October 2011 Archives

One test of the Pavlovian conditioning model of tolerance is whether conditional drug compensatory responses are engaged by predrug cues. In one experiment with rats, injections of alcohol in the context of one set of stimuli were alternated with injections of saline solution with a different set of stimuli for several days. Each day, the rats' body temperatures were measured. Alcohol lowered body temperatures the first time it was given, but this effect diminished over the course of the repeated alcohol administration. that is, tolerance developed to the "hypothermic" effect of alcohol. To determine if a drug compensatory CR was engaged by the usual predrug cues, the rats were given a placebo. In a placebo test, saline solution is used instead of the drug. The placebo CR test was given to some rats under conditions where they were expecting alcohol; that is, saline was administered with the usual predrug cues. For the remaining rats, the placebo CR test was given under conditions where there should have been no expectancy of alcohol. Rats given saline with the usual predrug cues had elevated body temperatures, while rats given saline without the usual predrug cues showed little temperature change. Thus, it was possible to directly observe the drug compensatory CR, in simple terms, going through your pre party (drinking) rituals literally makes you hotter in anticipation (of alcohol ;).
http://www.uvm.edu/~biopsych/outline/DrugsOutline.htm

The two theories of classical- and operant conditioning are in every situation related to learning in our daily life. We always face those situations, weather it is working harder and more efficient in the office when we know our manager is around who might punish us for not working hard enough, in school with the grading system, in sportive activities or teaching our dog new abilities.
Every event that is mentioned is related to operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is always present either if we face a reward or a punishment for our behavior. We differentiate those in either positive and negative reinforcement or positive and negative punishment. Speaking of a positive reinforcer we tend to present a new stimulus that strengthens the probability of behavior. Where you remove a stimulus strengthens the probability of behavior. Negative doesn't have to mean that is a negative outcome for the person, just that a stimuli is removed. A positive punishment is administer a stimulus that one wished to avoid and a negative is a removed stimulus that one wished to experience. I my opinion punishment is more dominant if it comes to learning. I am not speaking of strong punishment, for me punishment is already burning the hand on the hot iron. After experiencing that one wants to avoid the experience. If a person knows that there will be a negative outcome for the person if he doesn't do it, this person will try even more to adjust to their learning goal, by putting more effort to either avoid it, or experience it. Either ways the learning process will show effort. But don't forget about the reinforcement, which is very important as well for a progressive in learning process. It is the same as the punishment: People want to pursuit rewards. But it might be dangerous that people might not notice that they might be influenced on their behavior by getting rewards for "good" and punishment for "bad" behavior, as it is demonstrated in a funny way in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euINCrDbbD4

Source:
Youtube
Psychology-From Inquiry to Understanding, Scott Lilienfeld

Long-term memory is essentially the storing of information for an extended period of time. It is unfathomable how the brain can recall a brief distant memory instantly yet not be able to recall material that was studied for hours leading up to an exam. Aside from test scores and arguments about past events, long-term memory is also being linked to overall brain health. Recently it seems as though the belief that a healthy memory can lead to a healthy brain is becoming more of a topic of focus in the health field. The success of books like "How to Master Your Memory" and pills like "Brain Right" show that a vast population of people are buying into strengthening their memories in hopes of living healthier in the future and the prevention of brain diseases.
In a more personal way, the use of pills like adderall by college students is similar to these memory improvement practices as this pill is used to obtain a higher amount of knowledge/memory by being able to focus more in class. According to CBS's Popping Pills a Popular Way to Boost Brain Power article, "a surprising number of students are turning to drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, originally developed to treat attention disorders, to boost their brain power and help them make the grade." Here we see that the external support is being sought out by students to increase their focus in class and to ultimately increase their retention rates. The extent to which pills like adderall aid in student's grades and memory is hard to argue against. In fact, according to the article, nearly 50-60% of college students surveyed say that they use adderall as a aid in the classroom. Whether or not the success of these students is a correlation vs causation example is a different subject but I believe that, in time, these percentages will continue to rise. Since pills like adderall were originally developed to help people with ADHD focus, I wonder what pills scientists are currently producing that focuses more directly on memory. The abilities of the brain and memory retention combined with external aids will certainly continue to be linked as people search for that extra edge is this ever-competing world.

CBS article
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-6422159.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

10 ways to improve memory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6pg7VEE69s&feature=related

This week I was particularly interested in a concept from the reading regarding the idea that there is a critical period for learning a second language. The age and or developmental stage at which you learn a language determines the parts of the brain that are later in life used to speak that language. The reading mentions a study done on critical periods for language learning involving testing of immigrants' grammatical skills. Results of the study identify that the highest overall language proficiency is held by immigrants whom arrived between the ages of one and seven, after which proficiency gradually begins to decline. The study also goes on to state that "Syntax and pronunciation are more vulnerable to effects of the age of exposure than is vocabulary" (Lilienfeld 294). I think that this concept is important because of many reasons including immigrant accents, and overall ability to fully learn a second language, which are personal attributes that are prone to judgment in today's society. This concept applies to my life because I immigrated to America at the age of six, and was able to learn and have enough exposure to the English language prior to this conceptual age seven cut-off. As far as I believe, I don't have an accent and can easily shift between two languages utilizing proper pronunciation, but my parents, who learned English at a much older age, cannot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DryHvm8-jxw

In this relative video, Norman Doidge, an author, psychiatrist, and researcher, speaks about the plasticity of the brain, and gives his reasoning behind why it gets harder to learn a second language at later stages in life. He doesn't necessarily agree with the concept of critical learning periods. He states that "It is hard to learn a second language not because the critical period for learning is over, but because we are truly getting better and better at our first language the older we get." I found it interesting that he particularly touches on the notion of accents in explaining that "Our brains are too rigid," and that accents result from the brain's competitive nature leading to "The more over learned activity (one's first language/familiarity with that language's pronunciation) always winning." Reflecting on the reading's concept in mix with Doidge's perspective, I wonder if studies have been done on how strong of a correlation there is (if one exists) between vocabulary recognition/ability to guess correct definitions of unfamiliar words and bilingual individuals.

A few years ago, whenever I had a strange dream, I would always go to Dream Moods, a site specializing and dream analyses, and search for possible meaning and explanations to my dreams. For example, I recall having a dream in which I got into a terrible car accident, to which Dream Moods says "to dream of a car accident symbolizes your emotional state. You may be harboring deep anxieties and fears. Are you 'driving' yourself too hard? This dream may tell you to slow down before you hit disaster. You need to rethink or re-plan your course of actions and set yourself on a better path." I would always take every analysis to heart, reflect on each dream "definition" and apply it's meaning to my life.

The neurocognitive theory of dreaming, however, completely disagrees with the notion that dreams contain any signs or hidden meanings. Rather, as page 176 of Scott Lilienfeld's Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding states, the neurocognitive theory suggests that "dreams are a meaningful product of our cognitive capacity which shape what we dream about". Essentially, our dreams typically reflect our daily lives and what is on our mind during the day is likely to play a role in our dreams at night. Just last night, for example, I had a dream that I started sobbing uncontrollably in the Wilson Library computer lab because I was under so much stress with all of the homework I had to do. Sadly to say, this is not at all far from the truth.

Prior to even reading chapter five of Lilienfeld's text, I had noticed a decrease in bizarre and peculiar dreams, but rather my dreams had become boring and straightforward, typically involving a day at work or having a conversation with a friend and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Thus, I found it interesting to read that "non-REM dreams often are shorter, are more thought-like and repetitive, and deal with everyday topics of current concern to us" (17). With my sleep cycle being considerably condensed due to a heavy workload, this coincides with my boring dreams. If I am sleeping for shorter periods of time, then of course I won't as often be entering REM sleep, the deepest stage of sleep, thus explaining my dull dreams.

In the very first episode of the sketch comedy series The Kids in the Hall, a man has a rather intimate dream involving a pear:

Dream Mood's definition entry for "pear" shows up as "to see a pear in your dream symbolizes the womb and fertility. Thus, it may refer to some female in your life. It is also often associated with the Virgin Mary. The dream may also be a pun on a 'pair' of something." Does the man's dream relate to baby making, or does it relate to his love of pears? As the final seconds of the clip reveal, the man actually just really loves pears.

So what does this all come down to? Scientists have been unable to come up with a definitive finding related to dreams and their meaning, and we may never know exactly what our more atypical dreams mean. It's interesting to see what dream dictionaries have to say about our dreams, but typically the answers are contrived and unlikely. Instead, I agree with the neurocognitive theory in that our dreams are simply a reflection of our every day life. But as for the meaning behind our farfetched dreams? The world may never know...

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/11/the-office-altoid-experiment-1499823

In discussion last week when we were talking about learning and memory this video is the first thing that came to my mind. I was surprised that when I found this video they mentioned the experiment about Pavlov's discovery from the book in this video. This link provides perfect insight into how classical conditioning works. Basically classical conditioning is when a person reacts a certain way because of a certain condition. In the video link, Jim was giving altoids to Dwight whenever his computer made the windows noise. After doing this consistently many times, Dwight got in the habit of expecting an altoid when heard the noise from Jims computer. To break down the experiment, the computer noise was the conditioned stimulus (CS). The conditioned response(CR) was Dwight wanting an altoid when he heard the noise. The unconditioned stimulus(UCS) was Jim giving the altoid to Dwight whenever the noise rang. The unconditioned response(UCR) was Dwight reaching for the altoid when he heard the noise. This experiment was very similar to Pavlov's experiment with the dogs. I'm curious to try an experiment like this myself so see the effects for real. Obviously this video is staged by actors and I wonder how long it would take for this effect to take on humans compared to animals. I also have been more curious on if there are certain things I respond to that are similar to this.

Most of us, if not all, have had false memories ranging from mild to extreme cases at least once in our life. It's a "shame" to say I've had more than my share of false memories. I've also seen my friends aruging because each of them think they were right and both of them based it on their memories. Like earlier today, one of my friend, A, insisted that she already gave my other friend paperworks so she can get on with planning things. But my other friend, B, said that she "remembered" that she didnt get any paperworks so she have not done any planning. And they kept going back and forth trying to prove that they were right by using their memory. There could be two scenario to this sistuation. Maybe A really didn't give B paperworks, or B is just trying to make up an excuse so A wouldn't get mad and in doing so, B could be implanting false memory in B's head if she believe it. Does this sounds familiar? All of us have probably done something similar to this.

As I'm learning more about false memories and other factors related to it, I realized that if someone wants to plan false memory in my head, I would be an easy victim. I can be really gullible and forgetful sometimes. And when I dont remember something clearly in my head, someone could easily tell me otherwise and I would believe it. It's kind of scary to have that sort of realization, especially after the Paul Ingram article. It still blows my mind how he was fooled by his memory into thinking that he have done all those terrible things. Sometimes I would unintentionally implant false memories in my own head. For example, whenever I'm in a hurry to to leave the house, the last few minutes before I leave are blurry in my memory, because I would be rushing to do things and get ready. One time, after driving for a few minutes, I would stop and wonder if I had turn off the TV correctly. Since I can't remember clearly in my head, I try to make up false memories and reassume myself that I did turn it off.

Most of us, if not all, have had false memories ranging from mild to extreme cases at least once in our life. It's a "shame" to say I've had more than my share of false memories. I've also seen my friends aruging because each of them think they were right and both of them based it on their memories. Like earlier today, one of my friend, A, insisted that she already gave my other friend paperworks so she can get on with planning things. But my other friend, B, said that she "remembered" that she didnt get any paperworks so she have not done any planning. And they kept going back and forth trying to prove that they were right by using their memory. There could be two scenario to this sistuation. Maybe A really didn't give B paperworks, or B is just trying to make up an excuse so A wouldn't get mad and in doing so, B could be implanting false memory in B's head if she believe it. Does this sounds familiar? All of us have probably done something similar to this.

As I'm learning more about false memories and other factors related to it, I realized that if someone wants to plan false memory in my head, I would be an easy victim. I can be really gullible and forgetful sometimes. And when I dont remember something clearly in my head, someone could easily tell me otherwise and I would believe it. It's kind of scary to have that sort of realization, especially after the Paul Ingram article. It still blows my mind how he was fooled by his memory into thinking that he have done all those terrible things. Sometimes I would unintentionally implant false memories in my own head. For example, whenever I'm in a hurry to to leave the house, the last few minutes before I leave are blurry in my memory, because I would be rushing to do things and get ready. One time, after driving for a few minutes, I would stop and wonder if I had turn off the TV correctly. Since I can't remember clearly in my head, I try to make up false memories and reassume myself that I did turn it off.

Classical conditioning is a technique of behavior modification, it uses two different stimuli, one which already causes a certain behavior, and the other which the experimenter wants to begin causing that same behavior. The first stimulus is presented along with the second stimulus, and after enough repetitions, the subject learns to engage in the behavior when the second stimulus is presented alone.
In class, when we were learning about the concept of conditioning, I kept wondering what the limits to this extraordinary method of behavior control were. In a way, it seems like almost all of our behavior is defined by conditioning (that is, almost all of our behavior seems learned), from walking and talking to reading and interacting with people. Even the way we deal with undesirable situations and our own shortcomings seem learned to some extent. For example, if we learn, early on, how to behave a certain way towards certain situations, could those behaviors be changed later on in life by using conditioning techniques? The concept of conditioning is extremely important, in that, it has countless practical implications and uses. One such use is (famously) discussed in the fictional book (and movie) A Clockwork Orange. In the movie, a brazen and habitual criminal is put in prison and is selected to be part of an experiment regarding conditioning and criminal behavior. He's put through a series of treatments that couple a deathly sick feeling with videos of rape and violence. After treatment, he cannot stand to hurt another person, even if that person is harming him. The conditioned response (sick feeling) always outweighs the potential benefits of engaging in rape or violence. Of course, the conditioned response does not need to be a punishment, but the example in A Clockwork Orange still a good example of using conditioning for practical purposes.
The idea of conditioning became even more interesting when I began learning about Oxytocin and Vasopressin (hormones associated with love and companionship) in my biology class. If conditioning is really as powerful as I've read, could someone hypothetically control the hormone balance while presenting specific stimuli to the subject in order to significantly encourage certain behaviors like helping others or working hard? If I wanted to love exercising, but didn't, would taking a Vasopressin supplement while exercising help?

I recently read an online article that purported the ability to "hack" one's mind. I went into the article very skeptically. The author tried to claim that with simple mind tricks, a person could "...change just about anything about... [themselves]". At first I assumed the article was merely popular psychology and wouldn't contain any true science, but much of what was discussed was at least at its core based upon real psychological science.

What I have to say about this article is that they make some extraordinary claims with the science. The only real "techniques" that the article discussed for changing your mind was through simple tricks like word association and emotion mimicking. In discussion we talked somewhat about both of these little psychology mind tricks, so I know some of the science behind them, and I just find it hard to believe that they could be extrapolated to the extent that this article states.

It's a classic popular psychology article. What surprised me was the links to two legitimate sources, both academic articles on the Yale website. Along with that it linked to two less legitimate sources, Wikipedia articles. Together these sources by no means substantiated their claims, and I feel as though the author included them mostly as a way to gain credibility.

In the end I feel as though the article is not completely without merit, but like most other self-help articles its entertainment value is worth more than its educational value.

Infantile amnesia is the failure to remember things before the before a young age around 3 years old. I think this concept is interesting and important, I believe it is important because people do tend to wonder why they can't remember things before a certain age. Infantile amnesia is the term for what they are thinking or feeling. Since there is a term for it, one might feel more comforted. My earliest memory is of my great grandpa and sitting on his lap in his front yard watching the annual Raspberry parade. I don't know why this is my early memory or if it is even for sure my earliest memory but I know he died when I was 4 so that seems like it would be the earliest. Scientologists argue that one can go back to memories in the womb, and that they can remember hearing things their mother yelled or spoke. They claim this but it can not yet be proven. I don't believe this because if it were true, it would be more common and brought up more. Research studies also show that culture can determine how old we are during our earliest memory and what is about, also how it is portrayed. In the article "Infantile Amnesia: Gauging Children's Earliest Memories," it expressed that infantile amnesia is not just in adults but in children also, ages ranging from four to thirteen. The younger the child the more often their earliest memory would change. As we age we tend to lose memories too. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110511074803.htm)

Planet of the Apes
I loved the most recent Planet of the Apes movie. The concept of intelligence enhancing super drugs is very interesting to me. However, the aspect of this movie that is more relevant and feasible in the realm of actually psychology is that of communication between chimpanzees and humans. Specifically, I am interested in chimpanzees who can communicate using sign language. Chimpanzees lack the necessary physiological structures to produce phonemes of the human language, so researchers focus on non-verbal communication in order to assess the ability of chimps to comprehend and relay human language. One of the first and most prolific users of sign language was a chimp named Washoe, who mastered around 350 words. Washoe, a female chimpanzee was raised like a human child, though given only non-vocal communication. The researchers hoped this would help to simplify the process of learning ASL for Washoe. Not only did she learn 350 different signs, she also began teach other chimpanzees around her some of the signs. This fact is represented fictitiously in Rise of the Planet of the Apes as the main character Caesar teaches fellow monkeys to communicate extensively using sign language. This process is of course aided immensely by the fact that the apes have all been exposed to a cognition enhancing drug, but nonetheless, it is an exciting moment in the movie and an exciting idea in real life. Apes already communicate amongst themselves on a relatively complex level compared to other mammals. I would be very interested to know the boundaries of ape communication, and to then compare these to humans. The differences are obviously great, but I think the exact magnitude of the different communicating abilities could give a great insight into our many commonalities with our last common ancestors, and even some insights into how our brains currently work.

In the Lilienfeld text I found the section on The Seven Sins of Memory very interesting. Daniel Schacter summarized tricks that our memory can play on us with these seven sins. These memory tricks can lead us into making errors with our memory. I found a few of them worth discussing.

Bias
This memory sin is very common for people. This sin has to do a great deal with stereotypes. If we expect someone to act a certain way, we will probably remember them acting this way when they didn't.

Persistence
The book provides a great quote to explain this sin, "The past is never dead; it's not even past." This quote by author William Faulkner states that things in your past can linger in your mind and screw up your thoughts. This is a common sin for everyone. It would be quite the skill if someone can erase their past from their mind.

Absentmindedness

This is memory sin that I find myself committing all the time. Absentmindedness occurs when someone gets distracted and forgets something. This occurs because we're not paying full attention or we are retrieving memories we have already stored in our mind.

Cesar Millan calls himself the Dog Whisperer because of his work "rehabilitating dogs and training humans" (http://www.cesarsway.com/askcesar/aboutcesar). The tools he uses are an amalgamation of behavioral learning strategies -- like the ones we studied in class -- and communication methods that he believes dogs understand innately.

For example, consider the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cffj0vOBWsc. In this video, the Dog Whisperer uses punishment to show the misbehaving dog that his actions are unacceptable. When the small dog barks at the larger dog, the Dog Whisperer touches it in a way it does not like, then carries the small dog closer to the larger dog with its back turned. These are examples of positive punishment because elements are being added to the situation. Negative elements are paired with barking to condition the small dog.

Later in the video, the Dog Whisperer takes the misbehaving dog for a walk with other dogs, and he explains that the misbehaving dog needs to see other dogs walk obediently so it can model their behavior. This is an example of observational learning. It depends partly on the Dog Whisperer's theory that dogs have an innate understanding of a pack.

Finally, in the last segment of the video, the Dog Whisperer returns the misbehaving dog to the original scene. This time the dog remembers the punishments from its previous experience. The Dog Whisperer makes sounds that remind the dog of these punishments. Also, the dog observes the other dogs remaining calm. Together, these strategies successfully make the misbehaving dog learn how to remain calm around unknown dogs.

Talking about misinformation effect, we are often given wrong information of what happened in the past which leads to false memories.Actually we are often deceived by our memories just because of the misinformation effect. I'm always in such scenario：When my family got together and had family dinner, we especially the adults talked of some funny things happened within family before. But the tricky part is that, almost everyone of the have a slightly different version of the story and they loved to put the versions on kids and kind of "force" them to agree with their memories. At last, I always got confused about the actual details of that event and even felt some memories reoccurred to me suddenly from nowhere which I can't be sure with.

