What I would like you to do is to find a topic or person from this week's chapter (or from the previous week) that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find a video clip that demonstrates something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. Please use at least 3 quality resources.
Once you have completed your search and explorations, a) I would like you to say what your topic is, b) how exactly it fits into the chapter, and c) why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. Keep in mind that it will be easier if you keep it to one topic.
Additional instructions: For each URL (internet resource) you have listed. Indicate why you chose it and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
I decided to research more into the future of psychology. This was a topic that was part of Chapter 15. The chapter argued that psychology isn’t just one single field anymore, but it is a collection of different fields. Psychology is now so broad that if you told someone “I’m a psychologist”, it’d be like saying to someone “I’m an American”. If you told someone you were an American, they would get a general idea of where you were from, but they would have no idea where exactly you were from. This is the same idea with psychology. Just as you could live in numerous places, climates, or environments living in America, you could do numerous jobs as a psychologist. In order for us to really look into the future of psychology, we have to know its past. Compared to other disciplines, psychology is somewhat young. “Psychology has a long history, with a short past” is a quote that I found during my research. Interesting to think about since psychology isn’t really that old. I believe that Psychology is moving in a positive direction, and is now one of the most popular undergraduate majors in the United States.
Looking into the past of psychology has made me realize one important concept: different people throughout history were responsible for what psychology is today. Here’s the cool thing: history is a never ending process. We are creating history as we speak, and it’s us that will be responsible for what people in the year 2100 read about psychology in the early 2000’s. It is very possible that one of our classmates sitting next to us will be featured in a “History of Psychology” textbook printed 100 years from now. It is very possible that some of our classmates could have their name printed next to Albert Bandura, Aaron Beck, Sigmund Freud, John Watson, and other influential psychologists. It’s even possible that one of our classmates starts a new branch of psychology. After researching the future of psychology, I realized one thing: WE ARE THE FUTURE OF PSYCHOLOGY.
One major event that will impact the future of psychology is the publication of the DSM V. The DSM V will be released in May 2013. Scholars are expecting some major changes to the DSM V from the DSM IV. This is particularly interesting for me because I have been a T.A. for Abnormal Psychology for the past 3 semesters. The problem we’ve had this semester is that much of the information that we are teaching will change once the DSM V is released. One important change that could happen is the removal of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple Personality Disorder). Many psychologists believe that it is not a real disorder. Arguments have been made stating that it is actually created during therapy. Others believe that people fake the disorder in order to avoid real life conflicts or legal prosecution. The rates of reported diagnosis skyrockets after movies including people with this disorder go mainstream. It is however a very interesting disorder. My professor said that there was someone with this disorder at the mental hospital that they work at and everyone flocked to go see them. Another disorder similar to DID, called Dissociative Fugue could also be removed. Dissociative Fugue is when an individual experiences a “Fugue” and they leave their homes and start a new life somewhere else. Once they have created this entirely new life, they forget everything from their past. They forget who they were married to, who their kids were, what their past profession was, and who they were as a person in general. Sometimes people return from the “fugue”, and once they return, they forget who they were during the fugue. Similar to DID, some scholars believe that this disorder is also fake and that people use it to avoid problems in their life (unhappiness, failing marriage, etc.).
Just as there are many branches of psychology, there are many different ways to look into the future of psychology. I believe that we will continually come up with new branches, and that psychology will grow until the end of time. It’s now in OUR hands.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/05/26/update-dsm-v-major-changes/
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141514464/real-sybil-admits-multiple-personalities-were-fake
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/dissociative_disorders/hic_dissociative_fugue.aspx
For this week's topical blog, I read chapter 15 and decided to look up more on the Clark doll studies and how they influenced how people thought and if they had any modern day interpretations of the studies.
