Group Stuff

This week in class we talked about how a person will usually "go with crowd" and do what everyone else is doing. This is called "group-polarization," and an example given was a random person agreeing with someone in a room of people giving wrong answers on purpose during a test. When they all gave their answers, that person agreed with them just so he wouldn't sound different and look stupid, even though he may have known the correct answer. I know I have done this before, actually in a similar experiment we did during class a while back. I didn't want to look like an idiot so I said what everyone else saying--no confidence. So now looking at this information, I realize that I need to be more independent in thinking, and rely on my own intuition, and not follow the crowd.

Blog About Hunger

This week we had a discussion about how the LH and VMH in your brain affects your hunger and how much or little a person eats. To understand these to subjects, we did an online experiment about stimulating and destroying both the LH and VMH in a rats brain, and then watching them to see how much they ate and then gained weight. When the LH is destroyed in the hypothalamus, you are going to eat less, and when it is stimulated you are going to eat more. When the VMH is destroyed you cannot stop eating, and when it is stimulated you are going to eat way less. It's amazing to me how these two parts in the hypothalamus work together and regulate someone's hunger. I found an article on this subject.....

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Hunger-Motivation.topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25356.html

This article really hit on all the points we went over in class, and sums it all into about a page which I liked. A great study tool!

Article on a Mental Disorder

This is the article I found...

This is article was not so much interesting to me, but it showed me that people are starting to really care for the psychologically disabled more and more now a days. They are starting to put more of an effort into helping these people out with everyday tasks. It is a shame to read about how someone mentally disabled people were living on the streets alone and helpless in the 1990s, now the institutions that houes these people are not so degrading and conventional. These places have more of a "homey" feel to them, which provides more of a happy place for these patients.

Sleeping

In class today, we learned about sleeping and conditions associated with it like narcalepsy and insomnia. One of the subjects was sleep apnea, and when we were discussing it and the symptoms that go along with it, what people were saying described my dad almost exactly when he is sleeping. He would snore really loud for a while, and then he would almost choke and then stop snoring a little bit, but then start snoring really loud once again. He would do this all throughout the night, and you can here him all over the first floor in my house which is so annoying. I thought it was interesting though to learn abouty how this happens as well as learning more about our brain activity and the brain when we are sleeping. It's almost like I can predict what stage of sleep my dad will be in at night.

Week of March 28

On Friday we talked about our ID, Ego, and Superego. The ID is like what we do on an impulse or surprise. The more ID a person has, then obviously the more impulsive that person is going to be. Our Superego is very conservative on the straight and narrow. The more superego we have, the more anxiety and stress we put on ourselves for trying to do everything perfect. The ego basically balances these two things. I would consider myself to be more of the ego type, I not really like the other two at all because I'm not a very impulsive person around others, and I'm usually not someone who worries way too much about something. However, sometimes like before a test or talking to a girl I'll freak out and put a lot of anxiety on myself (superego) to do something like that. And other times when I'm with friends, and we're having a good time we may do something impuslive and out of the ordinary. But, usually I keep things in balance.

Memory

This week, on Monday, we had a lecture on memory. There were two different kinds of memory--short term and long term. We went over how people usually try and find the best way to remember things by chunking, spacing, etc. I usually never do spacing, which isn't good. It was interesting to do some of the memory tests displayed for us. An example would be how many sets of letters a person could remember in four seconds, or remember a set of numbers only read to you once, and remember certain words from a bunch after only looking at it for thirty seconds. For this one, it felt like I could remember a lot of them when I was looking at the words, but when it came time to writing them down from memory I drew blanks on over half of them. My short term memory probably isn't the best. Also, we learned about a lady who can basically remember everyday of her life. That was just amazing to me. However, I wouldn't want to have that "power." And lastly, the thing I found most amazing was the man with the thirty second memory. That was just unbelievable to me. His wife would walk in and say something to him, and he would forget it in seconds. To me that would just suck! So far I gotta say that AP Psychology is one of the more fascinating classes I've ever taken.

The Four Activities

The first station my group was in, we had to read a story about brain plasticity, and how it can heal itself. They gave some examples of people who experienced this as well. We also had to try and figure out, on a worksheet, out of five universities, five people, five rewards, and five cars, who drove which car, where did they go to school, and how much was their reward. It was extremely difficult, and my group and I didn't finish. Some may have taken it home and worked on it for fun, but I didn't. I had no perseverance in this station, although some of my other group members did and almost got through it.