I just talked about my own experience of implanted false memories as an example of misinformation effect. And I think maybe we can provide some misleading information to ourselves so that we can forget some unhappy things happened to us. If we do so, it would be a great relief for us.

But there is one thing I'm quite confused about. Nowadays, I think police rely more and more on polygraph to detect if a person truly commits to a crime. But if as I said, people can truly believe the memories implanted by themselves, then can polygraph still identify who is telling the truth?

The section on operant conditioning really got me thinking because its really interesting to me how we can extrapolate these experiments with animals into understanding how operant conditioning can be applied to human behaviors. Before I started reading the chapter I would have been sure that a fixed ratio schedule would be more beneficial in changing some ones behavior. Its just intuitive to me that if one is knowingly getting a reward after a fixed number positive behaviors they would be more likely to continue those good behaviors. It turns out that conditioning is more effective on a variable ratio schedule where reinforcement is given the same amount on average, but varies randomly. This got me to thinking about our day-to-day relationships, whether it is with friends or our girlfriends/boyfriends. I've always been taught good morals that were instilled in my through my parents, that should be repeated continuously with no variation (basically a fixed ratio schedule). However, it always was interesting and irked me how in romantic relationships men and women seemingly were attracted to people who treated them poorly a high percentage of the time over those who treat someone better with more consistency. Then I realized that this is explained well with the variable ratio schedule. If treating your partner/friend well is a stimulus that keeps someone interested in a relationship, then according to the variable ratio schedule its not optimal to be nice consistently. When this variable schedule of good behavior is implemented it's in the partners best interest to stick around longer to ensure that a reward is received (good behavior from ones partner) through droughts of good behavior. In relationships with friends or with partners, my morals suggest to be nice to others no matter what consistently. This contrasts with the optimal conditioning suggested in the book (variable ratio schedule), which is scientifically more effective in emitting a beneficial response. I'm at a crossroads based on the values my parents have taught me, which seem correct, and what is deemed optimal conditioning.

Mnemonic devices are perhaps the most helpful and interesting aids we have in memory retention. The concept seems contrary to intuition. Pointing one stimulus to a separate, and sometimes completely irrelevant, stimulus would seem to just add an extra step in the remembering process. However, our brains don't work in a simple point retrieval method for information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8S8V9VEFyI&feature=related A better interpretation of memory can be seen by BBC's description of falling dominoes. Each piece of information points to another one that ends up finding the information needed. It is in this way that mnemonic devices add an extra pathway, making information retrieval easier. BBC's prime example of this is a man who is able to memorize the exact position of a playing card in ten separate decks of cards. He does not have a photographic memory, but by applying pictures to each card in a deck and then forming a story with these pictures, he is able to memorize the cards. This is similar to the Psychology book's suggestion of a paired-associate task in order to memorize a series of words. Grouping the words "dog" and "shoe" by picturing a dog wearing a shoe makes the list far easier to remember. Although this strategy is extremely useful, there are no real guidelines for a person to be successful using it. This forces a person to be creative in constructing mnemonics in order to aid in remembering facts or events. So the problem is not the mnemonics themselves, but helping people apply this technique in their daily lives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111900891_pf.html

In this section, we've been discussing the mechanisms of memory and the phenomenon of false memories - how they can be created and the consequences they can have, such as in the case of Paul Ingram, whose bizarre series of presumably false confessions we discussed last week. In the interest of obtaining information or confessions from reluctant talkers by means short of torture, people have for centuries sought a reliable truth serum to aid in interrogations. The idea of a truth serum goes back to ancient Rome - Pliny the Elder wrote, "in vino veritas" ("in wine there is truth"), referring to the less inhibited speech of intoxicated persons. A few drugs were considered as possible "truth serums" in the early part of the 20th century, but by the 1950s most scientists had declared the entire idea invalid. Still, between 1953 and 1970, the CIA's Project MK-ULTRA tested various possible truth serums, but the project came to an infamous roadblock when Frank Olsen jumped to his death from a hotel window while under the influence of CIA-administered LSD. Since then, very little research has been done in search of a drug that could force interrogation subjects to talk or prevent them from lying, and most scientist have considered the idea unsavory and obsolete. But according to a 2006 article in the Washington Post, new research on oxytocin has led to its consideration as a possible interrogation-enhancing drug, in light of studies that show it promotes trust in situations where there is risk or uncertainty. Even if such an application were possible, the ethical boundaries within which it could be used would be both difficult to solidify and undoubtedly very restrictive, but the idea that the chemicals our own brains make could be manipulated so directly to force us to do things we don't want to do is both fascinating and deeply disturbing.

Classical conditioning is a type of learning involving five components: a neutral stimulus, unconditional stimulus, unconditional response, conditional stimulus, and a conditional response. In Pavlov's classical conditioning case he started with a metronome as a neutral stimulus which he transformed into a conditional stimulus with the use of meat powder. The meat powder in this case is the unconditional stimulus because it triggers the unconditional response of salivation from the dog. After repeatedly pairing the metronome with meat powder the dog started to salivate after only hearing the previously neutral stimulus. Research findings like these are important because it shows how much influence we can have over someone or something's mind. By pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditional response we can produce the reaction that we desire. There are many real world applications for this research; for example, when people try to train their dogs or in the conquering of phobias. Say I am deathly afraid of giving public speeches, if I were in a calm environment with people that I am familiar with I would have less anxiety than if I were in a room with people that I don't know.

The process of classical conditioning came up while I was watching one of my favorite television shows, The Office. In this modern case of classical conditioning, Jim Halpert trains his co-worker Dwight Shrute to expect a reward every time he powers down his computer.

- Here is the link to the video: http://vimeo.com/5371237

We learned in the text that Habituation is the process in which organisms respond less strongly to repeated stimuli over time. We also learn that the process is accompanied by a progressive decrease in the release of serotonin in the synapse. I found this very interesting because a popular designer drug, Ecstasy (or MDMA), is known to cause excessive release of serotonin from the neurons. Along with euphoria and extreme moodlift, MDMA is known to cause increased awareness and appreciation of senses and tactile sentations.
I've been to a couple raves here and there and have encountered a good deal of people rolling on the club drug, ecstasy, and I've noticed that they are often touching soft items (like fuzzy hats, boots, and apparel) and massaging each other.. These behaviors are very likely due to the fact that such a huge rush of the neurotransmitter, serotonin, in the users' synapses cause sensitization.
So, in some way, MDMA affects our bodies' ability to learn by preventing habituation. If one were to take ecstasy, he or she would be sensitized without any repeated exposure to a stimuli.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_effects.shtml
http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/ecstasy.html

As a natural blonde, when I came across the claim on snopes.com that stated that "A study undertake by the World Health Organization concluded that natural blondes will be extinct within 200 years", I started laughing. How on earth could anyone predict this?? Yes, blonde hair is a recessive gene, but there is no way that someone could actually predict how long it would be around.

So..a little science lesson, for those of you that don't know what it means that the blonde hair trait is a recessive gene. In the picture below is 4 flowers..lets says both parents have brown hair..they would have to both carry the blonde trait and from there..there is only one combination that would make their child have blonde hair (see the white flower in the picture below). Just because that it is a recessive gene, does not mean it will go extinct. People will always have that recessive gene, so there will always be a chance of having a blonde baby (as long as you and your partner both carry the gene).

This claim is very obviously an extraordinary claim. There is NO evidence of this claim what-so-ever. There are some articles but none of them are backed up with actual studied and evidence. In one article they even claimed that the last blonde child would be born in Finland in 2202. There is absolutely no way to tell know this claim, I mean really? Just because Finland has the highest population of natural blondes does not mean the last blonde will be born there..and in 2202. WHO WOULD BELIEVE THIS? (obviously not this blonde!)

This claim is also not falsifiable. There is no way to design a study to disprove this claim, so how can it be right? ..that's right..IT CAN'T BE!

On snopes.com they said that this very false claim was most likely started by some prankster in their teens. My thought is that is was probably a brunette that is just jealous (sorry to all the brunettes)!!

You know what they say..blondes do have more fun :)

While trying to think of past experiences that related to the last few chapters I came across the section about conditional taste aversion. Conditional taste aversion occurs when someone ingests something that doesn't agree with their stomach and makes them ill. This can happen with food or drink and has the ability to ruin it for the person for years or even the rest of their life. And it only needs to happen once.

This happened to me in high school. The first time I ever drank was with my best friend in my parent's basement. He happened to procure a bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum and we thought it would be a great idea to drink the entire thing between the two of us. WRONG! I ended up next to the garbage can for a couple of hours that night and had a little bit of explaining to do the next morning.

After that night, I couldn't drink or even smell spiced rum without gagging and feeling nauseas, which was probably a good thing because I was in high school. One interesting thing about conditioned taste aversions is that they are extremely specific, and my case was no different. I learned to like other types of alcohol but not rum. I have mostly recovered from it and can now drink rum without much problem (unless it's in excess!) but it has been taken six or seven years for me to get over it.

Happy Halloween!

Spontaneous recovery is a kind of recovery of an extinct conditioned response in exposure to the corresponding conditioned stimulus. This phenomenon often happens after the extinction process of our learning. I quite believe this concept because it is very related to our daily life. We often find that when we hear the song of our childhood, we still feel happy as we did before although we have heard the song for a long time. In this case, conditioned response is the happy feeling and the conditioned stimulus is the song. So I believe the concept is reasonable.
Furthermore, I find a video on the Youtube, which can also support the concept. The video shows the personal presentation of a boy, who recovered from stutter. In the video, the boy at first introduced himself very fluently but later when he got nervous, he began stuttering again. The phenomenon that he stutter again is a kind of spontaneous recovery. The boy had recovered from stutter for a long time. In common, he would have no problem make a personal introduction. However, when the boy felt nervous, which plays a role of a conditioned stimulus, the spontaneous recovery made him come to the conditioned response,stuttering. This case can strongly support the concept.
On this concept, I still have some questions. Must the spontaneous recovery happen? And what other ways may the spontaneous recovery take place in? How can we explain the spontaneous recovery in biological way?

Memory is very important for everyone! Memory is the retention of information over time and is very important as it holds key information that we need. In marching band we learn music and movements on a field to create elaborate shapes and cool forms on a football field. Learning new music and positions on a field is not that easy but with tons of practice (or rehearsal) helps keeps information on the notes of a song or where we exactly move in our heads. In marching band we learn new music and a show every week and most of these information goes into our memory and are most likely to become long-term memory, especially the shows. For music the marching band is expected to know and be able to play songs we learn for majority of the season, but for show we just need to remember the current one we are working on. With learning a new show though there is retroactive interference. We easily forget the old show from the prior week since we have to learn new positions (dots) for the new show. Its very important for the band to rehearse music over and over so we can learn the music and be able to play it perfectly. When I learn music I do a lot of repetition and also try chunking the notes and phrases together so that way I can learn music phrase by phrase and in the end just string each part together. There is a lot of the memory concepts that relate to the everyday activities in marching band. For me one thing I can think of is the primacy and recency effect. I tend to recall easily the beginning and the end of a song and not the middle leading me to not play in the middle section. Another thing would be explicit and implicit memory. When thinking about music and trying to remember what comes next I have to recall the notes intentionally, but after a while I will be able to recall the music without thinking, in example the Minnesota Rouser. Overall memory is very important in marching band! Without it you may get hit by a trombone on the show!

MARCHING BAND FLASH MOB! Playing music from memory!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg10v4vlXUo

Us on a field! Each band member has a specific spot which we learn and memorized!

As Lilienfeld described, observational learning is by simply watching others. This type of latent learning allows us to learn without reinforcement and is generally seen as effect. Personally, I think that it does have a positive effect in many cases. However, I ran across an article that shows the disadvantages of this type of learning.

One of the most common disadvantages is that undesirable behaviors can be learned. When a role model, or whomever the subject is observing, behaves is a way that is negative, such as aggressively or abusively, the subject will learn this behavior. This can be transferred to many people quickly because observational learning is such an easy way to to learn new behaviors. If subjects view these negative behaviors often or multiple times, it is more likely that the will adopt the undesired behaviors.

Another disadvantage is that the learned behaviors are not always observational. Along those same lines, observational learning requires motivation. The subject has to find the behavior easy to do or easy to retain in order to want to act out in the same manner.

In order to counter these disadvantages, observational learning has also exhibited alternate behaviors that are positive. Although observational learning does allow one to mimic or imitate behaviors, there can also be another effect: for one to refrain from acting out certain behaviors. By seeing a negative behavior, one can decide that this behavior is bad or negative, one the subject would not want to act, and therefore simple avoid showcasing that behavior. This effect can be very positive when the action observed is negative.

Writing Assignment #3
By: Tommy Merchak

Observational Learning

One important concept in chapter six is observational learning. Observational learning applies to everyone's everyday life. Observation learning is when you learn by watching others. This type of learning comes into account when you were not listening to your teacher's directions so you quickly look around the room observing others to try to attain that knowledge that you missed. Another example of observational learning is when a child sees adults fighting and then goes up to another child and starts to fight. Observation learning is very important because actions speak louder than words. To learn something as a child it is crucial you are shown how to do something almost more than being told. This type of firsthand learning plays a very critical role in a childhood. Children often pick up a great deal of their behavior often from their parents which leads researchers to believe that children that are abused are more likely to be abusive when they are older. The also learn simple things like how to shave while watching their dad get ready in the morning (pictured), how to feed the dog, how to fold clothes, how to put away toys, and so on and so forth.

One of the topics that seems the most interesting to me is the fact that our bodies go through 5 solid different stages of sleep. I never realized that when you twitch or dream dealt with what cycle of sleep your in. I read an article that introdues the young college student that thought of REM sleep and was able to observe many others while they were sleeping. While observing them, he experienced the different waves that were sent through and how fast or slow each one moved or responded depending on the cylce of sleep you were in. He noticed that we spend a majority of our sleep in stage 2. This really makes me think about what cycle I'm in when I'm dreaming, having nightmares or just starting to doze off. Before reading the psych 1001 book or this interesting article I would never just think about things like this. I love learining about the things we do when were most unaware of doing them, such as sleepwalking and having night terrors. These specific actions also mainly happen in specific cycles, but now I know if one of these ever happen to me and I'm told I did it I will beable to explain to myself and others why I did what I did and what cycle of sleep I was in. This yung graduate was very bright and curious to know why we do the things we do when were sleeping, but he decided to figure it out for himself. It's people like this that help to teach all of us what we should know.

http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/SleepStages.htm

When a video of the talking twin babies was posted online at the beginning of this year, it instantly became a YouTube sensation, with over 40 million views. In the video, eighteen-month-old fraternal twins, Sam and Ren, seem to be having a very in-depth conversation, complete with questions, facial expressions, and even a foot stomp. But are they really talking in their "own" language that only they can understand? Not exactly, but research shows that as many as 40 percent of twins develop what seems to be their "own" language.
This phenomenon is known as cryptophasia. It turns out that what seems to be a developed language is actually a result of "phonological impairment and other types of language delay"(Bishop and Bishop,1998) that is more apparent in twins than children born alone. They are trying to use their native language, but struggle to. Because twins are together from the moment they are born, they often share the same problems of speech when it comes to articulation and pronunciation. Although they have troubles with actual words, the babies learn how a conversation works at a very early age. They mimic each other's sounds and gestures, as shown in the video. The outcome appears to be a very serious conversation, a conversation that had the whole country talking.

In this class one of the most interesting things I have learned is how the mind can create false memories. I think that it is incredible how someone can remember an event that didn't happen in such detail and feel that it happened. The Paul Ingram case was very interesting to me because here was a guy that was convicted of a crime that he didn't commit, but yet Paul confessed because he created false memories of the crimes.
False memories are something that a person believes to have happened or be true but are completely false and have never occurred. I think this is a very important topic to be covered because we need to figure out why people strongly believe in things that have never really happened. I can remember one time in my life when I was convinced I had shots in my knees and I remember the event so vividly and down to every detail but in all actuality I never once got shots in my knees. I've always wondered why I was so convinced of an event that never happened and as I've learned about false memories I'm starting to understand why.
There are still a lot of things I wonder about when I think about false memories. I wonder why we can convince ourselves of these false memories and how substantial a fake even would have to be for us the strongly believe it happened. False memories are on of the craziest concepts I've learned so far in this course and I hope to learn more about as we keep learning.

Operant conditioning is learning controlled by the consequences of the organism's behavior. It is able to modify the behavior by associating a fixed stimulus. And the difference with classical conditioning is that operant conditioning deal with operant behavior.

In our daily life, operant conditioning is an interesting application in training a dog. For instance, let us watch a video on the internet which shows the theory of operant conditioning first. According to the video, we know that the dog was training to learn how to twirl by using dog treats. The dog treats reinforce the dog to twirl, after several days repeating command, the dog is likely to response to the hand command without dog treats. The dog treat operate as a positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the presentation of a stimulus that strengthens the probability of the behavior.

Take another video as an example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guroaQRFsX4 In the video, Sheldon often gave penny a chocolate as a positive reinforcement when penny obeyed his rules. And penny feels happy to eat chocolate while Sheldon want her to be quiet. Then it will form a behavior for penny in future that she will be quiet when she being together with Sheldon. That is operant conditioning held by Sheldon. Actually, it is not real story; we don not really need to refer this funny story to our real life, but it shows us the theory of operant conditioning.

The dog twirl followed by the reward is a classical example of operant conditioning. It also apply to other organism, rat, cat including human. But does it implement to any kind of organism in the world?

When reading through the book I became interested in the fact that we can have thoughts and distorted images put into our minds that altered our memories. I decided to look deeper in false memories for this reason and see what actually goes on in the mind. The definition of a false memory is a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event that did not actually happen. People often think that they remember their past perfectly and think that they can recall many memories down to specifics, when more than likely there recollection of the memory is going to be false. In the textbook we learned that people who are exposed to an event and then given false information about the situation will probably make false judgements on what they actually saw. This is true in the example of the simulated car crash that we read about. Participants viewed a simulated car crash at an intersection with a stop sign, but after they viewed the crash they were told the stop sign was a yield sign. Later when they were asked what the sign was almost all of the participants had fallen to false memories and got the question wrong.
False memories can be tricky and lead us to think we have done crazy stuff in the past and recall memories the didn't actually exist. Before our lecture we were to read a passage about a Catholic family in Spokane. The father of the family was told that he molested the children when they were young and preformed many satanic events during his life. He had no recollection of the memories but soon he began to picture memories in his mind with guided help from a psychiatrist and began to believe he committed those crimes.
False memories can be placed into someones mind in many different ways and can lead you to believe something with guided help. This is the most common kind of false memory because we usually can not depict the past perfectly so with the help of someone else we can paint pictures in our mind that did not actually happen. When reading about this i kept wondering how often an average do we fall prey to false memories, and how badly have a fallen prey to them?

This is a clip from an episode of the Twilight Zone called "The Fever." A man named Franklin and his wife spend a night in the casino. While he is initially against gambling and frowns upon his wife's decision to take part, he steadily gets reeled into the slot machines "charm" after winning a silver dollar and eventually becomes obsessed. He believes that the machine is human-like and is calling his name because he is "due" to win and making the mental choice, as if it has memories, to torture Franklin with loss after loss.

After reading about Variable Ratio schedules in our textbooks on page 219, we understand that this type of reinforcement "yields the highest rates of responding for all." Slot machines that you find in a casino are going to intermittently reward the gambler with money-- this could be after 2 times or it could be after 200. The unknown of when they are going to be reinforced, or in this case hit the jackpot, is what keeps them hooked. Who wouldn't love to win $10,000 dollars for pulling a lever or pressing a button? From a third perspective, we are aware that the odds of winning on you're hundredth try are not any different from the first 99.

