basically, since they expected the brownies had marijuana in them they acted the way they thought marijuana would influence them. To me, this is a very clear example of the placebo effect.

This past week, I read an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press regarding the role of God in psychology. You can read that article here. Gareth Cook, the columnist, basically summarizes and comments upon the findings of David Rosmarin, a psychologist at McLean Hospital. Rosmarin's experiment seems to indicate a negative correlation between amount of trust in God or a higher power, and amount of worry. To do some more research of Rosmarin's study, I found his original published article, Incorporating spiritual beliefs into a cognitive model of worry. Using the Principles of Scientific Thinking, I will attempt to analyze the validity of Rosmarin's experiment.

First, Rosmarin found a way to measure something that many people may consider "extraordinary". Using surveys to measure trust in God,uncertainty and worry, Rosmarin obtained small correlational evidence that mistrust/trust in God is associated with amount of worry. Thus, Rosmarin does have evidence to back up his extraordinary claims.

However, Rosmarin's experiment only surveyed religious people--both Christians and Jews. Presumably, Rosmarin should have used a third "control" group, a group of people who were not religious at all.

This observation ties into another Principle of Scientific Thinking. Rosmarin states that while there is correlation, causation cannot be automatically infered. In this case, it is difficult to separate cause from effect. Does trust in God cause less worries, or do people who trust in God simply worry less? For this reason, it would be helpful to have a base rate-- a group of non-religious people--involved in the study. However, it is important that Rosmarin is careful to note that his correlational findings do not equate causation.

In conclusion, both Cook and Rosmarin indicate that religion and trust could be used in clinical psychology, especially with anxiety sufferers. Rosmarin's findings seem to show a correlation between amount of worry and amount of trust in God. While there are some aspects in this experiment that could be improved upon, it is generally an acceptable experiment. Since many people are religious, it only makes sense to incorporate religious beliefs into their treatment! If Rosmarin's findings are replicated, psychologists should strongly consider using his suggestions in treatment. As Cook aptly says, "it's about offering a treatment option to the deeply faithful. It's about the field of psychology shedding its prejudices and preconceptions and returning to the first principle of therapy: meeting patients where they are."

Your short-term memory is able to handle about 5-9 pieces of information before you start to forget things. To extend the span of your short-term memory, people use a method known as chunking. Chunking is when an individual will group information in meaningful groups to expand their short-term memory. I find this interesting because instead of remembering for example 15 pieces of information, you can chunk that into 5 meaningful groups of 3 pieces of information each. For example,

If you were trying to remember the 15 letters below, you wouldn't be able to remember all of them:

CIAUSAFBINBCJFK

But if you chunk the group into 5 meaningful groups, you would be able to remember all 15 items without a problem:

CIA USA FBI NBC JFK

I have used chunking in my life when I was given information in a long string of digits or letters. I knew that I wouldn't remember all of the items in my short-term memory because it can only handle 7-9 items. So I took the information given and chunked it into meaningful groups. This allowed me to remember all the pieces of information and was very useful.

Also, in lecture the professor reinforced this idea in many ways. He asked us to remember a sting of letters or numbers. After an amount of time we recorded how many numbers or letters we could remember. But after he told us about chunking them into groups, people in class were able to remember many more numbers or letters. It proved that this actually works and I think that it's interesting how this does work.

Another example would be when Rajon Mahadevan was able to chunk and recall 31,811 digits of pi. He chunked numbers into area codes, phone numbers, historical dates, addresses and many more techniques to recall that enormous number of digits.

In our society, mind-altering drugs have become commonplace in daily life, either as a joke in conversation or as a lifestyle. Because they are so widespread in our society and have such complex effects on people's brains and lives, it's important for everyone to have a basic knowledge surrounding them.

Speaking, very generally, drugs have a multitude of negative consequences. Many people have seen the before and after images of one woman whose physical appearance changed drastically due to a meth addiction. Also problematic are the parents whose drug use affect their children.

However, drug usage has also led to some great artistic works. Less well known are the role of drugs in scientific discoveries. Though historically debatable, it's been rumored that Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA's double helix structure, allegedly had his stroke of genius while under the influence of LSD (this can be read about here).

Drug use in our society is a very complex issue that should be discussed seriously if it is ever to be dealt with. The current environment of viewing drug usage as a joking matter needs to be minimized if progress is to ever be made on how our society views and interacts with mind-altering drugs.

The availability heuristic is a cognitive bias in which the decision maker relies upon knowledge that is readily available rather than examining the question logically. In addition, the decision maker will make a decision based on how easily he or she can think of examples to the question. The media plays a large role in availability heuristics. They spoon feed us knowledge, and they seem to only cover uncommon events such as car accidents or other deadly occurrences, which then leads us to believe that car accidents happen more often than they really do.
For example, below is a link to an ABC segment on how the media can lead us to fall victim to the availability heuristic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOzAxhu6w2s
Also, here is another example of availability heuristic. Which group of animals are more deadly to humans in the world? Sharks, Lions, Bears or Mosquitos, elephants, hippos-- most people would instantly answer with the first group, which is incorrect. The media portrays lions, bears, and sharks as dangerous, deadly animals in movies like Jaws. Furthermore, attacks by these animals always make headlines, however, the second group in reality is much more deadly.

Imagine if you could take the pain away from the memory of a loved one dying or the harsh break up of a long relationship. In Chapter 7 of the textbook, the idea about having the capabilities to erase painful or traumatic experiences is brought up. Two scientists in the 1990s, Lawrence Cahill and James McGaugh, performed an experiment in which some of the participants in the study were given the drug propranolol, which blocks the effects of adrenaline on beta-adrenergic receptors. Typically, this class of drugs, called beta blockers, are used to treat high blood pressure, arrhythmias, and other conditions concerning the heart as well as migraines and glaucoma. However, when Cahill and McGaugh used propranolol in their study to inhibit adrenaline, participants did not have very good recall of emotionally arousing parts of a traumatic story they were read. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist, also experimented with propranolol to see how it effected people who had experienced traumatic situations such as car accidents. His study showed that none of the people who had been given propranolol prior to replays of their individual crashes showed a physical response to the tapes as opposed to forty-three percent of participants who had been given a placebo. Both of these studies show that propranolol can lessen the effects of traumatic experiences. The fact that experiences can be dampened by a pill leads one to wonder if traumatic events could ever be completely erased from a person's memory. If it is possible, would it be a good idea to make memory erasing available to anyone who wanted it? After considering this question, I firmly believe that it would not be a good idea. While traumatic experiences can alter a person's life irrevocably, the memories can be learned from and help make them who they are. If everyone was able to erase painful events from their memories, there would be no way to learn from them and avoid possible recurrences in the future.
This is a very interesting article that discusses the possibility of erasing memories and it's potential pros and cons.
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/memory_drugs_sd.html

In an episode in the second season of "Castle", a team of detectives finds a witness to a murder that can't recall anything because he has amnesia, which he sustained after he was shot at and nearly killed. A psychologist examines the witness and explains the different types of memory, and which were effected. The witness's procedural memory was still intact, because he was walking and talking normally. His semantic memory was also intact, because he still knew facts. What was missing was his episodic memory.
Episodic memory is our recollections of what has happened to us--essentially, our past memories. The witness on Castle, having lost his episodic memory, would have what is known as retrograde amnesia, where the sufferer loses past memories. On the show, the witness lost not only past memories, but all sense of self, and had no idea who he was. That kind of generalized amnesia is rare, and often appears in television shows and movies because it makes for a better plot line--after all, who's more interesting: the guy who remembers some things or the guy who remembers nothing?
Retrograde amnesia can have several causes. One cause is a traumatic brain injury, but it's important to remember that simply getting hit alongside the head does not cause amnesia. The effects of a traumatic brain injury vary depending on where the injury itself occurred, and retrograde amnesia is not always a direct outcome. Another cause of retrograde amnesia is traumatic events, where the amnesiac is trying avoid recalling the traumatic event, and can either end up forgetting everything (generalized amnesia) or simply certain events. The witness on "Castle" would have suffered from retrograde amnesia because of experience a traumatic event (being shot at).
In the episode, when the witness is being examined by the psychologist, the psychologist explains procedural memory as memories of how to do things, and doing things so often that neural pathways are formed, which cancels out the need for conscious thought. Castle managed to get closer to learning the witness's name when he asks the witness to sign a piece of paper, and the witness automatically scrawls his own signature. Castle concludes that, since we sign our names so often, we form neural pathways and it becomes procedural memory--we don't need to consciously think about signing our names, we just do. That may not be just Hollywood magic at work, however. The show's offered definition of procedural memory is correct--repeating an activity over and over until the relevant neurons wire to produce the activity automatically. Theoretically, even if a person suffers from generalized amnesia, if their procedural memory is intact they may very well be able to sign their name--which is Castle's quote from the episode: "So, you can sign your name, but you can't remember it?" The psychologist replies, "Mysteries of the brain."

We've all been warned to watch what we say around young children because according to their parents, "They repeat everything!" Children copy actions, as well as words, all in an effort to "be like you," the adult they admire.

In many cases children's copycat behavior, otherwise known as observational learning, is beneficial. According to the Lilienfeld text, the more official definition of observational learning is: learning by watching others. In animals observation learning occurs because of mirror neurons. Our Lilienfeld text tells us that mirror neurons are cells in the prefrontal cortex that are activated by certain movements when animals do or see an action. Observational learning is considered to be latent learning. Observational learning can have both positive and negative influences. This type of learning can save us from making terrible mistakes, but, at the same time can cause terrible habits. One example of this is observational learning of aggression. A negative effect of observational learning is shown by Albert Bandura's research, discussed in the text. In Bandura's research preschool children were shown an adult being violent to a Bobo doll or playing nicely while ignoring the Bobo doll. Next the children were given a Bobo doll of their own to play with. Researchers found that the children shown an adult being violent were more likely to copy that behavior and be violent to the Bobo doll. The Bobo doll research, along with observational learning itself prompt the question: How have you behaved today? Is your observable behavior worth learning?

I contemplated posting this blog at the very last possible time, but decided to not be a hypocrite and post it really early instead! Procrastination is something that I tend to deal with everyday. Before I can start any assignment related to school, I clean my room, wash my dishes, make lists of what I have to do, and check my Facebook about 100 times. Now, you're probably wondering why you care about my procrastination habits? Chances are, you probably don't. But my guess is that you have some procrastination habits of your own!

Short term memory and long term memory affect everyone's lives in some way. As college students, one very important way that STM and LTM affect us is study habits. Our short term memories can contain information for about 10-15 seconds without rehearsal. Rehearsal is similar to study habits and has two different types. Maintenance rehearsal occurs when we repeat something in its regular form over and over again. For example, studying vocabulary flash cards and saying "echoic memory- auditory". Elaborate rehearsal is a little different. With elaborate rehearsal you link the two phrases in some memorable way. For example, echoic memory (I see echo) and auditory (I see audio) are both related to sound so you'd remember that echoic memory comes from what you hear.
So how is this related to procrastination? Remembering complex information is easier when you analyze it and compare it to what you know, then just simply remembering things through repetition. This takes us to the levels-of-processing which is basically how easily a person remembers things. The more deeply we process information reflects our ability to understand the information. Semantic processing is the most effective and can be achieved by emphasizing the meaning of your information.
Semantic processing is what any college student should want to achieve! This enables us to send information to our LTM where it can reside forever. When it comes to studying, I recommend not waiting until the night before to review four chapters for our psychology test. Chances are you don't have enough time to thoroughly rehearse the information in order to semantically process it. Worst case scenario would be that you'd barely remember the information for the test and then forget everything as soon as you walked out of the computer lab door.
Good luck rehearsing all the material enough so you can store it in your LTM and remember it forever! But don't worry; I'll understand if you decide to change your study habits, tomorrow. ;]

Many of us have already seen the movie Inception and might have been shaken with its fantastic plot. Planting nonexistent memories into someone's brain, that sounds great, isn't it? Yet scientific evidence in memory shows that it can be real in some certain circumstances.
Researchers found that using suggestive memory techniques can strongly encourage people to recall memories, even creating memories that they might have never really experienced. In one study, researchers using different verbs like "contacted", "collided", and "smashed" to describe the same video of a car accident to different people letting them estimate the car's speed. And the more severe the word researchers use to describe the accident, the higher speed the participants tend to estimate, even the video of this accident is exactly the same.
In another study, researchers asked participants questions that contain misinformation-- in this case, they suggested that there's a stop sign while actually there's not-- about some details in a car accident video tape. Participants who had been asked such misleading questions generally had some false memories about the detail, which is their memory of a stop sign, while those participants who didn't receive such information mostly recalled the exactly sign correctly.
According to scientific theory, this can be due to misinformation effect, which is the creation of fictitious memories by providing misleading information about an event after it takes place. Evidence also shows that memories that are more acceptable by our rational reasoning are more easily to be planted in. For instance, having experienced a hot-balloon trip with family members in childhood is more rationally acceptable than experiencing physics professor dancing in a Golden Gopher custom, thus is much more easily to be planted. It seems that what the movie shows can be real in life if the planning is elaborate enough, but that will associate with ethical issues and there'll be long lasting debates to go.

Everyone has encountered a situation where we have behaved in some way and were reinforced by doing that behavior. Therefore, in trying to get that reinforcement another time, we will try to produce that same behavior. That was a pretty complicated way of explaining it, but I'll try to make it easier with an example. Say a baseball player taps his right cleat to get the dirt off before his at-bat, then during that at-bat he hits a home run. The player behaved in some way and was shortly reinforced after his behavior. The player might continue to tap his right cleat before each at-bat expecting the same reinforcement.

These superstitious behaviors happen all the time in sports, school, and even animals show this behavior. Skinner famously showed this in an experiment when he gave pigeons reinforcement every fifteen seconds regardless of their behavior. Skinner started to notice that most of the pigeons started to repeat their own actions before they received the reinforcement because they felt that their actions caused the reinforcement.

Superstitions are also tied into good or bad luck. Many people do or avoid certain things because they are superstitious that they will bring them good luck or bad luck. Common superstitions according to our text book include: lucky charms, crossing your fingers, not walking under a ladder, or to not step on cracks. Baseball pitchers show this by jumping over the baseline because they think if they step on the line, it will bring them bad luck.

I guess I thought that it was weird that superstitious behaviors not only happen in humans, but also in animals. Before reading chapter six, I thought humans were the only organisms to part take in such a weird occurrence.

I would like to focus on amnesia for assignment three. In my own words, amnesia basically means the loss of memory for a period of time, usually from an accident involving head injuries and the memory that was lost will eventually be regained. There are two different types of amnesia including retrograde amnesia which causes us to lose memories of our past and anterograde amnesia which makes it so we aren't able to create new memories. Amnesia is significant because it can completely change the lives of people who have amnesia. Imagine a family with two young children, if their mother doesn't understand who they are, how can she be a good mother? Amnesia can damage individuals and families very easily. I don't have a direct relationship to amnesia in my life right now but, as I imagine my mother or father getting amnesia, I can see how difficult things would become. It would be hard for my entire family including my grandparents, my sister and whoever has amnesia because they are missing information to a part of our lives together. In this video, short term memory loss is displayed in a comical way but it does a good job of demonstrating how this could effect a family negatively. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvF113uty4) I would like to know more about the statistics behind amnesia such as how many new cases occur on average per year and how many of these people make a full recovery? My last question is which of the two types of amnesia (retrograde and anterograde) is more common throughout the world?

When I was young, I saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland...and that same day, my parents took my in a hot air balloon...but then they lost me, and when they found me, we went out for ice cream and I threw up and ever since then, I can't eat ice cream! Are you sure, my mind repeats? Yes, I'm sure it happened...look, they even have a picture of me in a hot air balloon and everything!
Unfortunately, it's all fake! But my mind was so sure of it! I even remember it vividly! That's the problem with false memories and flashbulb memories! The book defines a flashbulb memory as an emotional memory that is extremely vivid and detailed. How much truth lies within these memories? We can't be sure, but one example, among many, demonstrates the problem with flashbulb memories! On September 11th, President Bush was at a school with younger kids when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, told him about the attacks; he later reports that he was watching the television when the attacks happened! Footage for the attacks wasn't released until days after the attacks! So what happens when people tells us we experienced things that never happened? What if they come armed with pictures and recollections of experiencing it with us?? Psychologists have even coined terms for processes that can trick us into believing what never happened: the misinformation effect and suggestive memory techniques! This is particularly interesting to me because I am super gullible and easily distracted by fantasies...as are all of my friends!! This means that, along with the elderly, and those who are prone to believe that they were adducted by aliens, I am predisposed to believing these false memories! How about you? How susceptible are you to believing these false memories? These false memories are problematic too because, when implanted in the lab, they can create major problems!They can even tear families if kids believe that something as drastic as sexual abuse actually occurred! At first glance, if you saw a picture of yourself on a hot air balloon, it wouldn't seem to defy the six principles of scientific thinking, right? There is evidence...you can see yourself, it must have happened for there to be a picture! And in all reality, it's not exaggerated, and it's 100% possible! So how do we distinguish, especially when our minds seem to be fooling us? I tried hard to find the answer to that question and to evaluate these methods using the six principles of scientific thinking, but it's hard to falsify a claim in a memory, most of our memories can only seem plausible (and thus, not exaggerated) for us to believe them, we often forget correlation versus causation because we don't imagine that our minds might invent something, and the simplest explanation IS that it did happen to us, and why think of another hypothesis? Why would we imagine that we had made something up? It makes no sense! It just is like that picture of the scientist holding the brain, meshing it and molding it into every way he wants...and here's how they did it and here's how well it has worked! So when do we know what's real and what's not real? In my opinion, we look for evidence and support for any memories, especially those that need it! What do you guys think? How do we know what's real life and what's not? And are we sure what we believe is real life...really is real life?

"Watch and learn!" this was a famous phrase by my brother when he tried to teach me something. Little that I know that I was engaging in observational learning where I learned by watching my brother's action. This form of latent learning is quite beneficial for children growing in a good environment as they will likely see things that are not harmful to be learning such as learning to build dog house, learning to make flowerbeds and more. However, due to the development of technology, good and safe environment might no longer exist as children nowadays can learn to smoke and hit other people just by watching the television and surfing the web. This is what we called "observational learning of aggression" where Albert Bandura and his colleagues demonstrated that children can learn to act aggressively by watching aggressive role models (Bandura, Ross,&Ross, 1963). The role models in this case are the actors in the television who were unintentionally giving bad education to the children.
I had seen the effect of observational learning of aggression first hand when my little niece started to hit her younger brother after watching an action cartoon movie. This observational learning of aggression can only be prevented by the parents where the parents censored bad example in the television from their children. Aside from that, parents and older siblings also need to be careful with their actions in front of the children as the children might mimic their bad actions. However, knowing that acting like an angle every single day might be impossible, the adult needs to explain to the children about the consequences of doing bad things like stealing or smoking.

Do you ever wonder why you can't remember something when you just saw it a moment ago? Well, the answer lies within the stages of memory. To be more precise, it's mainly the short term memory that's causing that. Short term memory is the second stage of The Three Stage Model. The STM is a cognitive workplace or in other words, it is a working memory system/ base. Within this stage, your memory last for 10- 15 seconds before the information fades. As for the capacity, it is 7 plus or minus 2 meaning that you remember 9 to 5 bits of information given an amount of time. Thus, in the STM capacity, it is restricted or has a limited of space explaining why we can't remember everything we saw within a given amount of time. So to make things easier for our brains and improve the STM, we get involved with CHUNK. Chunk means to regroup more than one thing making it easier to remember or regrouping it in ways that it is "meaningful" to you.
**TEST OUT USING CHUNK. First, look at the row of numbers below for a given amount of time then close your eyes or look away from the numbers and write as many numbers as you can from memory.
--> 1020110214102209061024
How many numbers did you get correct? If you got within the range of 5 to 9 then you just experience 7+/- and chunk. A way of using chunk in this case, look below
10/2011(month & year) 02/14(valentine's day) 10/22(homecoming ends) 09/06(first day of school) 10/24(psy final); see how easy that was!

During the memory lecture by Professor Fletcher, I was fascinated by what I learned about memory. To be more specific, the second stage of STM (short term memory) about "chunks" and how it can improve your memory. I have short term memory when it comes to remembering things, so that is one of the reason why I found CHUNK and 7+/- so interesting. Plus, during lecture we were experimenting with stage 2, and it was difficult at first but when Professor Fletcher showed us what CHUNK was, it was so EASY! Due to this, I believe I will use this method to enhance my memory. It just makes life a little easier.
What do you think about STM- stage 2 of The Three Stage Model?

Most of us did not realize how crucial depth perception plays a role in our lives and how reliable this function has guided us through each step we took. Depth perception allows us to look at things in three dimensions and gives us the sense of how far away and close they are. When it comes to depth, we use two kinds of cues; which are monocular depth cues and binocular depth cues. The monocular depth cues function by using only one eye. On the other hand, binocular depth cues are functioning using both eyes. Depth perception gives us the ability to compare one thing to another such as sizes, shapes, and distances. Imagine what would happen if you walking into something without know how far or whether the thing in front of you is blocking you not. In the video, it gives us some ideas about what might happened if we cannot perceive depth. A guy just walked into a mirror door because at that moment, he did not see or realize that the mirror was there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O2qPT8vgfI&feature=related

Looking at another video below, let's pretend that the artwork was real, and the guy who is jumping and avoid the cliff has the ability to perceive depth and the rest do not. In this case, those who do not have the ability to perceive depth would of fall when they step into the cliff (artwork). And the guy who has depth perception of course would avoid the fall.
http://gizmodo.com/5809997/mind-your-step-that-last-one-leads-into-a-gaping-pit

Lucid dreaming - the phenomenon of recognizing that you are within a dream, your conscious mind interacting with your subconscious mind. This occurrence has fascinated me ever since I first heard of it years ago. Of course my sources might have exaggerated or even embellished some, but the concept was intriguing. What always left me in wonder was the repeated claim of being able to control the dream once you've become lucid, being able to live out practically any fantasy you might have.