What I found was interesting was that there was a modern day "doll studies" in which a 17-year old film maker went through the experiment almost verbatum again with little girls. She asked the girls which doll they thought was prettier and why. Consistently african american girls reported the lighter skinned or white doll to be more attractive or more pretty simply because she was white. The article talks about how girls of all ethnicities are constantly bombarded with ads and commercials that are telling them that white skinned or lighter skinned people are better and more beautiful. That even though today it may not be as obvious as it was in the time of segregation, there is still prejudice and discrimination in this world no matter how hidden. One of the things that I didn't even consider that was mentioned in the article is the fact that even famously empowered black women are getting lighter and lighter in their skin tone (take lil kim and beyonce) and their hair is getting blonder and less natural to their african american anscestry. This was something that I think goes along with being hidden discrimination. Just as was for women, there are many things that are hardwired early in our years of life. For african american girls it is the idea that they are inferior to the white girls of the world, therefore obviously the dolls that look like normal models or the normal conception of beautiful must be more beautiful then themselves.
One fascinating thing about this study was that it seemed to significantly influence the decision in the Brown vs. Board of Education. The case that set the precedent for segregation in schools. This was probably the most publicied application of this study. They mentioned that segregation of children in school just furthers the discrimination and the thoughts of the young girls that they are inferior. The black schools were not nearly adequate for learning at the time of the ruling and many black students began to realize that they deserved every opportunity and resource that all of the other students were getting. The clark studies helped solidify the effects of comparison of two different races even at the young age of five.
One of the things that I had never heard about this study was the last question. The last questioned was asked which doll looked most like them. 44% of girls said that the white doll looked more like them than the black doll. In past tests, however, many girls just started crying or ran out of the room. This result is especially disturbing because it demonstrates just how effected these girls were by their own thoughts and hardwired thinking that they weren't as good as others. Many may have wished they were different and many were probably overcome with emotion when they had to come into this experiment only to be reminded that they are not beautiful.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7213714&page=1
-ABC report about how race was effected by this study
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/New_doll_test_produces_ugly_results_2919.shtml
-summary of modern day clark studies
http://explorable.com/stereotypes.html
-how stereotypes and the clark studies intersect
The topic that I chose to research is artificial intelligence. This topic fits into this chapter because it is a subject that covers an idea about how machines could help humans in a collaborative thinking process. I am interested in this topic because I think it is fascinating to believe how machines can have a thought process. It’s also kind of scary to think that machines can have a form of thinking like the human mind. This could be both beneficial to society and also detrimental.
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science to create it. After reading several different links of information I found that AI was created for a few different purposes. First it could be used to help decision making when humans are at conflict. This type of decision making could be beneficial to humans because it could give us the best likelihood of success for each decision being made. Al could definitely help maximize our chances at success by weeding out such things as emotion or person bias’. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1955, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."
Al could be beneficial in numerous other ways. Jobs that endanger people would be a great use for this technology. For example, Bomb squad use. This technology could be used to diffuse bombs using human logic and precision without having to involve humans at close range. Another concept could be in space. These ideas and logic could gather information and data and report it back to a server for human observation and analysis.
We are already implementing artificial intelligence in our lives. So many smart phones and other pieces of technology have AI capabilities. People have the ability to have a conversation on their phone with not only another person but with their phone alone. Devices like this give detailed feedback when you ask it a question which is very interesting. It makes one wonder how far it will go. IPhones which have Siri already incorporate this concept. Asking a question and the AI can analyze it and search for what you need or want. Every technological advancement has there flaws. Certain Issues like proper human reasoning have come up in the past while using AI. This could eventually cause a huge issue based on the information that is being processed. Part of the information I researched was very interesting and beneficial to the world. Parts of the information provided were kind of scary in some aspects. For example, having a computer make vital decisions based on program information isn’t very reliable if human aspects such as emotion or understanding play a part. Sometimes cutting the human mind and thinking process could be a great thing but there are other times where human processes are needed. Empathy could be a huge aspect of this. Computers don’t take into account everything that we learn on a day to day basis of living and understanding others. I feel after reading this information and section in the book it should only be used in certain situations. Things like phone technology are great but we shouldn’t only rely on AI to make our biggest life decisions. Sometimes the most successful likelihood decision could turn out not to be the best. Throughout life you learn that playing it safe or smart doesn’t always lead to the results that are desired. In our world today it could be very beneficial but also detrimental to the human race and their ability to make their own decisions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence
http://library.thinkquest.org/2705/history.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq-AHmD8xz0
For my final topical blog I decided to talk more about the future of psychology. In the textbook, they discuss that maybe the discipline of psychology is not just one major discipline but many psychologies under the umbrella of the American Psychological Association.