After watching the clip, you can see how powerful variable ratio schedules really are. Even though this was from the fifties and part of a television show, gambling addiction is still very real. Sometimes its scary to think about how some people, like those who own casinos, have this much power over our actions.

The magic number according to George Miller refers to seven plus or minus two pieces of information. We apply the magic number seven is universal and can be applied to everyday concepts like numbers, letters, people, vegetables, and cities (p. 249) in our text book. Telephone numbers for example are seven digits long, not including the area code, because if it was longer people would have a difficult time memorizing numerous different numbers. This concepts runs hand-in-hand with our short term memory because people struggle to retain more than nine and less then five pieces of information in their short term memory. People have came up with ways to increase the limitations of the magic number seven such as chunking, which is defined as "organizing information into meaningful groupings, allowing us to extend the span of short-term memory (p. 249) in our textbooks. In other words chunking allows people to group meaningful letters, words, numbers, etc. together in order to remember more information. Both the magic number seven and chunking are key concepts that can be applied to peoples everyday lives.

Anterograde amnesia is a condition in which individuals are unable to create new memories from experiences. The most identifiable case of this type of amnesia in film comes from the movie Memento where the main character even tattoos messages to his body in an attempt to remind himself of events taking place after the amnesia.

A more playful and lighthearted portrayal of anterograde amnesia can be found in the animated film Finding Nemo. Although the amnesia is not specifically referred to, one of the main characters is a fish called Dory who can't remember anything for more than a few seconds and cannot make new memories which suggests anterograde amnesia. Throughout the movie Dory is always getting lost and frustrating her companions, but amnesia can be a much more dangerous in real life situations and should not be made fun of. Here's a short clip from Finding Nemo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuvF113uty4

Have you ever been hypnotized or seen anyone believe they are under hypnosis? Hypnosis is a popular form of entertainment and has also become a common clinical technique for things such as quitting smoking, enhancing memory capacity, and losing weight. The effectiveness of these techniques is highly debatable for many reasons. The main reason is that there is no evidence that hypnosis is a good treatment by itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3MfUT16kB0
If you have seen a hypnosis show like the one in the link above, you may be wondering how hypnotists can get people to perform such crazy tasks. Stage hypnosis shows deliberately select participants that are highly suggestible, meaning that they respond greatly to hypnotic suggestions. The participants may also feel under pressure to entertain the audience, and are therefore more receptive to hypnotic commands. These people can resist hypnotic suggestions at will, so there is no real proof that hypnosis works. There have been many attempts to understand it, leading to several different theories. One of these theories is the sociocognitive theory, which states that "people's attitudes, beliefs, motivations, and expectations about hypnosis...shape their responses to hypnosis." Another theory is the Dissociation theory, which is based on a division of consciousness. This theory says that attention, effort, and planning are carried out without awareness, so the effects of hypnosis are caused by a separation of personality traits that normally aren't dissociated. It also states that "hypnosis bypasses the ordinary sense of control we exert over our behaviors."
Hypnosis is used for more than entertainment. It can be used to treat pain, habit disorders, and it increases effectiveness of anxiety and obesity therapies. There is evidence that hypnosis is effective in these applications, but it is unclear if this effectiveness is due to increased relaxation from hypnosis or the expectation that the condition will improve.

"50 First Dates" is a romantic comedy about a determined man, Henry, and his ultimate quest to win the heart of the woman he loves--Lucy. But in order to do so, he must first win a spot in her mind because Lucy also happens to have significantly altered short term memory functions due to a car accident. As mentioned in the scene posted below, it is explained that Lucy has some damage to her temporal lobe therefore she could not convert experiences from her short term memory into long term memory. Her case can be classified as anterograde amnesia, mentioned in Lilienfeld (Ch. 7). In fact, Lucy's story very closely resembles the real-life case of Henry Molaison in that chapter--the only difference being that Molaison would lose recollection of events as recent as a few minutes earlier.

It was also stated that Lucy had a magnificent amygdala, which is a great explanation for why her long term memory was somehow eventually able to retain some experiences and images about Henry. This directly corresponds to Lilienfeld's discussion of the role of the amygdala in memory. The amygdala calls on the emotions felt in the experience during the recollection of that experience. I think that that emotional linkage is the strongest and most significant component of memory since emotions are much more enduring; even in the case of Henry Molaison, he demonstrated good implicit memory, which is defined as memories that a person does not forwardly recollect but displays a much deeper awareness of at the subconscious level. The scene in the clip below illustrates how Henry's love for Lucy has significantly impacted her implicit memory.

"50 First Dates" is among one of my favorite movies of all time! It combines romantic wittiness with a tragic case of the human mind to effectively sum up the complexities of the human memory. As Henry's love for Lucy endures even the toughest challenges of her memory loss, it expresses the deeply intrinsic nature of emotions in the human memory; and it is perhaps this expression of emotion that highly appeals to audience members.

**For those that intend to watch the movie some time in the future and do not want the ending ruined, please do NOT watch this last clip!!!

Assignment#3_NaleeVang

According to the Loftus article, it is possible to change details of one's memories for previously experienced events, and people also can plant entirely false memories into the minds of unsuspecting individuals, even if sometimes the events would be implausible or even impossible. Memories can be fixed and changed over time and held with a great degree of confidence.

The most interesting thing I found from Loftus article is that people can change others' memories by using suggestive methods. An example in the article is that in one study that 33% of the subjects were convinced when they were children they had nearly drowned and had to be rescued by a lifeguard. Another example shows that people can remember seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney Land in their early life after seeing fake Disney ads that mentioned Bugs Bunny. This shows subjects can be suggested not only to have fake memories of normal events, but also events are particularly horrible. As a result of the suggestive methods, the subjects are sure about the fake memories suggested by the others.

In my opinion, I think suggestive methods are capable to lead people to have false beliefs and memories, and they can make subjects so sure about the fake memories. Subjects tend to have strong emotions and reactions when they are told the memories are suggested and created by others. They have been convinced that these memories have actually happened during the process of receiving suggestions. Subjects are also imaging these fake memories and become more confident when engaging in the imagination inflation phenomenon. It is interesting to think that we can actually plan an idea into someone deep mind and make that person believe in it.

I have an experience about false memory when I was about five years old. I remember I won a bet over my dad, and the result was that I was getting a new toy from him. However, in my memory, my dad denied the result and told me the bet never happened. I still remember that we quarrel on a train about if I actually won the bet and if I should get the toy. After reading this article, I am not sure if I ever won a bet, or if the bet has ever happened. However, I was deeply convinced that I did won and I should get the toy, and with the time goes, I became more and more convinced about this event.

At the end, I think it is very important to have an accurate recollection of past experiences in our everyday lives. Even though it is hard to tell the difference between the real memories and fake memories, it can decide one's life in certain situations. The example in the article mentioned that some people have gone to prison for the fact that fake memories are used as testimonies.

When I was a child and had physical fights with my older sister I always remember the both of us getting time outs for it. Punishment is an important concept in growing up because it disciplines children and teaches them right from wrong. There are two types of punishment: positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment involves administering something that the child does not wish to occur, such as a time out or spanking. A negative punishment involves taking away something from the child that they want, such as a toy or object the want. I believe it is necessary to punish children for their wrong doings or else they will not learn what is right or wrong in life. My four year old sister is finally getting to the age where she pretends she doesn't hear my mother when she tells her to stop doing something and in return my mother punishes her by giving her a time out. Of course my little sister cries because from experience she knows a time out is a bad thing, therefore she knows whatever she was saying or doing must have been wrong. I do still wonder though if even if you punish children does it necessarily mean that they will learn that what they did was wrong or can they rebel more against you?

http://www.richardtimothy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/15-timeout.jpg

When I was a child and had physical fights with my older sister I always remember the both of us getting time outs for it. Punishment is an important concept in growing up because it disciplines children and teaches them right from wrong. There are two types of punishment: positive and negative punishment. Positive punishment involves administering something that the child does not wish to occur, such as a time out or spanking. A negative punishment involves taking away something from the child that they want, such as a toy or object the want. I believe it is necessary to punish children for their wrong doings or else they will not learn what is right or wrong in life. My four year old sister is finally getting to the age where she pretends she doesn't hear my mother when she tells her to stop doing something and in return my mother punishes her by giving her a time out. Of course my little sister cries because from experience she knows a time out is a bad thing, therefore she knows whatever she was saying or doing must have been wrong. I do still wonder though if even if you punish children does it necessarily mean that they will learn that what they did was wrong or can they rebel more against you?

http://www.richardtimothy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/15-timeout.jpg

I am terrified for next semester. While I completed the third semester of Spanish (for the CLA language requirement) though a CIS course the spring of my senior year in high school, I am now a junior in college, and I have yet to take the fourth semester. However, while I am still terrified to take intermediate Spanish again after an almost three year absence, the concept of "relearning"- the measure of how much faster we learn things we've already studied the second time around- and especially "Ebbinghaus's Curve of Forgetting" were- while not a complete sigh of relief- comforting to me.

View image

This is because Ebbinghaus's Curve of Forgetting indicates that, while I forgot the majority of what I learned immediately after I graduated from high school and the semester was over, since then, I haven't been forgetting the language as at such a dramatic speed for the last two or so years.

Also, as a dance major, another aspect of relearning that is interesting to me is relearning motor skills after injuries- especially after replacement surgeries.
For example, according to the website of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, about 193,000 total hip replacements are performed each year, and most patients make full recoveries. However, according to the Rudolph Nureyev Foundation Medical Website, dancers with who have undergone full hip-replacement surgeries are more likely to recover the motors skills in their hips faster than non-dancers.

(Sort of an) Example: This is an (largely anecdotal) article about how dancer with the Royal ballet went from hip-surgery to performing in twelve weeks.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1266749/Dancer-Wayne-Sleep-Royal-Ballet-hip-replacement.html

This made me wonder if this concept applies to the "expert vs. novice" differences from Friday's lecture. Do dancers recover faster, because they are "experts of movement skill," and therefore, their bodies are more likely to simply "perceive" solutions to integrate this new body part into movement instead of "relearning" them? (This is a very large question, no doubt.)

Also, another inquiry I have, is that since a hip replacement doesn't have to do with brain damage, I think it would be interesting to find out more about the differences and similarities between relearning activities from a purely physical standpoint (like getting a hip replacement) vs brain damage (like damage to the hippocampus).

http://www.nureyev-medical.org/
http://www.udel.edu/AEC-workshop/stud/stud1.html

For the most part, when children recall memories they incorporate fantasy and reality into them and are never quite sure which is which. This makes their reliability difficult to depend on. Even though children fall prey to false memories easier than adults do there are some cases where they tell the truth and are almost not believed. My father told me about an experience he had when children did not have false memories during trial at court where they had to give a testimony.

A couple years ago, my father was called to take part on a jury during a trial. The trial was for a man who was being accused of raping his two nieces. The problem was the only evidence the court had was the testimony of the two young nieces (one was ten and the other was twelve.) The judge was having trouble determining whether or not to believe the little girls or the uncle, who plead not guilty. The judge was afraid that the little girls might be having false memories. He was afraid to put the uncle in jail for a crime that he did not commit.

My father was distraught when he told me about the trial. He hoped the man was put in jail because he knew the way the girls looked in fear at their uncle and clutched each other for support as they cried that this was no false memory. Finally, it was up to the jury to make their decision. The little girls won the case by one vote, showing that it is very difficult to go off of the word of a child because they can believe suggestions of others so easily. Later on, my father was told by a lawyer that the correct decision had been made by putting the uncle in jail because there was outside evidence that could not be used in court that proved the uncle was guilty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLrkmjvD7y0&feature=related
Classical conditoning is a set of procedures used to investigate hoe organisms learn about signaling properties of events. it involves learning the relationships between stimuli and responding to them. There are four components of classical conditioning. They are unconditional stimulus(UCS), unconditional response(UCR), conditional stimulus(CS) and conditional response(CR). The UCS is a stimulus which leads to an observable response without any training. The UR is the response brought about bu the UCS. It is an automatic and normal behavior. The CS is a stimulus that originally has no meaning to subject. Thriugh training, it is paired with the UCS and brings about the CR. The CR is behavior caused by the CS in response to the CS. It is usually in anticipation of the UCS. In the case that i linked, the UCS is the toy gun and the CS is the timer. The UCR and the CR are the same, they are both the Devin's self protection.

While reading through the chapter on memory in our psychology textbook, I became extremely interested in the discussion of amnesia. There are two main types of amnesia, retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia is amnesia in which the person suffers a loss of memories that happened in the past, such as memories that happened up until an accident that may have caused the retrograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia occurs when someone cannot encode new memories.

Before reading this chapter, I always assumed amnesia meant the complete loss of memories of one's past, such as the inability for a person to remember who they are. As it turns out, this is extremely rare, and the most common amnesia is anterograde amnesia. Severe head injuries are positively correlated with an occurrence of amnesia, however; this correlation does not always mean causation. The link below discusses many possible causes of amnesia, including stroke, a lack of oxygen to the brain, long-term alcohol abuse, tumors in the brain, and possibly certain medications.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/amnesia/DS01041/DSECTION=causes
Head injuries typically do not cause severe amnesia either.

The memory that occurs from amnesia is different from not being able to remember the name of all of our 3rd grade classmates. This is completely normal to not remember this because we will lose some memories naturally as we age. Having retrograde amnesia involves forgetting to a further extent such as forgetting a series of events. I was still curious if there are any ways of curing amnesia, however; I did not have much luck in finding successful cures to amnesia thus far.
Here is another video of Clive Wearing, a man with amnesia. I found it very interesting to listen to him talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDNDRDJy-vo

Self-Awareness and Habituation
I often find that the times I feel most self-aware are those moments when I choose to counteract the habituation of stimuli in my environment. Hear the lights above you, feel your own heart-beat, see the rise and fall of your own chest. In ignoring these constant sensory stimuli, our brain becomes much more efficient at processing the immense amount of information that our senses receive. When I choose to take note of the little things going on around me that usually fall unnoticed, I often gain appreciation for just how complex I am and how complex the world around me is. Through this experience I gain a feeling of increased self-awareness.
This notion brings up the question of whether or not animals can be self-aware. It is commonly accepted that animals (with the exception of Chimpanzees and Orangutans) generally fail the mirror test for self-awareness.

Also, it is generally accepted that most animals engage in sensory habituation. My question is whether animals can then choose to scale back this habituation and in the process become self-aware? This is obviously a difficult hypothesis to test, although there are many possible routes for experiments. The first question I think is worth answering is whether the act of realizing habituation is in fact a sign of higher level consciousness and thus not a cause of self-awareness, but a result of it. I would be very interested to see some research on this topic. Any thoughts?

After reading chapter 7 and the article about Paul Ingram, I started thinking about the documentaries and articles I've read about accusations of satanic ritual in the 1980's, and I wondered what sparked this bizarre and terrible trend.
Michelle Remembers is a book published in 1980 by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient-turned-wife Michelle Smith (already, red flag). This book was the first to introduce the concept of satanic ritual abuse and in it, Smith claims that she was abused by her mother when she was five and that the abuse only ended after, "an 81-day ritual in 1955 that summoned the devil himself and involved the intervention of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Michael the Archangel, who removed the scars received by Smith throughout the year of abuse and removed memories of the events." (Wikipedia) Smith claimed that the memories only came back to her after hypnosis.
Authorities used Michelle Remembers as a basis for investigations into similar charges and seven years after the release of the book, "Pazder reported that he was spending a third of his time consulting on satanic ritual abuse cases."
In the last two decades, numerous books and articles have been written debunking the stories told in this book, highlighting inconsistancies between Smith's claims and documented events (for example, Smith never missed a day of school during her supposed 81-day satanic ritual), the fact that neither of her siblings believe any of these events took place, and it has been shown that many of Smith's claims bare striking resemblance to popular movies of the time, such as The Exorsist, and to the stories of ritual abuse that Pazder learned about in Africa in the 1960's.
But the longterm effects of this mania are still being felt. Just this month three men, known as the West Memphis Three, were released after serving more than 18 years in prison convicted of satanic ritual murders. In this case, the evidence, viewed through a (sane) skeptic's eye, overwhelmingly supports their innocence.

Pavlov's experiment with his dogs and meat powder is way more famous then you probably thought. The essence of Pavlov's quintessential conditioning experiment was captured in an episode from the hit show "The Office". This episode portrays everything involved in the classic Pavlov experiment and includes a conditioned stimulus, an unconditioned stimulus, a conditioned response, and an unconditioned response. In Pavlov's dog experiment the conditioned stimulus is a metronome, the unconditioned stimulus is meat powder, the conditioned response is salivation, and the unconditioned response is salivation as well. Likewise, in "The Office" Jim tries an experiment on Dwight that involved Jim giving Dwight a piece of mento candy whenever his computer shut down which made a noise. After multiple trials, anytime Dwight heard the tone of the computer shutting down Dwight would immediately put his hand out waiting for a mento without being offered. In Jim's experiment, the conditioned stimulus is the beep of the computer as it shuts down, the unconditioned stimulus is the mento, the unconditioned response and the conditioned response are Dwight's expectance of receiving a mento. Jim's experiment provides a comical replica to Pavlov's original findings. Classical conditioning is more interesting then most of us thought proved by Jim and Dwight.

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

We need to know to know four things before we can read. First, we need to acknowledge that the written language has meaning. Second, we gain the knowledge that in the case of English writing should be read from left to right. Third, we need to know our ABCs. Finally, we need to know that each letter has sounds that go along with it. I, who was formally diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of seven, even before learning to read knew all these rules. I knew that the letters in the book my dad and I read were supposed to make a story. I knew how to sing the alphabet. I knew what sounds were supposed to go with each word. Also, I did not have trouble reading, because I simply because I did not want to read. I remember before the start of first grade being so excited about finally going to be able to read. However, when my teacher began to teach phonics, something simply did not click. My parents realized it too, long before any of my teachers did. When I was in the third grade, I was sent to a program in Colorado (I lived in North Dakota, so it was quite a drive) where there were tutors that specialized in that area and by the time I left elementary school. I was at the level of reading that I was supposed to be at. I wish people would know to things about dyslexia. One is that it is neither the child's (I had a teacher in elementary school who yelled at me for not passing my spelling test) nor the parent's fault that the child has dyslexia. Second, that most dyslexics have the ability to learn how to read just in a different way. That is all.

Memory is the ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Our memories allow us to reflect upon our daily activities, learn from past experiences, and relate information to outside sources. But what if you are unable to acquire new memories?
Alzheimer's disease is a fatal disease of the brain which develops slowly over time. An Alzheimer's brain contains many plaques and neurofibrillary tangles which ultimately results in the death of the cells in the Hippocampus where memories are first formed. This disease makes it difficult to form new memories. An individual with Alzheimer's will be unable to recall recent memories but have the ability to remember old recollections. Alzheimer's disease is said to affect about 5.1 million Americans and is the number one cause of Dementia.
Why does Alzheimer's disease occur? The cause of Alzheimer's has not yet been revealed but I believe the plaques and tangles created in the brain of those with the disease are there for a reason. Alzheimer's disease must serve some purpose and I am very interested in finding out what that purpose is. Alzheimer's is a slow and persistent disease which ultimately results in the patient's death. As of now, Alzheimer's is a devastating, incurable disease but hopefully someday, things will change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcuDz7tOL7E
Here is the link to a video that will give you a better understanding of the Alzheimer's disease.

Memory is a key aspect of everyday life. It provides us with the capability to retain, store, and recall information and past events. Memory is how we learn and grow as organisms. Almost everything we do can be related back to past experiences and knowledge that we use to strengthen our lives. Without memory, living would be repetitive and nonexistent.

The movie 50 First Dates, starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, is about a young girl Lucy who suffers from short-term memory loss. After a car accident, she survived, but with serious brain damage to her hippocampus. Resulting in anterograde amnesia, she cannot retain anything new. Her long-term memory prior to the accident is still intact, but during the night her "slate" is wiped clean and she wakes up thinking it is still the same day. Not knowing what else to do, her father and brother pretend like nothing had ever happened and let her "relive" the day of the accident over and over again (without the accident happening). Consisting of the same routine everyday, her life is one big lie. Approximately a year after the crash, a man named Henry Roth comes in her life and changes everything. He makes it possible for her to live a normal life and have a family herself. He creates a video explaining what happened and what is currently going on in her life.