The second station was dealing with three people on each side trying to get across sides by not skipping, turning around, and they had to be facing the opposite way from when they started. I did something like this is my chemistry class, as well as the others, so we already knew how to do it. You could classify all of us as having insight before doing this because we obviously already knew the answer, and just had to recall it.

The third station was trying to balance ten nails on top of one nailhead. At first we had a heuristic way of thinking. We wanted to think in a more speedier way so we could beat the record time of four minutes that was set by the previous group. After the four minutes had passed, we realized that we couldn't beat it, but instead went for more balancing nails. We were able to end up balancing 26 nails. I'm pretty sure we had the best in the class.

The fourth station was trying to get a record to play using only like tape, a pencil, some candy, a needle, a record, and a piece of paper--I think. At first we had the right idea because we had a certain mental set already developed. We knew how to do it, but we had to get it to work. We ended up sticking the pencil through the hole in the record, and making the paper look like a funnel used as a speaker. Then we just stabbed the needle through the end of the small side of the paper to go on the record. As Joonho spun the pencil, the record spun around and around as the needle stayed in one spot, in contact with it. The paper acted like a speaker, which amplified the sound coming off of the record to the rest of the class. Apparently we had the best success with this activity.

Rewards or No Rewards

Today we talked about how people do things they love because they love it, or they do it because they want more rewards whether it be money or something else. It seemed like we never really got to a definite conclusion about how someone begins to like something whether it be sports, reading, etc. So it made me, and probably others, left thinking and pondering what makes us motivated to like something and do it. For me, I like to play basketball and tennis, and I don't like reading, however I do find a passion to read the Bible. So I guess those would be my main hobbies, if you will. Those are the things I've grown to like in my life, and I guess watching basketball and tennis all the time on ESPN has conditioned me somewhat to want to play it, and then I just found a liking towards it. And since I was little, I always went to church and would look up texts and just found a love for Jesus, and part of that is reading the Bible. So to me, finding what you like in life starts at a young age, and a person then can grow off of that. Maybe their mindset will change towards ideas and styles, or maybe not, but I believe what you will be like is determined early in life. And how you become who you are can be influenced by countless people, places, things, etc.

Learned Habits

These past few weeks have been interesting to read about and listen to lectures in class because all the stuff we are learning about is relevant to our lives outside of school. This week, I learned about how habits and unconditioned responses are formed. The generic overview about being used to something at first, but then a new stimulus comes into the picture and the original idea you had about something will change, and you now have new feelings towards that "object or situation." A certain example for me would be smelling gases or exhaust fumes. Before I would never really worry about smelling gas, but then when I did smell it once and became sick I really didn't want to smell it anymore. So now when I walk past a car and smell its fumes, especially in winter, I scrunch my nose and hold my breath until I'm in the car, or away from the fumes. Just a little habit I have.

Blog Post #2

This week we had an in-class discussion about subliminal messages. These messages are signs or messages that are in our presence but not consciously recognized by us. It's weird not-knowing that something is in plain sight but yet you can't see it because it blends in with the surroundings. This subject, subliminal messages, reminded me of the Disney movies and their sexual subliminal messages. For the longest time I didn't know that they would throw those purvirted scenes in there, and now that people have pointed them out to me and then I look back and watch the movie, those things are right in plain sight. It seems when I think or watch those movies, I only think about those parts because it is so weird, but yet now so obvious to me.

Favorite Video

My favorite video was the video done by Mariah, Katie, and Patrick because it made me feel like I was actually watching a news or public service announcement broadcast. It was very informative, and the places they were talking about for the different stages of development they actually went to, and reported on the spot. I loved it, and thought it was very interesting to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0qoY_5ymOo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXGchM91NNU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I1L6LT_0NE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MI5J3FX-0E

Cognitive Development

In today's class discussion, we learned about how our mind and body develop over the course of our lifetime especially when we are very young. There are four stages of growth according to Jean Piaget: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations. The first stage is when you are born until you are two years old, then from two to six years old, then from six to 12 years old, and from then on to adulthood is the last stage. When you are a child you develop schemas and assimilate things with other relatively similar things that are not completely the same. For example, when a child sees a horse with four legs, he may call another animal he sees with four legs a horse as well. This clearly isn't correct, but it is how children classify things when they are very young. When I was little, I used to think that anything that spun around was a fan. I did this because the first word I learned was "fan" and when I saw it, it was obviously spinning around and around. I assumed that merry-go-rounds, and helicopters were fans because they did or had something that spun around. Later, I grew out of that phase and clearly realized that not everything that spun around was a fan. I moved on into the next phase, then eventually grew out of that phase, and so on until present day.