In an article I read it outlined what the author thought the future of psychology was going to look like. He explained that the practice of medicine will be highly valued and respected along with the fact that licensure will be opened to the whole United States and not just be individualized to being able to practice in just one state. Furthermore, education to become a psychologist in an field will be cheap, regardless of the true skill the person has, the discipline will be flooded with young people trying to make a name for themselves. He says that “these persons will attempt to reshape the field-with atleast, moderate success”. Therapists will not have to compete with other therapists down the street or in the same building; rather, you will be competing with everyone in the U.S. since the open licensure was created. If you are more savvy in technology, media, and marketing, then the better chance you have to get patients. People will embrace new media and will become spokespersons for the field. This cycle will happen very rapidly. Psychologists will obtain more revenue from things outside of therapy. It will come mostly from technology like apps, media, and online consultations. Furthermore, patients will be monitored by these apps and will be encouraged to use technology like text messaging, and other reinforcements like help from the media. The therapists will be the architects for these apps and help the patients through these apps instead of one on one consultation. Oversight on ethics will be difficult considering all interactions with patients and on consultations will be mostly through technology. Finally, getting therapy will be a lot easier to those who need it. Because of these advancements, patients and clients will be able to get therapy anywhere and at any time they choose.
The APA wants psychologists to start focusing on health care providers and try to motion themselves away from mental health providers. Since health care providers take care of about 70 percent of mental health issues, psychologist and other mental health professionals are said to be more involved or become more involved in the health care system. They are also stressed to meet the needs of a very diverse society. The APA also tells mental health professionals to use and apply basic and scientific evidence to inform our practice. To integrate these two things in a cohesive matter to be used interchangeably.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/02/pc.aspx
http://www.drjasonanderson.com/2012/02/20/the-future-of-psychology-in-11-bullet-points/
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm/volumeID_21-editionID_155-ArticleID_1297-getfile_getPDF/thepsychologist%5C0108care.pdf
For this week’s topical blog I decided to research more about the life and contributions of Eleanor Gibson (1910-2002) who is discussed in chapter 15. Problems for women in psychology have been examined in several chapters throughout the textbook and Gibson is a good example of highly talent psychologist who faced barriers to advancement simply because she was a woman.
Gibson first became interested in psychology as Smith College, which was a liberal arts college for women in western Massachusetts. Eleanor fell in love with the lab and her lab professor, James Gibson. She remained at Smith for a year after graduation, earning her master’s degree and marrying her favorite teacher (James Gibson) who would later become one of the best-known twentieth-century researchers in perception. After her time at Smith, Gibson went to Yale eager to work in the lab of Robert Yerkes. However, Yerkes denied her request stating “I have no women in my laboratory”. Although being denied by Yerkes, she refused to leave Yale. She earned her doctorate under Clark Hull in 1938. She then moved to Ithaca, New York after her husband was hired at Cornell University. Due to anti-nepotism rules she was unable to gain employment at Cornell. However, she persevered as an unpaid research associate for sixteen years. She managed to do so by winning competitive and prestigious research grants. It was during these sixteen years that Gibson made one her greatest contributions to perception; the visual cliff. Gibson showed that young mobile animals of many species will avoid a visually-specified drop-off even if they have had no prior visual experience, and that human infants do the same as soon as they can crawl. This finding is still described in virtually every textbook. In 1966 Cornell removed its nepotism rules and Gibson immediately became a full professor. She would go on to win numerous awards. One of her greatest achievements came in 1992 when Gibson was awarded the National Medal of Science from the president. This is the highest award that a president can award to a scientist. The award highlights her lifetime of research and achievements. Gibson retired from Cornell in 1979; however, she continued to be an active scholar up until her death in 2002.