Lucid dreaming blurs the line between the state of being awake and the state of sleeping, and thus adds a cloud of complexity to understanding how consciousness operates. What's remarkable is that through adoption of specific techniques, you could increase your likelihood of becoming lucid. Such techniques include looking for clues that indicate that you are dreaming, and once you have become lucid, to keep calm as best you can so the excitement does not wake you. This adds another layer of conscious control in a state that was long believed to be completely subconscious. A video delving deeper into lucid dreaming can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASf55cov5F8

After considering all this, it's is difficult not to wonder of the potential held in research of lucid dreaming. What are the limits? Are there even any?

One of the things my parents tell me about the most, when reminiscing about my early childhood, is how much I mimicked my father. I would follow him around all day while he did chores around the house or out in the yard. When he would mow the lawn, I had a toy lawn mower and would follow him around the yard with it. Looking back on that now through the scope of this course, I realize I was exhibiting Observational Learning. Observational Learning, simply put, is learning by watching others. According to the textbook (and common sense) major role models, like parents, are the ones who are observed and learned from by their children the most. Things like daily chores around the home, social activities and even habits can be observed and taken on by the observer. For example, once I became old enough, I did mow the lawn like my father.

Besides parents and other people, Observational Learning can come from other forms of communication, like the media (video games, movies, TV shows, etc.). One concern that arises from observing this content is that it could lead to learning habits and behaviors that are harmful, like excessive aggression. This can come from watching violent shows or movies, as well as playing violent video games. Though there is no causational proof that this can occur, there is plenty of proof that shows a correlation between such forms of media and observer aggression. According the Lilienfeld textbook, longitudinal studies have been performed that show that "children who choose to watch many violent television shows commit more aggressive acts years later than do children who choose to watch fewer violent television shows."

Both of these aspects of Observational Learning give testament not only to how powerful this type of learning is in its simplicity, but also to how important it is to have a level of discretion with what is observed. This is true for people of all age ranges. It is also important to note that this type of learning was and still is paramount to the survival of humans as a species. After all, by observing and learning we avoid having to learn the hard way through mistakes. Can you think of something you've observed and that you have learned from (simple or life changing)?

After reading the chapter on memory, I found this article: http://www.livescience.com/1473-moving-eyes-improves-memory-study-suggests.html I thought that it was very interesting and decided to share it in my blog post.
The main idea sounds pretty legitimate, that moving your eyes back and fourth increases interaction between the two hemispheres of your brain, and that communication between the hemispheres of your brain is important for memory. I don't think that there has been enough research done on this subject to make any conclusive reports though, which the researcher himself admits. That reminded me of what we learned a few weeks ago, about how sometimes scientists want to prove that they are right and will present their data in a way that proves something that they already thought to be true. I thought the fact that he admitted that more tests will need to be done was a good sign, and that if he could admit that his results were not enough to prove anything then the article was fairly legitimate and honest. I also liked that this article talked about the three different groups, one being the control group in which no variable was added.
I did a Google search on this specific topic, and found this article: http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2009/04/a_quick_eye-exercise_can_impro.php I thought that it was a lot more confusing and less straight forward than the first article. It added more variables, such as being right or left handed, or "split brained." It also seemed to claim much stronger proof for something, which made it seem less legitimate to me now that I've taken a Psychology class and learned about the mistakes scientists often make when conducting research.
Overall, I really hope that this is a true finding, and that they do more research to prove it. Alzheimer's runs in my family, and maybe in the future this might help lead to cures for that disease.

Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder where the patient suffers from sudden episodes of forced sleep lasting for several minutes and, in rare cases, up to an hour. This disorder is also present in animals. Below is a short video describing how narcolepsy affects the dog Rusty.

Episodes of narcolepsy occur during periods of strong emotion, such as surprise, excitement, joy and even during laughter. In the video the dog Rusty runs around and is seemingly enjoying himself and suddenly he falls asleep in mid run. This is not uncommon for Rusty since he suffers from narcolepsy.

Unlike regular sleep, where REM takes more than an hour to occur, those who suffer from narcolepsy reach REM sleep within minutes of an episode. This may suggest that narcolepsy is caused by a malfunction in the hypothalamus, the location of our "biological clock".

Those who suffer from narcolepsy can also suffer from a similar condition called cataplexy where all of the muscles loose their muscle tone, in other words, you go limp. Cataplexy occurs naturally when someone is in REM sleep, this helps the body relax from all the activity during the previous day. The difference between cataplexy and regular REM sleep is that during episodes of cataplexy the person is completely alert.

In rare cases, narcolepsy can severely impact the lives of those it affects. In one particular case, again a dog, suffers from such severe narcolepsy that it is difficult for him to stay awake all day long.

Since humans and animals can both suffer from narcolepsy, does this mean that other mental disorders such as chronic depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder are also present in animals?

Recently there has been some buzz in the media about men's sexual health as it relates to the development of prostate cancer. Claims have been made to whether there is a correlation between male ejaculation and the development of prostate cancer. Some researchers claimed that ejaculation (through intercourse or masturbation) might be a cause of prostate cancer in men. This extraordinary claim needed to be backed up by more substantial evidence.
In 2009 a study was published in the British Journal of Urology that seemed to better explain the correlation between ejaculation and higher rates of prostate cancer in men. Researchers found that sex hormones were a key factor that had been overlooked. A man with higher levels of sex hormones who is already predisposed to developing prostate cancer, genetically mostly, is even more likely to develop prostate cancer over his lifetime. The researchers found that a higher level of sex hormones may cause a man to have the urge to masturbate or have intercourse more frequently.
I thought that this study contained many of the six principles of critical thinking. The claim that masturbation caused prostate cancer was pretty extraordinary but I have learned that correlation does not imply causation. I also thought that in the end the simplest explanation was the correct one.

For college students sleep sacrifice becomes a very common practice. We are sometimes more concerned about the news on Facebook than our general wellbeing. It seems okay for us to cut back on several hours of sleep because we often are not aware of all of the important functions rest and sleep provide for us.

There are several stages of sleep and each of them has an important function. Stage 1 of our sleep is the light stage of sleep. Sometimes we are not even sure if we are actually sleeping or if we are awake. Stage 2 of our sleep lasts for about 65% of the night and during this stage our body processes slow down, muscled relax and body temperature goes down. Stages 3 and 4 are the stages of our deeper sleep. To feel fully rested in the morning, our body needs to go through several cycles of this type of sleep. During stage 5, or REM sleep, our brain action is similar to our awake state. Our heart rate and blood pressure increase and we experience rapid eye movements. Most of our dreams occur when our body is in this stage of sleep. When our body is deprived from this type of sleep for several nights, our body goes into REM rebound. This proves the critical biological function of sleep on our body.

Like in any other functions of the body, sleep also has several types of disorders. People might experience insomnia, narcolepsy (sudden urge to sleep), sleep apnea (caused by the blockage of the airway), night terrors, and sleepwalking.

It is important for college students to realize the importance of sleep. It plays a vital role in our health and the feeling of general wellbeing.

Being an athlete, I have always been curious what being "in the zone' actually means. Is it a real state of being or something that is made up to explain away amazing, extremely rare athletic performances? I saw a video where a professional basketball player scored 13 points in 35 seconds and I was intrigued as to how Tracy McGrady was able to accomplish this feat. While McGrady was very good, scoring thirteen points in thirty-five seconds is remarkable. Being a rower, I was interested how this applies to rowing and athletes who are not at a pro level. Flow, or being "in the zone", has a few different components. The first is challenge-skills balance, which is the time when one thinks the challenge matches the skills they have. This means that flow is applicable for all athletes, not just the best ones. The second is action-awareness merging. This occurs when you are completely immersed in the activity and everything else disappears from your consciousness. Clear goals is another aspect of flow. McGrady's goal in that game must have been to come back and beat the opposing team. The final part of flow is a sense of control. This relates back to the challenge-skills balance because thinking you can accomplish a task gives you a mental advantage over someone who is lacking that confidence and control. After researching flow, I was given hope that one day I might reach that level of performance during a race.

Article: http://www.cbass.com/Flow.htm
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXlLib0Og-4

The topic that I chose to write about was Depth and Perception in Section 4.1. Depth Perception gives us the capability to see things in three dimensions but also to be able to reach out and grab things. It gives us the ability to move around without crashing into something and gives us the ability to navigate. There are two cues that are part of depth perception: Monocular depth cues which only rely on one eye while there is also binocular depth cues which use both eyes.
I think it is important because depth perception has a great deal of effect on our daily lives. It gives us the ability to move around and touch things and have that spatial recognition and navigation. It is the reason why functioning throughout the day is capable.
http://youtu.be/NaSaLS6vap0
In the video Robin Williams takes the wrong medication impairing his depth perception. The questions that I still have about depth perception are, once a person's depth perception is obstructed can it still be fixed. Is there any medication that also helps a person's depth perception and what diseases affect depth perception?

http://www.snopes.com/legal/fema.asp
California is known for its earthquakes, which are devastating and cause a lot of damage to property. On January 17th, 1994, Los Angeles experienced an earthquake that shook many peoples' lives, injured or killed their loved ones, and destroyed their property. The Richter scale is a one to ten scale, of the intensity of an earthquake not the damage it causes. It has been said that earthquakes do not kill people, buildings do. The immense damage caused by, "the Northridge Quake," as it became known as after the fact, was so devastating that people were sure it had to be high on the Richter scale. When reported as a 6.7 on the Richter scale people were certain that could not be true. Many organizations oversee Richter scale measurements and collaborate to tell the public so a false reading would be hard to be publicized. The earthquake was reported to have a score of a 9.5, but on the Mercalli scale, which measures the amount of damage a quake causes on the surface not the power in the quake itself. People were sure this measurement to be a better Richter scale measurement. The damage was immense, but a 9.5 reading or the Richter scale is an extraordinary claim. The quake may have been weaker than it seemed but the buildings were just on unstable ground or the repeated quakes of California had worn the earth down the crumbling stage, causing a lot of damage. This claim could also explain the happenings just as well. The quake experienced by people woken up at 4:30, in the morning when the earthquake occurred, probably seemed worse than it was just from the shock of it.

Harvey, Steve. "Only in L.A."
Los Angeles Times. 2 March 1994 (p. B2).
Jackson, Robert and Miles Corwin. "Aid Centers Open But No Money Yet."
Los Angeles Times. 23 October 1989 (p. A1).
Mitchell, Sean. "Warning: The Following L.A. Stories Are Not True."
Los Angeles Times. 24 November 1996 (Magazine, p. 32)

Do you ever wonder why you can't remember something when you just saw it a moment ago? Well, the answer lies within the stages of memory. To be more precise, it's mainly the short term memory that's causing that. Short term memory is the second stage of The Three Stage Model. The STM is a cognitive workplace or in other words, it is a working memory system/ base. Within this stage, your memory last for 10- 15 seconds before the information fades. As for the capacity, it is 7 plus or minus 2 meaning that you remember 9 to 5 bits of information given an amount of time. Thus, in the STM capacity, it is restricted or has a limited of space explaining why we can't remember everything we saw within a given amount of time. So to make things easier for our brains and improve the STM, we get involved with CHUNK. Chunk means to regroup more than one thing making it easier to remember or regrouping it in ways that it is "meaningful" to you.
**TEST OUT USING CHUNK. First, look at the row of numbers below for a given amount of time then close your eyes or look away from the numbers and write as many numbers as you can from memory.
--> 1020110214102209061024
How many numbers did you get correct? If you got within the range of 5 to 9 then you just experience 7+/- and chunk. A way of using chunk in this case, look below
10/2011(month & year) 02/14(valentine's day) 10/22(homecoming ends) 09/06(first day of school) 10/24(psy final); see how easy that was!

During the memory lecture by Professor Fletcher, I was fascinated by what I learned about memory. To be more specific, the second stage of STM (short term memory) about "chunks" and how it can improve your memory. I have short term memory when it comes to remembering things, so that is one of the reason why I found CHUNK and 7+/- so interesting. Plus, during lecture we were experimenting with stage 2, and it was difficult at first but when Professor Fletcher showed us what CHUNK was, it was so EASY! Due to this, I believe I will use this method to enhance my memory. It just makes life a little easier.
What do you think about STM- stage 2 of The Three Stage Model?

"Hey what is the name of that show? What show? The one with the cops trying to solve a crime. Hmm...CSI...no, not that one the other one! Ohh my gosh it's on the tip of my tongue!!!"

The tip of the tongue phenomenon is an incident when we know something but we cannot put it into words. It can be aggravating to have the impulse of knowing what someone is talking about or asking but we are not able to recover the information in our minds. In our book they point out that tip of the tongue tells us the difference between forgetting something because we did not store it as a memory, and being unable to recall something that was stored in memory but we can quite retrieve it. This finding is important because many people experience this and when they believe they know what the answer is to something most of the time they are telling the truth. Daniel Schacter Seven Sins of Memory also use the tip of the tongue phenomenon as an example of blocking, which is the temporary inability to access information.

I dealt with the tip of the tongue phenomenon many times throughout my life. Just within these last few weeks of studying for all of the first mid terms I am learning and trying to retain a lot of new information. While taking the mid terms I consequently experienced this. After reading a question I thought to myself, "I remember reading this and I can see it on the page but what was that word/concept". I was frustrated with myself and after working through the rest of the test it finally magically popped into my head, and it was an "ohh ya why couldn't I think of that before" moment.

In discussion when we explored whether we were getting enough sleep or not I was shocked to see how many "true's" I had and how much sleep I wasn't getting. I usually only stay up really late when I have a test or quiz I need to study for, which seems to be too often. Whenever I am about to take a test I always hear people say "I stayed up all night studying" or "I slept until 3 or 4am and woke up to start studying." Like many other students, I have always done the same. I always stay up late and wake up early to study. After reading an article in USA Today I've decided to change my ways. Students who study through the night or become sleep deprived from studying are actually doing the opposite of what their intentions are. Think- if a student is decreasing their amount of time doing something else- like sleeping- they think they will have more time to study and therefore do better. Wrong! After reading this article I am going to find a way to get my sleep! Colleges are finding that students who are sleep deprived during their tests actually do worse than if they would have slept. Students who don't get enough sleep due to studying actually lower their GPA which is the opposite of what they want. Not only does it effect ones GPA, but it effects athletes performance as well. The article says that "Short term side effects of sleep deprivation include delayed reactions and tendencies to make mistakes." I'm glad that the article stated this because I always assumed that if I studied as much as possible the night before and the morning/day of that I would remember everything because it would be fresh. It actually does the exact opposite!! If you are a student who doesn't get enough sleep (basically all of you!) you should read this article :).

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-09-16-sleep-deprivation_N.htm

It is amazing how the human brain works at such a young age. According to the video, we become self aware between the ages of 18 to 24 months. this evidence was brought out in the experiment performed on children The amount of questions left unanswered is staggering. A few of them include whether or not animals are aware of themselves, if cells are aware of themselves and so on. Not only was I amazed at how much similar humans are to chimpanzees and orangutans regarding self awareness, but also how much time professor Gordon Gallup spent pursing this area of science. He describes self awareness as having the ability to put ourselves in relation to past, present, and future events. The positive associated with self awareness is our ability as humans to shape the world according to our vision. However, being self aware also means being aware of death.

you know that feeling when you are laying in bed for hours, trying to fall asleep, but seem unable to do so? well some people experience that feeling every night. It is from a disorder called insomnia. Insomnia can be diagnosed in three ways: if a person has trouble falling asleep on a regular basis, if a person is waking up too early in the morning for no reason,or if a person is waking up in the morning and is unable to fall back asleep. Insomnia can be treated with medication, but it cannot be cured. If a person has it, they will continue to have it for the remainder of their life. Insomnia is a fairly common disorder, effecting millions of people every year around the globe.

We are all aware that our taste buds can detect the flavors of sweet, sour, bitter and salty. The tongue has millions of receptors to distinguish the different tastes. Who knew that we had a fifth receptor called umami. Apart from the basic tastes that our tongue senses umami detects the meaty or savory flavor of food. For a long period of time there have been debates about if this 5th taste existed. Not too long ago scientists have been able to replicate their past results and conclude that it does exist. A scientist of the name of Kikunae Ikeda did an experiment of separating the savory flavor of foods he found out that the foods contained monosodium glutamate in others words MSG. Umami is not directly MSG but, it has an abundant amount of it. The neurotransmitter is responsible for enhancing the flavors of wide varieties of food because it has no distinct aroma or texture. Umami can't be defined as one flavor like salty or sweet because it contains the tastes of broth, savory, or spicy. When you think about it glutamate excites things in the nervous system and monosodium excites the food by giving it more flavor. Umami has been widely accepted as an additional receptor. The video on the right shows an experiment of umami with people tasting different flavors.

If you had to choose to eat one of the following three meals, which one would you eat? I have a feeling that the majority of you picked the third picture as your desired meal. Dr. Disgust aka Paul Rozin researched disgust reactions. The first picture of chili verde might be your favorite food, but presented in a way that resembles barf makes you hesitate before you eat it. Asian food might be your first choice, but probably not when it resembles diarrhea. And let's just face it, the third picture looks DELICIOUS! Rozin did a study that I found quite interesting. He had two glasses of sugar water but filled one glass from a bottle labeled 'sucrose' and another with a bottle falsely labeled 'sodium cyanide, poison'. However, they were both simply sugar water. But when people were asked to drink from both glasses, the subjects were very hesitant to drink from 'poison' glass even though they were told that it was sugar water. Psychologically this is important because when the human brain visualizes something that they aren't quite sure of, they hesitate before diving straight in. So basically, even though you might love the taste of chili verde, chances are you aren't going to eat it simply because your disgust reactions won't let you when it appears a certain way. I know I definitely eat with my eyes. My brother is really into culinary arts and he makes fancy dinners almost every night. He'd get frustrated because if something looks weird, discolored, or disgusting, I physically cannot eat it.

"If government doesn't keep the corporations down, monopolies will naturally develop, and they'll buy out startups with new products, saving them from their own inefficiency, and they'll never go away." Not only is this blatantly untrue, but it requires extreme evidence to be supported. This is a crazy claim about companies and monopolies that needs extraordinary evidence to prove that it is true. The scientific principle of extraordinary claims states that for every extraordinary claim it requires extraordinary evidence. Take Apple Ipad for example. While Apple created and owns the exact product "ipad" they don't own the general idea. Many other companies such as Microsoft and Verizon Wireless have created similar products to this. Apple is not taking over all technology and monopolizing the world of computer gadgets. There is no extraordinary, overbearing evidence that this claim is true.

You're walking with your friends down a street in your town and you hear a dog bark, followed by the screeching of tires at a stop sign, and then your friend says something to you, and you feel like you can tell what's going to happen next, and sure enough, it does. It's almost as if...you've experienced this entire happening before. Well, chances are, you probably are not a reincarnated soul, and this whole effect is just a phenomenon called Déjà Vu.
This strange sensation that you may have witnessed this event before is actually quite common. Our textbook claims that 2/3 of the population has encountered a sensation such as this one. Also, it says that this is due to an excess of dopamine in the temporal lobes, which holds significance in the feeling of familiarity, so we are almost tricked into believing that we have seen this all before, when in reality, the situation might be similar, but is never the exact same. Our brain, without our knowing, takes in so much information and stores it into our brain, so when we see something and actually spend time looking at it, it may seem familiar, but only because we have been unconsciously seeing it forever. Additionally, dreams may be similar to a situation that actually happens, and so the person may firmly believe it has happened before.

a good example of Déjà Vu coupled with a time loop effect is in the movie "Groundhog Day". starring Bill Murray, he continues to relieve the same day over and over again, and knows exactly when things are going to happen, from a platter of dishes being dropped to a boy falling from a tree

unfortunately no clips exist of these two occurrences. :( just watch the whole movie!

This occurrence may seem very overwhelming for some individuals, and others may enjoy the little trick played on them by the upper half of their CNS. I myself, like to experience Déjà Vu. It reminds me that although i consider myself an observant person, I can still miss out on things that my brain picks up for me. If we didn't have this function in our brain, we would probably not live nearly as long as we do now, for we would be focused on one task at a time and our brains would struggle to even keep us away from harm, like if we were too busy reading a magazine and didn't notice the car veering off the road toward us. Thank goodness for unconscious multitasking!

I am sure that many of you have heard stories about near-death experiences either from friends, family, television, or books. "I could see a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel" is the common claim from patients that have experienced such a thing. Other characteristics include seeing one's own life before their eyes, meeting family that one has not seen for awhile, and then "coming back into the body." You might think that these are just rare, claims such as u.f.o. sightings, but in fact about 25% of those with NDEs report they experienced their conscious outside of their bodies. The events that take place differ among people from different cultures and religions, which suggests that NDEs are constructed from personal beliefs. Scientists have come up with alternative explanations for NDEs based off of various physical traumas. Whatever your viewpoint may be, there is no denying that these experiences happen to humans, it is just a matter of what causes it that is still uncertain to this day. Here is an interesting video from ABC News where one patient of a NDE interviews a lady with a similar story. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/qlQyKzXlb1w

We have all seen in movies when peoples' consciousness leaves their bodies and floats away. Scientists have been battling with this concept for awhile now. Statistics have shown that a quarter of college student and ten percent of the population have reported experiencing these out of body experiences. These events have been portrayed as the consciousness floating above the body, experiencing hallucinations or lucid dreams, and body sensations. Researchers have tried to replicate these findings by comparing the sights and sounds of an out of body experience in a specific location, but they were able to conclude that the participants were just good at making guesses about what they saw or heard. Not only were researchers not able to replicate the findings but the claim was disproved that people surface out of their bodies. Some possible explanations could be that our physical bodies could be disrupted which may lead to the exact same effects that one may endure with they go through an out of body experience. Our sensory information can join together from all different pathways to create this experience. When the sensory and physical sensations intertwine we deceive ourselves into thinking that our consciousness can leave our bodies

We all can agree to the fact that we make sense of our world by putting bits and pieces together to form let's say a picture that's understandable to us. This is in fact what occurs in our brain, our mind has the capacity to put pieces together to create an understanding of and object or our surroundings. This is known as the binding problem which refers to "how our brains take multiple pieces of information and combine them to represent something concrete". It is one of the greatest mysteries of psychology.

