Open Discussion: April 2012 Archives

Stress effects people in numerous different ways. Some people deal with stressors as they come while others spend their days worrying about the stressors coming up. There are three approaches to stress discussed in our textbook: stressors as stimuli, stress as a transaction, and stress as a response. Hassles, or little struggles in our life, often cause people to have stress in their daily life. Too much stress can lead to a breakdown, which can happen to anyone who is having trouble coping with their stress.

A specific effect that can occur from stress is the nocebo effect. The nocebo effect is when beliefs can create reality by stirring your emotions so much that they actually come true. This article describes this effect very well. A personal experience dealing with the nocebo effect in my life has to do with my sister. She has anxiety about many things in her daily life and can't control her reactions to her stress very well. For instance, if her friend gets sick with something such as the flu, she will stress herself out so much and make herself believe that she has the flu. She will do this to the extent that she actually gets flu-like symptoms and begins to throw up. It is very sad to watch because she can't help her emotions, which are causing dramatic reactions in her body.

We all have emotions, the main 7 being happy, sad, angry, contempt, fear, surprise, and disgust. We can be happy and on top of the world, or sad and feel like nothing will ever get better. Most of our emotions can be described without words and with our body language. But in the recent years, our society is increasingly moving towards text messaging and email, and away from face-to-face communication. We show emotions through things like USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to express anger or excitement, or short answers like "k"to show something might be wrong. But we also use emoticons to show how we feel. the problem with them is does a simple face made of simples really get across the point of how we are feeling? Given a simple smile, :) , many things could be interpreted.

Emoticons have their pros, such as acting as almost a substitute ( a weak one) to body language, but at the same time, emoticons take away from writing how you actually feel. As we move more and more towards text communication, what do you think is the biggest consequence? Do you think text and email communication impair our abilities to communicate in person?

Week 7 Response
(Response to Jhon's post on Role of TV on Child Development)

Technology is affecting children. There is no question about it, there are currently 285 million televisions in US households, based on information from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). There is no doubt that children learn behavior from what they see such as siblings and parents, but their interpretation of these behavior are also based on what they see. Children's behavior is just as likely to come from watching tv and playing games as it is to come from seeing real people in their lives perform actions. This is one of the major concerns of parents as they allow their children to watch tv and surf the net no matter the age. Children are easily influenced and they don't have a firm grasp on what is what, so when they see that men are portrayed as masculine and show little emotion they think that all men are like that. Or when women are shown as weak and fragile they take that image and just run with it. I think that by allowing children to see these images we as adults are encouraging the stereotype that everyone falls into one of the two categories and that what they see on television is true.

In my opinion I think that children are better off not growing up with these prejudices toward how they should act. Children should be allowed to make their own judgement about how they view others. I think this is more of a concern when it comes to tv than it does in video games because even when the television show goes to commercial, the commercial uses even more stereotyping to sell their products. Less exposure would be better for children than more even if the television programs are educational. I would say as parents, adults have the power to choose when their children watch and they should use that ability to benefit their children's development.

Déjà vu
We've all heard of déjà vu and many of us have probably experienced it too. Research has shown that more than two-thirds of us have had an episode of déjà vu. Déjà vu is French for "already seen" and the technical definition is a feeling of reliving an experience that's new. If you've ever seen the movie "Groundhog Day", you can imagine what déjà vu is like even if you haven't experienced it yourself (the movie is a bit of an extreme version of this however).

Although the cause of déjà vu isn't clear, researchers have come up with some possible explanations:

1) Excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the temporal lobes
2) People who experience small seizures in the right temporal lobe (responsible for feelings of familiarity) may experience déjà vu right before a seizure
3) When a present experience resembles an earlier one

Jamais Vu
Even though déjà vu is commonly known, not many people have heard of jamais vu. This is basically the opposite of déjà vu and is French for "never seen". In jamais vu, one feels as though a previously familiar experience suddenly feels new or unfamiliar.

Sometimes neurological disorders are associated with jamais vu. These disorders include amnesia (memory loss) and epilepsy (sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions). Although there is not a lot about jamais vu on the internet, I was able to find an interesting video about a woman describing her jamais vu experience during a partial seizure. (In the video, she hadn't yet known that she had experienced jamais vu, but found out later as her video is titled accordingly).

Some Questions...
Have you ever experienced déjà vu or jamais vu? What was it like? Can you think of a reason or possible explanation for it?
Can you think of a way that déjà vu or jamais vu can be tested in an experimental setting?
Do you think the woman in this video was really experiencing jamais vu?

(make-up blog for missed discussion on 2/15)