According to the text, today women undergraduates majoring in psychology outnumber men two to one, and about 60 percent of doctorates in psychology are awarded to women. Although most faculty members in psychology continue to be male, I think it’s safe to say times have changed for women in psychology. These changes can be accredited to women psychologists like Eleanor Gibson, who wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept pushing to do what she wanted to do until it eventually became accepted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_J._Gibson
- Brief description of the “visual cliff” findings
http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/
- Overview of Gibson’s life
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/gibson.html
- Biography of Eleanor Gibson
This week I decided to look more into what psychologists are doing today and what they studying. The first article title of the first article I ran across struck my attention. The article was about quitting smoking cold turkey opposed to using the patch or some form of medication. This caught my attention because my father quit smoking and I know many people who smoke and want to quit but just can’t. Australia did a study and found that people quitting by themselves are more successful than any program. The study of patients at 1,000 family practices found that cold turkey accounted for 88 percent of all successful long-term quitters and that it was twice as effective as pharmacology. By this study it makes it seem like a vast majority of people should be able to quit cold turkey-no problem. In my own experience, this is not the case however. I know many people who have had difficulty either quitting by themselves or using other methods like the patch. Is it in their head that they can’t? They tell themselves it is not possible and by doing this fail themselves. Tobacco consumption is a powerful addiction because nicotine stimulates specialized neural receptors in the brain, just as all other highly addictive substances do. Most quitters fail in their initial attempt because their cravings are just too strong. If psychologists could figure out how to control what part of the brain is stimulated by the smoking, could they do something to help smokers quit?
The second story I found was about switching off our bad habits, is that possible? That's the possibility raised by a new study conducted by MIT neuroscientists aimed at finding the master switch in the brain that controls habits. Researchers found that a small region of the brain's prefrontal cortex, where most thought and planning occurs, is responsible for moment-by-moment control of which habits are switched on at a given time. The article stated that we're all well aware, old habits die hard, and that's because they are deeply wired into our brains. That's great in some cases because it allows our brain to expend energy on other things while a habitual behavior, such as driving to work, occurs with very little thought required. But in other cases habits can wreak havoc with our lives, as with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And sometimes what was once a beneficial habit continues even though it no longer benefits us. The researchers and MIT did an experiment using rats and having them run a course over and over until it became habit to them. Once they had shown that the habit was fully ingrained, the researchers wanted to see if they could break it by interfering with a part of the prefrontal cortex known as the infralimbic cortex. Using optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers to inhibit specific cells with light, the researchers turned off IL cortex activity for several seconds as the rats approached the point in the maze where they had to decide which way to turn. Instead of turning left, the way they was habit, they stopped. When the researchers turned their IL back on, the rats immediately started turning left again, suggesting that they never completely lost the habit. According to Graybiel, it's possible the technology will evolve to the point where it might be a feasible option for treating disorders involving overly repetitive or addictive behavior.
The third article I found was about a study psychologists did in 2011. The study was about correlating childhood happiness to adult happiness. This made me think about the child’s brain when it is developing as a small child and exactly how much impact people and situations can help or hurt someone. Researchers at Cambridge University examined the early and teen years of 2,776 adult subjects, analyzing their childhood mental well-being and personality (assessed from school records and personality tests, among other sources). They then correlated this information with their adult subjects' education level, marital status, income, occupation, mental health, social involvement, and leadership activities. Compared with children who had no positive ratings, participants with one positive childhood rating (e.g., a glowing teacher's report) were 21% less likely to develop emotional problems as adults, while those with two or more positive ratings were 61% less likely to develop those problems. Therefore, based on this study child who do have a happier childhood will have a happier adulthood. It doesn’t mean that child can have a bad childhood and grow up to be happy, it is just less likely.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201212/quitting-cold-turkey-better-smoking-cessation-programs - Smoking article
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/neuronarrative/201211/switching-bad-habits-true-possibility- Habits article
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/neuronarrative/201112/ten-impressive-psychology-studies-2011?page=2 – Adulthood happiness study
I chose Jean Piaget for this assignment for an obvious reason, I’m studying to be an educator. I felt that he was such an innovator for the field of education that it only made sense. In 1934, he declared, "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual." That really does hit close to home, because education is still the last item on the agenda of our country. But I digress.