In his lecture, Professor Sheng He showed us a slight where a deer was carved on wood, on revelation we realized that different pieces of wood were put together to create the illusion of the picture of deer- showing that our brains are prone to put together the pieces to create an understandable picture.

Another example is a structure of a house that is located in an "art garden" in Washington D.C. This house indeed is artistically created. Before I go any further, you might wish to sit back and watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHGqTClu6tU&feature=related

I believe if you have seen the video you have not only had a clear cut presentation of how illusion can create 3D effects but also grasped the concept of our brain making sense of something by literally putting the pieces together. If any of the pieces of this house was put it separate and spaced out location we would perceive them as individual pieces, but the proximity and special distance between these pieces creates the "complete house". Without the pieces in close proximity the characteristics wouldn't make much sense as they cannot be associated with a complete picture.

The question of how our brain does that is still unanswered. Psychologists are still exploring the ways by which our brain binds the pieces together to make sense of it. No matter what come up with a scientific, religious or theological answer, so how do you think our brains put the pieces together?

Have you ever heard of Dock Phillip Ellis? He was a pitcher who played for the Pittsburg Pirates in the 70's. Do you know what he has achieved in his pitching career? He is perhaps best remembered throwing a no-hitter in baseball. However you might not see the significance of this and say a lot of pitchers do so these days. But while under the influence of LSD? Yes, Dock Phillip Ellis claims that he pitched the no-hitter high on acid!

Do you know another famous figure who once was a psychedelic drug user? Founder of Apple Inc., Steve Jobs, has told he has done acid before, and calls the experience "one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life" (NYTimes). He created revolutionary User Interface and brought technological and cultural value to our society.

Psychedelic drugs such as LSD, and Marijuana remain illegal but many cases of the usage are wildly shown. Psychedelic drugs are psychoactive substances whose primary action is to alter perception and cognition. These are also known as hallucinogens and in contrast to opiates and stimulants, they tend to affect and explore the mind in ways that result in the experience being qualitatively different from those of ordinary consciousness. Now do you see why a lot of people used and or are still choosing to use it? However, the long-term effects of these drugs are not so pleasant. In case of LSD (acid), you might experience flashbacks or random hallucinations.
These mind-altering drugs are known from a lot of musicians and celebrities but also should show you what could happen when these drugs are abused or used for a long period.

If you're a fan of the popular old WB show "Gilmore Girls", then you've likely scene the final episode of the fourth season where oddball character Kirk describes to Luke how he is plagued with night terrors. Unfortunately, due to copyright issues this was the best video I could find from that episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQqqXNg4gc8
At 3:19, we see Kirk sprinting by Luke and Lorelai screaming because a typical part of his night terrors include believing that he is being chased by assassins. In an earlier scene, Kirk tells Luke about his night terrors: roughly an hour after he falls asleep, he wakes up believing that everything around him is threatening, and goes through various scenarios of being chased by assassins, thinking his pillow was a bomb, and believing himself to be on fire. While this only adds to the peculiarity of the Kirk canon, Kirk's descriptions of his night terrors are not entirely accurate. In the Lillienfield text, night terrors are described as occurring much more frequently in adults than children, likely because children spend more time in deeper stages of sleep, outside REM sleep, than adults, and that is the point in sleep when night terrors occur. Most sufferers of night terrors also cannot recall what happened during that time period, whereas Kirk is usually able to remember exactly what happened during his night terrors. Night terrors are also usually followed by a return to deep sleep, which Kirk does not exhibit later in the episode. Adults can suffer from night terrors, most often when they are under intense stress, and night terrors have no relation whatsoever to nightmares, which happen usually during REM sleep (night terrors, remember, occur in deeper parts of sleep, not REM). However, night terrors are often characterized by screaming, sweating, and confusion, all of which Kirk exhibits (as we can clearly see). So, understanding the background of night terrors, are Kirk's believable or not?

Circadian Rhythm is a 24 hour cycle in biological process. Circadian Rhythm is a very important concept since it closely related to our everyday life. Here is the video from John Winkelman who are a Medial Director from Sleep Health Centers: Circadian Rhythm The video indicates that Circadian Rhythm is one of the important signals that indicating our sleep and our body is not adapted to disruption in Circadian Rhythm. Mr. Winkelman also suggest that it is important to sleep and wake up at the same time everyday rather than to usually live an irregular life. Let me use my personal experience to illustrate it: as an international student from China, I return to China every year in the summer. I suffer from jet lag during the journey and it always take me more than one week to adjust Circadian Rhythm. When experiencing jet lag, I completely lost my appetite and have bad skin condition, which indicates that my healthy state is pretty bad. Combining what I learn from our book, research as well as my personal experience, I think Circadian Rhythm serves as a centre on operating our internal equilibirum. Having said all that, I am thinking how to avoid bad influence when suffering jet lag, then I find a video that perfectly answer my question: How to Avoid Jet Lag The video indicates several steps helping us to reduce impact on jet lag: first of all, before the trip, we could sleep couple hours earlier or later. Second, we should eat more vegetables and fruit rather than unhealthier food before the trip. Third, we could pretend to be on the destination's time zone. In addition, we can also wear comfortable cloth and drink more water to help us fall into sleep. Beyond talking about jet lag, some of the suggestions above can also be used as our daily tips to keep a good Circadian Rhythm such as eating more vegetables, fruit and drinking more water.

Nature deals with the genetic and biological factors that make up a person an example being, eye color or blood type. Nurture is the environmental factors that go into a person's personality like their religion, culture and language. Both nature and nurture are important in the study of psychology.
ESPN wrote an article, "What if Michael Vick was white," explaining how his circumstances of who his parents were and what race he was born as affected the athlete that he is today. The article takes a nurture approach to his sport ability. The article writes that Michael Vick has an African-American feel to the way in which he plays quarterback in the NFL. The style that he has playing as well as the way in which he moves in many ways is said to have the "Black Athleticism." If he would have been white the path that he took may have not included sports or his style may have been different when he played. The privilege which he may have received is he were white could have also altered the decision to play football.
On the other end of the argument is nature, he could be genetically more athletic and gifted in sports than others making him a star athlete. He could also have a gift for learning at a quicker pace than other or quicker reflexes making him a strong quarterback.
I wonder if there will ever be a way in which we could completely isolate nature and nurture, though there are twin studies and family studies nature and nurture are never completely isolated.

http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/id/6894586/imagining-michael-vick-white-quarterback-nfl-espn-magazine

Free will is the ability to make decisions without interference from outside factors. Using this humans can seemingly make conscious decisions that may not be predictable by any means. This could simply be deciding what to eat or what color shirt to wear, or more important decisions such as determining which college to attend. This gives the general sense that the conscious mind alone is in charge of these decisions. However simply experiments such as the one seen towards the end of the BBC documentary Horizon: The Secret You suggest otherwise.

The experiment run in the BBC documentary involved a research subject being placed into a brain scanner, and given two buttons to press, one for each hand. The subject than has to randomly press one of the two buttons when queued by a sound. It was seen that six seconds before a button was pressed the researcher could predict which button the subject would press before the subject pressed it. While this is not inconclusive evidence for the lack of control of decisions by the conscious mind it does raise some questions. Was the subject anticipating the sound cue and predetermining which button to press consciously or unconsciously? How much effect does the unconscious mind have on the decision making process? While the first question could be answered through more rigorous testing involving studying the brain activity of people making other decisions, the second question is a bit more difficult.

Trying to determine that amount of effect the unconscious brain has on the conscious brain is one for further study in the field. In order to determine the true answer to that question one would have to delve deep into the inner workings of the brain to learn how different parts interact with each other to make decisions. For now it seems unanswered whether our decisions are made by conscious thought or through a series of neurons connecting in a specific manner to pass a decision to a conscious mind producing an illusion of free will.

In our discussion group, we talked about sleep deprivation. I knew that I, along with many of my classmates, have not been getting enough sleep, but I had no clue how sleep deprived many of us are. On the quiz that we took in class, I responded with 8 trues (pretty average in the class), and 3 trues was considered sleep deprived. This was a reality check for me. I realized while sometimes I may not be able to control how much sleep I am able to get, many times, I am very much in control of this. In an article, published by Science Daily, they talk about how web surfing, texting, gaming, and too much caffeine are keeping teenagers awake during the night. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090724214602.htm)

Out of the 100 middle and high school students studies, only 20% are getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep each night. "Many adolescents used multiple forms of technology late into the night and concurrently consumed caffeinated beverages," said Calamaro. "Their ability to stay alert and fully functional throughout the day was impaired by excessive daytime sleepiness."

All in all, I think that we, as a school, need to emphasize the importance of sleep. According to our textbook, "people deprived of multiple nights of sleep, or who cut back drastically on sleep, often experience depression, difficulties in learning new information and paying attention, and slowed reaction times" (Lilienfeld 168).

If you follow this link, http://youtu.be/euINCrDbbD4 you will see a clip from the TV series The Big Bang Theory where they demonstrate the use of operant conditioning to modify a person's behavior. In the clip, Sheldon offered the woman a piece of chocolate every time she did something that he deemed "correct". In time she began to alter her behavior. The method of operant conditioning was created by behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner and involves using either a positive or negative stimulus in order to increase or decrease a desired behavior. Operant conditioning is commonly used to train animals and even humans. Remember back in kindergarten when you would get gold stars for behaving or doing your homework? Ya, your teachers were using operant conditioning.

They were using positive reinforcement in order to get you to behave and do your school work. As a matter of fact, throughout your entire life you will be exposed to operant conditioning. In college, if you study hard and do well in classes, your professor or T.A.'s will reward you with a good grade; slack off and party too much, you will be punished with poor grades. Even when you move on to a professional career, you get promotions and raises for doing well but demoted or even fired for failing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/health/23brod.html?pagewanted=2&ref=biologicalclocks

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/opinion/14kalish.html?ref=biologicalclocks

As humans we develop many habits over the course of our lives. Many of the things that we do as children stick with us for the majority of our lives, but to what extent is that a good thing? Sleep patterns tend to develop at an early age and bad ones can stick with you for a long time. Many individuals are afflicted with sleep deprivation and many are unaware that they are sleep deprived or the affects that it is having on their body.
The critical age range for when sleep patterns become altered is when a child reaches puberty because that is when their internal clocks shift. As we get older, the amount of sleep we need decreases, but also makes the sleep we actually get more important. Sleep habits are influenced by age and accessibility to things that keep you up such as television and video games.
Sleep deprivation can have many ramifications, both mentally and physically. Some of these being decreased reaction time, moodiness, poor concentration, diabetes, obesity, and increased risky behavior to name a few.
Few realize the benefit that an hour more of sleep can have on an individual. There have been studies in schools, where they have changed the start time from 7:30am to 8:40 am and there was a positive and noticeable difference in attendance and test scores
Many students, myself included, tend to stay up way past when they should and wake up before their body has had the appropriate amount of time to rest and recuperate from the previous day's activities. On nights when I don't get enough sleep, throughout the next day, I tend to get progressively more irritable and unable to get all of my thoughts together and concentrate. This comes at a cost to my education because it makes it harder to focus and retain the information I learn. Therefore, getting more sleep is ultimately more beneficial and will have more lasting and beneficial effects. This makes me realize how important it is to get enough sleep and has made me more cognizant of the affects of sleep patterns on multiple aspect of everyday life.

When I first saw the word biological clock, I thought it had something to do with pregnancy only. Then I read about it, which made me understand the different aspects of it. The biological clock is what controls our level of alertness and sleep cycle. According to the textbook it is another term used for the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus. I always wondered why I tend to get sleepy at the same time each day. Now I know that our sleep cycle tends to be the same due to our biological clock. I also tend to get up from sleep on the days I can sleep in because I am so use to getting up early. If we didn't have something that controls us in our daily lives, I don't think people would know when to rest even with the many tasks we have to accomplish. If we didn't have a biological clock then babies would be born at any age, which wouldn't make sense to whom gets old. It's what motivates people to get married a soon as they can so one can have a family before running out of time. For myself being a college student striving to be a doctor soon, which means medical school. It worries me when I know it would be difficult for me to get pregnant at a later stage in my life when I have accomplished my dreams, its not only about being ready its also about finding that perfect person to share your life with.

I am sure everyone has heard of the very classic myth, that tapping on the lid of a soda can decreases the carbonation, and keeps it from fizzing or exploding when you open it. This myth is so ingrained into so many people, including myself, that often tapping the lid of a can is just a natural reflex before a person opens any sort of canned carbonated beverage. In my personal experience I have never had a problem with a can exploding, after it had been shaken up, as long as I made sure to tap on the lid a few times. This is seemingly a very obvious example of a correlation/causation relationship where somehow tapping on the can makes the bubbles and carbonation settle to a point where it does not explode. However there was apparently a study done that was posted on snopes.com that says this is not in fact the case. The website says that the common assumption is tapping on the can causes the carbonation and bubbles to break up and separate, preventing the foam from spewing over the lid. Three tests were performed where soda was shaken; one with no tapping, a second with no tapping and 10 seconds after shaking before opening, and one that was tapped and opened. Surprisingly all of them yielded the exact same results, the soda exploded or spewed from the can after it was shaken. Based on these results, the scientists concluded that tapping on the lid of a can does not in fact effect the amount of fizzing created by shaking the can. The time taken to tap the can, allows for the carbon dioxide dissolved in the liquid to settle, the only logical explanation based on the results. This also demonstrates the theory of Occams Razor, the simplest explanation is the most correct. There is no scientific evidence to support tapping causing carbonation to subside, so the only reason must be the time allowed when tapping, lets the carbon dioxcide to settle, simply based on its chemical properties. http://www.snopes.com/science/sodacan.asp

I watched a segment of the BBC documentary on consciousness which focused on at what age people develop their sense of self. It explained and showed a test, called The Mirror Self Recognition Test, which aims to pinpoint when people begin to recognize their reflection in a mirror. It demonstrated that an 18-month-old didn't recognize themselves in a mirror, while a 22-month-old did. This suggests one becomes aware of their self sometime between 18 and 22 months of age.

This specific segment then went on to ask whether or not other animals demonstrated self-awareness. It was put forth that chimpanzees, orangutans, and humans all seem to recognize themselves. The video then brought up ramifications of having a sense of self. The narrator was quoted as saying that this characteristic "allowed us to shape the world according to our vision".

I was caught off guard by this quote regarding influencing our environment. My first thought was that many animals have been observed to shape their environment in order to benefit themselves; we've even seen examples shown in our introduction to psychology course. We watched one video in which crows utilized sticks to obtain food from a container. It has also been documented by natural observationalists like Jane Goodall that monkeys use tools as well. For me, this made me question the relationship between self-recognition and using tools. If using items to shape the environment is a characteristic of self-awareness, then it would follow that animals like crows would need to be characterized as self-aware. However, this goes against the generally accepted scientific definition of what self-recognition is. It's interesting to consider what being aware of one's sense of self even entails; at the same time, it seems logical that even asking this question implies a sense of self.

Many times when one is conversing to a friend about a dream they had the night before, questions that come up are usually "What do you think it means?", "Why did I dream this?", "How come it felt so real?", and many other pondering questions. It is quite common and familiar for people to try to understand their dreams and wonder if the dream meant something or it just is a dream with zero importance. Everyone has their own theories and opinions on dreams. Sigmund Freud believed, as the Indians believed, that our dreams are bringing out our desires in the loudest form. We are dreaming of the things we want or hoped could happen for us. It is basically revealing our secrets visually.

He also brought out the fact that not all dreams can be easily understood, we have to really think about the details to figure out what the dream truly meant. Freud came up with manifest content, the dream itself, and latent content, the symbolic meaning. For example, having a dream where you catch your significant other cheating on you is the manifest content, and the symbolic meaning is you are unsure about your relationship with your significant other in real life and are worried as to what this problem could be.

A perfect example from my own dreams is during times like these where midterms come around, I have these frustrating, negative dreams that really make me feel bad. Normally, I do not have dreams that make me feel so down and worried. The stress I am feeling from studying for midterms and losing sleep contributes to these dreams. Having a dream about not making it to my exam due to some crazy transportation issue most likely means that I really want to do well on this exam and I am fearing that something could go wrong preventing me from doing so.

• Is it possible for hallucinations to be wishful thoughts as well?

On a side note:
According to our text, Lilienfeld, "..if you have an occasional nightmare, rest assured: It's perfectly normal (p.175)".

Imagine living with a condition that could cause you to fall into a deep sleep at almost any moment. Even something as simple as laughing at a joke could cause you to feel an overwhelming urge to sleep. This is what people with narcolepsy deal with every day of their lives. Narcolepsy is a disorder that causes episodes of sudden sleep which can last from a few seconds to a full hour. During a narcoleptic episode, a person experiences cataplexy, which is a complete loss of muscle tone. Cataplexy is not abnormal in itself; everyone ordinarily experiences it when they enter REM sleep, but narcoleptics remain conscious the whole time yet cannot move. It is believed that narcolepsy is caused by a sleep-wake cycle that is out of sync, since patients dive right into REM sleep when they have an episode. Genetics may play a role in who gets narcolepsy but brain-damage may also result in forming the disorder. It typically starts in childhood and lasts throughout a person's lifetime.The hormone orexin also provides insight on to what could cause narcolepsy: people with the disorder have a smaller number of brain cells that produce orexin. While there is not currently a cure for narcolepsy, the medication modafinil is used to bolster wakefulness and has been quite effective. I believe narcolepsy is an important disorder to study because it is very debilitating to those who suffer from it. People with narcolepsy may find it hard to maintain a stable job since an attack could be triggered at any moment. Also, such common tasks as driving or walking down a long flight of stairs could be potentially fatal to someone who suffers from narcolepsy, as they could suddenly have an episode and cause a lot of harm to themselves and others. This video shows an older man who suffers from narcolepsy and the daily trials he goes through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2x14qETS7E

With approximately 530 recorded phobia's and numerous other ones that aren't, Phobia's are a big topic amongst humans and in society. A Phobia is the unrelenting fear of a situation, activity, or thing that causes one to want to avoid it. A phobia however is not to be mistaken as just fear. We all have fears in our life. For example some people have a fear of heights. A lot of us have this naturally because it is natural for the body to try and keep us safe. Not being able to go above a third floor in a building because you are afraid of heights, now thats a Phobia. The fear that comes from a Phobia is unneeded, unhelpful, and can be disabling to your life. Even with this distinction though, 10 percent of the world has had or is living with a Phobia. Out of that 10 percent, women are two times as likely to get one than men are. Researchers have tried to understand this but it is a hard thing to try and understand. They feel the biggest reason is the difference in sex hormones.Scientists know that estrogen interacts with serotonin--a neurotransmitter involved in regulating moods,sleep and appetite and feel that estrogen can be a more powerful starter for these phobias than as for testosterone in men. Whether it be in men or women, they are still very common though. Below is the list of the top 10 Phobias in the world today:
1)Acrophobia= Fear of Heights
2)Claustrophobia= Fear of enclosed spaces
3)Nyctophobia=Fear of the Dark
4)Ophidiophobia= Fear of Snakes
5)Arachnophobia= Fear of spiders
6)Trypanophobia= Fear injection or Medical Needles
7)Astraphobia= Fear of thunder and lightning
8)Nosophobia= Fear of having a disease
9)Germophobia= fear of Germs
10)Triskaidephobia= Fear of the number 13

http://phobias.about.com/od/introductiontophobias/tp/Ten-Common-Phobias.htm

http://www.medicinenet.com/phobias/article.htm

One important concept in Psychology, is the idea of inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness is the failure to detect stimuli that are in plain sight when our attention is focused somewhere else. A closely related phenomenon is also change blindness, which is the failure to detect obvious changed in one's environment. For example if the background of a video changed color, or anything similar to that. Furthermore, Inattentional blindness is crucial to our mental stability and survival skills, there are too many things going on in our environment, and if we were to focus on every aspect, we would inevitably be confused and become vulnerable prey. Focusing on what is important, is one of the reasons humans can survive in this world. Many of us have experienced a time where we are looking for something important, but we're thinking of something else, or looking at something, and we fail to see we were looking for, and it's right in front of our face. We are too focused on what were looking at, or the idea in our head, but we fail to see what is right in front of our eyes. Our eyes perceive the object or change, but our brain chooses to ignore it. The link below, is a short video, where participants are asked to account the amount of passes the team in white makes. Then, exactly in the middle of the videotape, a person dressed in a gorilla suit, goes through the team members and dances . Surprisingly, many of the participants did not even realize the gorilla passing through. This is a prime example of the extent to which inattentional blindness can effect our perception.

We all have stayed up to late studying and on weekends at college, so some people may have experienced a sleepwalker. A main cause to the sleep walking is lack of sleep in previous days/nights before, which is a main reason why its so important to get a healthy amount of sleep. I have only had one experience with sleepwalking before in my life and it was something that kind of freaked me out as a child because I never really understood it.
I am very close with two of my cousins, they are basically like my brothers. Every summer they come out to Minnesota from Boston for a month, July, and they stay with my family. This is something that has been a tradition since we were born. When he was younger my cousin Kevin slept walk all of the time. It was something that we were all very concerned about because he would not only just get up and move around but he would rummage through cab nits and get into different foods. It was concerning because he has quiet a lot of food allergies and the risk that he may get a hold of something that he wasn't able to have was high. Due to this we always had to put up baby gates in the doorway to were he was sleeping and around stairways so that we knew he wouldn't be able to get anywhere. Over time he has slowly grown out of this and now does not sleep walk any more but it was something that did seem pretty scary to me and my other cousins at the time, we always thought it would make the most sense to wake him up and have him come back to bed but my aunt and my mom always told us that that would not be the best idea. I was surprised to learn that even though there may be some risks to waking someone that is sleeping, it is not something that you absolutely shouldn't do. I think many people get there ideas from movies where sleep walking is shown, and in those movies they show the sleepwalker reacting poorly to being woke up. There is a clip of the movie "Step Brothers" that shows an example of this. Enjoy!