Plasticity

Doctors can reinvent how a person sees, not with our eyes, but with our tongue. They realized that to do this they had to have the feeling of touch go through the nerves of your tongue, then up the spinal cord, up the medulla, past the pons, and then link up with the thalamus by a process of synapse. Then these sensations would not go to the parietal lobe, but would go to the occipital lobe where a person normally experiences vision. I'm not sure what this would look like to a person, it sounds almost like science fiction. But if our body basically allows this to happen, plasticity comes in to play so we get used to "seeing" things this way through our tongue. Our body is amazing for doing this, and it must be awesome to know this can happen if a person is blind, they could now possibly have the opportunity to see again!

Neurotransmitter Assignment

Cocaine:


Cocaine is an antagonist because it blocks three important neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. These transmitters affect either our mood, arousal, attention, emotion, etc., so with them blocked, our body won't react normally with these feelings. This can lead into a state of depression unless cocaine is in the body fulfilling the craving for the "rush" feeling from euphoria. Long-term use of cocaine can cause lethargy, psychosis, depression, and it is fatal if a person overdosed. If a person is having an overdose try to calm them down by bringing them into a quiet room, and don't respond to their delusions. If nothing is working you need to call a doctor and bring them in.

Reactions

I loved doing the videos, I thought it was a neat way to learn about these psychologists. A lot of them were really funny and interesting to watch. I would definetely recommend that we do something like this again in the future and maybe do it for a bigger grade. I did learn a lot about my specific psychologist while we were researching about him, however, I didn't really understand a lot about the other scientists in the videos because I was either laughing or just not comprehending it. So overall it I like it but, I'm not so sure I learned a lot about the other scientists.

Experiments One

Mrs. Wollershiem’s Class

Understanding:
- Mean – 12.6
- Median - 12
- Mode - 12
- Standard Deviation – about 2.91
Visualizing:
- Mean – 18.375
- Median - 19
- Mode – 19, 20
- Standard Deviation – about 2.0361
Pronunciation:
- Mean – 6.3
- Median – 6.5
- Mode – 4, 8
- Standard Deviation – 2.2062

Mr. Dreier’s Class
Understanding:
- Mean - 13.75
- Median - 13
- Mode – 10, 11, 15, 19
- Standard Deviation – 3.562
Visualizing:
- Mean – 13.75
- Median - 13
- Mode – 10, 11, 18
- Standard Deviation – 3.382
Pronunciation:
- Mean – 6.25
- Median - 6
- Mode - 6
- Standard Deviation – 1.83

The Experiment

In this experiment, there were three groups-two being the experimental groups and the other was the control group. The control group was the group that was trying to see how easy it was to pronounce the sentences because this had little, if any, to do with trying to learn about the sentences. The two experimental groups were the ones trying to visualize and understand the sentences because they were trying to learn what the sentences were doing or saying. The results proved this perfectly because the "pronunciation group" scored the least, the "understanding group" scored the second highest, and the "visualizing group" scored the most. The visualizing group scored the most because they were actually picturing what was going on in the sentences, which enabled them to remember the characters and features of the sentences better. The independent variable(s) were the differences in the questions-how easy to pronounce, understand, or visualize the sentences. And the dependent variable was the number of answers the students answered correctly. Because the teacher knew the outcome of the experiment, and the students did not, this would be classified as a single-blind experiment. Obviously, visualizing information is the best way to retain information which has also been proven in scientific studies that are more in-depth than this.

The New Technology

I love the netbooks.....I think they can be very beneficial. We don't have to go into a lab and waste a bunch of time logging in anymore, we can just sit in our desks and go on whenever we need to. I also love the new online psych textbook readings with the practice quizzes, flashcards, and other helpful things for the class. I think if we all put in the time at reading and using these resources, we can all pass the class with ease. However, this technology could also be used in a way that is not beneficial to people. If they check out other websites and slack off using the webcam too much, then they probably won't get anywhere in the class. I don't think that'll be too big of a problem, but you never know. Overall though, I think this is more helpful than not in the class.

AP Psychology

When I first joined the AP Psychology course I was freaking out with all of the work, especially when I crammed it in the last week. I expected myself to do really well in this class, and become even more ready for college. After taking that ungodly hard quiz, I reliazed this is going to be no walk in the park. Those questions were so tough, and I didn't remember reading about anything a few of those questions were talking about. I'm so mad about that quiz! I'm looking forward to getting those mini-laptops and learning about the human mind. I'm nervous about the next quiz or test that I'll be taking because I can't afford anymore "F's"!!!!!!!

The Beast

Go Lebron James!!!!!!!