Jean Piaget is most known for his work on genetic epistemology, or the nature, origin, and extent of knowledge. He suggested that children learn more from their new experiences, and group their information into schemas, while adults draw from their prior experiences. Ultimately, this led to his theory of cognitive development. His theory was different from many other theories because it focused on the learning of a child (versus adults), the theory is based on development of a child. As the child progresses through stages the number and complexity of schemas increase with behaviors, ideas, and concepts. As the child ages, schemas will be organized hierarchically.
These stages begin at infancy with sensorimotor, which is marked with motor activity and experiences from their physical interaction. Pre-operational stage, in toddlerhood and early childhood, shows maturing language, symbolism, and imagination. The child at this age has yet to show reversible or logical language, so while 2+2=4, they may not understand that 4=2+2. The third stage, concrete operational, occurs in elementary schooling and early adolescence, shows reversible thinking, manipulation of symbols, logical thinking and conservation. Conservation is an important feature that many developmental psychologists have studied. The idea of conservation is best demonstrated by a water glass demonstration. The child understands that a tall skinny glass of water will be able to fill a short, wide glass, and be able to see this somewhat abstract idea. The final stage is called formal operational stage, which shows abstract thoughts through symbolism. While this is a stage that marks adulthood, less than 40% of high school graduates show the use of formal operations.
Basic facts on his theory- http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
Stages of his theory-http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/piaget.html
Piaget-http://psychology.about.com/b/2008/04/21/key-concepts-in-cognitive-development.htm
The subject I decided to research more into was on artificial intelligence. It fits into chapter 14 in the section that talks about trying to create computer to respond to questions like humans would, this is dealing with things like algorithms and heuristics. The reason I wanted to research more is because I feel like with all the technology around us we are seeing more and more artificial intelligence being incorporated into our daily lives.
Artificial intelligence has always been a fantasy of advanced cultures in human history. The real emergence of artificial intelligence into the scientific community happened in 1956. The pioneers behind this were John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon who all came to gather for the first artificial intelligence meeting at Dartmouth College. Problems in artificial intelligence usually relate to trying to make he computers respond more like humans. This is difficult because humans don’t process things in the form of complex algorithms. Also is the problem of deeper intelligence with things like sensory motor units. How do you make a robot feel? Many of these questions have seen much reform and many things are now tough activated. Even more complex are things like social intelligence. These ideas can be seen represented in the movie “I Robot” where the robot begins to have human feelings. This type of research is still a long ways from being perfected and being utilized, but in the future the role artificial intelligence will play in world affairs has a potential to be great. Especially in the area of military, replacing soldiers with robots has been something many people have looked forward to with the emergence of artificial intelligence. If government projects are making substantial headway into this area then they are keeping it secret because any big replacement for soldiers on the battlefield by drones has yet to be seen.
http://library.thinkquest.org/2705/history.html
- This is where I learned of the history of A.I.
http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~lazowska/cra/ai.html
- This is where I learned of new ideas in A.I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
- This is where I learned of general ideas and more history of A.I.