This past week during lecture we started learning about, well... learning. We talked about Ivan Pavlov who researched digestion in dogs. Pavlov used an initially neutral stimulus to induce a response. In Pavlov's case, he used a metronome and food. He first started the metronome and then presented food to the dog. The dog began to salivate due to an automatic response to food. Over time, just hearing the metronome caused the dog to salivate. The metronome was the neutral stimulus, the food was the unconditioned stimulus, and the salivating was the unconditioned response. When the dog started salivating when it heard the metronome (even in the absence of food), the unconditioned response (salivating) became the conditioned response. The metronome became the conditioned stimulus.
I found a video of a college student's take on classical conditioning. In the video he conditions his roommate to respond to the sound of a Staples "Easy Button." Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo7jcI8fAuI
In this case, the initially neutral stimulus was the sound of the button, the unconditioned stimulus was being shot by an airsoft gun, and the unconditioned response was flinching. After a few times, the unconditioned response became the conditioned response when he heard the sound of the button. This student successfully conditioned his roommate to flinch at a sound that would normally would not make him flinch.

(http://www.pamf.org/preteen/mybody/bodyscience/pt/sleepwalking.html)

My first encounter with a sleepwalker was when I went to college. My friends and I were coming back to our dorm rooms late at night when we say our friend sitting in the hallway. We said "hi" to her, but she did not respond and continued starring at the wall. We were all walking back and forth between our dorm rooms, and noticed that she was still sitting there playing with her fingers and the carpet. Finally, we noticed she was sleeping and then the debate began on whether or not to wake her up.

Many people believe that it is dangerous to the person who is sleepwalking if you wake them up, because they will have a heart attack, brain damage, or shock. The truth is it is not harmful to the person who is sleepwalking if you wake them up, the only thing to be cautious of is that they can inflict pain on themselves or you. Therefore, it is recommended to guide the person back to bed instead of waking them up.

Sleepwalking is more common then you may think, and unique. It is not true that sleepwalkers act out their dreams. Some sleepwalkers have been known to perform elaborate tasks like driving cars and using computers. About 15 to 30 percent of children and 4 to 5 percent of adults have sleepwalked before, and about 30 percent of children have before. Sleepwalking is caused by sleep deprivation, meaning that people are more likely to sleep walk the next night after you were deprived of sleep. The key to not sleepwalking is to make sure that you get enough sleep at night.

We ended up walking up our friend that night in the dorms and brought her back to her room. What would you do if you encountered a sleepwalker?

REM in Animals
Psych Write # 2

I think that pursuing researching about dreams through animals is essential in both a scientific view and a compassionate one about understanding our pets. As stated in the text, REM is "biologically important, probably essential." Something that I thought was very important to consider was the fact that animals, such as cats and dogs, also experience REM sleep, that is to say, they dream. As with many other studies using animal test subjects (which I'm not sure how I feel about) I think that they are very accurate models of the human brain. Not only for the purpose of studying the resemblance in human brains is it important to pursue research about animal dreams, but to have a better understanding about the emotional and social complexity of our animal companies.
In an article I will link, researchers at MIT say that researching animal dreams and sleep cycles will help us understand and treat memory disorders such at amnesia and Alzheimer's. In their research they found that the brain patterns during REM sleep in a rats brain were so similar to the reordered patterns while it ran the maze, that they could even pinpoint where in the maze the rat was while dreaming!
The possibilities are amazing. Research on the animal REM sleep cycle is extremely important and I look forward to more discoveries. Here is the link to the article I used to support my view:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/dreaming.html

So, it's safe to say that the majority of us have seen the move Inception and afterwards were all left with a severe sense of wonder about the state of mind we were in. Is this a dream, or real life? No worries, as far as I know, this is real life, and none of us are in danger of having an idea planted into our heads.

The idea of dreams has always been something that intrigues me and in Chapter 5 of our textbook, dreams and their purpose and origin are dissected. Sigmund Freud contributed to the study of dreams greatly with his theory of dreams as the protectors of sleep. There were several ancient ideas of what the purpose of dreams was and Freud decided to follow the concepts presented by the Native Americans. Their belief was that dreams were expressions of our hidden wishes and desires. I have always had similar thoughts on the purpose of dreams and where they come from. My ideas have stemmed from an insanely cliche, and sappy statement, "a dream is a wish your heart makes." Which was told to me by a close friend. I have always thought of dreams as a way for your manifested feelings and desires to be explored. Freud discusses the meaning behind what we dream about as well with what he calls Manifest Content, and Latent Content. These terms are used to describe the difference between the details of the dream itself (manifest content) and its true, hidden meaning (latent content). We've all had dreams that afterwards, cause us to contemplate the meaning behind the dream and what our brain/subconscious was trying to tell us the night before.

We all wonder about our dreams. What they do, where they come from, and why we have them. Some of us try to find a positive meaning behind even our most insignificant dreams. But most importantly...we all just hope that we arent going to have one of those terrifying dreams where you are trying to run away from something but you cant get your legs to move.

Sweet dreams everyone! :)

Everyone knows that having a baby disrupts your life in numerous ways. Your body has completely changed, as has your taste buds, your sense of smell and last but not least, your sleeping patterns. Gone are the days when you go to bed and get up from bed whenever you want. This little person has completely taken over your life and your sanity.

As I was reading chapter five of the Lillienfield text, I reached the section on the stages of sleep. Often times, new mothers do not reach the REM sleep stage for many nights in a row. Lack of REM sleep can cause new mothers (and of course, their partners) to be crabby or short-tempered. Which then, unfortunately, can carry over into their daily lives as mothers.

Although it has generally been accepted that mothers aren't getting enough sleep and go for weeks horrible sleep deprived, there has recently been a new study published saying that even new mothers are getting there daily recommended seven to eight hours of sleep a night - just not all in a row. According to the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, new mothers are getting full nights of sleep, they are just being sabotaged by wakings every couple of hours. In a study reported by the AJOG, many mothers fight taking daytime naps. It was stated that even though these naps won't move these women through all the stages of sleep, the extra snooze hours, may make them feel better.

Everyone knows the first few months of a baby's life is stressful and tiring on everyone involved, but making sleep a priority is going to make things go that much smoother. So if you're a new mom, take some time from yourself. If you know a new mom, offer to give her some time to herself. She needs it.

In the video, "The Secret You," one particular topic struck my interest. In California, a professor was doing a study with centered around the question the question, What evidence is their that single neurons are involved in consciousness? Professor Christof Koch did a study where patients looked at photos of certain people or looked at their names and the patients individual neurons reacted to them. The cerebellum in the brain has the most neurons but there is no evidence that if you loose it that your vision will be impaired or you will not have a tooth ache whereas if you loose your spinal cord then you will be paralyzed.
I found it very fascinating that each person can have that one neuron that is affected by pictures of people or by seeing their names. I think memory has a huge effect on the response of a single neuron. When you see someone's name written down, an example would be my mother, I instantly get a mental picture of what my mother looks like, as well as memories I have of her. This could be why seeing the text of someones name activates the neuron just as much as a actual picture would.
Does someone who is autistic have the same effect with neurons as someone who does not? Does someone with memory loss loose the neuron ability to activate or go off for a certain someone or does it still go off when they see a picture or name of that person like their mother?

What do you see? Maybe you see a rat or a face with glasses. Do you see both? It's incredible how our knowledge influence our perception as to how we see things. In Psychology class this is called top-down processing. This happens when we process something influenced by previous information and beliefs. We perceive things depending on our expectation, beliefs and views. Our brain surprises us many times. How you interpret things depends on the angle you see things or maybe what comes to your mind right away. After you discover what is in the picture, in this case; the rat and the face with glasses, you will feel amazed how two things can be in one.

Sometimes we tend to form a perceptual set, an example of top- down processing. A perceptual set is the expectation of someone to perceive something based on previous experience. Its kind of tricky but fun at the same time. Your brain is teased and it began to look to past experiences.

Another process we use perception besides perceptual set is the perceptual constancy. It is when we perceive an object or qualities under varied conditions. There are many conditions like color, size and shape. For example, when we perceive other color because of the shadow we tend to see other type of color like in the figure below.

Now, I want test your brain...What do you see?

If you see two faces you are ok, but you should also notice a wine glass in the middle of the two faces.

Marcus de Sautor, a mathematician from Oxford University, explores self-awareness among individuals. He questions when humans become self-aware and is also curious as to how this idea can be proven. In BBC Horizon's video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Biv_8xjj8E&feature=player_embedded, experiments are shown to answer Sautor's various questions.
Portsmouth University Professor, Vaus Reddy, provides an explanation as to what age individuals become self-aware. She uses the mirror-self recognition test to sense when a connection is apparent between a person's physical appearance and their inner self. Self-awareness is detected when young individuals look in a mirror and immediately notice a spot on their face. This spot was placed on the children's cheek in order to conduct the experiment. Results displayed that children between the ages of 18 and 24 months instantly noticed the spot and were found to be self-aware. This evidence portrayed that self-awareness happens at a noticeably young age and curiosity grew if self-awareness was apparent in a broader population of species.
Marcus de Sautor also contacted Gordon Gallup Jr., a professor at the State University of New York, Albany, who established the mirror-self recognition test. Gallup furthered his research by selecting different species to participate in the test. After hundreds of studies were conducted among animals, chimpanzees, orangutans, and humans were the only species to be aware of their own existence. These findings made me question if the mirror-self recognition test is well-suited for all types of species. For example, dolphins are known to have high intelligence levels, but how is this specie supposed to participate in this test. I believe that researchers should explore different types of experiments to test other species.

Even though I believe that many other tests could be done to test self-awareness, I believe that the mirror-self recognition test was a clever experiment. It would be difficult to come up with an accurate test to test self-awareness, so I am impressed with Professor Gallup's findings. As I watched the video, it surprised me that individuals less than 18 months do not even have recognition of themselves. I would have guessed that self-awareness would be apparent at a younger age.

As long as science has been around, researchers have dealt with phenomena that cannot be explained. This is due to the fact that they do not have any way of testing whether the phenomena is real or not. One of these unexplained ideas is called Extrasensory Perception, or ESP. Extrasensory Perception is the belief that one can perceive certain events or stimuli without using there senses, like touch or seeing. Researchers have divided Extrasensory Perception into three major groups, precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance. The first group is precognition; this is the idea that people can predict future events. They can tell what is going to happen before it actually does, they do this through means that cannot be explained with science. The next group is telepathy; this is the reading of other people's minds. The last group is clairvoyance, or the detection of hidden objects or things we cannot see. The problem with ESP is that researchers have a tough time validating claims. They have no real way of testing whether ESP is real or not. They have to rely on things like asking participants to identify the card they are about to flip. Some tests have proven that people have actually done it, but there is no way of telling if it was luck or ESP. Also, many of the tests cannot be replicated. This is one of the key characteristics of scientific thinking, replicability. The fact that there is no valid way of testing whether or not ESP is real means that we cannot completely believe in it. It is like ghosts, we can choose to believe in them, but we still do not know if they are real or not.

Sleep apnea is a condition that occurs when someone is sleeping; their airway is blocked during sleep which causes them to be very tired during the daytime. This causes people to snore very loudly and awake many times while sleeping. This is a disorder that I am very familiar with, because my dad has it. He now sleeps with a sleep apnea machine that makes him look like he has an elephant mask on. This machine made a world of difference for him. Before he had it he always snored very loud and he was always tired during the daytime which caused him to fall asleep every time he sat down for a little while. Before he got diagnosed he tried everything from Breathe Right strips to getting his uvula removed. Now that he sleeps with the machine he sleeps all the way through the night and he even says that he can't sleep without it anymore.

The brain is split into two hemispheres, left and right. The corpus callosum is fibers that connect these two hemispheres, which allows them to share information instantaneously. When these fibers are severed it is called being split brained.
The part of the brain that is involved in speech production (broca's area) is located in the left hemisphere. If you are split brained, and you see a quick visual stimulation in the left visual field, that information goes to the right hemisphere.
Thus, if you see a quick visual stimulus in the left visual field, you are consciously unaware that you saw it because you are not able to come up with words to describe what you saw. This phenomena happens because information processed only in the right hemisphere doesn't have the ability to be expressed in words because broca's area is located only in the left hemisphere and since the corpus callsoum is severed, that information cannot be shared with the left hemisphere in order to be spoken. This is a very interesting occurrence that is explained through knowledge of how the brain functions. Below is a picture that displays where broca's area is located in the brain.

It is a topic that has been talked about politically for years: should marijuana be legalized in the United States?

According to our book, marijuana is the most used drug in our country. Using the drug can make the user feel high, and their sensations are far greater. People under the influence of marijuana tend to be in a better mood, laugh a lot, have a more appreciation for sights, and just have a better time. This all happens because of the ingredient THC. It travels through the bloodstream to the brain, which causes our cannabinoid receptors to be stimulated. These periods of being high only last a few hours (depending on how much you take in). So why ban a drug that just basically makes the user feel better?

Why should it be legalized: There has been no evidence to suggest that marijuana does any physical damage to the human body when using it, besides that it does cause cell damage and can cause lung disease. Marijuana also can help cancer patients not feel as much pain. This is like Minnesota's very own, Percy Harvin. He has been known to smoke marijuana to treat his symptoms of migraine headaches. He has tried medications and other forms of treatment, but the only thing that seems to work is marijuana. Legalizing the drug could also be a good thing for the government to tax highly because people would still buy it. Also, legalizing it would free up prisons which were occupied by marijuana drug dealers. That would save states a lot of money.

Why should we keep it illegal: A person who has used marijuana tends to have slower reaction time and have a harder time concentrating. This makes driving a lot more dangerous if the driver is under the influence of the drug. More accidents can lead to higher health care costs as well. Marijuana is also a drug that leads people into using other drugs, like heroin and cocaine. This can lead to more serious problems.

Obviously this is just a few examples of each side of the topic. I am against the legalization of marijuana because I have seen the many cons of using it, but I can see why legalizing it makes sense. I just think keeping it illegal will help to prevent many problems that would result of making it legal.

Lucid Dreaming: The experience of becoming aware that one is dreaming.

In Chapter 5 of the Lilienfeld text, the authors spend the first part of it talking about sleep, sleep cycles, the stages of sleep, and sleep disorders. They briefly mentioned lucid dreaming, and it struck a chord with me.

When I first heard about the concept of lucid dreaming, I was a freshmen in high school, and thought that it was one of the most amazing things. I had never experienced it before (or I at least do not remember if I have), and hearing about being able to know when you are dreaming was such a novel idea to me. To be aware of when you are in a dream completely opens up the possibility of being able to control your dreams.

For a while, I didn't think that it was possible. I thought that it was merely a concept that people talked about, and that it couldn't actually happen. However, once I started looking into it, I discovered that it is something that is accepted, that people do it, and there are people who can do it at will.

There are many theories and techniques about how to achieve lucid dreaming. I've read stories of people talking about how after many years of trying, they finally mastered the art of lucid dreaming, and now use it to study in their sleep for exams. (How amazing would that be to be able to study in your sleep?) Other people spend their time exploring their subconscious, and using lucid dreaming as a tool for self reflection. I've also read many stories in which people use lucid dream to fulfil fantasies.

The Lilienfeld text does point out though that researchers still are not completely sure whether or not if lucid dreamers are always actually asleep and aware of their dreams, or if they just feel like their dreams felt lucid once they've woken up. Either way though, the mere concept of lucid dreaming is so amazing, and it truly says a lot about how much our brains and our minds can do.

It would be absolutely fantastic to be able to lucid dream whenever you wanted, no?

Everyone has his or her own routine. Some of us are early to bed and early to rise, while others are the complete opposite (and everything else in between). But has the thought ever occurred to you that there happens to be a universal routine for humans as well? Well, there is; it is what science refers to as the Circadian Rhythm. Our Circadian Rhythm consists of a plethora of biological cycles that occur on a 24-hour basis. In other words, our bodies are constantly releasing, shifting, and adjusting things such as brain waves, body temperature, and hormones. Psychology Today refers to this cycle as an "internal body clock is affected by outside sources such as sun rise and time zones. And when one's circadian rhythm is disrupted, say by jet lag, sleeping and eating patterns can run amok."
Who hasn't had a disruption in their Circadian Rhythm? A large percentage of our world's population struggles with various types of sleep disorders. Insomniacs struggle getting any sleep at all; narcolepsy results in people experiencing periods of sudden sleep (triggered by surprise, and other strong emotions); sleep apnea consists of a blockage of air that leads someone to have a lack of oxygen resulting in fatigue the following day. Other Circadian Rhythm disorders are more voluntary of the victim. Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder accounts for someone literally shifting their sleeping patterns to where they go to bed early and wake up early. This disorder leaves them feeling fatigued and overly tired in the afternoon and early evenings. Jet Lag is the disruption of our internal biological clock when entering a different time zone. Lastly, Shift Work Disorder occurs when a person's work schedule interferes with the body's natural circadian rhythm, in example, people who work late night shifts (during normal hours of sleep) and sleep during the day can suffer from this disorder.

If you're someone who lives by the words: "There is plenty of time to sleep when you're dead," the chances of you suffering from a sleep disorder increase, and you might find yourself regretting staying up until 6 A.M. the night before...

Here is a short clip on sleep disorders for your educational entertainment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2yfUL8uct0

GO TO BED!

In chapter 5 of the lilienfeld text, it discussed the basics of sleep. Everything from sleep cycle to disorders that affect sleeping. The term sleep apnea is defined and mentioned. Stating that sleep apnea is a disorder caused by a blockage of the airway during sleep, resulting in daytime fatigue (lilienfeld). The reading reminded me of a situation a few years ago when I stayed the night over at a friends house. In the middle of the night I was walking down the hallway of his home and his parents bedroom was open. I caught a glimpse of his dad sleeping, he had on a mask of some kind that looked like something out of a movie. I was a bit concerned to ask my friend what this was, so I kept my thoughts to myself and never concluded what this machine was. Through my reading I have discovered that this device is a PAP machine. "It works by pushing air through the airway passage to prevent apneas"(ASAA). After learning this a few questions came to me. I have been waking up feeling more tired than I should be. I have a history of asthma and poor breathing, now I wonder if I suffer from sleep apnea? What can I do to diagnose this? Through the article I have attached I found some useful information. The most common way to cure sleep apnea is through using a PAP machine. These machines need to be prescribed by a doctor and can be covered by insurance. Due to this reading, I plan on making a visit to my doctor to set up an appointment to see if I suffer from sleep apnea.

http://www.sleepapnea.org/diagnosis-and-treatment/treatment-options/positive-airway-pressure-therapy/choosing-a-pap-machine.html

Many college students at some point in time will find themselves staying up late the night before a test trying to "cram" all the material that will be covered on the test into their brains. Why does this common practice continue to happen year after year with students even though it is so highly frowned upon by educators? Is cramming an effective way to learn material covered in class rather than learning the way nature has taught us, with repetition over a period of time?

We learned in lecture that with Thorndike's Instrumental Conditioning, learning happens from the relationship between a behavior and its consequence. In the case of cramming for a test, the student's behavior of putting off their studying until the night before should be followed by the consequence of a bad grade on the test. The resulting bad grade would then cause them to stop cramming for tests. Is this always the case? Even though in theory optimal learning happens best through continuous studying over a period of time, this isn't always the case. A study of learning by "cramming" was executed here at the University of Minnesota, which takes a further look into the relationship between cramming and test scores.
VanNote_2009.pdf

The researchers concluded that students who "cram" are at neither an advantage nor a disadvantage on tests. Their scores were not significantly that much different. Thorndike's Instrumental Conditioning would emphasize this common practice in college students' studying habits because the students who are "cramming" for their tests are doing just as well as the rest of the student population. This consequence is favorable for them which would not cause the students to change their studying happens in the future, and begin studying previous to the night before the test.

With that being said, can "cramming" be considered an effective means of learning? I am going to have to still say no and continue to learn the way nature intended me to, with repetition over time.

In chapter 5 of the lilienfeld text, it discussed the basics of sleep. Everything from sleep cycle to disorders that affect sleeping. The term sleep apnea is defined and mentioned. Stating that sleep apnea is a disorder caused by a blockage of the airway during sleep, resulting in daytime fatigue (lilienfeld). The reading reminded me of a situation a few years ago when I stayed the night over at a friends house. In the middle of the night I was walking down the hallway of his home and his parents bedroom was open. I caught a glimpse of his dad sleeping, he had on a mask of some kind that looked like something out of a movie. I was a bit concerned to ask my friend what this was, so I kept my thoughts to myself and never concluded what this machine was. Through my reading I have discovered that this device is a PAP machine. "It works by pushing air through the airway passage to prevent apneas"(ASAA). After learning this a few questions came to me. I have been waking up feeling more tired than I should be. I have a history of asthma and poor breathing, now I wonder if I suffer from sleep apnea? What can I do to diagnose this? Through the article I have attached I found some useful information. The most common way to cure sleep apnea is through using a PAP machine. These machines need to be prescribed by a doctor and can be covered by insurance. Due to this reading, I plan on making a visit to my doctor to set up an appointment to see if I suffer from sleep apnea.

http://www.sleepapnea.org/diagnosis-and-treatment/treatment-options/positive-airway-pressure-therapy/choosing-a-pap-machine.html

In chapter 5, we learned about a number of sleep disorders that are common among humans. The one that caught my attention most was sleep apnea, because my uncle suffers from a severe case of this. He learned a couple years ago that he actually stops breathing over 100 times per night, and it is quite dangerous because any one of those times his medulla may not kick in to make him breathe and the results could be fatal. As of now there is no definite cure for sleep apnea, but my uncle must wear a mask over his face each night that forces him to breathe through the night. A common sleep apnea tube is shown in the image below.

