I listened to "Teens and Sleep." The broadcast talked about how most teenagers don't get enough sleep and how it affects them. I learned only 20% of teens get enough sleep. Seniors in high school get an average of 6.9 hours of sleep. This is really close to how much sleep I get. I usually get between 6 and a half and 7 hours a night. I found it interesting that most parents don't know that their children aren't getting enough sleep. This is because parents go to bed before their children and don't know when they go to sleep. This is true at my house. My parents go to bed hours before I do and don't know how late I stay up.
Studies have shown the reason teens are staying up later is too many activities, electronics, and their biology. Teens stay up on their computers and cell phones late into the night. This relates to my life. I stay up late doing my homework. If I didn't have a computer, I would get my homework done much faster and not have to stay up late. Cell phones are also very distracting because I talk on mine instead of concentrating on my work and it takes me twice as long to complete the activity I'm trying to accomplish at the time. Biology is another reason I stay up so late. Teenagers' internal clocks within their brains shift and they don't allow them to fall asleep. Even if I try to go to sleep early, I don't fall asleep until at least an hour later and this is because of my internal clock.
Not getting enough sleep affects teenagers in many ways. A study showed that 737,000 teens fall asleep during school every day. Lack of sleep also affects the moods of teenagers. They tend to be depressed and more temperamental. Lack of sleep also affect grades. People who get more than 8 hours of sleep tend to get better grades.
I also learned about REM sleep. It is rapid eye movement sleep which is a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. The muscles are relaxed but other body systems are active. This stage of sleep is the only stage that I will remember any of my dreams. Eugene Aserinsky discovered this when he did a test on his son with an electrocephalograph he had been repairing. Another thing I learned about was hallucinations which are false sensory experiences, such as seeing something in the absence of an external visual stimulus. People with demetia often hallucinate. I had experience with this while I worked in the nursing home. They would often try and point out people who weren't there.
I was suprised that 80% of teens don't get enough sleep. They stagger out of bed in the morning, awakened by their alarm clocks and yawn all throughout their day. At 11 P.M. they will start to feel energized. This is how much of my day is. I don't want to get up in the morning and yawn until after lunch. I almost fall asleep early in the night while doing my homework and then at 11 I'm not tired anymore and have a hard time falling asleep.
I agree that lack of sleep affects the emotions. I feel more depressed and get irritated much easier when I am sleep deprived. Sleep may impact some teenagers brains but I don't believe it affects everyone. I don't get 9 hours of sleep at night and I still get good grades. I think grades depend on how much time and effort is put into homework.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Blog #3
The first activity I did was "Seeing More than Your Eye Does." It says that the brain "makes up" a lot of what we see. There is a hole in photoreceptors where neurons pass a bundle through it making up the optic nerve. This makes a blind spot in the middle of what we see. We have a blind spot for each eye. When both of your eyes are open you can't see it, but if you close one of your eyes you are able to. This is because each eye sees what the other is unable to. There was an activity where there was a cross and a dot. If you close your left eye and stare at the cross, as you move your head closer to the screen, the dot will disappear because it moves into your blind spot. The second activity I did was Contrast/Color "Illusions." It said your brain makes "informed guesses" about the intensity and wavelengths the eye sees. The color of an object may change as they are moved around. It proved this with two pictures. One was a checkerboard with a cylinder casting a shadow on part of it. If you move the squares of the board around they change color when under the shadow and not under the shadow. The second picture was a rubik's cube. The center color was brown on the top but on the side when under a shadow it appeared orange.
From the activities I learned that the brain makes up a lot of what we see. It has a lot more to do with our vision than what I originally thought. Everyone has a blind spot which was suprising. I was suprised on how much the eyes depend on each other and the brain to put together what we see into the full image. It's also interesting that the brain makes informed guesses on colors and as an object is moved around its color varies. You can use this in your life when buying clothing or furniture. If you buy a shirt to go with a sweater it may look different in the store than when its actually up to the sweater. The same with furniture. It may look different when you get it home because the colors contrast when moved around because of the informed guesses the brain makes. What I learned didn't really change the way I think about how we perceive or interact with the world. It was really informative though and now I can relate the things I learned to different parts of my life, like when I'm shopping.
I learned about the different parts of neurons and how they function. Now I know that sensory neurons carry messages from the body's tissues and sensory organs inward to the brain and spinal cord for processing. Motor neurons cary instructions from the brain and spinal cord to the body's tissues. The dendrites receive information and the message goes to the cell body and through the axon to other dendrites of different neurons. I didn't really have any idea about how the brain processes and perceives information so my thoughts didn't really change, but I now understand a little of how the brain communicates and controls our body parts. I also learned about phrenology. It's th early theory that claimed bumps on the skull could reveal our mental abilities and our character traits. It doesn't impact the way I think about how we process information because it wasn't true. It does make me realize how far researchers have come in studying the brain and how it affects behavior.