Before Henry, Lucy had a nonexistent life - she was trapped by her own memory, replaying what had already happened. Most days she would go without knowing, but sometimes she would find out that her life is a lie. When this happened, her father would take her to the doctor where they could explain, in detail, about her permanent brain damage. Her doctor then proceeded to show her that it could be worse. Ten second Tom is a great example of a memory loss patient. He only retains information for ten seconds, and then forgets it all. Without memory, life has no meaning.

Lucy on her way to the doctor - youtube clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3GcvRe9G_w

Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning is a type of learning involving animals coming to respond in some way to a once neutral stimulus paired with another stimulus. Russian researcher Ivan Pavlov studied this type of learning by experimenting with dogs. He paired meat powder (unconditioned stimulus) with a metronome clicking (conditioned stimulus). Presented with these combined stimuli, the dog subject salivated (unconditioned response). Later on, when presented with just the metronome sound, the dog salivated (conditioned response) because it associated the metronome with the meat powder. I find this kind of learning extremely fascinating. We never really think about it, but it is very present in our lives. The book used an example of a girl reacting negatively to a picture of a roller coaster because of a previous experience.

I found this fascinating article about how classical conditioning is present in our food preferences. For example, candy would look plastic and not very appealing if we had not tasted it previously and liked it.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/consciousness-and-the-brain/201011/classical-conditioning-in-everyday-life

That article is supported by this one, which goes on to explain how classical conditioning is present in our fears, our likes and dislikes, and reacting to drugs. It's really cool to see how much it affects us even though we are completely oblivious.

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~cslem/101/8-C.html

In high school, I knew a girl who cried every time she heard "Our Song" by Taylor Swift because it reminded her of her ex-boyfriend. Apparently they had a bad break-up. I'm assuming she did not react to that song in that way before her relationship or even during, so I'm wondering if this is also an example of classical conditioning. I can definitely see how there could be a connection there.

Classical conditioning, also known as Pavlovian conditioning because it was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov. Typical procedure involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance, the "unconditional stimulus." Though at first the neutral stimulus doesn't invoke any behavior, when paired consistently with unconditioned stimulus the neutral stimulus will activate a certain behavior after awhile. For his experiment Pavlov used a bell as the neutral stimulus and food as the unconditional stimulus. Every time he fed his dog he would ring a bell, soon the dog began to pair the sound of the bell with being fed. So whenever the bell would ring he would begin to salivate. There have been many similar experiments since then, here is one below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo7jcI8fAuI

Operant conditioning and classical conditioning are both methods of behavioral learning in psychology, but they both differ in unique ways. Classical conditioning is a form of learning through associations between an environment stimulus and a naturally occuring stimulus. There are four parts to this form of learning: unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned response, and conditioned stimulus. An example of this type of learning is shown in the television show Big Bang Theory. In one episode, Sheldon decides to train Penny to use appropriate behaviors in his apartment. The conditioned stimulus in this case is the chocolate he feeds penny when every she acts appropriately. This new and improved behavior is the conditioned response.

http://youtu.be/qy_mIEnnlF4

Operant conditioning is when learning is controlled by the consequences of the organism's behavior. This learning is where the subject "gets something" out of the response. An example of this would be if you give a dog a treat when they do as you ask, like sitting or not barking. This allows for the dog to learn that they receive a reward in return for showing the behavior sought after by the trainer or owner.

These two ways of learning are different in many ways. More or less, classical conditioning allows for a response to be made in part of some stimulus acting on it. Operant conditioning is voluntary and is a result based on negative and positive reinforcement.

Edward Lee Thorndike's early studies with animal behavior led him to declare his Law of Effect. The Law of Effect states that the greater the satisfaction or discomfort, the greater the strengthening or weakening of the bond. This is no surprise to me that the effect a response has or has had in the past is a powerful determiner of whether or not the response will happen again in the future. However, I am amazed that this simple idea can account for a much larger volume of behavior that we typically don't give it credit for.

The Law of Effect is an important idea because it's a simple concept that can be applied to more complex situations. The responses we get from situations followed by satisfaction that are strengthened, and the responses we get followed by discomfort that are weakened. Every day we seem to get a sense of satisfaction or discomfort from various different situations we are in. For example when I'm around my friends I feel accepted and comfortable and when I'm around a new group of people that I don't know at all I tend to feel a little uncomfortable. If the new set of people continues to be uncomfortable to be around, I consciously decide to not associate myself with them anymore or put myself in a situation where I'm with them. This shows that the feeling of discomfort present when I'm with that new set of people weakens the bond between us. Another example of a feeling of satisfaction would be when I study hard for a test and I'm rewarded with a good grade. This accomplishment makes me happy and I feel a sense of satisfaction for my actions. My effective study habits that lead to the good grade will then be repeated for the next time I have a test because of the satisfying results I got the first time around. It's the decisions we make that lead to the feelings we have, and directly influence our future actions.

In conclusion I question the complexity of keeping things simple to understand human behavior and help people change their behavior. I simply wonder if The Law of Effect applies to everyone. The reason for my uncertainty is because I know a lot of people that do things that have negative consequences but hey don't change their ways. Either they just don't care or they are not mentally capable of figuring out what changes need to be made. Do you agree that taking into account the consequences of our behaviors and implementing changes may actually be a lot easier said than done?

In chapter 5, the author introduced a concept called lucid dreaming, which is defined as experience of becoming aware that one is dreaming (Page 171, Lilienfeld textbook, lucid dreaming). It challenged the idea that people are either totally asleep or totally awake. According to the textbook, most of people have experienced lucid dreaming. More that 70% of people believe they can control their dreams.

In my opinion, lucid dreaming can be interpreted as the grey area between total asleep and total awake. It is common in our daily lives. For example, my Mom has been having lucid dream for a long time, and she often described her dreams as partially related to her real life experience. For example, she will dream about cooking at her kitchen. She might wake up and realized it was a dream, but later she would continue the dream. It seems that she was telling a story, and suddenly the story was stopped when she realized she was dreaming, and then she fell asleep again and the story continued.

I have experienced lucid dreaming for many times. Especially after I played basketball. I got excited about the game and would think about it when going to bed. When I fell asleep, I often dreamed about playing basketball, and during the dream when I jump for a rebound I often kicked my legs in bed, sometimes it woke me up and made me realized that it was a dream, but later I usually continued sleeping with the same dream. In addition to the dreams of sports, I experienced lucid dreaming when I have nightmares and dreams of violence. The scary content of the dreams woke me up, but I could not get up from my bed. I would know it was a dream, and I would fell asleep again continued the same dream. I tried to control the dream sometimes when it is scary, but usually it did not work.

I think the concept of lucid dream is very important for the reason that it opens up the possibility of controlling our dreams. There are a couple of times when I have nightmares I could control my mind and told myself it was only a dream and felt peaceful. However, I have not successfully got up from bed when I realized I was having a nightmare. I believe it is possible to control one's dream with some practice.

In addition, based on the scientific thinking principle #4 of replicability (Page 23, Lilienfeld textbook, scientific thinking principle #4), if the assumption that we can control our dreams is correct, we need to do further experiments to get the same results to show that it can be replicated. My personally experience of controlling my dream can be led by a fluke.

Page 171, Lilienfeld textbook, lucid dreaming Page 23, Lilienfeld textbook, scientific thinking principle #2

Throughout history the most popular drug choice has been the depressant Alcohol. It is believed to been used in the Stone Age 10,000 years ago. Alcohol depresses areas of the brain that alter our emotion and behaviors. Alcohol does this by entering our bloodstream through the stomach and intestines.

Alcohol is a very important topic today with all the binge drinking occurring on college campuses. About 70% of college students drink alcohol and about 45% of these binge drink. There are some pretty amazing statistics of what alcohol has caused on college campuses.1900 students die and 600,000 students are injured annually due to alcohol.

How do we control binge drinking on college campuses? This is a problem that all campuses face. There seems to be no clear answer.

When do we become aware of self? That's the first problem which the instructor searches for. Did you ever think about this matter? Everyone have the senses of the outside word. Imagine that I am walking on the street, I can feel the wind and air flow, see people walking on the street, and hear that somebody is talking about hot issue. Sometimes, you can clearly hear your breath in a small room, which tell you that you are alive. We have this feeling when we were in childhood, we called it self-aware. Self aware describes the characteristic of knowing yourself, understanding your decisions and being conscious of how you behave (yourdictionary.com).

Focus on the video, the scientist held an experience with a girl who is 22 months. The scientist put a black mark on her face, and then let her see herself in a mirror. Then the little girl aware of there is a black mark on her face and tried to get it off. It proves that she know the person in the mirror is herself, she already has self-awareness. In contrast, a little baby who do the same test as the little girl. But he do not recognize who the person in the mirror is, he laugh at himself! Thus we are being self-aware when we were only 22 months.

According to the test, we know that the baby who does not have self-aware, his cortex of brain do not fully developed. However, the girl's brain has already formed to conscious her self. But does the result various in different people? I think that the questions that we still have to solve.

I recently read an article about College Students who experience Night Terrors. This article was interesting because it is very unusual for someone as old as a college student to still be having night terrrors, but when they do they are pretty extreme. Night terrors can be a reoccurence of something that has startled or disturbed one in the past. These terrors often cause crying and screaming and are very hard to wake out of it. The article mentioned that not only is it difficult to wake someone during a night terror, but it can also be dangerous. Waking someone from a night terror can cause them to freak out or believe that you are apart of it, which could result in harm to both of you. Even though this is very rare in college students, it still occurs. I have a friend that has night terrors every once in awhile and its scary to deal with. She always says its hard to fall asleep because she never knows when they are going to happen. I can't imagine being scared to fall asleep every night.

I recently read an article about two 35 year old women that discovered they were "identical strangers" or in other words, twins separated at birth. Both women were adopted when they were new borns, but neither of the adoptive families knew there was a twin. The adoptive parents were told their new adopted baby was apart of a study but was neglected to be given any detail about what type of study. Once grown and curious, one of the women went in search of her real mother, but when calling the adoption agency for detail, discovered an identical twin sister instead. She was able to get enough information to find this twin sister. When the two met at 35 years old, after growing up on opposite sides of the country with no contact, discovered they were "identical strangers." They had everything in common that you could possibly imagine. This deals with the nature vs. nurture concept because it manages to prove that no matter how you are raised, nature has a huge part in how you live. These two women didn't even know eachother existed but yet were almost a replica of eachother. The way these two were "nurtured" or raised could have been similar but not similar enough to make them have identical personalities. This story really involves the concept of how nature or genetics has a huge part in your life. This story was very interesting to me but yet very sad. These two women missed out on 35 years of their life together due to a psychologist wanting to be able to observe his two variables from a distance in the quiet. I'm just glad they were reunited.

Often times, I find myself falling asleep at the red light at an intersection because I had to spend countless consecutive nights studying. I could say that ever since i started college, being sleep deprived is almost on a everyday basic. And I would assume that most college students go through the same thing. Sleep deprivation is a condition of not getting enough sleep. Being a victim myself, I often feel tired and out of energy. I have a hard time focusing on things like homework and it's harder for my brain to make sense of what i am reading in my textbooks when I have to struggle to force my eyes to stay open at each word. Other signs and symtoms include fatigue, sleepiness, and weight loss or gain. Sleep deprivation may also lead to muscles
ache, memory problems, depression, headache, irritability, and blood shot eyes. Sleep deprivation is a pretty "viciou"s cycle that generally have an effect on students' performance in school.

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What triggers sleep deprivation? A lot of things: which can include increase academic work load, peer pressure, stress, anxiety, and an unhealthy lifestyle. If students have partime jobs, they are also more prone to sleep deprivation. Sleep is one of the most basic needs of our body, and it is our biological clock which acts to regulate internal functions such as hormone secretion and external functions such as motor movements. Partying out late, drinking, and other night activities may lead to sleep deprivation, and sleep deprivatio in college students can lead to many other sleeping disorder. Almost all of the time, their performance will suffer, attendant will drop, and untimately their grades will lower. Is there a way to "eliminate" sleep deprivation? If there is, I would very much like to know!

Sleep is probably the most important aspect of our lives. It allows humans to recover from mental stress as well as physical stress. However, what is more interesting is the possible repercussions sleep has in aiding memory and learning. If is difficult to precisely describe the biological processes that take place when the brain is in sleep, but there are ways we can compare the brain when it is asleep to when it is awake. Detecting different types of brain waves can allow a researcher to study sleep cycles and make inferences to what may be happening during sleep. One example of this is the comparison between brain waves while awake and the brain waves in REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. It is interesting to note that the brain waves produced in REM sleep largely resemble those produced while fully conscious and awake. All of the other stages (Stage 1-4) are more unique and can be easily distinguished from each other. REM sleep is also associated with the majority of dreams. Most of these dreams are contrary to reality and can have a great deal of fantasy to them. It is debated how these dreams are produced and how they reflect our own cognition. Some believe that dreams are merely crazy interpretations that are brain makes when the pons sends signals throughout it, but others believe that the forebrain has a large effect on dreams. The latter would suggest that dreams could serve more of a purpose as opposed to random images. Recent studies have been able to conjure images from a subjects' brain based on what they are seeing on a screen. The results so far have been extremely impressive and if this technique could be applied to dreams to provide a visual representation, a deeper look can be given to the psychological applications of dreams. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nsjDnYxJ0bo

Although many psychologists have researched REM sleep and tried to explain its importance, we are still not completely certain as to why it is necessary. Scientists have even conducted experiments in which rats die from being deprived of REM sleep, bringing to light just how essential it is to our survival. There have been many possible scientific reasons as to why organisms need it. One that particularly caught my attention was that regarding real-life simulation. I recently watched an episode of Nova called "What Are Dreams?" on Netflix that went into depth about how the brain may be producing simulations of possible real-life scenarios when we dream. For instance, someone may have a dream that he or she gets fired from his or her job. Dreaming about this could mentally prepare that person for that particular situation if it were to happen in real life. Just as in the textbook, the Nova program also touched on the subject of deactivating a certain part of a cat's brain that paralyzes them during REM sleep. This experiment allowed researchers to see that, during REM sleep, the cat's movements were that of everyday activities, like hunting. I found that this evidence strongly supported the statement that REM sleep prepares one for real life by simulating real-life scenarios.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/what-are-dreams.html

For this blog post, I'm going to talk about the topic in chapter five, specifically about sleep. Considering that we are all college students sleep is not only scare, but also an extremely important topic. I used to be pretty naïve about the issue but after reading some brain health books and taking biology is realized its importance. As important as it is, it pales in comparison to how prevalent it is as well. Many formal studies, in addition to the informal one we did in class confirms this. From reading the textbook and these brain health books it appears there is a good correlation between maintaining good brain health. However, it's important to point out, it's a chicken and the egg type argument (because its hard to exactly determine if sleeping habits causes good brain health or if good brain health habits create better sleep habits), improving on sleep habits or brain habits has an impact on the other. I think its interesting because the ideas sound so easy in theory, but are so hard in practice, especially as technology keeps improving. Mainly all of these things that help brain health and in turn aid in sleeping well include working out regularly, eating healthy and especially refraining from fatty foods at night, not smoking, avoid looking at TVs or computer screens for long periods of time, and lastly abusing medication (ironically sleeping pills as well) and alcohol. In fact it mentioned in the textbook that even if one gets a full night of sleep after consuming to much alcohol they miss out on the later stages of sleep, including REM sleep, which is when we get our deepest rest. Not only will this force us to make suboptimal decisions, make it harder to retain memory, but will also force us to want to take naps during the day when we complete important tasks. Its one of those things that's easy to say in theory but harder to do in practice, but practicing good brain habits will improve ones overall sleep experience and utility in life.

I found the section from chapter 5 about hypnosis to be very interesting. Hypnotists are people that can alter a person's thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviors. In order to do this, they use a technique called the "induction method" where they calm a person down and get them into an extremely relaxed state where they are more susceptible to suggestions. I always thought that hypnosis was a load of crap but after reading the book it seems like it does actually work on some people. I remember watching an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air when I was younger where Will is hypnotized into thinking that he is a little kid whenever a bell rings. In short, hilarious antics ensue until he is brought back to the hypnotist and released from the spell that was put over him. I always knew that was ridiculous, and I believed that hypnosis had no truth behind it because the media makes it seem so farfetched. The myths covered in the book are all used by Hollywood but then the book laid out the real theories behind hypnosis and they made a lot of sense. The Sociocognitive Theory rang true with me because I don't think I could ever be hypnotized since I don't think it works that well. All of my expectations are that it wouldn't work, therefore it probably wouldn't. However, I still think that it is cool that people can be hypnotized and that it helps with getting over addictions, treating pain, and whatever else therapists use it for. I'm still curious about what is physically happening in the hypnotized person's brain and I hope that scientists can explain it someday soon.

One important concept I learned from the text is feature detection. I had never known that our eyes actually contained feature detector cells, which are responsible for visual processing, and detecting lines and shapes of varying complexity. Without these cells working hand in hand with other cells to perform visual processing operations, we would not be able to distinguish or detect many of the fine details we pay attention to for identifying objects in every day life. I think the function and existence of these feature detector cells is very important to note because it plays a part in many if not all areas of life including our safety. If it were not for these cells we would not be able to distinguish edges of lines in our visual perception, and hence conduct ourselves in ways such as to walk around sharp or protruding edges to prevent injuries. This concept applies to my own life because if were not for my ability to tell apart patterns with fine detail, lines, and edges I would not be able to drive and abide by the rules of the road, as well as tell apart anything with intricate detail such as clothing or sweaters with small prints and patterns. As I reflect on this concept I wonder about whether our ability to detect features fluctuates in different conditions and whether or not those conditions can be measured. For example, does tiredness or age plays a big enough role to increase or decrease sensitivity to feature detection?

Sources:
Lilienfeld text p.140
(still having issues with uploading images and having to rewrite the blog several times because of refreshing due to failed image uploads)

The concept of parallel processing is very unique. I always knew that everyone saw things in life different ways but never knew the concept behind it. I think of parallel processing as the way people perceive objects and it determines the way each individual sees something through there eyes. The breakdown of parallel processing is even more unique. Parallel processing can be either bottom-up or top-down. The difference between the two is a person's mindset going certain situations. Bottom-up processing I believe gives a broader viewpoint on things. Top-down processing is close minded because your mind is already trying to create an image before the situation.
I think this concept is very important especially in psychology. When doing surveys and research, it's a lot easier to predict what people will perceive depending on the parallel processing they choose. Then if the predicted results are completely different then that gives researchers something more to look into. Top-down processing reminds me a lot of the regulations that experiments need to be considered an experiment. One of the big keys is for the subject not to have a perception when being part of research because it will then make them bias. Therefore I feel that bottom-up processing is more popular in research for psychology. Results from studies with bottom-up processing I feel would be more accurate because people are answering questions off of what that perceived as the experiment was going on. I attached photo that can be perceived to ways depending on the process that people use to look at it. I've always wondered who the first person was to create an image that involves parallel processing. I find these type of images fascinating because not all people can the images in different ways.

Plasticity is quite simply described as the brain's ability to adapt. Plasticity is integral in learning and memory, but more interestingly can be used to recover from severe injuries to the brain. I did some research into the recovery of Gabriel Giffords. For those who don't know, Gabriel Giffords is a US Representative from the state of Arizona. On January 8th 2011 Giffords was the victim of an assassination attempt. She was shot in the back of the head, the bullet passed all the way through her skull from back to front, but only in her left hemisphere. As we learned in class the left hemisphere controls the right half of the body. It is also responsible for things like logical thinking and speech.