He also has recently been talking about getting a tongue reduction surgery called tongue base reduction which would shed some layers of the very back part of his tongue to try to relieve his sleep apnea symptoms. This procedure has worked for some patients, but not all. A full list of possible treatments for sleep apnea can be found here. My uncle is not overweight, but according to our book many people with sleep apnea are overweight, and weight loss seems to help their disorder. I read an article that talks about a study that was originally conducted to see if weight loss in overweight people suffering from type two diabetes could help their diabetes. The experimenters then found out that a vast majority of these subjects suffered from sleep apnea as well. They found out from their study that not only did weight loss positively affect their diabetes, but almost of of the patients who lost weight also had their sleep apnea symptoms greatly reduced.

Hypnosis, contrary to popular belief, is merely a set of suggestions for behavior and thought rather than a controlling force. The level of influence that hypnosis has on a person varies depending on that person. If that person already believes that hypnosis will have a strong influence on them then they are more likely to be affected by it. I for one am not convinced that it would be able to change my behavior so there is a strong likely hood that it wouldn't. Belief in hypnosis can also be dangerous in some aspects. There is one example from a court of law where a witness under hypnosis recalled the wrong person's licenses plate number with complete confidence. If hypnosis had been relied on in this case the wrong man may have been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Now the court system has banned hypnosis, but it still shows the point that hypnosis can cause false confidence.
It is important to note that hypnosis cannot make you do things that you absolutely would not do under normal circumstances. Popular media shows hypnosis as being some incredible force that can cause inconceivable things to happen. This is a remake of a clip from the move Office Space.

After the main character is hypnotized he is in a state of complete bliss and changes almost every aspect of his life. He does a full one eighty personality wise. This is a good example of how media can greatly exaggerate the truth.

The theory that states that our three cone types work together to detect the full range of colors, known as the trichromatic theory doesn't explain such phenomenons as afterimages. This is because afterimages, which are seen after a person focuses on one color for a long time and then looks away, are often used by magicians to trick peoples minds when it comes to sudden change in color of a object. Thus the competing model or theory, the opponent process theory, states that we perceive color in terms of three pairs of opponent cells: red or green, blue or yellow, or black or white. An example of opponent process theory is what occurs when a person sees an afterimage, the ganglion cells of the retina and the cells in the visual area of the thalamus that respond to red spots are inhibited by green spots. There are points where both competing theories, Trichormatic and opponent process, seem to explain color vision with their respective principles, so in this sense questions about color vision can be ambiguously answered. My personal experience with this occurred when I saw a magical act on a TV show called "America got Talent". When I saw the act which involved a magician quickly changing a female assistants dress several times I thought I was really seeing magic because what I perceived was a trick on my eyes. My eyes where so focused on the act itself it was impossible for me to realize what was really going on, this I believe can be explained by the opponent process theory.

So since there is no one theory that can explain the way in which color vision works, to explain a situation where color vision is involved a person has to evaluate the situation for what it is. However it does beg to question the legitimacy of both theories if they cannot explain the workings of color vision fully. Can there be a new theory that incorporates the principles of both the theories to arrive at a less ambiguous answer?

Vision Illusion is the stimulus we perceived does not react its physical reality.
For example, when we perceive this picture, we think it is a motion. However, its physical reality is stable. When our eyes observed the picture, eyeballs are moving in a high speed due to the vision tiredness of the vision system. Therefore, we have vision illusion in this picture. However, if you stare at one point, this vision illusion will disappear or reduce. This is because we make out eyeballs motion stop or weaken.
What I have stated above is motion and stable illusion; the other vision illusion is parallel processing. For example, we give two people a same picture; they may come up with different ideas of the picture. In fact, both of them are right. The reason why they perceive the picture different is that one is the top-down influence, which is the perception influenced by beliefs and expectancies, and the other one is bottom-up influence, which is perception is constructed from parts.

For example, when we perceive this picture, under the top-down influence that we are thinking of a mermaid saying goodbye to sea mew. However, under the bottom-up influence that we are considering the sea mew as a word of "LOVE".
This concept is important, because it is widely applied, such as advertisement design, architecture designing and so on, which can make the design more creative and meaningful. When I studied this concept, I realized that people have vision illusion, then what about auditory illusion, sensual illusion? I was wondering about whether people have auditory illusion, sensual illusion or not.

How many times has a soda can exploded all over you? Some people (myself included) like to vigorously tap the can before opening, in order to minimize spray. Does this handy "trick" really work? Read this article to see an experiment involving exploding soda cans.

This article outlines an experiment examining the tapping of soda cans. The experiment involved three groups. For each group, the soda can was shaken. In the first group, the can was opened right after the shaking. The second group's can was opened after ten seconds. Finally, the third group's can was tapped for ten seconds, and then opened. This experiment was repeated three times total. Surprisingly, the experimenters did not find a convincing correlation between tapping and amount of spray. The tapped can expelled slightly less spray than the other two, but there was not a great difference between the settled second can and the tapped third can. Thus, it seems that tapping soda cans is not a very effective activity.

We should look for Rival Hypotheses in this experiment. A major flaw in this experiment is the lack of separation between two important variables-- the settling of the can and the tapping of the can. The cans in the third group of the experiment both settle AND are tapped. To correct this in a future experiment, researchers should introduce a fourth group. In this group, the can should be vigorously tapped for one to three seconds, and then opened. This would allow researchers to focus on the tapping element without the settling element. In summary, this confound introduces a rival hypothesis. Is the can spewing less liquid because of the tapping, or because of the settling? The results seem to indicate that the settling of the can, not tapping, is the crucial variable, but it is still very important to analyze this further.

In conclusion, it seems that tapping a soda can does not really reduce the amount of spray from a carbonated can. Instead, the can should sit and settle for a minute or two. While it may seem that tapping the can will reduce the likelihood of an explosion, this is probably due to our availability heuristic-- we recall more easily the times when we DID NOT tap the can and it exploded than we remember all the times we DID tap the can, and it DID explode.

In Chapter 5 we become more familiar with the term déjà vu. Almost everyone has experienced déjà vu and we just chalk it up to some weird and mysterious feeling. We've all felt like we are experiencing something that we have already experienced, even though we rationally are aware that this is a new situation. The Lilienfeld text defines déjà vu as the feeling of reliving an experience that's new (p. 180). It is French for "already seen." And more than two-thirds of people report experiencing déjà vu (p. 180). Is there a biological basis for this? It may be an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the temporal lobe. Another explanation is that we don't consciously recall a memory, so we may have already experienced what we see, but we don't remember it. In other words, our minds process information unconsciously (recall the perception chapter and lecture), so it could be explained that we don't know that we have previously noticed something, and processed it, until we notice it for the "first" time! In a non-biological and unscientific explanation, there are others who claim that déjà vu is evidence of people remembering a past life.

Our text also describes a phenomenon called jamais vu. It is best described as the exact opposite of déjà vu. Translated, it means, "never seen." A person feels like he is seeing something for the first time even though he knows that he has seen it before. People who have amnesia or epileptic seizures have reported experiencing jamais vu. It can also be induced in otherwise unaffected people. Try this: say a word repeatedly, like your name, for 60 seconds. Soon, the word will no longer sound familiar. In related experiments, up to 68% of participants have reported experiencing jamais vu.

It's a quite frequent idea that people would share similar experiences when they underwent situations where they "almost" died. We've seen such episodes in a bunch of films, and even learned some story of near-death experiences from family members or even ourselves. The world suddenly seemed static, and a life review of all the memorable times when we spent with the ones we loved, as well as a light through a dark tunnel came to our mind step by step.
According to the textbook, near-death experience (NDE) is an out-of-body experience reported by people who've nearly died or thought they were going to die. Giving a few illustrations about NDEs differ across persons and cultures as well as other facets, the authors generally alleges that those claims are extraordinary but without extraordinary claims. And though they didn't show absolute words denying NDEs and souls, readers can easily feel their contempt toward such phenomenon through some insufficient refutations and their fondness of materialistic theories even when both of them have little evidence.
And that behavior of belief perseverance can be a problem, especially making their critical thinking not as "critical" as they think they do. Before college, I've watched an online course of of Yale University. I still remember Professor Kagan's an analogy of near-death experience. He suggests that, if you go to the border of France, you can have an experience of what France is like (though maybe just a general glimpse), so why can you say that those people who have NDEs knew nothing about death because they didn't "really" die. That makes sense. And though I am not an idealist and I love science, I do worry that the materialistic current let our scientists trapped in such a confirmation bias that they try every possible materialistic theory and value them while largely overlook the evidence for idealistic theory because due to their nature they're regarded as not "falsifiable".
Here's a story my father told me. When he was on voyage to Antarctic as one of the crew before I was born, one night he suddenly woke with tears in his eyes. He dreamed that his grandpa, who brought him up when he was little, died and came to see him the last time. As the communication in China was not that convenient more than twenty years before, he simply marked the time when he dreamed of his grandpa. Finally when he came back, he asked his mother how his grandfather was, she told him that his grandpa had died for a long time. And when he checked the time his grandpa died, it is exactly the same day when his grandpa came into his dream and said good bye to him. You may say that this is anecdotal, or say that it's just a father who wants to show mystic toward his son, or you may refer this as just a coincidence. If you do, then you're not a scientist because you evade from things that you can't explain and deceive yourselves instead of facing them. And science should be not only all about finding the truth, but also introspect ourselves, eliminate flaws in thinking, to better serve this process.
And here comes the question: Is "unfalsifiable" meaning something is not able to be real? Any cautious readers of the book will tell that unfalsifiable only means that they are not in the Science realm and we thus are not going to examine them because they're not already part of science. But, if something is shown real even though their nature lets them not replicable or falsifiable so far, will our scientists largely ignore them and refer them to either invalid anecdotes or metaphysical realm that science will not pay attention to kind of deceiving ourselves? Science is not a government department, which is only responsible for this part or that part. It's supposed to examine everything that does exist and try to find "why and how". If anyone insists the border between science and religion, we who know a little world history will tell them that initially everything is of religion before science appears. After all, before we gradually accumulate former experiences and methods, how can whether the sun surrounds the earth or vice versa be testable?
It's just personal idea. Hope that they're not that wrong.

Narcolepsy is a disorder where people experience episodes of sudden sleep lasting anywhere from a few seconds to minutes at a time. There are very few instances where it lasts for hours. I think that this disorder is so important to be educated about because in people with narcolepsy, they can get the urge to sleep at any moment. Not only does it affect people's lives greatly, but depending on the situation, it could also be very dangerous. The severity can diminish with time, but that may be because patients learn how to deal and adapt with the disorder. I also learned that it does not just occur in humans, it can occur in animals. Here is a link to a video I found of a dog that suffers from narcolepsy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN1_yS6_5T4

Strong emotions can lead to some people with narcolepsy to experience cataplexy. Cataplexy is a complete loss of muscle tone, so people tend to fall because their muscles become limp; however, cataplexy does not just happen in people with narcolepsy, it happens in healthy people during REM sleep. REM sleep is also known as Rapid Eye Movement, and REM sleep isn't usually entered for more than an hour after they fall asleep. Although, if people have narcolepsy, and they have an episode, they go into REM sleep immediately. Vivid hypnagogic hallucinations often can happen on the onset of a narcoleptic episode, so there is a possibility that REM intrusions are one cause of brief waking hallucinations.
The risk of narcolepsy is greatly increased with genetic abnormalities, or it is developed after an accident that causes brain damage. The hormone orexin plays a role in triggering sudden attacks of sleepiness, so medications that either replace orexin or mimic its effects in the brain may cure narcolepsy one day. Until they find a cure, people with the disorder benefit from taking the medication modafinil because it promotes wakefulness.

Learning is crucial process in everyday life. We can learn by observing our environment and from our past experiences. In the effort of trying to study how humans and animals learn, E.L Thorndike raised up as an important figure for studying operant conditioning. He developed the law of effect which is foundation of later research of operant conditioning. In his original statements, he stated "If a response, in the presence of stimulus, is followed by a satisfying state of affairs, the bond between stimulus and response will be strengthened (Lilienfeld textbook, p.212)". This means that if the stimulus generated rewards, we likely to response to the stimulus and will more repeat that response in the future because we expected something at the end which makes it more worth to response to the stimulus. In other words, we can say that learning changes because of its consequences. Conversely, if we don't get any reward at the end, we don't bother to response to the stimulus, the response will less likely to repeat without any rewards. Behaviorism refer this to S-R psychology (S = stimulus, R = response). Most our complex behaviors are accumulative between stimulus and response like driving our car, eating noodle. Watch this Video, to see if the cat was clever or not? The cat wasn't clever but it acquired to escape the box from learning. Thorndike designed puzzle box and place a cat in puzzle box. He also places reward (fish on dish) outside the puzzle box. At first, the cat wasn't clever enough and struggled to open the trap door. Thorndike heard some scratching inside the puzzle box. After endless time of struggling inside the box, the cat finally managed to open the trap door and ate the fish. When he repeated his experiment, he found that the time it takes the cat to get out the puzzle was decreased. It means that the behavior of the cat was changing due to its consequence. The cat knew that if as soon as the cat gets out of the box, it can eat his favored fish. When the experiment repeated, it reinforced cat's behavior. When stimulus presented (fish on dish), the cat wants to eat that fish more and more over time so it tried to get out as fast it can to get reward. Finally, Thorndike concluded that the cats learned by insight. Another example of Thorndike's law was giving a child a treat after he behaves in right manner, petting a dog after it fetches mail. The work of Thorndike was important as it laid out the groundwork for B.F. Skinner to develop his Skinner box and understand more about reinforcement, punishment of behavior. The law of effect helped us to understand more about how human and animals can learn. It helps us to develop a way to train animals to help disability people. It helped us to overcome our procrastination by rewarding us (watch TV, treat with ice cream) after studying. The operant condition and classical condition work hand in hand to help us to explain some of anxiety disorders. They both helped us to prevent when something is dangerous will happen. Even though we acquired more knowledge about learning but we still don't know what part of brain is actually active during learning process? How does the brain communicate with other part of our body to produce appropriate responses to certain stimuli?

See the above picture; I think that most of us who are taking the psychology classes will know how absurd the subliminal self-help tapes are. We are the lucky one because if we were to search the internet for subliminal self-help tapes, we will notice how many people still believe in this nonsense. On the other hand, as long as it brings benefits to us, it wouldn't matter, right? Wrong!

We only think that subliminal self-help tapes bring benefit to us because of the illusory placebo effect. We have learned from the previous chapters that placebo effect is an improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement, so, this means that illusory placebo effect is an illusion of placebo effect.

Let say that I want to be more decisive so I bought one of the self-help tapes above, after a week, I will probably be able to decide better but is it really the works of the subliminal self-help tape or is it because I decided to convince myself that I will be more decisive after listening to the tape? Of course, it is because I have the expectation of being more decisive only after I listen to the tape. So, in conclusion buying subliminal self-help tapes is a waste of money and a waste of time, it is like we are trying to convince ourselves that we can change ourselves unconsciously by just listening or looking.

Sound is everywhere in our daily lives, from the sound of ones rhythmic breathing to music being played over the radio, however many people do not understand scientific explanations for how our brains perceive sound. Sound travels through the air as small vibrations of energy that reach our brains through wavelike motions. similar to how different notes having different sounds, all sounds have have a distinct frequency, otherwise known as pitch. Higher pitches have higher frequencies, whereas lower pitches have a lower frequency, and thus, longer wave lengths.

The volume of sound is determined by the amplitude of the sound wave as it travels through the air and into our auditory sense receptors. A simple demonstration of this can be shown by the contrast between a rock concert and an orchestra concert. At the rock concert, the amplitude of the sound waves is extremely large, and thus the music is perceived as being quite loud, whereas the classical music from the orchestra concert has sound waves with a lower amplitude, and thus it is more timid and quiet sounding, in comparison.

Our brains perceive sound vibrations, taking into account their frequency and amplitude, when the sound waves reach the hair cells within the organ of Corti and basilar membrane within the inner ear. We then process the sound through transduction until our brain, perceives the sound through our auditory cortex. Without this process the sounds of everyday life would be non existent, and music, conversation, and the basic sounds of nature would occur without being perceived and realized.

Nearly everyone is aware of how significant research is in the development of further psychological, scientific, and medical advances. However, there is currently the debate as to whether certain forms of research are ethical, moral, and fair. The counter argument to support these "unethical" forms of research is that dramatic medical and scientific strides could be made towards better understanding the human brain, locating cures for difficult diseases, curing cancer, and much more.

Ethics in research has long been up to debate. For example, In the early 1930's researchers at Tuskegee practiced cruel research methods by refusing to treat African American men with their diagnosed syphilis, the disease they were unaware that they had, instead choosing to merely observe the patients as the disease progressed. There is also unethical research being done on animals, in which animals are often damaged or even killed in order to reach better scientific conclusions. Groups such as PETA as well as many who are against unethical research of animals are standing up, however animal research continues today.

Probably the most pivotal of all the ethical research debate is whether or not the use of stem cell research can be justified. Many argue that the use of stem cells could cure memory disorders, allow for nerve repair, and even possibly cure cancer. However the use of stem cells in research is often deemed unethical by many individuals, who claim that it is destruction of human life.

As the debate goes on over which research methods are ethical and which are not, it is clear that the development of the issue has led to great strides in research ethics. For instance, a case like what happened at Tuskegee Institute will never happen again, and many guidelines and rules have been set in place for testing on humans. Every major institution has at least one major institutional review board which now enures that several ethical guidelines are met. These guidelines include the requirement of informed consent for participants, a debriefing of what the research will entail for participants, and protection from harm and discomfort.

Time will tell whether ethics or demand for scientific advancement will show victorious in the debate of certain research methods like stem cell research. As the majority of the population grows older and older, and new more innovative and liberal ideas are being taught to the youth, it would not surprise me if ethics are sacrificed for medical and scientific gains.

I think that it is very interesting how our brain will provide missing information about outlines. This is a phenomenon know as subjective contours. Our brains take the visual information that is given to us and it will perceive the image depending on its surroundings and our expectations. If we expect to see an object, we will see that object even if we don't want to. This makes me curious about this phenomenon because even though there is no image there, we still see a shape. This is interesting because there really is nothing there. Our brains think an image should be there so that's how we perceive it. This principal has applied to my life while perceiving different pictures of illusions and subjective contours. While looking at subjective contours, I may have missed out on a very important piece of the picture because I perceived an object that really wasn't there. While looking at a subjective contour, you always seem to look at the object that you perceive to see. I was very interested in these figures after reading about them because it fascinates me how we perceive an image when nothing is really there. Our brain makes connections between different objects to form a bigger picture. In the pictures that I have added with this blog, you will see images when nothing is really there. The paper is completely white even though it looks like the image that you perceive has a different color and has a boarder around it. This is very weird how the brain makes these connections and it shows how you cannot always believe what you see.

At one time or another you may have experienced the conscious phenomenon of Déjà vu. You will be going about your daily life when you have a feeling that you have been in the present situation before. It is sometimes unclear but you remember doing or seeing the same thing but it was in the past. Our psychology text book phrases it a "been there" "done that" situation, or reliving a new experience. Some scientists have created theories on why we have these occurrences one of them being an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the temporal lobes and another being small seizures in the temporal lobe cause the memorable feelings. The familiar feeling may also arise because the situation may have been similar to a past one but we do not remember every specific detail as they happened in the earlier time. This may cause us to think we were in the same situation but in reality it is not an exact replica of the experience we had in the past.

I as well as most people have experienced déjà vu at one time or another, and have heard many stories from family and friends regarding this phenomenon. Some people have an eerie feeling when they come across an experience they believed they have already lived through and may try to think back or rationalize where they have experienced this before. While others find it humorous and just jokingly say "Wow déjà vu" then blow it off and continue on like nothing really happened.

Since there is still no reason for why we experience this phenomenon, for me it brings up the questions "Did we really relive an experience?" or "Can our dreams really give us a glimpse of our future?"

We applied depth perception to detect the distances between objects and ourselves. Without it, we can not even catch the coffee cup, for we are not able to know how far our arms need to stretch out to reach the cup. There are two major cues for depth perception, relative size cue and linear perception cue.

Now, look at the pictures below.

What a surprise! Our perception tricks us, assisted by the tilt shift photography and the "little coin".

The tilt shift photography applied in the pictures above is originally to promote the quality of the wide-angle picture. Just like our eyes, the camera sometimes create severe tilts of objects' outlines in a picture, which is a disaster for photographers who want to reproduce the original scence, but quiet important for us to perceive depth, known as linear perception cue. The tilt shift photography corrects these tilts by applying modification on the lens. So the objects are no longer out of shape. Simultaneously, the linear perception cue is weakened, which makes the objects look like toys.

In addition, the coin gave us a relative size cue to estimate the sizes of the objects. But in this case, it is a false positive cue intentionally made by the photographer.

The tilt shift photography is quiet popular today. There are more such photos on this website: http://www.moillusions.com/2011/06/6-cool-examples-of-tilt-shift.html.

Can you remember any other kinds of illusion photos you have seen? And how it tricks your perception?