For this week I chose to do my research on artificial intelligence from chapter 14. I chose this chapter because I found it interesting and I don’t know a lot about it. It fits well into this chapter because it does discuss what artificial intelligence is through chapter 14. When I first think of artificial intelligence I think of computers having the ability to think and feel like a human, to have set emotions. It can also be described as a branch of computer science. Artificial intelligence tries to create computer programs that can solve a problem using a thought process, rather than using only straightforward data processing. To make computers think, feel, and act more like humans to better come up with answers like us is really what they want. AI, is also the study of man-made computational devices and systems which can be made to act in a manner which we would call intelligent. The birth of the field can be traced back to the early 1950s; through the publication of a paper entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" by the British Mathematician Alan Turing. A main reason why psychologists came up with the idea of AL because it could help assist the everyday work of a psychiatrist; Knowledge representation, natural language understanding, search and planning, computer-assisted diagnosis, simulation and teaching. This I found very interesting because computers do so much for us today, imagine what they will do for us in the future. Yes this could be actually kind of scary because sometimes technology does get out of control and too much intelligence is used. But to think of how useful it was back in the 40s and 50s. Unlike humans, computers have trouble understanding specific situations, and adapting to new situations. Artificial Intelligence aims to improve machine behaviour in tackling such complex tasks. Together with this, much of AI research is allowing us to understand our intelligent behaviour. Humans have an interesting approach to problem-solving, based on abstract thought, high-level deliberative reasoning and pattern recognition. Artificial Intelligence can help us understand this process by recreating it, then potentially en abling us to enhance it beyond our current capabilities. If we can enhance it beyond our capabilities maybe AI can come up with answers we humans are still searching for? AI sounds very scary but it is also very interesting, in the right hands it could be something even more amazing then it is now. The ability to create intelligent machines has intrigued humans since ancient times and today with the advent of the computer and 50 years of research into AI programming techniques, the dream of smart machines is becoming a reality.
http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/dept/phil341/wisai/WhatisAI.html - Described what AI was and put into more detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence - Explained what AI is and the importance it has on us.
http://www.bizymoms.com/computers-and-technology/artificial-intelligence.html - Discussed why AI is important and what future could hold through development.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdRonGgDanI – A video of what I always thought AI was and a fear that has always come to mind if AI in technology were to get out of hand.
I chose to research more about the fundamental issues faced in psychology. Chapter 15 stresses the point that psychology has no universal discipline and can only rely on its history as any source of proof. As society progresses and advances, issues arise that question the morale of some studies. This is something I want to learn more about because I find it so fascinating due to the overall essence of psychology. There is not always a right or wrong answer and it is a good thing to be skeptical and challenge previous ways of thinking when it comes to psychology, yet society used to forbid this very thing. The subject is so broad and involves so much that is still unknown that it requires depth including facing any problems that could hold you back.
I immediately became interested on the first site because of a quote I found by D.H. Lawrence, “If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stick at last, as human psychology.” This goes along with what I meant by depth earlier and makes me think of it as the notion of expecting to get your hands dirty. Part of learning comes from negative experience so ignoring these impacts is only disrupting the learning process. The acceptance of Psychology as a field of study is not something that has always existed and even today the subject continues to take heat from the public as a combination of doubt and fear. Something interesting that I read which makes sense is that the older a topic is the more people get used to it and have less controversy. I take this in somewhat of a negative way and think it looks almost arrogant or selfish for automatically objecting to any new thought or idea. Modern day technology has led to increased acceptance of discovery with a generation that thirsts for knowledge that can expand mental capacity. I see my generation much different from my grandparents because of the more conservative views present in the past. One controversial issue in psychology that has been around for decades and still remains is religion and science. Religion is such a large part of any culture, so when theories begin to develop that weren’t compatible with the Christian worldview people responded harshly. It was interesting to find out that many Evangelicals believe that psychological truth resides in the scripture and only reject the ideas that contradict the bible. The last interesting source that I read was about Eco-Psychology and the relationship between humans and the natural world. This involves the issue between nature versus nurture, specifically when defining insanity or madness. Ultimately, people can sometimes get too caught up searching for a yes or no, right or wrong answer when then true answer is that there may not be one at all. I don’t necessarily commit fully to the idea that seeing is believing and I still consider myself as having faith, but I tend to have the mindset that many aspects of my life are theories without proof and it’s not whether or not I think one is true and the other is false, but more about my interest in learning all points of views. It is almost fun for me as a creative way to think about endless ‘what-if’ questions and hypothetical situations. In conclusion, Psychology is a field that requires being skeptic and keeping an open mind, but even more so having the ability to accept an undesirable outcome and take it as a learning experience. Ecology, or science, is something that should be accepted into the field of Psychology because they both need one another in order to benefit.
