Soda M.: February 2012 Archives

Autism is a disorder of neural development, which impacts the communication, behavior mood and and social skills. There is one person who will be diagnosed of autism in every twenty in the world, and in the U.S., the percent of autism is 1/1000 to 1/1500. The factor of causing autism is unsure, some researches claim the genetic factor is the primary reason that causes autism, and they even find 7 groups of gene which could possibly cause it. Also, researchers suspect vaccinations are quite important for autism, which MMR is the first suspect.

The follow video could give you more information of autism:

The theory of MMR causing autism was mentioned by Andrew Wakefield in 1988, but after the researches and experiment, some people believe the morbidity of autism and MMR are not related. However, later Kennedy implied that Thimerosal (a vaccine preservative with organic mercury) may causes autism, because he found that the mercury poison is very similar to autism. The controversy of vaccinations theory is never stopped, but the CDC still required medicine companies to stop using Thimerosal as vaccine preservative. There are a lots of researches showed the MMR vaccine has no connection with autism, and even after stopping use Thimerosal, the rate of autism did not drop.

In chapter 9, the main concept is intelligence and IQ test. Intelligence test is a kind of sensory capacity, and IQ test is going to test the overall thinking ability. However, intelligence is not only about the ability of logical and mathematical skills, and more specific intelligence are about such as linguistic, musical, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. Also, textbook mentions that biological bases will influence intelligence, such as brain structure and memory. IQ test are not perfect and it is still debatable in psychological field, but people could get some reference from IQ test. In the last part of this chapter, it mentions emotional intelligence, as we know EQ.

EQ is a popular topic currently, and that is a ability of understand emotions and apply them. I used to think EQ is only about how to deal with relationship with others, which means EQ is about how to communicate and how to make individuals to adapt the environment and society. However, the deeper ability should be identify and understand the emotions, and try to make those emotional information useful for our help. For example, when I saw a friend had a sad face and heard upset voice, I understand he must be in something bad. in this moment, I knew he is in bad mood, and then I did not make myself much happy because I wanted to avoid my happiness to make him lonelier. Also, I should show kind and careful face to him to comfort him. This story is about EQ, because I get person's emotions and show the appropriated emotions to the person, and then make both of us comfortable. For noticing people's emotions, I believe I emotional intelligence is about finding microexpression, which the main point of LIE TO ME. Thus, microexpression (micro-facial expression) is a brand new field of psychology, and this intelligence is very useful in realationship.