I thought "The Man With Two Brains" was interesting. I didn't know a person could live with their brain cut in half or how it would affect what the person sees and perceives. The man could draw to objects at the same time because the two sides of his brains functioned as completely different brains. It was also interesting on how if he saw the object on the left side he couldn't name the object because his right brain would process it, and the left brain deals with speech. The left brain is the more dominant brain and I think that has to deal with why most people are right handed. The movie was interesting and I learned a lot from the experiment that they did.
From the activities I learned that the brain makes up a lot of what we see. It has a lot more to do with our vision than what I originally thought. Everyone has a blind spot which was suprising. I was suprised on how much the eyes depend on each other and the brain to put together what we see into the full image. It's also interesting that the brain makes informed guesses on colors and as an object is moved around its color varies. You can use this in your life when buying clothing or furniture. If you buy a shirt to go with a sweater it may look different in the store than when its actually up to the sweater. The same with furniture. It may look different when you get it home because the colors contrast when moved around because of the informed guesses the brain makes. What I learned didn't really change the way I think about how we perceive or interact with the world. It was really informative though and now I can relate the things I learned to different parts of my life, like when I'm shopping.
I learned about the different parts of neurons and how they function. Now I know that sensory neurons carry messages from the body's tissues and sensory organs inward to the brain and spinal cord for processing. Motor neurons cary instructions from the brain and spinal cord to the body's tissues. The dendrites receive information and the message goes to the cell body and through the axon to other dendrites of different neurons. I didn't really have any idea about how the brain processes and perceives information so my thoughts didn't really change, but I now understand a little of how the brain communicates and controls our body parts. I also learned about phrenology. It's th early theory that claimed bumps on the skull could reveal our mental abilities and our character traits. It doesn't impact the way I think about how we process information because it wasn't true. It does make me realize how far researchers have come in studying the brain and how it affects behavior.
I thought "The Man With Two Brains" was interesting. I didn't know a person could live with their brain cut in half or how it would affect what the person sees and perceives. The man could draw to objects at the same time because the two sides of his brains functioned as completely different brains. It was also interesting on how if he saw the object on the left side he couldn't name the object because his right brain would process it, and the left brain deals with speech. The left brain is the more dominant brain and I think that has to deal with why most people are right handed. The movie was interesting and I learned a lot from the experiment that they did.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Blog Post #2-Thinking Critically
Researching is VERY important. Without research the world wouldn't be as we know it today. We wouldn't have the electronics or technology we have these days. Can you imagine a world without cell phones or computers? Without research that's how our world would be. The scientists and inventors who created the technology didn't succeed on their first time. They had to research and look at other people's failed attempts to learn from other's mistakes. Research is a very important step in the scientific method. Without research you could do countless experiments that would be pointless if they didn't turn out, when you could have just done a little research and found out what did and didn't work in other's past experiments. Research is important in everyone's lives not just scientists. Students research for school and people research when they are making an important decision and want to choose the right choice.
Research that is relevant with my life is the article "Essentials of Group Psychology." It was about how groups form, conform, then warp people's decision-making, productivity and creativity. They can either cause a person to conform to the group's consensus or cause them to be more creative and independent and share their ideas with the group. Most of the time you see people conforming to be like the others in the group. In class, when the teacher asks for a vote and the majority of the class votes for one thing, it influences the rest of the class to vote for that same thing because they are afraid of being different. I have seen this in many of my classes and have I have conformed to be like the rest of the group before.
I learned about the placebo effect and thought it was very interesting. The placebo effect is experimental results caused by expectations alone. It is any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agent. It is important because if it's used with the double-blind procedure it is an effective way to get accurate results. I did a study once that was a double-blind procedure with a placebo. It was to come up with a new vaccination. Some of the people who volunteered for the study got the vaccination and others got a placebo and you didn't know what you got until the end. Everyday for the duration of the study I had to take my temperature and write down how I felt and any symptoms I had. In the end, the study worked and they were able to come up with a vaccination.
I also learned about illusory correlations. They are the perceptions of a relationship between two things where none exists. It is important because when we have illusory correlations, we forget that they are random and see them as correlated. Because of this, we easily deceive ourselves by seeing what is not there. We must remember this so we don't believe one of these false coincidences. I also learned that psychologists study animals. It's important because we are animals and they can connect some animal behaviors to us. Psychologists can learn a lot about people from animals and have come up with treatments for diseases.
Research that is relevant with my life is the article "Essentials of Group Psychology." It was about how groups form, conform, then warp people's decision-making, productivity and creativity. They can either cause a person to conform to the group's consensus or cause them to be more creative and independent and share their ideas with the group. Most of the time you see people conforming to be like the others in the group. In class, when the teacher asks for a vote and the majority of the class votes for one thing, it influences the rest of the class to vote for that same thing because they are afraid of being different. I have seen this in many of my classes and have I have conformed to be like the rest of the group before.