Immediately after the shooting, Giffords was unable to speak, but could still respond to simple questions with hand gestures. She also was completely unable to walk or use the right side of her body at all. Over time though, and with great effort, her brain began to rewire itself. Through intense physical therapy she has relearned to walk and can now speak, though often not in complete sentences.

This is a true testament to the power of the brain. We learned in class that the brain truly is wired in a certain way from birth. Brain scans can show the exact location being used by our brains for particular functions like speech. However as we can see in examples like this one, that the brain can adapt from even serious injuries to these sections.

During the BBC program on consciousness, a number of subtopics on consciousness were discussed, including a brief description of where consciousness may actually reside, physically, within the brain. One part of the brain, the Thalamus, is something of a relay station for sensory information; all senses (aside from olfactory) have a Thalamic nucleus, that is, all senses have their information routed through the Thalamus at some point. When Marcus de Sautoy attempts to locate consciousness within the brain by asking one of the researchers, the researcher tells him about the Thalamic loop, which consists of sensory information being distributed to parts of the brain for processing, and then being rerouted back into the Thalamus. If there was a part of the brain that was directly linked to conscious thought, this would likely be it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Biv_8xjj8E&feature=player_detailpage#t=1017s

This picture is of an fMRI taken of Marcus while in a dreamlike or semiconscious state. He is imagining playing tennis.
Notice that the Thalamus doesn't particularly display much activity.

Just recently, my boyfriend was freaked out because he experienced a strange and scary phenomena as he was "sleeping." He told me that something was on top of him and it was hard for him to breathe. He was so freaked out and he tried to move but could not. He said that he was clearly awake but that "thing" was pinning him down and he was struggling to break away from the control but it was seemingly impossible. Like everyone else in our culture that had experienced this, he said there was a ghost on top of him. I have a few other friends that experienced this also and they thought a ghost was on top of them too . Till this day, I didnt think that this was common, especially in other cultures too. The reason is because I have never heard any of my friends outside my culture mention anything like this. It was really mind opening for me when I came accoss this topic. There was just an instant click of connection and i knew right away what my blog topic is about.

Sleep Paralysis refers to the state of being unable to move just after falling asleep or right before waking up. During sleep paralysis, the person is immobile and they feel like there is someone sitting on top of them. I have never experience this phenomena, but I'm sure that not experiencing this would not hurt one bit. Reading and acutally learning about this phenomena really helped with my fear. If i haven't come accross this in the book and learned more about this, I would have live the rest of my life thinking that ghost really do sit on top of you. I have always prefered scientific explanations over superstitous one.

Nature vs. Nurture is a currently debate,which is about whether our behavior patterns are a result of our genes (representing our nature) or our social surroundings like our parents or friends, who might influence us with our behavior patterns. So the question is what plays the crucial role of our behavior pattern.
This link provides a summary of the history of he debate nature vs nurture.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJAB7OS4fXg&feature=related
There might be several explanations for a reason why we behave as we are. Three possible studies, which allows us to see possible behavior reasons if nature or nurture dominates are the family study, the twin study and the adoption study. Each study focuses on another reason why we have certain behavior patterns. The family study analyses how characteristics run in intact families. It is useful of estimating a disorder among relatives of people. This study isn"t really showing the effect of nature vs nurture, but it is helpful to rule out alternate hypotheses.
The twin study analyze how traits differ in identical versus fraternal twins. Because twins are more similar than random people, especially identical twins, it is easier to infer that characteristics are genetical influenced. They have several identical behavior patterns. Furthermore it is easier to assume environmental influences on their characteristic due to their similarity. When they are in different environments it might be clear which patterns are influenced by their environment.
The third study, adoption study analyses how the traits vary when individuals are raised apart from their biological relatives. In conclusion they share genes but not environment. It states the influence of environment by maybe similar genes. It tries to control for selective placement namely the correlation of biological and adoptive parents in psychological characteristics.
I personally think that both, nature and nurture have an important influence of our characteristics and behavior pattern. It is not easy to say that on of those factors dominate the other, because it is so complex. But it is for sure that the environment one is living in might form characteristics of one person. When I moved to a boarding school, to live on my own far away from my original environment, I realized after a while, that I adopted my way of speaking and acting to my new environment. So I am convinced that behavior changes with a new surrounding.

Sources:
Youtube
Psychology- From Inqury to Understanding, Scott Lilienfeld

While looking at snopes.com i came across a claim that I always found interesting that was proven false..

The old wives tale that there is a special compound added to pool water, so if you peed in the pool everyone could see.

I think at some point, everyone's parents have told them this lie. To be honest, it is probably for the better, because if they didn't there would be a bunch of little kids peeing in the public pools that we all swim in. I find this claim to be both extraordinary and in a way occam's razor.

It is an extraordinary claim because it is an old wives tale. Is there any evidence to this claim? We have all heard it but none of us (or very few of us) probably ever peed in a pool to see if it was true. We just accepted it was true and didn't ask questions. If it was true and we peed in a pool, it would not only be mortifying but also damage our poor adolescent reputations.

As well as that it is also a form of occam's razor in a way because we could look at it as is there a simpler explanation for why this is a "claim" and of course there is...adults don't want to be swimming in the same pool hundreds of kids decided to use as a bathroom. So to get around this they came up with a simple solution...tell a lie that would mortify children.

This "claim" is such an old wives tale that they are even making jokes about it in movies...like the recent movie "Grown Up's"...here is the link scene for your enjoyment..

Grown Up's Pool Scene

Our mothers and fathers may have told us this lie...but really it is for the better. Who wants to go around with the reputation as the kid that peed in the pool..so embarrassing. So even though this is one extraordinary claim...I can't help but be grateful for it :)

Marcus Du Sautoy in the BBC: The Secret You takes us on a journey that looks into several questions regarding the search of consciousness, or what makes a person feel in terms of "I". One particular question that I thought had interesting evidence in the video was what the difference in consciousness between waking and sleeping tell about one's sense of self.
According to tests done at the University of Madison on Marcus's and other volunteers' brains, stimulation communications extend into integrated networks in the brain when a person is awake. However, when one is asleep and loses consciousness, stimulations are concentrated closer to the area of initial stimulation due to communication channels in the brain shutting down from losing consciousness in the sleeping state. The information gathered from these tests reveal how the brain still responds to conscious signals even when we lose consciousness during sleep, but to a much smaller degree.
For further research, this testing may help in the investigation involving both consciousness and dreams. While sleeping, the unconscious body loses awareness of the present surroundings such as the location, feeling of the blankets and pillow, and sometimes conjures visual pictures and fragments from memories to create dreams. What makes those dreams feel real is our loss of connection with the current physical body and senses. But when we suddenly have a nightmare, or dream of free falling, why does the reality of these dreams cross the threshold to our physical body and jolt us awake? At what point does our unconscious body decide that what is merely a dream is in fact a reality, and our body must respond? This goes more into the much debated topic of dreams and our conscious (or unconscious) mind. Without our conscious mind, we would be stuck in a dreamlike world, unknowing what is real and what is not, and most importantly, whether or not we can believe to exist in the world that our conscious finds as the reality.

What is sleepwalking? In my opinion, it is means walking or doing some acting while someone is fully asleep. Why there are so many researches about sleepwalking? Sleepwalking is one of the important parts in our daily life, because there are many people have been hurt by sleepwalking, there is also an example in our textbook. In one controversial, a young man who drove almost 20 miles, removed a tire iron from a car, and killed his mother-in-law and seriously injured his father-in-law with a knife! It was so scaring! And there are also many examples in our daily life, I have heard that a little boy ate the telephone while he was sleeping; someone just washed his dishes while he was sleeping and so on. What make this happened? There are many explanations, and there is no accurate theory can answer it.
Another reason that I think sleepwalking is very important for us is because there are so many people have the misconception to the sleepwalking. Ones is sleepwalkers aren't acting out their dreams, because they are fully asleep, another is it's perfectly safe to wake him or her up while someone was sleepwalking. So it is very important for us to know what is sleepwalking.
But there is still something I want to know. For example, I want to know what occurs this phenomenon. Why people do the different behavior?
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trxuOyoQL-4

Inattentional blindness is used to describe some circumstances where people fail to pay attention to something when they are focusing on other items. Although different parts of brain can manipulate different functions to make people do several things at the same time, I think our frontal lobe has to decide which thing is prior and needs more attention. So when we focus very much on a specific thing, we might fail to realize others things or changes.

I remembered when I was in high school, I almost got killed by a rushing car. I was in bad mood that day, so I called my friends on the street complaining to them about something bothered me when a car is rushing towards me. The car blew its whistle and didn't plan to stop because the driver thought I must have heard the whistle. But I was so immersed in our conversation that I had no chance to know what's going on around me. Fortunately the driver stopped the car in the last minute just a few centimeters away from me or I would get injured just because of the lack of attention to the car whistle. If I had known about inattentional blindness, I would make that phone call after I got home safely instead of on street.

And I've got a question about the concept: I was told that there are a small amount of people who can pay attentions to more than one thing at the same time. How does it happen? Does it show that their brain is more advanced than ours?

As we all know, sleepwalking is the action of walking around or doing something in our sleep during which we are unaware. We, ourselves, have probably been a "somnambulist", or sleep walker at one point in our life or at the very least have know someone who has or have heard stories of sleepwalkers. Generally, sleepwalking is more common among children but occasionally occurs in adults. Sleepwalking usually consists of some fumbling around or frolicking about, but in some rare instances sleep walking can turn fatal. Recently, an international newspaper headlines read 'Geelong tourist killed in sleepwalking balcony plunge'. The article talks about a man who was visiting Thailand that slept walked right off his hotel balcony which lead to his death. This is just one example of the many fatal tragedies that occur due to sleepwalking. The textbook talks about another instance when a man killed and injured his mother and father-in-law all while sleep walking. Is there a way to prevent sleepwalking? Should we be worried about fatalities due to sleepwalking? And maybe even a more important question, should we be held responsible for our actions while in a sleepwalking state?...

While reading Lilienfeld, I found particular interest in Synesthesia. It is explained as a condition in which people experience an integration of separate senses upon detection of physical elements. For example, a Synesthete may describe the number "8" as being maroon-colored or the word "kitchen" as tasting like cinnamon. It is indeed a fascinating intertwinement of the human senses.

Researchers have proposed that there is a strong genetic component to this condition and that it may be more prominent in artists, poets, and creative people. As researched by Baron-Cohen et al. in 1996, women are six times more likely to have Synesthesia and about 33% of respondents in the Baron-Cohen et al. experiments have known family members who also have Synesthesia.

Interestingly, while researching more about Synesthesia, I noticed my own recurring thoughts about a color-themed poem I had written in 8th grade. I wrote phrases like "melancholy Blue" and "sauntering Grey". I used those specific descriptors because they were common associations I gathered from my 13-year-old experiences at the time. After years of listening to music and stories, I easily recalled the color blue being used in reference with depressing contexts and the color Grey being used in casual or leisurely contexts. This communication between physically motionless colors and words that directly express motions was my primary way of writing metaphors. Although my metaphors may be significantly different from Synesthetes' experiences, it still shares the similarity by the cross-linking within the Sensory system. I definitely agree that further exploration of Synesthesia may offer insight into the Psychological elements used to build metaphors and language.

Below is a link to a short clip about metaphors that we see in the media everyday--song lyrics! Throughout writing this blog, I have tried to understand why I like metaphorical song lyrics much better than others. It may be that metaphors are more open to interpretation and I enjoy the opportunity to search for those meanings, or it may not be so at all. Whatever the reason, I hope that I may use future research on Synesthesia--and other Psychological inquiries in general--to answer my questions.

metaphor-free radio (contains inappropriate language use!!)
http://youtu.be/Aa-eo-tsaso

sources:
http://www.imprint.co.uk/rama/synaesthesia.pdf
http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar01/synesthesia.aspx

Assignment#2: Nalee Vang

Dreams are a universal event that happens to everyone and they are a window into our subconscious minds. But why do I repeatedly wake up confused, marveling at what my subconscious just created? Some people are convinced that they don't dream but it isn't true they just don't remember them, as stated in the Lilienfeld text even blind people dream. Remembering dreams is one of the most important components of dream analysis because to analyze a dream you have to know what transpired during said dream. Analyzing our dreams can help us to overcome problems in our everyday lives that are causing us stress or tribulations; in fact dream analysis has been around since the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. So how do we decipher what our dreams suggest? It is important to keep a dream journal close to your bed in order to write down everything we remember from our dream as soon as we wake up. We do this because ninety percent of what we remember from our dreams can be gone in the first ten minutes of being conscious again. After writing down everything we remember try to look for things that stand out such as reoccurring objects, or something from your conscious life that keeps appearing. When you identify these patterns, underlying importance can be found. For example if you were to dream of a sunset you can interpret a task or project has been completed and now it is time for you to relax and rejuvenate. It all sounds bogus but you ultimately have the choice to take what you want from your dreams; I feel like dreams occur for some reason so why not make the most of them instead of forgetting about them. My sister started to analyze her dreams and she found many benefits from doing so and that is how I got turned on to the idea. In fact remembering your dreams has been linked to many positive health benefits like: increased knowledge, self awareness, self healing, helping guide us through difficult decisions, and become stronger more confident people through learning more about ourselves.

The nature vs nurture debate has been a long debate over the years of psychology. It discusses whether our behavior is determined by our genes(nature) or our environments(nurture). For the genes debate we know such things such as height, color, and features are determined by our genetics from our parents. We learned from the text book that Gregor Mendel did experiments on peas to show how these characteristics showed up in peas, and how the genetics of peas were transferred from generation to generation. A human has 46 chromosomes that are passed down from our parents and the determine which traits we will portray by our dominant and recessive genes.
The other side of the debate is nurture, and that is whether or not be develop our behavior from the environment. Darwin was a famous part to this argument because he came up with the theory of natural selection. He said that organisms change over time based on the environment they live in. If they want to survive they will have to adapt to their surroundings. Many studies can be done to study the affects of behavioral environment including family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yTCShemS_0&feature=related
I find this debate to be extremely interesting because I like the study of biology, and in biology we learn the importance of both genetics, and environment to our development as a human. We grow up in a house and become to be just like our parents. What they teach us from right to wrong is most likely what we are going to believe. From class we had the example of the family where the parents were both abusive parents, and criminals at the same time, and there children became criminals because it was a learned trait from their parents, this shows an example of how nurture affects us, but at the same time people argue that their is an gene in the brain that tells us to be violent which is an example of how nature affects us. It has been a long going debate for many years of whether which one effects people more, but at this point in time there is no easy answer.
When talking about this debate it brings many questions to my mind. Well they ever find a link between which cause your behavior, whether it be nature or nurture? Does both of them have an equal amount of pull on how your behavior turns out, or does one outweigh the other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aNaMlSc3Ag

As the BBC fascinating video shows, Marcus de Sautoy went to a university to solve his problems in his mind. And he saw a mirror self-recognition test. In the test, there were two baby with different ages, 16 months and 24 months, tested by measuring whether they recognized the mark on their face or not. Finally, the result showed that the 16-month-old boy didn't realize the mark on his face while the 24-month-old girl moved away the mark when she found it on her face. Although there were only two individual samples for testing, the result can support the common result, as the test done time and time again , that human develop their sense of self between the ages of 18 and 24 months. In this case, the test makes the use of a behavior after seeing the mark on face, which represents the awareness of self.
In my opinion, awareness of self develop maybe after a certain age, as I can imagine that a little baby can only cry and obverse the out-side world but not be aware of self. I am quite surprised at the question that when we, as human, human develop our self-awareness because I just own it but never realize that when I got it. Furthermore, this question stimulate my curiosity about self-awareness. I wander Whether animals have self-awareness and How human develop the awareness of self. And How does the awareness of self work in our daily life?

According to this article, your keyboard is five times dirtier than a toilet, in terms of number of germs. I was shocked when I first heard this claim but soon after that I realized it was true and reasonable. The basic logic are here: fingers are considered as the body parts that are the most often in contact with the objects every day: we pick up things, clean the counter top... whatever you can think of, we are using our fingers. While the fingers is in contact with the items,the bacteria and viruses adhere onto the fingertips and is highly possible to be transferred to the things we touched. On the other hand, the daily computer use ranges 3-5 hours per adult, which means the bacteria/viruses can accumulated on the keyboard during tapping of the keys. Also, many people have the habit to eat in front of computers, which make the possibility of the food crumps fall into the slit in the keyboards, creating the favorable condition to culture bacteria/viruses.

According to medical news today, the microbiologist James Francis swabbed 30 keyboards and a toilet door handle and a toilet seat at the one of the London offices. Most of the keyboards and the toilet door handles passed the hygiene test, but Francis found 4 of the keyboards were so infested with germs, which posed a health hazard that could give someone a bad stomach upset; and one had 150 times the safe limit of bacteria, and was 5 times dirtier than the toilet seat. Francis suggested this keyboard be removed from the office, as a precaution.

The evidence generated by Francis' test is sufficient to support that the keyboard is dirtier than the toilet. Even though Francis 's experimental design is not thoroughly stated in the report, people who are interested in the same topic can easily replicate the test to either support or falsify the claim. The statement of "The keyboard is dirtier than a toilet" presents both falsifiability and replicability. The claim meets all six rule of critical thinking, and thus it is a true statement.

After reading many relevant articles, I would suggest handwashing is the most effective and cheapest way to fight bacteria, and cleaning the keyboard regularly is another smart solution.

Additional Readings:Your Keyboard: Dirtier Than a Toilet

Extraordinary Claim - Iridology

Some practitioners believe that there really is something to that twinkle in your eye. Iridology is the belief that the each part of the body is reflected in the iris of the eye. The iris of the eye is the colored part of the eye. In the article, Iridology-A Window into Health, Frankie Avalon Wolfe, MHH PhD, explains some doctors believe that a sparkle is a sign of health and the lack of sparkle is a sign of illness. According to Wolfe, Iridology is practiced mainly in Europe by medical doctors, but it is gaining traction in the United States. Iridologists study the markings, lines and color of the iris to detect illness. Iridologists believe that each part of the iris reflects the health of specific parts of the body. For example, if a person has a think "ring" around the iris, this is a sign of an imbalance in your cholesterol or calcium. Many iridologists will use this to prescribe lifestyle changes or add supplements to a patient's diet.
There is currently no scientific evidence that supports the theory that each part of the iris represents the health of a specific part of the body. I would argue iridology is an example of an extraordinary claim because it is not based on scientific evidence.

Yawns, closed eyes, and head bobs as students fall in and out of consciousness are prevalent in just about every class lecture. It seems more and more like college students just aren't getting the adequate hours of sleep they need. With all the social activities, busy schedules, and late nights hitting the books, sleeping patterns take a back seat to the everyday rush of being successful in college. Often one hears about how students simply try to get by with continuous short nights of rest in hopes that they can catch up on the weekends. As suspected, late nights and early mornings have been linked to having negative effects on everyday routines.
According to an article published in "Science Daily" (linked below), a study conducted by LeAnne Forquer and Carl Johnson at Central Michigan University linked college students poor sleep cycles to having detrimental effects on daily performances. The article titled College Student Sleep Patterns Could Be Detrimental states that "College students are among the most sleep-deprived age group in the U.S. Sleep deprivation can have detrimental effects on daily performance, including academics and driving, and has also been linked to depressed mood and behavioral problems." When student's sleep cycles are constantly changing, negative effects are commonplace because "disrupting the circadian rhythm, a person's 24-hour day-night cycle that influences quantity and quality of sleep" affects their overall function. Because of this, there has been an increased amount of interest in learning how to increase sleep quality of students. In a study mentioned in the same article, white noise has been linked to possibly providing a better nights sleep. This study, also led by Forquer and Johnson, found that "white noise was effective for college students with self-reported sleep problems to decrease difficulty in falling asleep and night wakings."
This pertains to me because according to the Sleep Deprivation test performed in our psychology discussion section, I also have inadequate sleep hours. My "sleep debt" adds up throughout the week and is usually relieved on the weekends, like most of my fellow classmates. Despite the negative effects, I find it amazing yet difficult to understand how the body can still perform as adequately as it does on short sleep. I still wonder about how the body manages to feed off alternative sources of energy in our bodies to get through the day. As more studies are conducted and tests in sleep labs are performed many of our current uncertainties will be answered. But in the mean time, maybe we should just sleep on it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080512145824.htm

Here's a youtube video of college students with poor sleep cycles and the negative effects associated with it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSB_UPUwexU

I was told that for someone my around my age we should be getting a solid 8-9 hours of sleep, but lately that has been impossible! With all the work and people in college getting the full amount of recommended sleep has become increasingly hard. With school work students are not getting enough sleep continuously throughout the week and becoming deprived. According to Lillienfield "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).