Inattentional blindness is defined as the failure to detect stimuli that are in plain sight when our attention is focused elsewhere. It when one's mental representation of the outside world is limited to only a few elements, and one attends to only the "interesting" parts of the environment. The remarkable thing about this phenomenon is that things that may seem so clear and obvious in a normal situation may be hidden or oblivious to people who are distracted by something else. I find this quite fascinating. There are many experiments and studies that have been done on this concept, and there are several articles and videos to show it. One example that I find very interesting is the youtube video of the two young men who change roles when the innocent, oblivious person is distracted. The video shows one of the two men standing behind a counter in an office, when a customer walks in. The man hands the customer a consent sheet to fill out, and as the customer finishes the sheet and hands it to the man, the man ducks down to put it away underneath the counter. Instead of the same man standing up after the consent sheet is put away, the other man stands up instead. The phenomenon in the study is that every customer that was finished filling out the sheet never noticed the change in the man behind the counter. This is a great example of inattentional blindness, because it shows that although we may seem to always know what is going on in the environment around us, we may be distracted when our attention is focused somewhere else and miss things that are in plain sight. I can think of several examples in my life when I have had inattentional blindness happen to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ0l9s8_Hmk

As college students, we all think that we take control of our own learning. We believe that we control what we want to understand in class and that our professors are simply relaying vital information which we my take in our put out of our minds. However, some classes my influence college students to learn by, perhaps, mentioning a pop quiz but never truly telling when they may be. With professors continuously telling students, "there WILL be a pop quiz," you may be influenced to study more based on the two words "pop quiz". This is a slightly altered form of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning comes from learning the relationships between events and the event's environment. The psychologist accredited with this form of learning was Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. He tested classical conditioning with the famous "Pavlov's Dog" ideal. Pavlov collected saliva from a dog in his laboratory while giving the animal food. Naturally, at the smell and taste of food the dog began to salivate immensely. After several trials, Pavlov realized that at the sight of the food the dog now began to begin salivating. So he decided to shield the dog from the food, and decided to associate the sound of a metronome with the food. Soon after, the animal began associating the ticking of the metronome with obtaining the food. This was proven by the measurement of saliva when the metronome was turned on. The high amount of saliva proved that the dog had begun to associate the ticking with the reward of food. This form of conditioning tested the animals ability to associate and to learn. This experiment is classical conditioning at its finest, and it is the reason why Pavlov is so highly regarded in the world of psychology. After seeing the experiment with Pavlov's dog, compare your learning without the prospect of a pop quiz to your learning with the prospect of one. So, are our professor's treating us like dogs and conditioning us to learn?

Who hasn't heard of it before, psychic healing? Spiritual healing? The book defines psychic healing as an individual's possession of supernatural gifts or abilities that enables him/her to reduce others' pain. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Of course it would be nice to believe the someone could relieve us of our pains! This is particularly fascinating to me because it provides amazing potential for our ability to cure diseases and alleviate pain! Psychic healers are also known to be able to tap into a sixth sense to relay information that is unknown to the lay person.

The book highlights major experiments used to test this theory! One of them was done using patients who were suffering pain from cancer, chronic back conditions, and fibromyalgia. Half of the selected group members were under the care of a psychic healer, while the other half were given no treatment, but they weren't aware of the group to which they beloved (use of the placebo!). They used the McGill Pain Questionnaire (View image ) to test levels of discomfort before and after the trial. They compared the scores before and after, and found no significant change!

Despite these extraordinary claims about psychic healing, we have to honestly wonder how valid these claims are! Let's go for a test run with a few of the sixprinciples of Scientific Thinking!

• Correlation vs. Causation: The book states, "They found no correlation between psychic healing and decreased pain; however, they found that decreases in reported pain correlated with increased belief in psychic phenomena. So beliefs in the paranormal may create reality, at least psychological reality."
• Extraordinary Claims: This principle demands extraordinary evidence for exaggerated/extraordinary claims. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that we have discovered enough evidence yet to deem this valid!

• Replicability: Experimental evidence has to be evaluated in terms of its replicability (how well can it be reproduced). Without strong evidence of replicability, we can't be so quick to deem this valid! We also have to remember that we at times fall prey to illusory correlations. Someone could simply be feeling better due to coincidence!

Lastly, we have to remember the power of the placebo cause we might just feel better...because we think we're getting treatment!!

Watch this video for a real demonstration of the spiritual/psychic healing process! See if you can identify some fallacies!

Been there, done that, seen that? Déjà Vu translates from French to mean, "already seen." Have you ever had the experience of walking into a room and feeling as though you had been there before, even though you never really had? Or maybe you saw and image that you were absolutely positive you had already seen, but you hadn't. According to our text Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding, Déjà Vu is most likely to "people who remember their dreams, travel frequently, are young, and have liberal political and religious beliefs, a college education, and a high income." Many 'know' that Déjà Vu is real and does happen, because it has happened to them. But many more know the truth, Déjà Vu is a trick of the mind, not a real happening. This mind trick happens when we remember part of something from the past, perhaps from our childhood, or when we consciously see an image we have unconsciously seen before. Although the claim of Déjà Vu may seem significant, it cannot be falsified. According to the Scientific Thinking Principles a claim must be falsifiable to be significant. While Déjà Vu may not be scientifically significant, it is Hollywood significant. Multiple films are based off the Déjà Vu mind trick. One movie in particular titled Déjà Vu, tells the story of a man (Denzel Washington) saving the damsel in distress, while experiencing Déjà Vu.

Déjà Vu is real in Hollywood, but insignificant in science and real life. Remember this the next time Déjà Vu plays a mind tick on you!

I have watched hypnosis performed on others many times and it has always been fascinating to me. Hypnosis, by definition, is a set of techniques that provides people with suggestions for alterations in their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For most of us, this means hypnosis makes people act silly. At least for me, it just meant people acted funny but, as we read chapter five, we learn that hypnosis is much more than just tricking people into funny situations. Hypnosis, in my own words, means to lull someone to sleep so they are willing to do anything you tell them. Basically, the person being hypnotized is your trained pet during hypnosis. Hypnosis is practiced in a variety of clinical and scientific applications and it is important because it can be used to treat pain, medical conditions, and habit disorders. Also, it makes anxiety and weight problems more manageable for many people. Although hypnosis is great for our entertainment and helps with all these situations, there isn't any evidence that shows hypnosis directly causes weight loss. Instead, many believe hypnosis acts as a reassurance factor, giving people a positive and relaxed attitude toward weight loss which leads them to lose the weight. Even if this is true, a positive attitude is caused by hypnosis which still contributes positively to the individual.

During my senior year in high school, a hypnotist came to my school. He was there purely for entertainment, he took about fifteen volunteers from the crowd and went on to hypnotize them. It was a very conventional hypnosis as he made them act like animals, drive their favorite cars, and even chase each other around the auditorium. By reading the text, I learned that hypnosis is much more than a fun show to watch. What did everyone else think about hypnosis before reading the text? I would also like to know how hypnosis is being used today for reasons other than entertainment.

Check out this video, this shows what hypnosis meant to me before I read chapter five and this is very similar to my high school hypnosis show. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDt6G6UlN2U)

In today's society we often take the scientific knowledge for granted and don't think about how it was acquired. Many of the experiments and case studies have various concerns about scientific methods and ethics regarding the subjects. Tuskegee Study is one the known studies in US history. The subjects of this experiment were 399 poor African American males who had syphilis. The researchers intended to gain more knowledge about the disease by leaving the subjects/patients untreated even though a cure was available. In addition, the subjects were never informed about their condition and were expected to live their normal life. The question of ethics towards the subjects arose 40 years after the study began and eventually the study was terminated and in another 25 years the former subjects received an apology from the United States government.

One of the important lessons this study taught us is the appreciation of the subjects and protection of their rights. The policy of Informed Consent was adopted by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) requires that the subjects of the experiment or case study are informed about the details of the experiment. In some cases the IRB allows the debriefing of the subjects, which is telling the subjects about the purpose of the experiment after it's concluded. The Tuskegee study should be very important to us today because there are thousands of studies taking place in the United States at any given time and it is important to feel protected from any possible harm that might result from the experiment.

The field of Psychology prides itself on the use of empirical knowledge to discern the cause and effect relationship between phenomena. In order to achieve this, scientists utilize the experimental method. This method involves the manipulation of variables in order to determine cause and effect relationships. In doing so, there are scientists need to gather several pieces of information.

Random assignment- scientists make sure that participants have an equal opportunity to make either the control and experimental groups.
Control Group- This is the group exposed to normal condition.
Experimental group- This is the group that has its variables manipulated.
Independent variable- This refers to the variables that is being controlled
Dependent variable- This is the variable that is being measured.
This video shows these definitions in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7bpwbnged4&feature=player_detailpage

The field of Psychology prides itself on the use of empirical knowledge to discern the cause and effect relationship between phenomena. In order to achieve this, scientists utilize the experimental method. This method involves the manipulation of variables in order to determine cause and effect relationships. In doing so, there are scientists need to gather several pieces of information.

Random assignment- scientists make sure that participants have an equal opportunity to make either the control and experimental groups.
Control Group- This is the group exposed to normal condition.
Experimental group- This is the group that has its variables manipulated.
Independent variable- This refers to the variables that is being controlled
Dependent variable- This is the variable that is being measured.
This video shows these definitions in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7bpwbnged4&feature=player_detailpage

The field of Psychology prides itself on the use of empirical knowledge to discern the cause and effect relationship between phenomena. In order to achieve this, scientists utilize the experimental method. This method involves the manipulation of variables in order to determine cause and effect relationships. In doing so, there are scientists need to gather several pieces of information.

Random assignment- scientists make sure that participants have an equal opportunity to make either the control and experimental groups.
Control Group- This is the group exposed to normal condition.
Experimental group- This is the group that has its variables manipulated.
Independent variable- This refers to the variables that is being controlled
Dependent variable- This is the variable that is being measured.
This video shows these definitions in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7bpwbnged4&feature=player_detailpage

The field of Psychology prides itself on the use of empirical knowledge to discern the cause and effect relationship between phenomena. In order to achieve this, scientists utilize the experimental method. This method involves the manipulation of variables in order to determine cause and effect relationships. In doing so, there are scientists need to gather several pieces of information.

Random assignment- scientists make sure that participants have an equal opportunity to make either the control and experimental groups.
Control Group- This is the group exposed to normal condition.
Experimental group- This is the group that has its variables manipulated.
Independent variable- This refers to the variables that is being controlled
Dependent variable- This is the variable that is being measured.
This video shows these definitions in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7bpwbnged4&feature=player_detailpage

I think that one of the most interesting things we have learned about
so far in psychology is the concept of inattentional blindness. I
think that this topic is particularly important because of the large
numbers of bikers in Minnesota. We watched that tv commercial about
inattentional blindness and how unaware we all are of our surroundings
when we are so focused on something else. Minneapolis is often cited
as the most biker-friendly city in the United States, but I don't
think that can ever be a true reality until more people see that
commercial and realized that bikers should be higher on their minds
while they drive.
After watching that video, I wondered how many things happen all
around me that I don't even notice because I am so busy paying
attention to other things. This article:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Inattentional_blindness also
states that talking on a cell phone has been show to increase
inattentional blindness while driving. Although I have seen many
public service announcements and commercials about how it is a bad
idea to talk on a cell phone while driving, I never really understood
why. I think that if they included information about inattentional
blindness or if more people were educated about this, they would
listen to the suggestions about talking on a phone while driving. I
know a lot of people that see those commercials and say "what are they
talking about, I can talk on my phone and drive at the same time just
fine; I'm a good multi-tasker." I doubt they would say that if they
learned about inattentional blindness.

How focus are your eyes? What do you see? A big cat or lots of cats? The answer lies within your visual perception on what you saw first. Either way, you are able to recognize those cats in the picture due to the neurons from the lower temporal lobe that responds in recognizing faces and etc. Our brain is able to interpret these images/ things into meaningful information that could help us understand what we are seeing or experiencing. In other words, due to our visual perception, we are often fool by these illusions when our brain is multitasking. As you have experience in the picture to the left, you either see the makeup of cats or one huge cat and trying to see both at the same time would be complicated since your focus would be unstable.
I think this is interesting because I find it remarkable that pictures like this can manipulate the eyes and the brain. This whole illusion of the Cat example and the concept reminds me of a quote that many of you know, "don't judge a book by its cover,'' because people tend to see what they want to see on the outside but once they look deeper in depth, it's amazing to what they find out just like this cat illusion.
To finish this visual illusion, check out this clip-->Impossible Balls Illusion! - YouTube it demo the same or a similar concept. Enjoy!

Anyone who has spent time on the Internet knows it is full of ridiculous products making ridiculous claims: Lose 10 pounds in a week! Grow back a full head of hair! Erase all your wrinkles! Being of a curious nature, I decided to check out one of these products and analyze it like the novice scientist/critical thinker I am.

The website I decided to check out was http://www.stopagingnow.com/. Even the URL by itself was an extraordinary claim; to stop the process of cellular aging immediately would be quite a feat indeed, and therefore would require extraordinary evidence to support this claim.

Not unsurprisingly, I didn't find much supporting evidence further in the website. Quite a few personal testimonies were exhibited. Jim D. from Holland, Michigan, was quoted as saying "very happy with the high quality..." which really isn't saying much about these products. Bob C. from Tampa, Florida, is quoted as saying "Red Yeast Rice has helped lower my cholesterol." However, anyone reading this testimonial doesn't know what else Bob has been doing that could have influenced his cholesterol: there are too many confounds to contribute Bob's drop in cholesterol to Red Yeast Rice.

While I personally find products such as this comical and obviously unreal, not everyone on the Internet is as prone to scrutinizing the information they're handed. This in turn can lead to real issues. I don't know anyone personally, but I would guess that not a few people have been scammed into buying products that are useless or even potentially harmful. It makes me wish that the general populace of our country were better versed in critical thinking.

Have you ever noticed how we are able to block out all of the background noise around when we are trying to focus on something very important? That important something could be homework, studying, favorite television show, sports game or even a conversation with someone. Our brains are capable of something called selective attention. Selective attention is selectively concentrating on one particular event going on in the environment, and ignoring everything else.
Selective attention is constantly at work, if our brain had to constantly interpret everything going on around us, our brain would be overwhelmed. There are many examples of selective attention. One example I can think of is when your trying to watch football on Sunday but your family members around you are making a bunch of noise, yet you are still able to focus on the game entirely. Someone then tries asking you a question but you don't hear them at all until they pull your attention away from the game completely. Sometimes our selective attention doesn't work. For an example, when I am writing a sentence but then I hear someone talking about a different topic, I find my self writing what that someone is talking about.

http://www.customerinput.com/journal/do_the_test_selective_attention_and_advertising.asp

Here is a selective attention test.
Knowing about selective attention, we can grasp a little bit on how complex our brains really are.

It is often found in research, newspapers, magazines, etc, that a certain event happens that causes the other to occur. This can indeed happen, however, in statistics the only time we are allowed to say that event A was caused by event B, is if we have conducted an experiment where there was a control group, and treatment was allocated amongst another group. Frequently, when conducting and interpreting studies where two variables appear to be associated with one another people make the mistake of claiming event A was a result of event B, when in reality, correlation is NOT causation - that is lesson number one in statistical inference.
A common example of a situation where one event appears to be a result of the other is the many studies that show an association between violence in the media and aggressive behavior. In essence, one would hypothesize that more exposure to violence through things such as: music (lyrics), television, movies, and the media, may suggest a larger probability of displaying aggressive behavior. Many studies and experiments have been conducted with similar hypotheses. Although the results vary, the majority of the data appears to suggest an association between the amount of violence exposure and the display of aggressive behavior.
The Adults & Children Together Against Violence Foundation (ACT) is an organization driven to help children and young adults with violent issues in society. On their website, they speak on behalf of
"the first longitudinal study of violent media on adolescents.... This study remains unique because it links exposures to violent media after childhood-i.e., among teenagers - and then follows them into young adulthood when aggressive behaviors actually take place" (Johnson, J.G., et al)
The data collected from the studies resulted in a positive correlation between the two variables. Now, based on the data and a positive association between our two variables, it would seem probable to restate our hypothesis and conclude that exposure to violence causes aggressive behavior. However, we must relate back to the golden rule of statistics, just because two variables appear to have an association or correlation, that doesn't permit us to say that one causes the other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAnt65D-9Qc

Here is a short video on how our culture is being shaped by violence in the media. Pretty interesting stuff!

"Special Topics: Media Violence and Aggression." Adults and Children Together Against Violence Web Site. Web. 02 Oct. 2011.

• I wonder if these two phenomenons can be seen as a survival skill? For example, if someone is trapped in a cave, do they see meaningful positive images in the walls around them that reminds them of the good things. This keeps up their strength for survival because their spirit is kept up.


• I also question the amount of times people experience these phenomenons and if the number is high, does that mean there is something wrong with them (crazy)? Or is it just part of how our natural brains think and work?

The idea of nature versus nurture has been an ongoing debate for quite some time. It basically implies the question of are we born with certain characteristics that lead us to act a certain way? Or are we influenced by outside factors? If one were to take the nature side, they would be suggesting that our behavioral characteristics are from genetics or biological factors. This would mean that our thoughts and actions would resemble those of our parents. However, the nurture idea is more environmentally associated. Things like religion, culture, language, and relationships seem to be the root of how and why we behave a certain way.

This debate is important because it brings up a good question: why do we act the way we do? This question is usually brought up in the early years of one's life because little children tend to be full of questions. However, there is no direct answer. The nature versus nurture debate is continuing to cross the minds of most individuals, usually starting early on in one's life. I personally think that our behaviors are affected by both aspects of the debate. I believe that we do inherit some characteristics from our parents, but we also learn our behaviors from our surrounding environment.

An example from my life that I have is my athletic characteristic. I have always been very intrigued by sports, and most of my life consists of participating in different sporting events. I find it interesting to note that most of my relatives are not very active, so this example makes believe that we get our characteristics and behaviors from the nurture side of the debate. However, I am a very organized person, and I would call myself a perfectionist. This definitely runs in the family because both of my parents are the same way. This makes me think that my characteristics and behaviors are more on the nature side.

Nature and nurture make you who you are and what you will become in the future. It has been an ongoing argument between Psychologist, whether nature plays a more important role in the development of individuals or if nurture does. Nature deals with your genetics from both your biological mom and dad while nurture deals with how you are raised whether with your biological mom or dad or other people. Some people believe that nature is what makes you who you are while others believe it's nurture. From my own personal experience from being a twin, I believe nurture plays a more major role for making us who we are today.
When going out and about on the town my sister and I are constantly asked if we are twins but also if we are identical because we look so much alike; sadly we are only fraternal. The only difference from us being identical is our DNA being different, almost everything else is the same. We look almost identical, we have a lot of the same interests, we are good at the same things, etc. I believe nurture is the main cause for how most of these qualities exist. Because we grew up together we became interested in the same things.
One major question I had involving the Nature vs. Nurture was whether scientist think that either nature plays a more major role over nurture, or vise versa for the development of all humanity. How can you really tell if nature overpowers nurture (or the other way around) if their is so many inputs for a possible output to be tested?

The other day my friend and I were having an argument whether someone was wearing a shirt that was "red" or "deep orange". This made me think back to the concept of color constancy in our textbook. This concept seems intriguing to me, especially because I am very involved in art and I use the concept of arranging colors all the time. For a person to perceive a color to be something other than what it truly is due to the color of its surroundings astounds me. This picture from our book really surprised me and I honestly could hardly believe that it was true.

color constancy.doc

In this block of multicolored squares, it seems as if the color of the brown square on top is dramatically different than the yellow square in the middle of the shadowed side. For our eyes to receive color cues as exactly the same, but perceive them to be two different colors, is so interesting. The shading of the cube makes the colors exposed seem like radically different hues, but that is because we are unknowingly basing our perception of color around the surrounding colors, it seems to us that they are different. I find that almost "zoning out" and staring in the median distance between the two points of color and keeping both of them in my peripheral vision helps the truth become clearer. My eyes are playing tricks on me. To relate this concept back to my story of argument over a t-shirt color, my friend and I were both viewing this person in front of a building that was light blue and green. Because of the colors surrounding the person, the true color red was not observed and so our eyes perceived a sense of red, but not one of complete certainty. This shows how our eyes can definitely trick us when it comes to perceiving color. To finish my story, it turns out the person was actually wearing an orange shirt, and unfortunately, I was wrong in the argument. :p however, I did see a realistic view of how perceptions can differ from the external stimuli we are actually receiving.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with information from possibly thousands of sources a day, it is nearly impossible to consciously examine and thoroughly evaluate every scrap of information coming our way. Part of our brain already filters out stimuli to dumb-down our world for easy processing, but what type of information do we actively listen to? News, media, and advertisements are things we consciously process through our complicated language. Many news sources seem a good source of information concerning technology or politics, things that directly affect us. However, if we were to follow a critical thinking standard we would quickly find the most popular news reporters and stations toss scientific skepticism out the window. They make extraordinary claims with no evidence, draw poorly based correlations and do not consider or propose rival hypothesis. Our sources of information must be carefully considered and evaluated before we can consider their information. A good way to tell if a story is legitimate is to check for scientific studies that support the product or story. Check the credentials of the people involved. Are they an expert in their field? Does the author have a reason to be biased? Not adhering to skepticism will lead to misinformation and the formation of conclusions based on false evidence or a lack thereof. The main point is to always consider the sources of our information and the consequences of regarding the possibly false information as truth.

One important concept in Psychology is the never-ending debate of Nature versus Nurture. It poses the idea of whether our behaviors are a result of our genes (nature) or our rearing environments (nurture). Some scientists think that people behave as they do according to genetic predispositions or even "animal instincts." This is known as the "nature" theory of human behavior. Other scientists believe that people think and behave in certain ways because they are taught to do so. This is known as the "nurture" theory of human behavior. However, some have considered this debate dead, because everyone now agrees that our behaviors, personality, intelligence, and so forth are both results of biology and our surroundings. Yet to what extent nature or nurture contributes to different behaviors are still debated and unknown today. For example Thomas Bouchard's study of twins, who were separated at birth, and later studied for the purpose of this debate. He concluded that the findings could be interpreted as strong support for genetic influences on personality. Another example if that of The Boggle Family who are a prime illustration of the complexity of this concept. Many of the members of the family have been either in jail or prison, but is this due to the violent environment they were in, or the biological makeup of their genes. Obviously, both contribute to their behavior, but the extent to which they contribute are debatable. Personally, I feel that nature is more prominent than nurture because your surrounding can vary but your personality, intelligence, and traits are dependent on your biological makeup. My sister and I are in the same exact environment, but our personality and interests are completely opposite, she is interested in subjects such as humanities, while I prefer the "hard sciences" like biology or chemistry. Hence, our genes would be the reason why our interests are so opposite, rather than our surroundings.