I learned about the placebo effect and thought it was very interesting. The placebo effect is experimental results caused by expectations alone. It is any effect on behavior caused by the administration of an inert substance or condition, which the recipient assumes is an active agent. It is important because if it's used with the double-blind procedure it is an effective way to get accurate results. I did a study once that was a double-blind procedure with a placebo. It was to come up with a new vaccination. Some of the people who volunteered for the study got the vaccination and others got a placebo and you didn't know what you got until the end. Everyday for the duration of the study I had to take my temperature and write down how I felt and any symptoms I had. In the end, the study worked and they were able to come up with a vaccination.
I also learned about illusory correlations. They are the perceptions of a relationship between two things where none exists. It is important because when we have illusory correlations, we forget that they are random and see them as correlated. Because of this, we easily deceive ourselves by seeing what is not there. We must remember this so we don't believe one of these false coincidences. I also learned that psychologists study animals. It's important because we are animals and they can connect some animal behaviors to us. Psychologists can learn a lot about people from animals and have come up with treatments for diseases.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Chapter One
Before I started this class, I knew that psychology had to do with studying the mind, and that's all I really knew. I had no idea how complex the science of psychology actually is! I now know that psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes, and it is organized into different schools of thought-- structuralism, functionalism, Gestalt psychology, behaviorism, and psychoanalysis. I now know that psychology has different levels of analysis, psychology has spread all over the world, and the science of psychology continues to grow.
Psychology greatly affects everyone whether they know what it is or not. Everyone has thoughts and their behaviors are affected by them. Their thoughts are affected by both the environment and their genetic traits. People use psychology without even knowing it. Everyone has wondered or asked a person, "Why would you do something like that? What were you thinking?" People use it in those "big games" when they try and get in the opponents head or when they are trying to get what they want and use "reverse psychology."
I thought the section on overconfidence was very intriguing. I learned that as people, we tend to think we know more than we do. I liked the example the book gave about trying to unscramble the words. Overconfidence has a lot to do with hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe, after lerning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. People are often overconfident that they'll do something in the future or could have figured that problem out. I am often overconfident too. I see a problem and don't know how to go about reaching the answer. Then after I receive the answer I think, "duh! I knew that." Most of the time I probably wouldn't actually be able to figure the problem out though.
I also thought the section on random sampling was interesting. It is very true. Large representative samples are better than small ones, but a small representative sample of 100 is better than an unrepresentative sample of 500. A random sample is a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion. This can be achieved by using a random number generator or picking names out of a hat. The larger the number of samples you have, the more accurate the outcome should be. This will only be true if you have representative samples. This means a sample from all different kinds of people, from different races, backgrounds, cultures, and from different places. The names are picked completely fair with an equal chance for everyone.
Psychology greatly affects everyone whether they know what it is or not. Everyone has thoughts and their behaviors are affected by them. Their thoughts are affected by both the environment and their genetic traits. People use psychology without even knowing it. Everyone has wondered or asked a person, "Why would you do something like that? What were you thinking?" People use it in those "big games" when they try and get in the opponents head or when they are trying to get what they want and use "reverse psychology."
I thought the section on overconfidence was very intriguing. I learned that as people, we tend to think we know more than we do. I liked the example the book gave about trying to unscramble the words. Overconfidence has a lot to do with hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe, after lerning an outcome, that one would have foreseen it. People are often overconfident that they'll do something in the future or could have figured that problem out. I am often overconfident too. I see a problem and don't know how to go about reaching the answer. Then after I receive the answer I think, "duh! I knew that." Most of the time I probably wouldn't actually be able to figure the problem out though.
I also thought the section on random sampling was interesting. It is very true. Large representative samples are better than small ones, but a small representative sample of 100 is better than an unrepresentative sample of 500. A random sample is a sample that fairly represents a population because each member has an equal chance of inclusion. This can be achieved by using a random number generator or picking names out of a hat. The larger the number of samples you have, the more accurate the outcome should be. This will only be true if you have representative samples. This means a sample from all different kinds of people, from different races, backgrounds, cultures, and from different places. The names are picked completely fair with an equal chance for everyone.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Introduction blog
Hi, I'm Alyssa Fisher. I'm 17, and I go to Stratford High School. I think my parents have shaped me as a person. I have the morals I do because they take me to church and have taught me what's right and wrong since I was a little girl. Almost every part of my personality is based off of what they've taught me about how to treat others and working hard. Studying psychology is important because it will lead to a greater understanding of people and how they think. It can help to see others' views and allow you to use empathy. The reflective writing and critical thinking portions will also help with other subjects in school. I've taken medical terminology in the past and if you break psychology into word parts, it means the study of the mind. I think it is studying and trying to understand what people think and their behaviors because of their thoughts.
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