I've tried my best to get things done or to just not do things to get as much sleep as I can. I've learned that I can't stay up late anyways and won't benefit from studying into the very late hours. Recently I met a friend who studied all the way to 5:30am on a Saturday night and I wonder to myself "WHY AREN'T YOU SLEEPING?!?!" I told him that studying that late continuously does not help.

Lilienfeld also says that being sleep deprived can lead to health problems like becoming overweight (something I hope to never be!). Being sleep deprived is something I believe that should be avoided and getting the recommended amount of sleep is very important. One thing that strikes me the most is why would someone stay up so late to study when studies show that being sleep deprived increases the difficulty in learning new information that is vital to being a good student.

College does take a huge toll in our biological clocks since our sleep schedules are always disrupted with the many activities, work, school, distractions, and people that are present! We are forced to go to the sleep bank everyday morning and everyday to deposit the sleep that we are unable to get and then come back on the weekend to withdraw it out!

I hope I can sleep well in my new fort that I made! (Currently roommate-less for like the 3-4th week!)

Inattentional blindness is simply the term for the fact that are minds are bad at detecting obvious and often important stimuli when our attention is focused elsewhere.

I'll be the first to say, like most people, I am totally guilty of inattentional blindness. I used to just think I was bad with names but knowing this makes me think otherwise. The situation that would often happen to me is upon meeting or being introduced to someone, the moments before and threw the first "hello's and introductions" I would be so focused on what I was going to say, the handshake or hug, that I would completely miss the individuals name. It's really frustrating because you don't want to be rude and ask again so you end up speaking for a while or listening to try to pick it out of the conversation.

The video "The Secret You" provides evidence that we develop our sense of self between the ages of 24 months and 18 years. Self-awareness can be described as having a sense of being yourself, or of having the capacity to differentiate yourself from others and your environment. This video gives evidence that humans develop this sense of self between the ages of 24 months and 18 years. They performed a mirror test, where they put children of different ages in front of a mirror to see if they would recognize themselves. The parents of the children surreptitiously placed small red stickers on their cheeks, and the children were placed back in front of the mirror. Those that noticed the red dot and tried to remove it were said to have a sense of self, because they recognized themselves. The ones who couldn't recognize themselves have not developed self-awareness yet. Those were children who tended to be younger than 24 months. I found this very interesting, because I have never thought about myself at a time when I wouldn't recognize myself as myself. It is strange to think of self-awareness as an ability that is developed, not something we are born with. I have often taken my self-awareness for granted, because if I didn't have it I wouldn't be me, so I haven't thought of what life would be like without it. I also think it is interesting the humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans are the only mammals that are self-aware. I thought there would be more species that have that capability.

I am neither a "night owl" nor an "early bird." I am a daytime person, and even though many people argue otherwise, they are as well. These descriptions- night owl and early bird- are adjectives that describe our circadian rhythm- the 24-hr cyclical changes in many biological processes -, and our biological clock- the mechanism controls our level of alertness throughout the day.
I was particularly interested in this topic, because- unlike many college students claim- I definitely do not function best at 11pm at night. As it turns out, according to research done at Penn State, only about 15-30% of people are actually most alert very early in the morning or very late at night. Therefore, the notion that many college students function better in the evening isn't necessarily true.
The article says that a reason many adolescents and young adults swear that they are "night owls" is because a large amount of our activities- like going out and socializing, night class, homework, homework procrastination- occur during the evening hours. This means that having an evening-type personality is perhaps more of a social construct, and that many college students are fighting their natural circadian rhythm and biological clock of alertness.
The article also briefly mentions the role of genetics in circadian rhythms, which I'd be interested in finding more about. For instance, as mentioned, I am a "daytime" person, and I don't go to sleep particularly early/late nor wake up particularly early/late. However, my mother goes to sleep early and gets up later, and my father goes to sleep late and gets up early. Therefore, I'd be interested in knowing how much of my circadian rhythm is determined by genetics, and how I am perhaps affected by social sleep constructs. This would also be another topic of discussion in the nature vs. nurture debate: are my sleep habits determined by my genetics or by my environment, peers, etc.

Brown, Frederick. "What Makes Someone a Morning Person or a Nigh Owl?" Reseach:Penn State. Pennsylvania State University, 27 Nov. 2006. Web. 9 Oct. 2011.

Although sleepwalkers are usually depicted as zombie like figures, wandering around aimlessly, the range of actions a sleepwalker can actually perform includes anything from just sitting up and appearing awake to more complex activities, like going on the computer or driving a car. Sleepwalking is most common in children 6 to 12 years old, but it may occur at any age and appears to run in families. A popular misconception is that sleepwalkers are acting out their dreams. However, vivid dreaming is most common in REM sleep, the deepest level of sleep, and sleepwalkers are usually in a non-REM sleep.

In one rare example, Lee Hadwin (pictured above) is a nurse by day and a "sleepwalking artist" at night. Hadwin, nicknamed Kipasso, creates artwork, while sleeping, and has no recollection of it in the morning (or artistic ability). When Hadwin first started sleepwalking at age four, his parents figured it was just a phase that he would grow out of. However, he continued to sleepwalk and in his teens he began to create art. At first it would just be doodles on his bedroom walls. The artwork then escalated and Hadwin would wake up in the morning and find everything: tablecloths, napkins, newspapers, and walls covered in artwork. Today, Hadwin lays out art supplies and sketchbooks before going to sleep so he is prepared for his nighttime art sessions. Major galleries have even begun to approach Hadwin for examples of his work, which they feel would be great to market. Although sleepwalking usually involves little activity, Kipasso is just one example of the many unbelievable sleepwalking stories that have been recorded.

I wanted to look into the nature vs. nurture debate because I find it very interesting. This debate has been going on for years. The argument is whether nature or nurture shape our physiological and psychological makeup. It could even be a combination of the two. Scientists ask themselves, "how significant are genes when it comes to becoming who we are?" It certainly makes for a very interesting study. There are three major ways of studying this debate. The first is family studies, which involves looking at how much a characteristic "runs" in an intact family. The second method is twin studies, which examines the differences between both identical and fraternal twins. Finally, the third method is adoption studies, which involves studying how much adopted children resemble their adopted parents as opposed to their biological parents.

While I was researching this topic, I stumbled across this very interesting and somewhat shocking article about a twin study that was initiated around 1979.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15629096

A researcher found sets of twins and triplets up for adoption and had them separated. These subjects grew up without knowing that they had siblings. Their adoptive parents were told little more than their children were involved in a psychological study. Obviously, this raises a lot of ethical questions, especially revolving around informed consent. Now, a lot of these siblings are finding each other and learning about the study, which is sealed until 2066. I am disappointed in the researcher's lack of morals, but it will be extremely interesting to find out exactly what the study has revealed about nature vs. nurture. The discoveries could possibly be a huge breakthrough in the scientific and psychological fields.

Many people experience déjà vu throughout their lifetime, but often it comes as a surprise. You feel like you've already done something before, and it is confusing as to whether it really is a familiar situation or not (Lilienfeld, 180). There have been many hypotheses about how this happens, but Dan Dennett has his own hypothesess. As Dan mentions in the video , déjà vu occurs between the eye and the place in the brain that can be called the "familiarity detector". His first hypothesis states that, while an image and situation are being sent to the brain, this information may be sent along two similar channels, but one may be delayed. Once the delayed channel sends the information the familiarity detector says "I've seen it before!" This could account for the feeling of already doing something before. His second hypothesis states that there is only one channel, but if the information resembles another experience, it sends the "I've seen it before signal" into the brain.

Although I think that either, and even both, hypotheses makes complete sense, in the end it comes down to what a person believes. This can affect how a person sees or interprets their own déjà vu experience.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjEyNTAyOTA4.html
when you watched video, do you have a feeling that you cannot believe what you have seen? Maybe you will ask why do i not see the color change. Let me tell you. It is a interesting psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness, one important concept in perception. when we focus on one thing, we will be unawareness of else other thing because our eyes will have a really poor sight in what you are not focusing on(poor at detecting stimuli from other things). and there is another similar phenmenon called change blindness. They have the same principle. That can explain why you cannot see the color change.Because from the beginning to the end, you only focus on the card(diamond three).
so you do not pay attention to the other things like the performer changes environment( clothes, tablecloth,cards and curtain).

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/dead.asp

Myth: The number of people currently living is greater than the number of people who have ever died.

This claim seems possible, if unlikely, especially because it supports popular notions of world overpopulation that became popular in the 1970s and have been circulating, more or less, ever since. However, there are two methods of scientific thinking that can be used to determine the validity of this claim.

The first applicable principle is that of falsifiability. This is something of an issue in this situation because it is impossible for us to know exactly how many people have died in the past - we can estimate population size going back to the time of the first modern human skeletons that have been found, but we can't be positive that there weren't earlier individuals that we haven't found evidence of. Still, let's assume our estimates are close enough to use for these purposes.

The biggest problem with this claim is based in the principle of extraordinary claims. Essentially, extraordinary claims, such as this one, would require extraordinary evidence in their favor in order to be considered sufficiently supported. Thus, even though we don't know for sure that there aren't more dead people than we can be aware of, we would need to have reason to believe that there were considerably fewer than there are people currently living in order to accept such an extraordinary claim. Because our estimates actually suggest that there are considerably more people that have died in the history of the world than there are currently living (between 12 and 110 billion being the widest range, with consensus tending around 60 billion as opposed to nearly 7 billion living today), there is hardly any evidence to support this claim, let alone enough to support such an extraordinary claim.

I found the video posted on the WebVista site, Marcus de Satoy's "The Secret You," very interesting. For the purpose of this entry, I'd like to focus on his discussion of who really makes our decisions - our conscious selves or our unconscious brains? I'm with Satoy 100% in his conclusion that the conscious self is part of the brain, and there really isn't any necessary dualism between consciousness and the brain. But I'm not sure he really takes this idea far enough. Obviously he's doing a TV show, and he had to create some potential conflict in order to keep an audience interested enough to stay for this 10-minute segment, not to mention the entire 58-minute show, so I understand why he set it up as though he found the idea of his brain making his decisions to be disturbing and not in keeping with his sense of his own free will. But our consciousness isn't just in harmony with our brains - our brains are the only consciousness we can have. There isn't anything to our consciousness but what is in our brains, because there can't be. We literally have no other means of "thinking" or "knowing" or "feeling," or even of "being different" from other humans or other animals, that doesn't happen in and only in our brains. That's not to say that consciousness, particularly human consciousness, isn't incredibly complex. There's a genetic component to our cognitive capacity and our personalities, an environmental component, a physical component, and perhaps even others, too. But I think it's clear that all of that has to be in the brain, because it really can't be anywhere else.

Here's the video, by the way, if anyone wants to watch it. The last section, starting at about 47 minutes, is the part I'm referring to in this entry.

According to our text, college students are supposed to get nine hours of sleep each night! In my experience, this would be nearly impossible while keeping a normal course schedule. In addition, our culture tells us that being exhausted and sleep deprived for four years is an important part of the college experience. Investigating this further, I found several articles describing the importance of sleep in learning. I was aware that sleep deprivation is related to negative health effects, such as weight gain, high blood pressure, and heart problems, not to mention susceptibility to accidents. On top of this I learned that, by sleeping too little, college students may be directly affecting their ability to remember things. One of the articles I found describes a different kind of memory which forms while people are sleeping (http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/09/28/sleep-learning-improves-memory/29852.html). The ability to consolidate memories while asleep varies by person, but for some people, getting full night's sleep has a dramatic effect on their memory abilities. A second article suggests that giving students more time to sleep could have a more positive influence on learning than extending the school day, partly because students of all ages tend to be sleep deprived (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/26/should-the-school-day-be-longer/let-students-sleep?scp=5&sq=sleep&st=cse). This ties into the comment in the text about Americans' "chronic sleep deprivation." It is a challenge to find time for sleeping in a society that values time spent at work over time spent resting and recharging memory.

There are times where I wake up from dreams where it takes me a minute to realize that I was dreaming. Other times, I pretty much seem to know I am dreaming even before I wake up. Some dreams that occupy are simply bizarre, such as a balloon floating to the sky and becoming the sun (that was really a dream that I had). Other dreams seem so true to life and realistic, such as taking an upcoming test or finding lost objects. Almost everyone dreams at least occasionally. Dreams where the sleeper experiences rapid eye movement, or REM, tend to be the most illogical and emotional, such as the sun balloon one. Whereas, non-REM sleep tends to be more realistic, such as the missing objects and test ones. Dreams are still a mystery to many scientists. Many theories have been proposed about why we dream. Sigmund Freud believed the Interpretations of Dreams which states that dreams disguises and represses erotic and violent impulses by transforming them into symbols that represent how we which things could be. He believed that dreams required interpretation to reveal their true meaning. Most scientists have rejected Freud's theory of dream. The Activation-Synthesis Theory states that dreams reflect the brain's attempt to make sense of random and internally created neural signals during sleep. In other words, the brain tries to make sense out from nonsense. The neurocognitive theory states that dreams are meaningful product of our cognitive capabilities, our ability to think and reason. The theory states that because since many dreams appear ordinary that they would have to be based from more than neural impulses. Nevertheless, no matter how or why dreams occur they play a very important aspect in daily lives and culture and probably always will.

There are many shocking and disturbing effects of countless drugs, but the outcomes of methamphetamines astonish me most. Within seconds of entering the body, meth attacks the nervous system and starts destroying tissues as well as blood vessels. The stimulant provides an intense exhilaration that can last anywhere from twelve to sixteen hours.
The article I found in The New York Times tells about the drug itself, the effects, and the dependence that people acquire from meth. The studies and information within the article has been replicated (replicability) by numerous sources, making the statistics believable. Meth goes through the body triggering the release of neurotransmitters and destroying receptor cells. It increases heart rate, blood pressure and can lead to severe strokes or it even compromise the immune function. Not long after the drug has been used, drastic physical effects start taking place such as dry skin, acne, pallor, blurred vision, and flushing. Many psychological effects take place as well. Some of the major effects include anxiety, increased libido, irritability, aggression, paranoia, and hallucinations. The video clip I attached shows before and after photos of meth users.

Meth "Faces" Photo
http://www.soulpurposeministries.org/faces5.gif

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/109486//faces_of_meth
Video of "Faces of Meth"

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/methamphetamines/index.html
Article on Meth from The New York Times

I got the idea for this blog post after seeing the new 2011 Kia Optima commercial, but couldn't find this specific commercial on youtube. Instead I found one for the Mazda 626 clear back from 1997 which uses the same idea. (I just posted the URL since I cant figure out why this wont post the link.)

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

Our brain is made up of two hemispheres each performing specific, yet very different functions. The term lateralization means that some cognitive functions rely more on one side of the brain than the other which was later confirmed by split-brain surgery; the cutting of the corpus callosum which transfers information between the two hemispheres. Functions of the right hemisphere would include such things as face perception and simple speech, while the left would include speech comprehension and fine motor control.

This has led to the misconception that there are two different kinds of people in the world--those who are more "left brained" meaning they are "scholarly, logical, and analytical" and those who are more "right brained" or "artistic, creative, and emotional" (Lilienfield, Lynn, Namy, & Woolf, 2011). This ad used this notion by using specific words such as "data" and "statistics" and posed the question "What if you were to buy a car strictly with your left brain?" following with the statement "...your right brain would be handsomely rewarded." It implies that if you use your left brain to buy this product that you are smart, and intelligent and that your right brain will be pleased by the beauty and creativity of the model... although this was from 1997, so times have clearly changed.

The Kia Optima 2011 used the same type of advertisement which shows that this is still quite a popular misconception, but simply an "over-exaggeration of accurate science" (Lilienfield et al, 2011). A majority of our population has not undergone any kind of split-brain surgery so our corpus callosum would ensure that both of our hemispheres remain in continual communications and work with each other; not separately.

Alcohol is a depressant drug that lowers the effects of the central nervous system (CNS). Low doses stimulate while high doses sedate. Usually when someone drinks alcohol to feel better they go past the small amount that helps you to feel better because they feel so good that they enter into the stage where they begin to forget their pain at high doses of .2. If they reach levels of .50 and over they begin to risk their lives.

My mother came from a family of alcoholics. Her mother, father, and four of her siblings were addicted to alcohol. The alcoholic gene runs in our family and when my mother and I occasionally talk about drinking she mentions that sometimes when she sits down at night to have a glass of wine she feels the urge to drink more than she should. Alcohol is the most commonly used drug. It worries me to think about not being able to control the urge to drink so I stay away from alcohol. I would rather be safe than sorry when it comes to an addicting depressant drug.

Our textbook explained sleepwalking and what actually happens to sleepwalkers. I have always been told that I sleep talk so I decided to do a little research. My parents told me that when I was younger I had a consistent pattern of sleep talking. After about 20 minutes of sleep, I would begin to sleep talk, however; it was almost always slurred and difficult to understand. As it turns out, sleep talk, as well as sleepwalking, both occur during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). I also found out that some people sleep eat. Basically, sleep talking occurs when someones brain is half awake, and the other half is asleep. The half of the brain that is awake will begin to talk, although the person sleep talking will not remember it, which I can attest to. This phenomenon can occur due to a lack of enough sleep, an irregular sleep schedule, or eating a large meal before going to bed. It is also more likely for children to sleep talk that adults. I found this website helpful for information on sleep talking: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleeping-angels/200905/why-do-people-sleep-talk.
I found it very interesting that sleep talking occurs during non-rapid eye movement sleep because I always thought I would sleep talk in response to something going on in my dreams, however; it is not as common for people to be dreaming during NREM sleep as it is during REM sleep. The sleep talking occurs while we are in a light sleep and seen below are the brain waves of our different sleep stages. As can be seen, the REM brain waves are the most similar to those of which we are awake, which is why we dream during this stage. The sleep talking occurs during stage 2 of our sleep.

Image URL: http://www.alleydog.com/images/sleepwaves.gif

In chapter 5 of the Lilienfeld textbook, one of the key concepts presented is dreams. A dream is images or sounds experienced while sleeping. Dreaming is practically experienced by all and comes in many diverse forms. Some people claim to never dream but research seems to reveal that they fail to remember dreams rather than fail to have them. Those that are blind still dream as well! The biological purpose of dreams has not yet been discovered but what is known is that dreaming is strongly associated with rapid eye movement (REM).
In Freud's Dream Protection Theory, Freud believed that dreams were the protectors of sleep. During sleep, the ego is less able to monitor sexual and aggressive instincts allowing them to come out in our dreams. Freud also believed that dreams were not as straight-forward as they seem to be. They must be deciphered in order to reveal their true meaning. The fact that dreams must be interpreted is still widely believed today.

http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/

Here is the link to a dream dictionary which believes that symbols in our dreams can be interpreted to reveal our deepest secrets and hidden feelings. Go ahead and try it to analyze the feelings and wish fulfillment of your unconscious!

I believe that dream decoding is a hoax and that there is a more biological reason behind why we dream such as the Activation-Synthesis Theory. Overall, dreaming is still a mystery to the human race and hopefully someday we will reach the answers as to why we dream and if we physically need dreams to live. Until then, we can continue entertaining ourselves by trying to discover the concealed meaning of our dreams.

