Remembering and Forgetting video

I found the video on remembering and forgetting very interesting, especially the part about the eye-blink conditioning helping to detect Alzheimer's even earlier.  This relates to me because my mom has worked with Alzheimer's patients for a long time and I have seen the stages in which it goes through first-hand.  To detect Alzheimer's early is a big deal.  Although there isn't a treatment yet, it is very possible that if this really is an accurate detection of the disease, that the medicine would be able to develop enough eventually to be able to cure it when caught in it's early stages.  Right now, however, all we can do is exercise our mind in hopes to keep it longer.  

Chapter 8 Blog

Memory is everything.   I always like to say that we should live in the present, but it is our memories of our past experiences that help us make decisions, important decisions.  I remember that, as a child, when I touched the stove top, I got burned.  This memory, although painful, helps me to not touch the stove.  This prevents my hand from looking like a charred hamburger.  Also, moral decisions are impacted by memory.  I remember that last time I lied to my parents, they found out and I was punished, so I try to prevent that now.  This makes me a better human being.  Also, humans are social beings.  We need to communicate and share our feelings with others, especially women.  If a person didn't have any memories of anyone, how would they be able to confide in a friend.  They wouldn't have any friends.  

If we didn't have memory, life would be miserable.  We would live in a continuous state of confusion, and worry.  We would never have a single happy moment.  The bright side is we wouldn't remember being constantly worried and sad.  

Clive Waring lives a miserable life.  However, he isn't depressed.  He is happy most of the time because every minute is as if it is the first minute he is alive.  Everything is new and exciting.  It would be hard to hold a relationship with him however.  

I do think about memory differently now.  I have found that I use the memory techniques a lot more often in an attempt to have a greater capacity for memory.  Also, I have learned to not depend completely on my memory.  Our brains can change them.  It may be hard to almost impossible to recognize, but it happens.  It's mind boggling.  With that said, I do trust my memories to a point.  However, when it starts to impact others, I have to be able to say that my memory might be corrupted.  

The most important thing that I learned is about the eye witness testimony.  This is the idea that the mind doesn't record everything exactly as it happened.  It changes it as new information is represented.  This is important because we have to learn that we can't depend strictly on our memory because we are setting ourselves up for failure.  

PsyBlog: 6 Types of Play: How We Learn to Work Together

This PsyBlog article discussed a rather simple topic.  I was surprised that this was even Psychology.  It talked about how we learn how to play and the importance of play time.  It helps us develop our social skills by developing a sense of self, learning how to interact with other children, learning how to make friends, and learning how to lie and role-play.  For this study, children between the ages of 2 and 5 were observed and their play was categorized into 6 types.  Unoccupied play, that seems to have no apparent purpose, solitary play, when they play with themselves and don't seem to notice others, onlooker play, which is when they look at other children playing, but don't join in, parallel play, which is when the child mimics others activities, but don't join in, associative play, where they play with others rather than toys, and cooperative play, where there is organization while children play together.  What came out of this was that as children get older, their play time develops and they lean how to play more with others.  So, learning to play is learning how to interact with others.  

Television

I was reading the sidebars in our text book and I was taken back when I read the one New York Times 1939 quote on page 321.  It says, "The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued to a screen: The average American family hasn't the time for it.  Therefore the showmen are convinced that... television will never be a serious competitor of [radio] broadcasting."  This was written way back in 1939.  My thought was, "Yeah, why do we spend so much time watching TV.  We complain all the time about how we don't have enough time for this or enough time for that, but we can sit down in front of a TV screen and do absolutely nothing for an hour-long show!"  Just think about all the stuff that we could accomplish within the nine years straight we spend in a lifetime just sitting in front of that stupid screen.  

I find our link to television really disgusting, especially being that we learn so much from it.  There are some really good, educational shows on it, but we hardly choose to watch them.  Instead, we watch action films with a lot of violence, causing us to act in a violent way.  It also introduces stereotypes, which we all say are bad in the real world.  The fact of the matter is, we are wired to learn from what we see and if we are watching TV, we learn bad things.  I say that we shouldn't watch TV anymore.  Ya, right.  We have become accustomed to it.  It is now a form of relaxation.  

Chapter 7

I found the Bobo doll experiment extremely interesting.  I couldn't believe that the kids actually imitated the adult's actions and were more likely to lash out in an aggressive way when angry.  However, I think that the onion breath conditioned stimulus was the most interesting.  It was gross, but interesting.  I can't even imagine kissing a guy with onion breath, let alone be aroused by the smell of onion breath.  It's really disgusting.  

We are classically conditioned to things like our alarm clocks and school bells.  Also, when I was younger, I had a group of birds, specifically Barn Swallows, swoop down at me when I was mowing lawn, causing me to get into a little fender-bender with the lawn-mower that I was on.  Even it was just a bump, I was really scared to see my dad's reactions.  Even to this day, I have a tremendous, irrational fear of birds.   I think that this is also a result of classical conditioning.  

Chapter 6 Blog (I know, late... oops)

I accidentally forgot to do a reflections blog on this chapter... oops.

Some things I found really interesting was the complexity of our senses.  There is so much going on in our bodies in order for us to be able to do what we do.  For instance, for something so small, the eye has so much going on.  It is much more than I would ever be able to understand.  With that said, I found that the sense of touch was the most interesting.  I mean, people have adapted to be able to live without eyesight or hearing, but touch is harder to adapt to.  It is so important for us to be able to feel what is going on around us.  Even as I sit here and type, I realize that it wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the fact that my fingers are feeling each and every key so that I hit the right one at the right time.  I never knew this before, but touch is divided up into four different parts.  I never realized how much there really is to it.  

Why Do People Bother Voting?

This article was strange, but it kind of made sense.  It tried to explain how even though we know that our vote doesn't count all that much when compared to the billions of votes cast, we still vote.  It said that it was mainly because we recognize that others feel the way we do about it and if others decide not to vote, then their candidate won't win.  So, by them themselves voting, they feel that they are making others who feel the same way vote.  It our narcissism that makes us vote.  I disagree that our votes don't matter, because they do.  We should all vote when we come age.  However, this article makes sense in saying that this is why we vote. 

Pain-free

I really enjoyed reading about the girl who couldn't feel pain.  It seems as if pain should be a bad thing, but it can really help us.  I watched an episode of House (my favorite show) this week that was about a girl who had this same problem.  She was in a car accident and that's how she got to the hospital.  At one point in the show, she stuck her hand in a cup full of boiling water and got second degree burns because she couldn't feel it.  She also constantly had to check her fever because she would never be able to tell if she had one or not.  While in the hospital, she had such a high fever that she lost consciousness, but she didn't know it beforehand.  It was really interesting.  Something was wrong with her, but she could tell them where it hurt, so it was a wild goose chase.  They had to check everything.  

Illusions Blog

I viewed the Fourier Analysis, Induced Motion, Use of Visual Information in Art, Effects of Shadow, Vergence Eye Movements, Figural Aftereffect, Color Aftereffect, and Emmert's Law tutorials.  I learned a lot about how the mind can play tricks on us and how our previous beliefs, like the placement of the sun, can affect our perception of a picture.  It was rather surprising how easily my perception of an image changed after having new information.  I also thought it was cool how our minds can remember images we had seen.  These tutorial changed my view of how we sense and perceive the world by showing me how important our beliefs an previous knowledge is to how we perceive things.  This affects me by showing me that I must make sure that I am unbiased when I look at an image and try to only see the facts, although that might be impossible.