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/controversial-topics-in-psychology.html
D.H. Lawrence, public opinion of doubt/ fear, technology advancing = more liberal
http://www.psyche.gr/lpsycrel.htm
Religion versus science, contradictions w/ the Bible
http://www.williamjames.com/transcripts/roszak.htm
Eco-Psychology, nature versus nurture, ecology
I chose to learn more about Ronald Fisher. He is only mentioned in a single line of Chapter 14 where it says that he developed the statistical procedure called “analysis of variance” (p. 492). He was British and developed ANOVA in the 1920s. But it did not get widely used in psychology, as it is today, until the 1950s. The social psychologist Leon Festinger, who got his degree at the University of Iowa and developed cognitive dissonance theory, helped to introduced ANOVA designs into main stream psychological research (P. 493). We have just finished studying ANOVA in my statistics class so all of this caught my attention. Who was Ronald Fisher, how did he develop ANOV, and why did it take psychology so long to adopt it?
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher lived from February 17, 1890 to July 29, 1962. He has been described as a “statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and geneticist.” Besides inventing ANOVA, he also developed the Fisher's exact test. This is another version of Chi Square. One person described him as "a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science" and another said he was "the greatest biologist since Darwin.” Fisher showed skill at mathematics at a very early age. But because of his poor eye sight he would visualize the solution to problems often leaving out the in-between steps between the problem and solution - but always being correct. He also at a young age had an interest in evolutionary biology. He attended Cambridge University and there helped to form an organization devoted to eugenics.
Some years after graduating Fisher worked for a British agricultural group that was analyzing years of data on crop production. What factors made a difference? There were many to consider (the plot of land, the seed variety, the kind of fertilizer, the amount of rain, etc.) and they all acted at the same time. Out of trying to understand this problem Fisher invented analysis of variance. He published the technique in a book titled: Statistical Methods for Research Workers in 1925. Later, in 1935, he published Design of Experiments, which explained the many ways to use ANOVA in developing a research project. These two books are the foundation of modern statistics as used in psychology research.
Fisher also contributed to other fields. His contribution to genetics was published in The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection in1930. Most people would think that this was a much more important contribution than any statistical tests he developed. This book, and Fisher’s ideas, helped to show how Darwin’s principle of natural selection and the developments that had occurred in the study of genes could be put together in one theory. For some years people thought that these two ideas were in conflict and that Darwin was wrong. They thought that mutations would explain evolution instead of natural selection explaining it.
The most interesting thing I found out about Fisher is that he came to Iowa. He taught at Iowa State University for several summers, in the year 1931 and again in 1936. He was teaching his statistical techniques to students in agriculture, and it was after this that the techniques came to psychology-- but not until the 1950s and not until they had been taught and used in agricultural applications in the United States.
I find it very interesting that ANOVA was first taught in the United States at Iowa State and that Festinger who went to the University of Iowa helped to introduce it to psychology. I never would have guessed that ANIOV had these Iowa connections.
Websites used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher
wikipedia brief biographical information and reference to work contributions
http://the10000yearexplosion.com/sir-ronald-fishers/
describes how he is seen as one of Darwin’s “greatest succesor’s”
http://www.drpeterjdadamo.com/wiki/wiki.pl/R.A._Fisher
more detailed description of Fisher’s work
In my last topical blog I wanted to focus on cognitive dissonance that was discussed in Chapter 14. I love social psychology and I know that I have a hard time fighting cognitive dissonance on a daily basis. However, I wanted to focus on how the term plays a part in everyday life, and how research has done studies on this emotional discomfort. Also, I found a very interesting article on how a Republican congressman,Todd Atkin, displayed major cognitive dissonance in his beliefs on rape.