A lot of people don't think it, but many of us complain to get things that we want. It's a natural thing for humans to do and whether you believe it or not, there is ways that you can do it that will turn the art of "complaining" in your favor. Before you start complaining there are some steps you can think about. First, understand what you really want. Understand what you want will help you with deciding the next step. After you decide what you want, find someone who can provide what you want. A problem people make is that they lash out at the first person they see and this doesn't always prove helpful. Another key that some people look over is to be nice. This is a very important key because it makes the mood a lot less hostile. In this article they referred to it as a "Complaint Sandwich". The top slice is a ear opener and is usually a nice comment or calm statement that lightens the mood. The middle is the complaint that you are actually trying to get across to them. This is where you get the most information out. Then there is the bottom layer which is the layer that you sell yourself and show that you are a person worthy of help. Fallowing these steps isn't necessarily a good thing to know, but it could definitely help if you find yourself in this situation.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201109/the-art-influence

I have always been curious as to why extremely hot objects, when touched, feel cold for a split second before we register how hot they actually are. The temperatures of the objects do not change while we are touching them, so why does it feel like they are changing? After some research, I learned that there are "feeling spots" on our hands. These spots are sensory receptors that each receive different sensations, and then send the signals of these sensations to our brains to help us make sense of what we are coming into contact with. Some of the receptors register cold sensations, while others register warm ones. None of these register both. If I accidentally touch a hot stove top, some of the cold receptors on my hand will send a message to my brain that I am touching a cold object. I accepted this information, but I was confused why the touched object would not always feel cold, why it felt hot almost immediately after. This is because the cold and hot receptor spots on your hand are very small and very clumped together. When an object is touched, both hot and cold spots register the temperature of the object. In the case of a stove top, the stimulus is very strong. Both temperatures are being stimulated, and the receptors get confused and occasionally send the wrong signal to the brain. This happens even though both temperature receptors are being stimulated. The length of time it takes until the correct temperatures are recognized can be different. Sometimes it takes a split second, sometimes a few seconds, and sometimes a few minutes.

Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/17254

Has anyone ever said to you "come on that's common sense"? Well they may be right, there are a lot of things that are common sense, but when analyzing situations and psychology simply using your common sense may not always lead you to a reasonable solution. Although many people believe that it would be easier to trust your common sense to get the correct answer on things it may possible lead them in the wrong direction. Take the saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder," most people will agree that this is a true statement. From experience from long distance relationships I would agree that you do feel more appreciative towards people when you are not with them everyday. Then look at the saying "out of sight, out of mind." Again, most would agree that when you are not seeing or doing something everyday, it does tend to be on your mind less often then when you are constantly around it. I took a survey of 7 people and I asked them to tell me whether they agreed or disagreed with each saying when they looked at them separately and these were my results:

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" - Agree: 5, Disagree: 2
"Out of sight, out of mind" - Agree: 4, Disagree: 3

After I had them look at each of the sayings separately, I told them to look at them together and see if they noticed anything. Now, many of them did not catch it right away until I made it aware to them that the two sayings are contradicting each other. I was surprised, and so were they, when we realized that a few of us had agreed with both of the sayings. This should help us realize that sometimes out common sense can lead us to believe a lot of things, even if those things go against each other. Native Realism - the idea that we see the world as it is or "seeing is believing vs believing is seeing" is what common sense can be based around. We need to remember that sometimes common sense can catch us in a tough battle of contradictions and strictly trusting that common sense may not always be the best idea.

I have always been interested in the ethical side of research design. In fact, I think that this is a subject that everyone should pay attention to. The main issue with research design is looking at the ethical obligations of the researchers towards their participants. They have to evaluate how far is too far, and as is with many situations like this, there is not a definite answer. There can be a very foggy line between right and wrong, and it is scientists' job to try not to cross this line.
As science advances further and further, we need to make sure that we don't lose sight of our morals. As Lilenfeld states, "Scientists have learned the hard way that their thirst for knowledge can blind them to crucial ethical considerations" (Lilenfeld 67). One example of this, as given in the book, is the Tuskgee study. This study was performed by the United States Public Health Service between 1932 and 1972 (Lilenfeld 67). The researchers wanted to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis, and they used poor African American men who thought that they were receiving free health care from the government as subjects. The African American men did not know that they had syphilis (which had an effective treatment at the time), and were not informed that they were subjects. As a result of this study, 28 men died of syphilis, 1-- died of syphilis related complications, 40 of the men's wives were infected with syphilis, and 19 children were born with syphilis (Lilenfeld 67).

As a result of the Tuskegee study and many like it, many people started to pay more attention to human subjects' rights. Because of all of the attention, every American research college and university has at least one institutional review board (Lilenfeld 67). The IRB looks at all studies carefully to make sure that the subjects' rights are not being violated. Because of the IRB, all researchers must inform the subjects what they are doing before beginning the study.

Today, I feel that in the United States, the rights of human subjects aren't at risk anymore, but the rights of animals need to be considered again. If animal rights interest you as well, take a look at PETA's website : http://www.peta.org/. The debate of what is right and what is wrong will be never ending. Our morals will always be challenged and put to the test, but I hope that we will be able to stay true to what is right. We don't want people reading a text book 50 years from now reading about our mistakes. Our generation needs to set a good example for those to come.

Many times when I was driving in a busy freeway, one thing I noted was that I almost always in the slowest lane of the freeway. However, when I switched to the lane that I saw was faster, all the sudden the lane I switched from is moving faster than the one I was driving in. Many of us might experience this once in a while. It surprises me because I usually believe what I saw is right. But in this case, it is not. Which raise a question, should I believe in the entire thing I see? In the first chapter of the text book "Psychology From Inquiry to Understanding" it says "Even though our perceptions are often accurate, we can't always trust them to provide us with an error-free picture of the world." (p.5, Shepard, 1991) As it says in the book, we tend to believe what we see and trust our common senses for most of everything because of the way we perceive the world. A research done by Donald A. Redelmeier of the University of Toronto and Robert J. Tibshirani of Standford university in 1999 shows that when we are driving, "drivers spent much more time watching other cars whiz by, creating the illusion that the next lane was moving faster." (Source A). They also explain that the illusion occurs because more time is generally spent being overtaken by other cars than is spent in overtaking them. Which I agree with them because I realized when I was drive in a busy freeway, I tended to who at the cars on the other lanes that driven by which I did not realize that my lane was also moving.
Source A: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/2546/title/Highway_Relativity

Naturalistic observation is a concept which I believe is very important in psychology. It's one of the concepts which do not have the subjects feeling uncomfortable or having an expectation. This concept lets the subjects act natural and does not hinder any of their actions. Similar to Jane Goodall's observation of the chimpanzees we can also find out many things about humans in everyday life. There was a study on the news about what we like to talk about. Interesting enough what the guy who did it found that we usually talk about gossip with whomever we are with. Naturalistic observation is also something I believe we do every day. For example, a long-term crush which we have seen but haven't interacted with. There are quite the complications but in simple terms we observe and notice the things naturally about them which make us interested. Besides everyday this can be used to learn about animals such as the chimpanzees from Jane's observation. Without the environment of which a lab produces the chimpanzees are able to naturally act within their real environment with its many uncertainties.

Why I say natural observation is important because we gossip about others while observing them from afar. We do it naturally and don't even know it. It's interesting because a professor once told the class to observe how people walk. I found out that just looking at someone from behind while walking yourself you tend to notice how they walk and how they move while walking. I believe that people tend to change once they are put into different type of mood and environment. However, being known about being observed or having the knowledge about being observed makes the tendency to cause false results just as surveys which are sent out and filled out about certain questions. Even though they are unanimous sometimes there is an impression left to do well which causes lots of false results. I believe that when the subjects to do not know they are being viewed are when it's the most accurate because of the lack of expectations.

We have all heard sport announcers talk about when a football team is "hot" (when a team is on a winning streak) or "cold" (when they have not been winning games), and gamblers who describe themselves as "hot" or "on fire" when they are consistently winning games in a row. But have you ever heard of the "hot hand" in basketball? The term describes a basketball player who makes several baskets in a row and is more likely than average to sink their next basket as well. A study was done in 1985 by Cornell University (Thomas Gilovich) and Stanford University (Amos Tversky and Robert Vallone) that examined this myth of the "hot hand" with the Philadelphia 76er. Their results found that there was no extra advantage or disadvantage to making a shot if you made the previous shot, therefore proving that there was a misperception on these random sequences. The table below is their data that they collected on some of the Philadelphia 76er players.

(https://docs.google.com/a/umn.edu/viewer?a=v&q=cache:rDEtE2lxRzMJ:www.psych.cornell.edu/sec/pubPeople/tdg1/Gilo.Vallone.Tversky.pdf+larry+bird+and+hot+hand+and+myth&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgR8W1HWw5ZjUX9ipB594OzRpMP2tnV-57ZeXnPtKv0aD6PrUaHFfoAfVusk7PHt2ROu0pvps8MV5BtmBtEi9D27H2Mi_ylQfR8NJjrcbbTYf3XnuJRHApioKOSHH9K-_Bwi6WN&sig=AHIEtbQtrp3GuWa_f-ErExT58xjQBgFM2Q)

This shows the percentages to make the next shot are not significantly changed if the player hit or missed their previous shot. Also, the last column shows the correlation between the percentages showing that the number is actually closer to zero (meaning there is no relation) than one (meaning relation). The reason why the myth of the "hot hand" exists is because of illusory correlation. The likelihood of a player making a shot has no connection to if they made the previous shot. People are more likely to remember when a basketball player is making shot after shot, than when a player makes a shot and misses; therefore people remember when a player is on a winning streak. According to Occam's razor, an explanation for why the certain players make consecutive shots is because these players are the ones who practice the most and have the confidence to take more shots. Overall, it is discovered that there is no such thing as "hot hand" in basketball.

links-
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/15/health/20080915-brain-development.html
http://www.edinformatics.com/news/teenage_brains.htm

Have you ever pulled out an old photo album, or looked back on an old memory, and wondered, "what was I thinking?" or "why on earth would I do this?" When you reflect on these memories and question what was going through your mind, you can reflect on how much you have grown and matured. It takes around 21 years, or about 7,665 days for your brain to reach full maturity; and a lot happens in that time.
With each passing year, your brain gains an increased sense of maturity. You begin to gain the ability to make your own decisions, analyze situations, and increase your self control; and this is all due to the development of different regions of your brain; the most significant to the process being the frontal lobe, especially the prefrontal cortex. The frontal lobes carry out executive functioning, meaning they oversee and organize many of the other brain functions; therefore giving it a crucial role in development.
Many teenagers can relate to this because they are going through the process right now. It can help explain why they made the decision to go into an unsafe area alone, or dress a certain way. I can speak from first hand experience, that sometimes my parents question why I have done something that seems very rational to me, but completely irrational to them. I can attribute this to the lack of development in my frontal lobes. Although these experiences are very subjective and dependent on the individual, the brain is nonetheless still developing until an individual is in their early twenties, and is therefore a major factor in their everyday decisions. Also, knowing that such development occurs at this time, we can possibly elaborate or expand on our knowledge in those crucial years to make us more high functioning adults.
The process through which our brain develops is the biological equivalent of "growing up" and should therefore be embraced and nurtured. It makes us think twice about the impact the decisions we make now can have on the rest of our lives.

Researchers have discovered that learning and memory can be affected when the amount of protein in specific parts of the adult mice' is changed. The protein is called kibra, and has been involved in past studies with memory and Alzheimer's disease. I found this article to be quite helpful when it comes to relating synapses to real-life studies, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110928110047.htm.
The studies found that better memory traits have been traced to gene codes for this kibra protein. Nerve impulses communicate the synapse. Plasticity is defined as the ability of the nervous system to change, and this is exactly what the kibra protein does when interacted with a certain AMPA receptor. The protein was regulated in the receptors; some cells produced less kibra. What resulted was that the AMPA receptors moved faster in cells with less kibra than the control group with normal levels. When the receptors are added to synapses this results in stronger connections in the brain. Richard L. Huganir, Ph.D., says, "most forms of learning involve the strengthening of some synapses and the weakening of others." This changing of the nervous system is plasticity. He comes up with the hypothesis that "kibra specifically helps create a pool of receptors that is used to add receptors to synapses during learning." They later found that mice without kibra displayed less plasticity compared to the mice that had higher levels of the protein. Lower plasticity results in a lower ability to learn and remember new information, a.k.a. memory. This study shows us that there are ways to alter plasticity in the brain by adding proteins that go through synapses.

Figuring out correlation depends on choosing two variables that can be related to each other. We as humans are terrible at estimating the sizes of correlation because we are prone to illusory correlation. Lilienfeld text defines it as the perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists. In this article illusory correlation is defined as the tendency to inaccurately link an action and an effect. Many examples were given in the book, but I ran into this article, which described the story behind how we easily over estimate things due to the knowledge we know not what actually causes it. The story basically explains how two friends went out to eat for a birthday lunch suddenly one of the friend's fingers turned blue. They both were shocked the other friend automatically assumed that he was not getting enough oxygen to his extremities, so he checked her feet to see if they became blue. It turned out that her feet were normal, making the two friends more puzzled. Eventually the girl went to the bathroom just to realize that her hands were resting on her unwashed blue jeans the whole time, she screamed to her friend that it was the jeans. They both couldn't believe it until he told her to wash her hands and wipe it with the white cloth that turned to blue.
Humans have this feeling of seeking causes for things that tend to happen in their lives according to David Ludden, associate professor of psychology at Lindsey Wilson College in Kentucky. He says, "No other species makes casual inferences like we do." I believe that we as humans look for things we think we know, which blinds us from what is right in front of us.

http://www.brainbiases.com/2008/11/illusory-correlation-bias.html

Twin studies are used by psychologists to study the similarities and differences between fraternal and identical twins. The study their genes and how they're expressed in correlation with their nurture. The majority of twin studies are used to determine what is biologically predetermined within a person and, oppositely, what we have an effect on.

Twin studies have made a major impact in the studies of developmental disorders including autism. There is always going to be a debate on if parenting causes these developmental delays or if they were already predetermined in the womb. By studying twins (identical twins provide the most accurate comparison because they share 100% of their genes), you can see the differences between an autistic child compared to a "normal" child who were raised in the same household. For almost three years, I worked with an autistic child. She is now 10 years old and is one the sweetest kids you will ever meet. This fact doesn't stop the snickers she gets in school or the whispers between other moms when they see her on the playground. I've seen her mom struggle to keep her daughter happy and healthy all the while battling outsiders telling her how to be a mother to her child. Having a disabled child is two full time jobs in one and many mothers have to then deal with the judgement by others about how they aren't a "good enough" mother and how they are doing things wrong and that's why their child is the way they are. Although the girl I worked with is not a twin, twin studies are helping to change the perception of autistic children, their mothers and how they were raised.

In a study conducted by Dr. Susan Folstein and Dr. Michael Rutter, it was determined the fact that not all identical twins are concordant for autism which indicates that there may be some non-genetic factors causing autism. However, the more present high concordance rates are strong evidence for significant genetic influence.

Of course this doesn't mean that all developmental disorders are strictly genetically determined; this doesn't even mean that all autism cases are strictly genetically determined. What it does show is how helpful twin studies can be to correct the mind set of the general public about developmental disorders like autism. These studies can help the mothers of these children feel better about themselves and their parenting.

Links: http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/TreatmentTypes/placebo-effect
http://www.webmd.com/balance/how-worrying-affects-your-body

One of the most interesting aspects of psychology is the power of the mind over the body. This is demonstrated in a lot of ways and one of the most common is the Placebo effect. The Placebo effect is what occurs when an individual feels improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement. Thus, in medical studies, like clinical drug trials, this effect must be considered by having a control group be given a placebo pill and the experimental group the actual drug under examination. A lot of the time, people receiving the placebo pill actually claim to feel better or feel improvement, when in actuality they are simply consuming sugar pills. This is because the people receiving the placebo pill are so hopeful that it will lessen their symptoms, they actually start to feel better. Thus, without the control group it would be hard to determine if the medicine in question was actually working or if the act of taking a pill simply made the participants better.
The opposite for harm or increasing discomfort can come from the Nocebo effect. This effect is harm resulting from the mere expectation of harm. This is especially true for people with anxiety issues. They may believe that they are injured due to muscle aches or even feel like they may be exhibiting symptoms of a heart attack. In actuality they are fine but because they are so worried, symptoms started that mimic those of more serious ailments like chest pains and tingling in extremities.
Just from these couple effects it becomes clear that the mental state of an individual is paramount to their health. It is kind of scary in fact.....

Link: http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/dominos.asp

Who doesn't like Dominos pizza? Their new garlic covered crust is wonderful and I've always had good service ordering there. Many people have heard of, or remember when Dominos offered the "30 minutes or it's free" delivery guarantee. They do not offer this deal anymore and there's a widely known explanation for why. Many people have been told a dominos driver hit a child while speeding to deliver a pizza on time. The real reason for the guarantee being rescinded is, in fact, car accidents, but people altered the stories to make them worse than they are. No one questioned the evidence behind this claim, but rather, turned it into a story that was spread to most Dominos and used to explain why the guarantee was not offered anymore. This is a bandwagon fallacy and no other hypotheses were introduced, because most people just believed it was true since they were told so. I believe people unintentionally altered the story to make it more interesting to tell to others. People in the media tend to do this with most things they are told about as well. No one questioned who the child was, or at least no one could answer, so, instead of questioning the story and forming a rival hypothesis, people accepted the story. There could be many other reasons for the guarantee being removed, such as, they were losing too much profit, people wrongly accusing their pizza was late, or even that the deliverers were getting speeding tickets, but never hit anyone. This shows how people will believe what you tell them. The story is not completely irrelevant to what happened, but makes the situation seem much worse than it actually is. The best principle to use with this claim is ruling out rival hypothesis.

Sources:

Bryant, Tim. "Angry Jury Hits Domino's Pizza Chain for $79 Million."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 19 December 1993 (p. A1).
Faust, Fred. "Settlement Could Be in Order in Domino's Pizza Case."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 28 March 1994 (Business Plus; p. 4).
Fernandez, Maria Elena. "Buford Man Files $40 Million Suit Against Domino's."
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 15 September 1994 (p. J1).
The Oregonian. "Domino's Reaches Settlement with Family of Dead Woman."
12 May 1993 (p. E1).

The nature-nurture debate is one of the oldest in the history of psychology. The basis of the debate is that either nature or nurture influences an individual's character traits. Proponents of nature state that we our born with genetic traits, or our traits have been carried from our parents to us, their offspring. Nurture proponents state that factors such as personal experiences and environment influence who we become. Although the nurture camp has been the most prominent, their ideas have come from John Locke theory of the tabula rasa or blank slate. According to Locke, humans are born with no innate characteristics, we take in that information as we observe our environment. Of course, we all know that both nature and nurture play a role in our characteristics, now it has adapted to which has the greater influence.
Like all other debates, this one has its own controversies. The controversial domains are: personality, intelligence, and mental illnesses. Scientists have used behavioral genetics to study the influence of nature and nurture in these psychological traits, it includes genes and environment. Genetic designs also allow scientists to estimate heritability of traits and diseases. Heritability is the extent to which genes contribute to differences in a trait among individuals. It is measured in the percentage of the veritability in a trait across individuals that is due to genes. If the heritability of a trait is 60 percent due to differences among individual's genes, then 40 percent is due to differences in one's environment. Some traits like height are highly heritable, between 70 to 80 percent in humans.
Experimental designs such as family studies, adoption studies, and twin studies as well, they track the presence or absence of a trait among different relatives to determine the contriutions of genes and environment of a trait. In family studies, researchers examine a particular trait among family members, particularly the ones raised in the same home. One drawback is that these studies do not permit us to isolate the effects of nature and nurture. Also,researchers use twin studies to examine the difference between identical and fraternal twins in character traits. From the basic logic of twins, we can infer if a characteristic is genetically influenced (assuming the environmental differences of this trait are the same), because identical twins are more alike in psychological traits.
Adoption studies test the extent to which children adopted to new omes resemble their adopted rather than biological parents. I myself hae observed this since I went to high school with a few adopted kids. They were adopted from Colombia and they acted like their adopted parents, They not only spoke English, but they also shared some personality traits with them as well. Selective placement is a practice utilized by adoption agencies, has caused a drawback in these studies. It is a drawback because investigators will incorrectly correlate the similarity between adopted children and their biological parents as a genetic effect. To improve this situation, they try to control for selective placement by correlating the biological and adoptive parents and their psychological characteristics.
1.
2.
www.personalityresearch.org/papers/haimowitz.html-
Two weeks ago during discussion, we looked at the Bogul family which consisted of mostly criminals and whether nature or nurture influenced their offspring. Another such family with a common trait is the Gliadovskys. They cosist of Kirill and his wife Anna, who are both Russian-born trained concert pianists who have many awards and held performances internationally. They have a daughter, Anastassia, who also is well-trained (by her parents), and has won several awards herself. In some cases, her parents, being both excellent musicians, have shared that certain genetic trait with her. They also raised her in an environment which allowed her to achieve the similar level of success as her parents. With stories like these, the nature-nurture debate will go on indefinitely with more studies to show similar results.
1. www.santamariasun.com/music/6919/a-family-of-genius/

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/2012-the-end-of-the-world/

Many have heard the claim the word is going to end in the year 2012. Whether it's a blockbuster hit, documentary or a newspaper article. There's plenty of information floating around about this claim. The most notorious reasoning is based around the Mayan calendar. The claim is focused around a culture referred to as the Mayans that is thousands of years old. The Mayans calendar lasts approximately 5,125 years, the end of the calendar lies on December 21st 2012. Hence the reason why people believe the world will fall into absolute chaos on this day.