Narcolepsy is a concept where a person or animal is suddenly overcome by sleepiness and falls asleep. During this disorder, sleep lasts from only seconds to sometimes hours. Unfortunately, for those with the disorder it leads them to have cataplexy, complete loss of muscle tone. Cataplexy usually occurs during REM sleep in people who don't have narcolepsy, but when cataplexy occurs in people who have narcolepsy they can fall and be completely awake even though they can't move. Also, people with narcolepsy fall into REM sleep immediately causing them to not be able to wake up. Hallucinations occur during a narcoleptic's REM sleep as well. The disorder of narcolepsy makes me wonder how its treatment of medication, modafinil, works. Also, are there any biological functions that are affected that cause a person to be a narcoleptic?

In the world of sports entertainment, a big part of the production, other than the lights and the cameras and the actual games being played, is commentary. Commentators come in all shapes and sizes but all have one thing in common, they are biased!
Whether it was because of a team they previously played for, coached, or grew up cheering for, commentators are cheering for certain teams, and when that team isn't winning, it was bad luck, or some other non skill attribute that affected the team not playing well. This is also evident in officiating of sports, not only in the officiating itself, but in the fans, including myself, that are on them all the time for missed calls, but rarely do we praise the refs for their correct calls. Because of our confirmation bias, our predisposition that officials are bad at their job and only make incorrect calls, we look for them to make those incorrect calls to confirm our theory.

Terror management by is described as adopting theories regarding the afterlife in order to give more meaning to life here on earth. This topic is interesting to me as someone who isn't an incredibly religious individual. I support every ones beliefs, no matter what they are, and even if they contradict my own. To give context to my post and my opinions however it seems important to state that at the moment I am an atheist. One big misconception about atheism is that those who believe it, believe that God doesn't exist. What it really means is that we as human beings are constrained by what we know, and the idea that God exists cant be proven nor is it falsifiable.

The point of this post is as an atheist I've often thought about what the meaning of life is from a practical point of view. To me since I don't gain much self-esteem or self worth from God, life is what I make it out to be. To me that way of thinking that we all control our own destiny makes me aggressive in pursuing my goals and tenacious in completing tasks that I enjoy which makes me a better person. I feel like life is tough enough, that it doesn't make sense to worry about a super natural power that I have no control over. This way of thinking makes me truly unafraid of death because I have no say or control over when I pass. I'm worried about what I can control, and doing my best not to take any precious moments for granted. This mood is a mixture of control and abandon, and centers around an awareness of the inevitability of death. Once we accept that our death is completely inevitable, and really but moments away, we are free to live life to the full.

Anyway, when I read about the terror management concept I thought it would be interesting I give a perspective of someone who isn't overly religious.

Sigmund Freud argued that one's behavior was a result of unconscious desires. I do not thing Freud is either right or wrong. Recent science has showed that unconscious actions make up a great deal of who or what we are. For example if you wanted a dog as a pet you would be more inclined to pet a dog rather than a cat. Is this because you dislike cats, no it's because you like dogs more. Freud postulated that sexual drives were the primary motivational forces of human life. A point I disagree with, because in the end he usually wound up telling his patients they had sexual tension towards their mothers. As these two previous examples show the unconscious definitely plays a part in your everyday life. But I believe you unconscious mind works in tandem with you conscious, blending into your everyday behavior. Like many topics in psychology there is no one cause for a certain behavior, rather many factors that work together. The picture attached is synonymous with Freud because it represents our conscious and unconscious mind. Freud believed that the unconscious mind was much greater in size and importance, but was hidden (by the water). Freud was an interesting man, going as far as to use cocaine as an antidepressant. In conclusion I believe Freud made many great contributions to Psychology furthering research outside the ID and super ego.

Illusory correlation is a rather common phenomenon that shapes society and people's actions and decisions. It is the belief or perception that two nonrelated events or occurrences are measurably and statistically correlated. These strange links are definitive and exemplary of superstitions such as thinking that opening an umbrella indoors will bring one bad luck. There is no actual evidence confirming that performing this action will truly affect how well one's day or week will go following the action, however many people make it a point to not open umbrellas indoors. Furthermore, if something unpleasant or bad does end up happening to them in close proximity to the time that they opened the umbrella, it "fits their expectations and causes their confirmation bias of the correlation to kick in" (Lilienfeld 58). I think that this phenomenon is important because the more people there are who participate in illusory correlation and believe in superstitions, the more likely they are to partake in certain activities, which ends up largely defining a society. Illusory correlation plays a role in shaping people's beliefs and can go unnoticed as being a big contributor to the patterns in how members of a society conduct their daily lives. This phenomenon applies to my own life because I find myself having expectations resulting from the superstitions I believe in, such as expecting to have a male visitor if I drop a knife on the ground, which is one that my grandma always repeated to me. As I reflect on this concept I wonder about how many superstitions began and why particular ones, such as the umbrella example, have stuck around with so many people for so long.

http://www.lifescript.com/Soul/Spirit/Beliefs/10_Common_Superstitions.aspx

"PLEASE BRIEFLY DESCRIBE THE EMOTIONS THAT THE THOUGHT OF YOUR OWN DEATH AROUSES IN YOU" This was a question that researchers asked several research participants in order to study the Terror Management Theory. This theory was based off of a cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker's works, and was made into an empirical analytical theory in the late 1970's by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. Terror Management Theory(TMT) is a theory that looks into how humans react to the concept of death. "Man has an inherent tendency for self-preservation and has cognitive capabilities in awknowledging life's impermanence." This self-preservation underlies mankind's existence, and is supported by what the theory believes to be culture and beliefs. Death correlates with cultural values and beliefs, and the people who are exposed more to the idea of mortality are more likely to hold strong cultural values and beliefs to give them a reason to live, and judge views different from their own to protect their own ideals. Culture ends up "[serving] as a death-denying function", making the nature of reality more "meaningful, orderly, and stable and that provisions for immortality." An example that many of us students may have had is right before (or sometimes during) taking an exam. You think of the death you face by your parents if you fail this exam, class, and school. Fear of this death immediately gives rise to a short prayer to God to help you ace this test. This is a simple example of using our faith as an escape from the thought of death. Another example would be cases of cancer victims who hold on to their last breath of life until they are certain that a priest has blessed and forgiven them before they enter Heaven. The reassurance of their continuity after death is enough let them leave the world in peace. Some criticisms to this theory is that these motivators can also be due to a controlling or social factor. I wonder if key historical figures were influenced to hold stonger to their passions and leave a mark on history because of their fear of mortality as well. Whether you are afraid of dying, or are conditioned to the idea, a comment I remembered reading summed up the theory well: "when you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice." (clip from the Hitchkiker's Guide to Galaxy) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aboZctrHfK8 http://helpingpsychology.com/terror-management-theory http://www.deathreference.com/Sy-Vi/Terror-Management-Theory.html

I have a friend from high school who regularly experiences night terrors. He usually sits up in bed, screams uncontrollably for a few moments, and then lies back down. In the morning he has no recollection whatsoever of these events, and would deny their existence but for their reoccurring nature.
The first time I witnessed this was as a freshman in high school when he was sleeping on the floor next to my bed. In the middle of the night, hours after we had gone to sleep, I awoke into terror as I heard screaming and saw my friend standing upright directly in front of me. I surveyed the scene and realized that nothing terrifying was happening (other than the screaming teenager) and promptly told him to shut his ugly face (in uglier terms no doubt). A minute or so later, he lay back down and returned to slumber - never waking to my repeated shouts. In the morning he simply said "Yeah, I do that sometimes."
The Lilienfeld text doesn't do much explaining on this topic, so I went to a source outside the book: http://www.nightterrors.org/mot.htm. On this site I found out that night terrors happen only during the fourth stage of sleep, when the brain is least active. People who remember often "see" images of animals, spiders, snakes, or shadowy figures, and report feeling threatened. However, the images in the night terrors are not necessarily images that would insight fear during the waking hours.

In my opinion, nature is which means genes, and genes is which means what you get from you parents, and maybe you have the same characteristic . Nurture is what means environment around you , and environment is which means the people around you or something will effect you. It is important to resarch the nature and nurture, because if we know which part plays the more important role in our daily life, then we can figure out which one is more significant, and which one will effect us more.
There is a example in my daily life, one of my friend can play piano well, and guess what? Her mother is just a artist, and her major is music in her university. So her mother can play piano even better than she does. So maybe her mother' genes just inherent her that she can play piano more easy than others.For another part, two of her friend play piano as well, and when they get together, they always talk about piano and practice together. So i think it what i mean environment. Two of her friend, is just the people around her and effect her a lot.
All in all, both nature and nurture are all very important, and i can not figure out which part is more important, but in my opinion, i think they are just important as the same level.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aNaMISc3Ag

The difference between correlation and causation are two concepts in scientific thinking that seem very similar. But to confuse these two concepts can lead to a variety of misconceptions and misunderstandings. I think that the correlation-causation fallacy is an important concept of scientific thinking because it can be overlooked so easily and can lead to a conclusion that is far from the truth. Also, this fallacy is widely overlooked in the media and in popular opinion. Correlation, means that two variables are associated with each other, which is similar, but different from one variable causing the other. There are an almost endless amount of examples of this by media outlets. Usually, when a media outlet reports on some large scientific study that has found that two things are correlated, like the sexual lyrics and sexual behavior example from the text, they present it in a way such that the reader could easily overlook the fact that there is not necessarily a causational relationship between the two things. I also think that many times, this is intentional. A causational relationship is much more interesting than simply a correlation. In our world where everything is about instant information and headlines and sound bites, looking past the headline is not valued. It is much easier to frame the relationship as causational than to explain the real relationship. I think that causation sells better than correlation because of this. So the real importance of the concept of the correlation-causation fallacy is the ability to recognize this fallacy that can be so easily overlooked and to avoid forming misguided views based on a false premise of a causational relationship that is actually just a correlation.

One of the most well-known monsters in the world is the Loch Ness Monster. This monster supposably lives Loch Ness in the highlands of Scotland. To this day there is no significant evidence that the monster actually exists. There has been many claimed sitings of the monster. You can see almost all of the claimed sitings, bad pictures, and sonar contacts at this website link listed http://www.nessie.co.uk/ . Here is a picture of the Loch Ness Monster.

Extraordinary claim:

The claim that the Loch Ness Monster actually exists is definitely an extraordinary claim. This type of claim requires more substantial evidence to prove such a remarkable claim.

Occam's Razor:

Is it possible that there is a simpler explanation? Maybe if the photo of the Loch Ness Monster was more focused and it was actually this...

Not many elephants in Scotland. So, I doubt it.

What I find interesting about Psychology so far is that there will never be a ceiling on theories. One of the sections I noticed that grabbed my attention was learning about heuristics and bias. I discovered through reading the bias that I'm a very bias person when it comes to life. I'm very much Hindsight bias person. This is the bias of making predictions more or less off a gut feeling with not legit supporting evidence. Then when your prediction is correct you get a sense of feeling really smart and then tell your friends "I told you so." This bias also includes looking back on events and day dreaming about things you could of done differently to change things in your favor. I do this a lot in my life with sports. Recently I predicted the Packers winning the Super Bowl and the prediction came solely off of me being a hard core Packer fan. I've almost made many statements about the Packers winning the most Super Bowls this upcoming decade. I gave justifications why I made this prediction, but none of it is actual evidence to prove my prediction correct. During my sports seasons in high school I would look back at my losses in football or tennis and think about the one play or move I could of did to help win the game or match. Being a big sports guy I've realized all ESPN is a lot of Hindsight bias. Commentators always make their predictions off of patterns and tendencies. Then they also will recap a game and ask questions about certain plays in the game that completely changed the outcome for one team or another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89kXY9OFnPs

Ever since we landed on the moon in 1969, there have been several conspiracy theories claiming that the Apollo program and its associated moon landings were all just hoaxes created by NASA. The main claims are that the astronauts from Apollo didn't actually ever walk on the moon, and several conspiracy theorists have tried to produce evidence to support this. The experiments that are conducted to produce this evidence can be seen as pseudoscientific. There's no way that the conspiracists could actually produce absolutely tangible evidence to debunk space landings that happened four decades ago, out of our world. Especially because most of these experiments are created only to debunk, and can't be relied on as actual scientific fact.

Mythbusters try and debunk the claims that the moonwalk was faked:

On page 21 of Steven Lilienfeld's book Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding, the first principle of scientific thinking is identified: ruling out rival hypotheses. Lilienfeld summarizes it by saying "whenever we evaluate a psychological claim, we should ask ourselves whether we've excluded other plausible explanations for it" (21). Of course, this method of thinking does not need to strictly be applied to "psychological claims", but it can also be used for every day situations. When analyzing a situation, consider all of the possibilities. When a friend doesn't text back, before jumping to conclusions and thinking that they are ignoring you, consider other possibilities. Perhaps they were sleeping or their phone was broken. Or when going out to eat, the server may be less enthusiastic as a result of dealing with rude people all day, not because they are bad at their job.

Manipulation is commonly used tactic in the media. Reality TV shows are known to manipulate scenes and misconstrue dialogue in order to create a more dramatic story line. Tabloids are filled with misleading titles and unflattering photos. Paparazzi lurks on the outskirts of the lives of celebrities, waiting to attack and capture the perfect moment of a celebrity at their worst. Take, for example, this photo of Jessica Simpson:

Although terrible dancing is her own fault, tabloids could create speculation of Jessica being pregnant, when in fact it is a combination of an unfortunate angle, unfortunate moment, and unfortunate wardrobe.

Rather than seeing in black-and-white, it is always important to see a story from every perspective and consider every possibility. A recent example from my life is that my roommate's cat, Margaret, had an issue with urinating in all the wrong places: his bed, the rug, or the worst of all: my leather coat. Rather than considering that Margaret was ill, my roommate was under the impression that his cat was simply having problems adjusting to being around different people in a new environment. Finally, after the problem continued, he decided to bring his cat to a veterinarian. As it turns out, his cat in fact had a bladder infection and he was finally able to get her help. Instead of waiting, he should have gone to the vet immediately to discover the issue and solve the problem.

In conclusion, considering alternative explanations to problems can resolve a lot of conflict, broaden minds, and make sense of situations. I feel as though this concept can also be applied in the sense of putting ourselves in another person's shoes and examining the situation in their position. Doing this will allow us to gain a lot of understanding in many different situations, and I feel that this ability to see through another pair of eyes is absolutely essential to our every day lives.

Selective attention is a cognitive process to choose, on which stimuli we would like to focus and which one we should not pay attention to. It is comparable with a filter of all the stimuli we receive at one moment. One example of selective attention is the "Cocktail Party Effect" where a person is able to focus on a certain voice in a noisy room. Selective attention is also a factor in car accidents, drivers focusing on talking on a phone or holding a conversation with a passenger are more likely to be in an accident because they are more focused on the conversation than on the driving.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
The video with the basketball passes and the bear is a very good example,
(even though we had it in our discussion already) of how we focus on our task, rather than pay attention to other events happening at the same time. When I saw the video first, I was very impressed, because I was so focused on counting the passes, that I did not see the bear at all, when it was shown that a bear appeared in the video I realized it.
. Selective attention is considered as very important to everyone. For instance while learning we filter just the important information, rather than knowing the whole text by hard. Because this phenomenon appears not just with me, but with almost everybody we can speak of reliability. But I was just wondering how it is possible for our brain, to really make the right decision of what is really important, and what we can just ignore. Maybe it is correlated with our nurture and what we have been taught what is important or not.

Sources:
Youtube
http://www.ewi-psy.fu-berlin.de/einrichtungen/arbeitsbereiche/allgpsy/lehre/lehrveranstaltungen/ss_2008_Lehrveranstaltungen/Seminarplan_SS_2008/Aufmerksamkeit_Zusammenfassung_Mi.pdf
Psychology-From Inqury to Understanding, Scott Lilienfeld

http://www.bnfree.com/better-know-a-pseudoscience/

Pseudoscience is a set of claims that seem scientific but really aren't. They are a set of claims that fail to meet many scientific claims and fall short to conformation bias. Many researchers believe in UFO's and their sightings but fail to show any scientific evidence.
The first principle of scientific thinking that UFO claimers fail to meet is falsifiability. Many researchers make the claim that UFO's have been spotted but fail to support it with a hypothesis. In order to have an experiment and test your results you must have a testable hypothesis, but all UFO claimers say is that they exist. They do not give any form of testable hypothesis which disrupts the scientific thinking methods. According to the article "Better Know a Pseudoscience" it says that no UFO claimers can state a hypothesis that is testable, and can achieve scientific results. From the readings i have done i can assume that UFO's are an extraordinary claim that can not be explained with a hypothesis which again fails the principle of falsifiability.
Another principle of scientific thinking UFO claimers seem to ignore is Occam's razor which is lead by extraordinary claims. Many researchers claim that UFO's enter our atmosphere every night and abduct people, but they fail to explain how the UFO's escape detection by both astronomers and air planes. One of the things we must take into consideration is does the extraordinary claim have extraordinary evidence. In this example there are too many obstacles being overlooked, and there is hardly any evidence if any of actually sightings of UFO abductions.
This leads to Occam's razor. The sightings that people see are probably due to some simpler explanation. The sightings are probably confused with airplanes or even simply street lights. But usually believers of UFO's are caught up by conformation bias, and only look for explanations that explain their theory. To much evidence goes against the pseudoscience of UOFlogy to believe its true, and it fails many of the scientific principles. Some questions arise when thinking about UFO's for me. Will UFO's actually ever be spotted? Is it against scientific thinking to think there is life on other planets?

You can say that pseudoscience is one of science's "greatest" imposter. Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice of which people try to portray as scientific, but are actually not. It lacks supporting evidence, and cannot be reliably tested. Pseudoscience is a very interesting subject and stood out to me the most because I've realized that I encounter it everyday; I just didnt know the proper name for it. Learning more about pseudoscience will be very beneficial to my life, because I will be save from bad scam that sooner or later I know I will probably fall for.

Let's take my mom for exmple. She definitely fell prey to pseudoscience many times. About a few years ago, we had an unexpected additon to our household, and you guessed it! A Hawiian Chair. I knew what it was, because I have seen the add for it on TV ton of times everyday. This chair claimed to help the user lose weight by mimicking the movement of the traddtional belly dancing style in Hawii, hence the name. In the ad, they were talking about how you dont have to "work" when you're working out again. Now you can just sit, watch tv, or do other things in the chair and you can lose up to 300 pounds! That is definitely an example of exaggerated claims. I don't doubt that BELLY DANCING will help you lose weight, because it actually involves the whole body up and moving around. In the basic physics class that I attended, I learned that you have to exert a certain amount of energy to do work. Therefore, work is equal to you expending energy. All the chair did for the user was move them around. It was the exact opposite of working out; the chair did the work while the user did no work at all. But the ad showed people comfortable sitting in the chair, not breaking a sweat, happily smiling because apparently they found the answer for weight loss without exercising. If losing weight is that easy, then wouldn't all fittness gym go out of business? Now that chair is just sitting in the basement, collecting dust and sharing the same fate as all of the other chairs that other people bought. One important concept to take out from this is that you shouldn't believe anything you hear without researching more yourself. If somethings sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true!

Several stories have cropped up recently including one in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904537404576554444276847196.html) as well as on the BBC news website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15115059) claiming that using 3D technologies in the classroom can improve knowledge retention. Reading over these articles I found myself wondering more and more what the technology is worth the price tag (estimated at $10,000/class).

The experiment was conducted by taking two groups of students. Both groups were given a test on material they hadn't learned yet. After the test, the control group was taught the material using "traditional teaching methods", while the experimental group was taught the same material using these 3D technologies. Finally both groups were retested on the material. The results showed 86% of students using 3D technologies improved versus only 52% in the control group.

This does show a correlation between the two, however we can't be sure what the cause of this relationship is. Proponents attempt to claim that the 3D "...engages spatial reasoning skills, leading to higher retention rates and test scores." On the other hand, the study said that the relative "attention level" of the two classes was 92% of the experimental group were paying attention, while only 46% of the control group were. If these numbers are accurate, they seem to be a better explanation of the improved scores than the "engaging of spatial reasoning skills" (Occam's razor). This leads me to ask, why these students were paying more attention, and it's my belief that it was the novelty of the lesson. Give a student an iPad or 3D glasses or any other gimmick for a day and you'll likely see increased attention because the technology itself is something interesting to the students. The real question is if you keep that technology around for a year, will it still have the same power to entice the students?

Until I see data that proves me wrong, I'll remain skeptical of the claims being made (ruling out rival hypothesis). At a price of $10,000/class, I would hope that our cash-strapped public schools do their homework before buying into these claims.

Correlation vs causation applies to everyday situations. However, whether its logical to make the assumption that one event is parallel to another or if it is truly coincidental is what needs to be determined. Its difficult to support a correlation vs causation scenario because there are so many variables that may factor into the situation. It is important to find such examples because they can shed light on many of life's wonders but at the same time need to be highly questioned to ensure accuracy.
Geneticist Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University's pain laboratory provides us with what just might be a prototypical correlation vs causation example. The results of a recent study performed by Mogil and his staff concluded that natural redheads have a higher pain tolerance compared to non-redheads. According to Discover Magazine's article Secrets Of Redheads (link below), "Mogil and his team found that the mutant gene that causes red hair, melanocortin-1 (MC1R), also affects how redheads (including mice) react to pain" and that "men and women with naturally red hair can withstand 25 percent more electric shock than non-redheads".
This study is controversial because there are so many variables involved that to make such a claim warrants opposition. As a naturally born redhead this is intriguing because it pertains to my life. However, I believe further tests need to be conducted and replicated to provide concrete explanations. Being that future studies are in the works, I am eager to hear what these findings will tell us. I do believe that there are certain cause and effect issues that relate to redheads. I am curious as to what other health associations just may be linked to people like me.
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/nov/secrets-of-redheads

http://thisthattheseandthose.com/images/redhead.jpg

The Berkeley Psychic Institute in California claims to have helped thousands embrace and advance their psychic abilities through specific programs and qualified instructors. After enrolling in their psychic kindergarten, students should be able to spiritually heal, explore past lives, understand male and female energies, etc.

http://www.google.com/images

ABC Nightline News featured a short video about the Institute and students such as psychic hairdressers and healers. A group of psychic healers were invited to remove dark auras and spirits from a house which were left behind by the former tenants. The real estate agent personally sought for their help because he believed that the negative spirits were hindering his sales.

By Lilienfeld's principle of Occam's razor, much simpler reasons than negative spirits could be used to explain the real estate agent's lack of sales. Before putting his money and time into the psychic services, the estate agent could have looked to the interior design of the house. It is quite possible that the house was not selling simply because clients were not pleased by the way it looked. Some rearrangements and additions to the interior may have positively influenced clients' responses.

Additionally, the principle of extraordinary claims requires that the claims made by the estate agent, and psychics in general, be provided with sufficient and accurate evidence. The main evidences for their claims are gut feelings and personal beliefs. For such strong claims of mystical elements, gut feelings and beliefs are not sufficient since they are not objective and factual enough to completely explain anything.

In consideration of the emotional reasoning fallacy from Lilienfeld, the real estate agent may have resorted to the psychic services due to the stresses of a bad economy. It is possible that the negative emotions resulting from that stress have driven him to believe that such mystical elements are the answers to his problems.

Here is the link to the website for the Berkeley Psychic Institute:
http://www.berkeleypsychic.com/ShowPage.asp?id=163

Assignment#1_NaleeVang

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20110919/us-police-lineups/

As many of us watch CSI and Law and Order, we see the classic simultaneous criminal lineup, where the eyewitness picks out the one who is guilty out of a group of people. However, applied research allows us to examine this common procedure and make changes that benefit the real world. Psychological research shows that sequential lineups, in which victims view each perpetrator individually, have much better results than simultaneous line ups.

The logic behind this is the victim viewing the sequential lineup will compare each person to the perpetrator in their memory, rather than comparing a group side-by-side to see who most resembles the criminal. If the perpetrator is not actually in the lineup, the witness is likely to just pick the one who most resembles the actual perpetrator, unlike in a sequential lineup, where the witness less likely to pick an innocent person. According to Gary Wells, an eyewitness identification expert at Iowa State University, many laboratory experiment results have shown that sequential lineups are the most accurate. In his study,"the witnesses were shown mug shots of one suspect with five "fillers," or the known innocents. In the simultaneous lineups, the witnesses picked a filler 18 percent of the time, verses 12 percent for the sequential method. Witnesses picked the suspect about a quarter of the time using both methods."
However, police departments are hesitant to change their lineup practices, wondering if they would apply to real-life witnesses. The question of whether the results could be duplicated in real life is an example of replicability. There are many other things to keep in mind when deciding whether to fully replace simultaneous lineups with sequential lineups. For example, the conductor of the lineup should be blind to who the suspected perpetrator is to avoid giving unintentional bias to the witness. As more experiments are done and repeated successfully, the shift from simultaneous to sequential lineups will continue to increase.

There are three major misconceptions about heritability which influence the result in psychological study.

First, According to our general knowledge about heritability, we probably think that it is heritability if we see a boy who is tall as his dad. Scientifically, heritability is a study which built by a large group rather than one person. Let look at a funny IQ test between two man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG55HQpFAiU Although it is funny that a man always finds a different way to solve problem than another, it tells us that IQ is not relative to one person, but the differences between a population. And heritability is not applied to one sample, it predict the reasons why people are different. That is the first misconception of heritability.

Second, heritability is unable to determine the changing of traits. Traits are not 100% depends on heritability, they may be changed by any environmental factor. "One such example of greater resources correlating directly to higher intelligence is a 1988 study on nutrition conducted on sixty Welsh children aged 12-13. Half were given a substantial vitamin and the other half a placebo for eight months. The half with nutritional supplements was shown to score eight points higher on non-verbal tests over the control group." (Fabian Grasso http://allpsych.com/journal/iq.html ) The experiments shows that traits can be changged by environmental influncenes.

Last one, heritability is not permanent for a number. It is rely on the range of environmental influences on a trait within a population. For instance, I have two classmates who are twins in middle school, but they are in different classes since they went to high school. And the brother got more active than anther. In my perspective, I considered that the environmental differences between them force them to behave diversely. However, their behaviors are similar before going to high school. Thus heritability is differ with diffrent period and environmental influences.

Finally, through the study of three misconception of about heritability, I am more curious about which one place a more significant role on traits, the environmental influences or the heritability.

Pseudoscience is defined as a set of claims that seem scientific but are not. One of the most popular and mainstream forms of pseudoscience are the various types of ghost hunting programs that have emerged on television and the Internet. Despite the lack of scientific validity the popularity has influenced many people into believing something that cannot be proven. According to a survey conducted by the Associated Press in 2008 34 percent of Americans said to believe in ghosts. This concept involves many principles of psychology in that an Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis is used in how the "ghost hunters" use high tech equipment to locate and communicate with the ghosts and spirits. Though the ghosts cannot be proven to exist, they also cannot be disproven, allowing there to be a loophole to defend the theory of ghosts. Humans search for meaningful connections among unrelated and random phenomena known as apophenia. We are drawn to make order out of disorder, for instance the creak we hear in an old house must be caused by a ghost because we have no other explanation other than the house is old. What makes this pseudoscience is that they claim to be using science and technology to find these spirits but in reality it is not scientific at all.

http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/icecream.asp
This particular claim is about universities serving ice cream at every meal because someone donated money and demanded that some of it be used for this specific reason. When we use the scientific thinking principle "ruling out rival hypothesis" we can conclude that this finding is false. It is false because as said in this principle that you can't make claims and only have one source or explanation to back it up with. This is a general accusation about many colleges and going more specific to talk about Harvard University and how they serve ice cream for each meal. They state that most students like it and that is why they serve it but it is also said that Eleanor Elkins Widener donated millions of dollars to Harvard and that she had certain demands of what she wanted done with the money. Another principle one can use to examine this claim is the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This principle can determine that the evidence must be as extraordinary as the claim and since are only evidence is rumors or what was thought to have happened we can conclude that this claim must be false. There is no proven evidence about this claim. This claim could be compared to the theory that each night lots of Americans are being taken out of their bed, experimented on by aliens, and then returned safely. Neither claim can be proven nor has significant evidence. Both claims were thought of by individuals but the individuals could not prove what they were addressing.

The crossing over of senses is perhaps one of the most amazing aspects of the brain's perception of the environment. It would seem to be a safe assumption that vision and hearing work independently of each other, but this is not the case. A prime example of this is the McGurk effect. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0&feature=BFa&list=PLAC5BDC262E18B063&lf=autoplay) In this experiment, a person simply says "ba" multiple times in front of a camera. However, if the same audio of "ba" is transposed over a video of the person saying "fa," then the visual cues will take over the auditory senses of the subject watching the video who concludes that the person is indeed saying "fa." One of the most interesting aspects of this experiment, however, is that even if the subject knows what will happen in the experiment, the same results will follow. This has the implications of questioning reality as we see it. It would seem logical that by simply observing an occurrence it is possible to be unbiased about it. However, it is astounding that by adding a second stimulus, which should intuitively describe the event at hand further, the overall message becomes more muddled and unclear than if there were only one sense. The rubber hand experiment shows this concept even further as subjects will feel a stimulus on a fake hand if they believe it to be their own. The main conclusion of either of these studies is that there is no perfectly objective outlook when relying on sound, touch, or even sight. The world is much more of an illusion and set of assumptions than we think it is. Therefore even simple occurrences require deep analysis to be properly understood. Even though the McGurk effect may seem like a psychological hindrance, it also seems like it could be beneficial for the opposite reason. If indeed the brain takes in two separate stimuli and completely discards one sense in validation of another, it would show that the brain is constantly doing a quality control of the information that is being taken in. Higher priority would be put on information that makes sense within the context. It would be extremely interesting to find someone who is not susceptible to the McGurk effect and see how that affects their informational processing abilities.

As a woman in her early twenties, when I came across this claim on snopes.com, I knew it was the perfect topic for me to blog about.

This claim is the perfect example of the replicability principle. While reading the article there was many different claims of how much lipstick an average woman consumes in their lifetime and that amount ranges from 3 to 10 pounds!! If this study was done that many times all over the world and never came up with the same findings, we can assume that it is not true at all. With that we can look at the facts and see that the average lipstick tube is about 3 grams, so to make 1 pound of lipstick there would need to be about 151 tubes. So if you believed in the 3 to 10 pounds, the average woman would have to literally EAT ( or consume the lipstick on their lips) between 454 and 1512 tubes of lipstick. There is no was in a lifetime that a woman would go through even 454 tubes, which is only 3 pounds.

When you first hear the claim, it makes sense in a way. If you think of an average day, you do end up licking off or consuming some of your lipstick, causing you to reapply. However, a lot of that lipstick gets left on napkins, cups, and if you kiss someone it will even go onto their lips.

Because this study has never had the same results nor does it seem possible it all, we can rule that this claim is completely false. So, don't worry ladies...we can again wear lipstick with the fear of consuming all of those extra calories :)

The Bandwagon Fallacy is defined in the book as "the error of assuming that a claim is correct just because people believe it. It is an error because popular opinion isn't a dependable guide to the accuracy of an assertion." I chose to elaborate my feelings on this matter because I thought it was interesting and the book only gave one short paragraph in explanation.
During the 5th the world's population thought that the world was flat. In 1500AD we still believed that the earth revolved around that sun. Up until 1865 African Americans were thought of a property that could be bought and sold and it wasn't until 1920 that women were thought competent enough to vote. These are some of the greatest misjudgments is human history and the Bandwagon Fallacy had a major part in fueling their flame.
It's not enough to just make the assumption that an idea is correct just because a large number of people believe it to be. Consider this, Roughly ninety percent of all Americans that vote vote along the same party lines as their parents, while this might not be totally Bandwagon related, growing up in a family would imprint you with similar beliefs, I still believe it has a bearing here. That is that a Bandwagon idea doesn't need an extraordinarily large crowd to spread. I think that its influence as opposed to its relative size just needs to be strong enough.
We as individuals need to be more careful now than ever. With the growing population and ease of transferring ideas over the internet we are still very susceptible to negative bandwagons. We need to use critical thinking to make sure we realize that Muslim doesn't equal tourism and that Justin Bieber's hair definitely doesn't make him talented!

Seeing is one of the fundamental ways to perceive the surroundings. The signals from the surroundings are received by eyes and then processed by the brain. However, partial signals are not received due to a spot that lacks of rods, called the blind spot, and does not have that particular perception of that field of vision.The brain fills in the lack of perception with surrounding detail and with information from the other eye, so the blind spot is not normally perceived.

There are several patterns of how brain analyze and categorize the signals when we perceive things in their overall context. This phenomenon was first recognized by Gaetano Kaniza, and later integrated into the "Gestalt principals" formulated by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka in 1920s. These principles are: (1) proximity: (2)similarity, (3) continuity, (4) closure, (5) symmetry, and (6) figure-ground (pg140-141, Lilienfeld 2010).

This concept of how people organize visual elements are widely applied in commercial graphic design. Here is an example of the logo that we are familiar with:

We often see the logo of Major League Baseball in our daily lives. Every time we see this, our brain fills in what is missing, in this case is the contour of a baseball player (This is the "closure" in the Gestalt principle). Also, the ball is in close proximity to the player, they are perceived as a group, or unified whole (This is the "proximity").

To see more explanations of each principle, please read the following article. It includes pictures that illustrate each principle, and the descriptions are very easy to understand: The Gestalt Principles
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

Pseudoscience, as defined in our textbook, is a set of claims that SEEM scientific, but aren't. A great example of this would be astrology and horoscopes.

A horoscope is "a scheme indicating the arrangement of the Sun, the Moon and planets with regard to Zodiac constellations at the moment of birth or the beginning of any other important event in human life." However, the way the sun rotated around the constellations thousands of years ago is nowhere near close to the way it does today. "Most forms of astrology have remained almost identical for about 4,000 years, despite the discovery of outer planets in the solar system (Uranus and Neptune) that were unknown in ancient times" (Lilienfield, Lynn, Namy & Woolf, 2011). This would be an example of "Lack of self-correction." This could also tie in with belief perseverance-- people are going to stick to what they believe despite new evidence.

We are drawn to pseudoscience to make order out of disorder. We search for meaningful connections among unrelated and random phenomena known as apophenia. There are 12 different zodiac signs based on the month you were born in and its corresponding constellation; however there are about 7 billion people in the world. By reading a horoscope, it is generalizing a daily routine for over 5.8 million people! It is entirely possible that these events happen by chance alone-- not to mention the way people might alter their behavior in order for their horoscope to apply to them. However, many people find comfort in the fact that something is confirming internal feelings-- like landing a new job or finding romance with one of your colleagues.

Bottom line is that we fall prey to confirmation bias and never consider evidence that might falsify our beliefs. Coincidences are much more interesting than non-coincidences. Bandwagon fallacy also plays a large role when evaluating psychological claims. Since so many people read their horoscopes, people believe that there has to be some truth to it. You can find them in almost every entertainment magazine, and even our very own Minnesota Daily...

Take a look for yourself! http://www.horoscope.com/

The placebo effect refers to improvement cause by someone's expectation of getting better. I think placebo effect can make people realize that they have very potential to overcome the very difficulties they never thought they can go through. The phenomenon of the placebo effect is universal in our daily life. When I had a fever as a kid, my mother always forced me to eat lots of watermelon because there is a saying in my country that watermelon can cure fever. After eating watermelon during fever, I always felt better. Even now, I still think watermelon is effective to cure fever. In my opinion, watermelon is a kind of placebo for the reason that it can make me feel more confident to go through fever.

But placebo effect is also a double-edged sword. One of my mother's friends with a long smoking history was trying to quit smoking. He ate candy every time he wanted to smoke. He took candy as placebo and hoped that candy would be a perfect distraction from cigarette. But after a period of time, he found himself just couldn't leave candy because if he did, he would lose control to cigarette. So, relying on placebo too much or even becoming addicted to it is still not a good thing.

From where I stand, the placebo effect takes the advantage of people's confidence and expectation to active the systems in their body to make some potential talents show out without people realizing it. So I am wandering that what if we just use mental therapy to cheer people up and give them confidence instead of use placebo or any actual drug? Which is more effective, the cheer-up spirit therapy or the placebo with only expectation of improvement?

Selective attention is A process which can make people choose one thing to focus on and ignore or pay less attention to other things. For an example, in our daily life, when we are looking at a picture, we tend to stare at one object in the picture and ignore its background or other objects. This satisfies the results of Richard Nisbett.
Richard Nisbett companying with his colleagues found that European Americans tend to focus on central details of a picture while the Asian Americans like to focus more on the peripheral details. This difference between two groups of people reflects that they have different selective attention. In my opinion, though the case is based on a number of people, it can also reflect the individual characteristic, selective attention. People's brains, which decide ways of thinking, control their selective attention so that they pay more attention to things they care about. In this case, different culture, as a controlled variable in this research, influences people's ways of thinking so that European and Asian Americans share different details to focus on. In this way, when they are appreciating a picture, they will be attracted by different objects in it and at the same time ignore other objects in it.
People will also face the selective attention when we see motion image. As the video shown in the discussion class, when we watched it, we only picked up one kind of motion to focus on. Most of us might watch the motion of the ball and ignore the existence of the gorilla.

Heuristics allows us as humans to make sense of the world by organizing our thinking. There is so much information in our lives that we would be overwhelmed if we didn't have shortcuts to remember things. Heuristics can help us to simplify and to conserve mental energy but they also make it easy to oversimplify our world because we apply shortcuts where they aren't intended. One specific heuristic is the availability heuristic and it is defined by how easy something comes to mind. For instance, when watching the news we are lead to believe there are more plane crashes and murders than there are heart attacks or car accidents. Deaths by natural causes are not reported by the media which leads us as people to believe that murders and gang violence occur more frequently than heart attacks and strokes. One example of the availability heuristic at its best is with the state of New York. When I ask if there is more rural or urban geography in the state of New York what is your answer? You probably think of New York City and forget that New York State has the largest state park in the United States. Adirondack Park is larger than Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Olympic National Park combined. In fact most of New York's geography is dominated by farms, forests, rivers, and lakes rather than city landscape. It is this aspect of the availability heuristic that drives us to oversimplify our lives to the point where we make assumptions about a place from one general idea. I think that this research finding is important because even though it makes our lives comfortable we also have to try to not make assumptions just because it is easier.

For every individual, a blind spot is present where the optic nerves is connected to the retina in the eye. This means that everyone has two blind spots, often is different places on each eye based on where the optic nerve is connected This is a spot where we cannot actually see, but our brain fills the gap with the missing piece of the picture (Lilienfeld, 139). Blind spots are not obvious for this reason, but there is a simple test you can do to find your blind spot. The picture containing the cross-hairs and the dot can help you find you blind spot. By closing your left eye and focusing your right on the cross-hairs, you can move towards your computer screen or away until you see the dot disappear from sight. Your eye fills in this absence with a white space because the brain is making up what is is this spot based on its surroundings.

It is important to consider the blind spot as an important finding because it shows just how powerful the brain is. It takes what we see and fills in a missing gap based on the surroundings so we do not have a blank spot in our vision. To show just how effective the brain is at filling in these gaps, a series of additional photos can show you how many different situations allow the brain to fill in this blind spot relative to what is going on in the pictures.

http://extraordinarybus.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/ghosts/

This claim states that ghosts are spirits of people that have died and come back to life to interact with the real world. If we evaluate this claim using the scientific thinking principal of extraordinary claims, it would be shown as a false statement. Dating back thousands of years, ghosts have been known to play a role in many cultures, but no proof has been found. Research lacks all forms of evidence proving that ghosts are in fact roaming the Earth. Since many claims have been made about interactions with the afterlife, people have the tendency to stick to their belief preference on the matter. Once an idea is set inside one's head, it is hard to believe a different concept.