I believe that the reasoning behind this is outlandish and foolish. Scientific thinking principle #5: extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence explains the 2012 phenomenon. The Mayan prediction lacks any type of recent scientific evidence. The Mayans claim that the earth will pass through the "galactic plane" which then will throw the earth off its axes. Although, recent study shows we are 24 light years north of the plane. Earth will not even be crossing this plane for 27 million years (Mccandles).

The claims made in the article provided are all refuted by relative data. Many people are prone to fall into these types of claims because this information is easily available. This article is a prime candidate of pseudoscience, a set of claims that seems scientific but aren't.

Have you ever seen magicians or psychics reading people's minds? People who claim to possess special ability to do supernatural activities? Commonly referred as the "sixth sense," Extrasensory Perception(ESP) is reception of information through mind but not by physical senses. In psychology, ESP is subdivided into three major types: precognition: predicting of events before they occur; telepathy: reading people's minds; and clairvoyance: gaining information from a living, or non-living things, or even events from "the sixth sense." There are many closely related type of supernatural activities and one of them is psychokinesis: moving objects with mental power no assistance. Many of the supernatural tricks that amaze people have not been tested scientifically. In other words, they are tricks that are meant to trick the audiences' eyes. Uri Geller, a well known self-proclaimed psychic, is believed to bend spoons just by staring at it yet he's explanations and descriptions of his tricks are not strong enough to be believed in addition, some even refute against his tricks.
So the dispute about the existence of ESP is ongoing and never seem to be settled. It is not possible to disprove the existence of ESP entirely. Some inexplicable supernatural events are being sought or experienced everyday. However, the experience of it is not enough evidence; in order to assure its existence, some official studies in a lab, where things are measurable, should be done in a careful manner. Have you ever had these kind of events happen to you? Someone you have been thinking about calling you, or when your "sixth sense" kicks in? Many experts view these kind of occasions as no more than beating very small odds. People tend to believe in ESP even if they are told that it does not effect their lives, people still believe in its existence because they remember the very few supernatural instances but not all those times when it did not happen. Still remains in question, is ESP just really all about odds?

Various correlational designs were focused on in Scott Lilienfeld's text. The concept that caught my attention was illusory correlation. An illusory correlation is two variables that are assumed to be related but actually do not. This idea is common today due to lack of examining the whole situation. For example, many individuals focus on crime during a full moon, but they do not consider the number of moments when crime does not happen during a full moon. Lilienfeld stated, "Moreover, when we think about what occurs during full moons, we rely on the availability heuristic, so we tend to remember instances that come most easily to mind." It is important for individuals to not assume these illusions are true without evidence to prove these scenarios.
Illusory correlation was apparent when I played the sport of golf on my high school team. Whenever I marked my ball on the green, it had to be a certain type ball marker for every round. I believed that the ball marker assured excellent performance in my golf game. I focused on the specific rounds that I did well and did not take into account my unsuccessful performances.
Individuals, including myself, have to focus on the events where these instances are not in our favor. There are plenty of golf rounds where I didn't perform well, but relied on availability heuristic. Like my situation, many superstitions are popular throughout society. I have always wondered how these superstitions were started. For example, the superstition of walking under ladders or avoiding black cats to cross your path have always been apparent in our society. The lack of evidence in these findings still surprises me on what individuals assume to be correct.

With the knowledge that human brains and animal brains are extremely similar, a lot can but done in the world of psychology. We have found that while the brains of humans and animals differ in some ways; i.e. size, shape, we have also found that they are very similar in the ways that count. Most of the parts are in the same areas and have the same function. This finding has allowed for many discoveries in the psychology world. Scientists have been able to do studies that would not be possible on humans, for ethical reasons. How does this affect my life? How could it not! From many of the medications I have taken, to treatments I've had for a mental illness, I am certain that the findings by these animals were crucial. There are many reasons that animals are used for research, some of which include needing to know what happens to a living, breathing body when x,y, or z happens and how it can be fixed. Another reason is that we can learn a lot about things like neurons in the brain by studying other animals. I think that this is really important because as unfortunate as it may be and as terrible as it may sound, animals need to be the ones tested for these things, not humans. I mean idealy it would be neither, but if you had to chose over your mom or your dog, I'd certainly hope you'd chose the earlier of the two.

(http://www.animalresearch.info/en/science/whyanimals )

Have you ever jerked suddenly or turned around quickly when you heard someone say your name--even if they weren't necessarily talking to you? It's not just a random reflex. This phenomenon is called the cocktail party effect. Our brains have the ability to pick out important details that are relevant to us (like our names) in an area outside of our immediate sensory stimuli, and instantly perk up when they detect something. This demonstrates the complexity of the brain's capacity to absorb stimuli outside of our attention, and indicate whether or not it is important. Even when the brain isn't receiving stimuli it is still ready if something, like someone saying your name at a party, is deemed important. So next time someone calls out your name and, even if you were completely absorbed in something else, you look, you'll know exactly what just happened.

My Research for this blog post came from the book "Freakonomics".
The first time I saw the movie version of this book the following section caught my attention. The big question is why did the crime rate in United States show a sudden drop in the 1990's?
So let's set the scene. It's the late 1980's. Crime rates have been on a steady increase since the beginning of the decade. The percentage of violent crimes is the worst that the US has ever seen, the epidemic is nationwide and new sources claim the rates will only increase. The crack cocaine market has been picking up speed in the last 10 years and President Reagan's War on Drugs is sending more non-violent drug offenders to jail.
Now let's turn to the 1990's. The increase in violent crime rates has decreased dramatically. Crime is down 20-30% in almost every city in the United States. What happened to the increase that had been forecasted?
Economists hypothesized that better police prevention, crackdown on small crime, increased gun enforcement, changes in the crack market, a better economy and several other factors were contributed factors to the decrease in crime. But these rival hypotheses can only account for about half of the decrease in crime.
So let's rewind again. Now we are in 1973. The landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade just made abortion legal across the country. Before this case only 5 states had legal abortion and these states had the lowest crime rates in the US. So why is this important?
With the legalization of abortion mother's had the ability to chose if they were ready to have a child or not. Therefore, almost a whole generation of unwanted children wasn't born. From studies that we have seen come out of Romania, (when in the 1960's there was a ban on abortions and strict government regulated fertility laws) that when laws were enacted to grow the population to stimulate the economy, the reverse happened. Unwanted children were born in Romania and these children are more likely to commit crimes when of age. In the US in the 1990's would have been the time when these children effected by Roe v. Wade would have been at "peak crime age" causing a sharp decrease in crime rates.

I am having issues uploading my photos so here are the links:
http://www.trailershut.com/movie-posters/Freakonomics-Movie-Poster.jpg
http://www.stlmag.com/Blogs/Look-Listen/October-2010/Review-Freakonomics/freak.jpg

For further readings:
http://www.freakonomics.com/

The Evolution of the Human Brain--What makes us Human?
Around six or seven million years ago what is now the human evolutionary line split off from apes. Two or three million years after that something remarkable happened; our genome evolved at a rapid rate and caused our brain to triple in size. In certain research studies it has been shown that relative brain size is associated with things that we human regard as intelligent such as complex social networks. This change in size and genetic make up played a key role in shaping who we are as humans today and how we live our everyday life.
Physically there isn't much that separates us from apes except of course our brain mass to body mass ratio. We share 96 percent of our genome with apes, so what is it that makes us different? What is it that makes us human? This is not a simple question, and the fact that we ponder it adds to possible explanations. One suggestion could be our ability to communicate and create culture; in short our social dexterity. The development of human language made it possible for us to communicate in very complex ways. Human culture in all of its glory is like no other organism's on Earth. Another idea may be our capacity for introspection. This psychology class, for example, is focused on teaching us about our emotional and mental processes. Many characteristics could be pointed out that differentiate us from our ancestors. I urge you to explore your own answers to these questions and leave you with one final thought, "Any ape can reach for a banana, but only humans can reach for the stars" --V.S. Ramachandran.

There is a legend that a death curse threatens presidents in years evenly divisible by twenty. It started with William Henry Harrison in 1940, and as continued all the way through John F. Kennedy elected in 1960. All of the presidents except for 2 have died in office if they were elected in the years divisible by 20. The only breaks in the pattern were Ronald Regan, elected in 1980, who actually survived an assassination attempt, and George Bush. Although there are rumors of a Native American curse being the cause of the trend, there is really no evidence to support this claim. However the correlation that exits is very interesting. For that reason I decided to examine this claim using the correlation vs causation principle of critical thinking. Since the claim also involves the president dying in office, I decided to research all of the different presidents who have died while in office. The only one that actually breaks the trend of the 20 year curse is Zachary Tayler, who was elected in 1948. Although there is a very clear correlation with this death curse, there is just not enough evidence to claim that there is a curse which causes this pattern. It appears to just be a strange coincidence that has occurred. The full page on this curse can be found at http://www.snopes.com/history/american/curse.asp.

Everyone in the world was created equally. Which means at one point, everyone will eventually die. The thought of dying looms in the back of every single persons mind. It is a universal fear mostly because you could die at any moment. This is a very scary thought for people; what is even scarier is the thought of what happens after you die. This thought frightens people a great deal. This looming thought leads people adopt ideas about afterlife, which reassure us that our lives actually mean something. This method of coping backs up the terror management theory. This is the idea that people accept religious and cultural views that help them believe that there is something for them after they die. That there is an afterlife or a heaven waiting for them. To test this theory, scientists use a thing called mortality salience. The researchers ask participants to either imagine their own deaths, or describe their emotions when thinking about dying. When researchers manipulated these feelings, they found that participants were more likely to accept cultural views that reassured them that their lives are meaningful. Sometimes, the frightening thought of dying even leads people to accept beliefs such as ESP, ghosts, and communication with the dead. This is not to say that these are false beliefs. These claims have not yet been completely evaluated. No researcher has proved any of these beliefs wrong. Terror management theory simply suggests that the thought of death makes people more susceptible to accepting these beliefs. This theory can be applied to everyone in the world. We all hold the same fate of an eventual death and we all need a way of coping with the looming thought of it. The Terror Management Theory proves this.

In chapter 4, we learned about illusions and how the brain can be tricked in seeing something that is not actually there. An optical illusion is textbook-defined as an "image that differs from virtual reality". This is exactly what Julian Beever does for a living. He is a sidewalk chalk artist who has been working all over the world to draw breathtaking optical illusions for almost 20 years. He has worked in the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, the USA and Australia. He uses a process called anamorphosis to create his drawings. Anamorphosis is basically another way of saying that his drawings are only recognizable from one exact angle. Take a look at this example:

Now, here is a picture of that same drawing from the wrong angle:

This type of sidewalk art is becoming more and more popular all over the world, even right on campus! A few days ago, I noticed a man drawing an optical illusion just like Beevers right outside of Coffman Memorial Union (seeing this drawing is what gave me the idea to write this blog post). He was drawing a picture of the Minneapolis skyline, but just by walking by you would have a hard time telling what the picture was of, unless you looked at it from just the right angle. Our brains are easily tricked by this phenomenon because, as we learned from our textbooks, our perception keeps our brain from seeing the reality of what is there. When we look at the above example, we see a swimming pool in the middle of the ground. Obviously, there is no swimming pool; it's just a drawing. We interpret what we see as a three dimensional image when in reality it is only two dimensional. To find out more about Julius Beever and 3d sidewalk chalk drawings, simple google "sidewalk chalk optical illusion" or visit www.juliusbeever.net.

Inattentional blindness can be understood as the failure to see events when one is paying close attention to another event. It is being so completely absorbed in one task, that you completely overlook (or do not see) other things around you. Studies have shown that when a person is attending to one task, he or she can completely miss anything that is unrelated to the task. It sounds unbelievable, but I'm not talking about not noticing simple things or things that are "easy" to miss. I'm talking about things as ridiculous as not noticing a person in a gorilla suit dancing through a frame or a clown riding a unicycle right past them. In the clown experiment, participants were talking on their cell phones and did not notice a clown riding a unicycle past them! Now, you might be thinking, "These are just experiments. A clown? On a unicycle? I would notice something like that!" But, real people, just like you, in the real world are easily distracted.

In the real world, inattentional blindness is known as multi-tasking. And in the real world, there can be dangerous consequences. Recently, two pilots flying a Northwest airplane overshot their destination, Minneapolis, by 150 miles! They weren't on Facebook or Twitter or reading the newspaper. They were multi-tasking. The pilots claim they were trying to figure out their company's new flight crew scheduling system. While flying the plane. And they simply forgot to land! And they did not hear their cockpit instruments beeping at them or the calls from air traffic control. Fortunately, there was a happy ending and this is just a cautionary tale. Unfortunately, too many people think they can multi-task. Many people use their cell phones while driving. According to a recent study, 28% of car accidents involve people using their cell phones while driving.

All of this is to say that we should be aware of the possibility of inattentional blindness. It's okay to not be able to do two (or more) things at once. It's in our wiring.

Everyone knows that the human brain is a crucial part of our bodies for survival. It is the command center for everything that happens inside each one of us, but the one aspect of the human brain that truly makes it amazing is something called plasticity. Simply put, plasticity is the ability of the nervous system, which includes the brain, to change and/or adapt its structure. The brain's structure is always changing, very dramatically early on in childhood, and later in life in a more fine-tuning sense. The reason this is so important in all our lives is because it allows us to not only live better lives by giving us the ability to learn new things, but also its ability to change after damage to the brain or even removal of a portion of it. The human brain can modify the way it functions over time to take over responsibilities that were once controlled by a different part of it.

A great real life example of this can be seen in this video about a little girl who had to have half of her brain removed to stop seizures.

Without the ability of the nervous system to change, this young girl would not be able to live a normal functioning life that she now is living. As for all of us college students, we would have no reason to be here at school without a way for our brains to change and retain the new knowledge that we are gaining everyday in class.

This makes me wonder, where would our civilization be today, as humans, without our brain's incredible ability to change?

We've recently learned about inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness is when our brain fails to comprehend or see something that is in clear focus. After watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7LuvAM6XLg I was shocked to find how much in life I am actually not seeing. The three changes I didn't see were the red hankerchief changing to a green one, the magicians white shirt changed, and the assistant was actually a completely different person.
I read on a previous classmates post that they believe inattentional blindness could have something to do with having a "frantic lifestyle", and I would agree. Everyday people have so much going on in their life whether it is from going to school or work, what directions they need to take, and anything you could possibly imagine. One story that I would like to share about inattentional blindness is when I was going to take a math test. Whenever I am about to take a test I get really bad anxiety and start stressing out big time and I just want it to be over with. As I was about to take my math test my teacher was giving the instructions and specifically said "read the instructions before you begin." After she passed them out, of course I skimmed over the instructions and tried to finish quickly before I forgot anything. I started stressing out when kids were bringing their tests up in less then 10 minutes and laughing. After finishing the whole test and 50 minutes later I brought my test to my teacher. She just starred at me like an idiot and finally said, "I specifcally said read the directions. Did you not see where it said 'If you are reading this put your name on the top and hand this is. You do not need to take this test. You can leave after you see this'? I was so worried about doing well on the test that I completely blew off reading the instructions. I literally skimmed them over and somehow failed to see "YOU DO NOT NEED TO TAKE THIS TEST." -- I truly believe when you have so much going on you don't realize half of the stuff going on because you are so focused on what you think you should be focused on. I was so focused on doing well and remembering equations I didn't focus on the instructions right in my face. I never forget to read the instructions now :)

The placebo effect: a phenomenon in which a patient's symptoms can heal simply because the patient has faith in the medicine he/she is receiving, regardless of the medicine's actual effectiveness. Our text book defines this concept in the much simpler terms of "improvement resulting from the mere expectations of improvement." I find it fascinating how powerful the effects of expectations can be. In fact, after doing a slight bit of research, I found the many physicians commonly prescribe placebos as treatment in regular clinic practice. More on this can be read in this TIME magazine article:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1700079,00.html

This brings me to wonder, how effective has medication that I've received throughout my life been and how much of the recovery was due to the placebo effect?

The placebo effect has become a common term in medical practice. Its strengths and weaknesses are still being uncovered. For example, from research studies, how the placebo is delivered seems to have an influence on the magnitude of its effect. Placebos delivered through needle have more immediate effects than those swallowed, and similarly, placebos prescribed in higher doses tend to generate a greater effect than those of lower doses. Of course, we must consider a possible correlation-causation fallacy in this claim, but with effective replicability, it is safe to deem it valid. After taking this into account, many more questions arise in my head, as I'm sure they do for you too. Have I ever fallen prey to the placebo effect? Is use of placebos in prescribed medicine justified? Is the placebo effect taken advantage of in cases where actual medication is ineffective? If not, can it be?

Have you ever looked at a friend or family member and think that something about them seems a bit different than normal? Not just something different like a new hair cut or clothes, but almost like that person has been replaced by an almost identical imposter. People with Capgra's Syndrome believe that their loved ones, pets, and sometimes even inanimate objects have been replaced by replicas.

Although there are many theories about the cause for this disorder, the most prevalent theory is that it is caused by of a disturbance in the visualization process that takes part throughout many areas in the brain. When you see an object or a person there are usually emotions tied to you seeing that person or object; and it is believed that patients with Capgra's don't have that emotional connection due to some sort of brain injury. A majority people who are afflicted with Capgra's have some sort of psychotic disorder. It is believed that damage to the amygdala is the main cause. The amygdala is the gateway from the temporal lobe, where we identify the thing we are seeing, and the limbic system, where we generate an emotional response from what we see.

Because Capgra's syndrome is very rare, little is known how to treat it. Although some patients do recover from the disorder and medication may help manage it. Unfortunately for many sufferers, no amount of medication or treatment can be used to cure them.

I find illusions to be very interesting and they are also important to help us learn more about how we perceive things. It is interesting how our minds and our senses play tricks on us, especially when most of us probably feel that our body systems should be flawless. The moon illusion is a great example that shows us our errors in perceiving distance. Just because the moon is on the horizon line doesn't mean that the moon is in fact larger when it is in that location in the sky. The moon is still about 240,000 miles away no matter where it is in the sky. It just looks larger because it is by the horizon so there is something else to compare it to.

Another great illusion is the Ames room illusion. This one messes with our ability to perceive size, especially when someone very young looks larger than someone who is much older. This illusion is created by a room shaped like a trapezoid and that has slanted walls and ceilings and floors that are inclined. For example, putting the older person in the far back corner and the younger person in the corner closest to the view hole will make the younger person appear much larger in size.
Example of the ames room illusion:
http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2010/05/ames-room-illusion.html

Illusions are a great way of showing us we aren't paying attention to. Maybe illusions can help us be better critical thinkers so we analyze more about what is in our surroundings.

Our brains process sensory inputs unconsciously all the time, such as when we make slight steering adjustments as we drive a vehicle. It is necessary for our brains to process certain inputs unconsciously, as we would experience sensory overload if we were to consciously think about every input we're exposed to. Due to the fact that we naturally engage in subliminal information processing, such concepts as subliminal advertising is very intriguing to many people. Subliminal advertising stems from the idea of subliminal perception, the processing of sensory information that occurs below the threshold of consciousness. In compelling experiments, it has been shown that subliminal perception is a very real event. Studies such as the one in which researchers subliminally presented words pertaining to religious figures showed that the subjects were less likely to cheat than those that had not been exposed to the religious words. These experiments provide proof for the influence subliminal messages have on our conscious actions. From subliminal perception comes the debated idea of subliminal persuasion, a category under which subliminal advertising falls. Although most researchers believe that subliminal persuasion is not effective and lacks supporting evidence, many people of the public are still interested in the topic. I don't really believe it, but I think it's something to be aware of, as it could apply to everyone's life in some way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

This video shows a very interesting example of subliminal perception.

It took me a while to decide which topic I wanted to write about, but I finally decided on TOUCH!

youtube.com

Have you ever examined your fingertips and thought to yourself, "Wow! There are a lot of free nerve endings in there!"? Yea, me either. We tend not to dwell on the technical reasons and definitions for things, but free nerve endings are responsible for our ability to sense touch, temperature, and pain. I'd tell you the technical definition of how we are able to touch, but you will have already experienced mechanoreceptors traveling in your somatic nerves to your spinal cord faster than you can even think about touching your keyboard.

Touch informs us of our immediate surroundings. This is VERY important! Without touch I wouldn't be able to feel the keyboard under my fingertips, or my hair tucked behind my ears, or the glasses on my face. Can you even imagine a life where we didn't comprehend touch? You wouldn't be able to feel your boyfriend kiss you goodbye, the clothes on your skin, or when you step in a puddle of water.

Touch is something that we all deal with every second of everyday. Personally, my dad would get mad at me because I tend to get irritated when people or things touch me! Don't touch me! Our lips, face, hands, and feet also have a high amount of free nerve endings--which means that we detect touch easier. I would be sitting on the couch with my family and if my mom, dad, or brother would brush their arm or something against my feet, I just could not handle it! I'd move instantly.

It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile!

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This particular claim is still undecided. I think it's important to view 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence when examining this concept. Partially because I think it would be difficult to determine exactly how many muscles it takes to frown and then to see how many it takes to smile. Then you'd have to consider if maybe another variable affects a person, and maybe it takes more muscles for them to smile. If I am considering correlation v. causation, I'd take in to consideration a variable in the situation. What if someone was injured somehow in the face, and physically it took them more muscles to smile? There are so many other aspects to consider then just the actual number of how many muscles it takes to smile and to frown.