The first site I found information on was giving an example how we tell ourselves little white lies all the time to fight cognitive discomfort. An example of cognitive dissonance would be that “if you’re a student looking to choose between two different universities, after being accepted to each, you’re asked to rate the universities after considering each college’s pros and cons” Then after the student would make their choice they would ask them once again to rate the two universities. Studies showed that the students would rate the chosen university better than the one that they rejected, after making the decision. According to the author, Psy.D. John Grohol, telling white lies to ourselves only can leave internal anxiety, and one can fight it through self-awareness and not justifying decisions or behaviors that you do not fully agree with. Cognitive Dissonance as a therapy is interesting because someone might use role playing exercises and cognitive/behavioral techniques.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/10/19/fighting-cognitive-dissonance-the-lies-we-tell-ourselves/
The second resource I found discuss the political discussion of Congressman Todd Atkin. Todd Atkin believed that a “female’s body has ways to try to shut the whole (process of rape) down.” It was said that maybe he was not just heartless but suffering from cognitive dissonance. Social scientists have been using the term more frequently, especially during the election year. When a person holds two conflicting ideas, the mental strain is greatly noticeable. Maybe Todd Atkin was trying to seem smart and a decent person for being “pro-life”, but does not feel totally comfortable with the idea of a woman being legitimately raped and carrying the rapists baby. Atkin is justifying what he said by sticking with his statement. This is a more modernized version on how social cognitive dissonance can play a role in politics and everyday life.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliot-aronson/todd-akin-cognitive-disso_b_1840432.html
The final source I found had a great example of Leon Festinger’s research on cognitive dissonance. Festinger and Carlsmith asked participants in 1959, to perform a series of dull tasks. The participants were either paid $1 or $20, to tell a lie to the waiting participants that the tasks were fun. According to the study, almost all of the participants agreed to it and created a cognitive dissonance through forced compliance behavior. The results showed that when the participants were asked to evaluate the experiment, those paid only $1 rated the task more fun than the ones that were paid $20 to lie. The reason why the $1 participants rated the task more fun was that it was not enough money to really lie about it, and so they overcame dissonance to believe it was interesting. The people that were paid the bigger bucks didn’t have dissonance because there was a reason they did the boring task.
McLeod, S. A(2008).http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
The three examples and research above show that 2 conflicting attitudes toward something causes discomfort and leads to an altered belief or behaviors to reduce the pain. Everyone experiences cognitive dissonance with friends, family, and even oneself.
The topic I decided to look more into is artificial intelligence. It fits into chapter 14 as there is a section explaining people trying to create a computer that can think like a human. I wanted to look into this more, because it’s just such an interesting topic. We’re in an age where technology is becoming very advanced, so I wanted to look more into a type of technology that could possibly think like a human, or even be smarter than a human in some ways. Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and robots and the branch of computer science aiming to create it. The field of artificial intelligence was founded at a conference at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956. A couple of men mentioned in the chapter became leaders of AI research for many years. These men were Allen Newell and Herbert Simon. In one study, the researcher concluded that for a computer to be considered intelligent, it must have the following: language understanding to communicate successfully, ability to store information before or during the questioning, ability to reason, to answer questions and reach conclusions, the ability to learn and adjust to a new situation, vision to discern objects, and robotics for mobility. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, AI systems were beginning to improve and successful results were starting to surface. These successful results led to many different things being created involving AI. One successful result was a vehicle being run by an onboard computer system. The computer system drove a van all but 52 of the 2,849 miles from Washington, DC to San Diego. Another example would be computer chess built by IBM researchers, known as Deep Blue. The chess computer defeated world champion Gary Kasparov. Today, there are many different things being affected by AI. Credit card providers, telephone companies, mortgage lenders, banks, and the U.S. Government use AI systems to detect fraud and expedite financial transactions. AI is also used in systems to diagnose and treat problems. Photocopiers, computer operating systems, and office automation tools all use AI technology in hopes to reduce service calls. Also, AI systems help physicians in diagnosing patients, prescribing treatments, and monitoring patient responses. One that people would be familiar with would be on the IPhone and other smart phones. There are apps that can be utilized by speaking into the phone. A person can give the phone a command, and it understands what that person says and carries out that command. This is such an interesting topic, and there have been so many advanced already in AI, and I can’t wait to see more advanced made in the future.
http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~lazowska/cra/ai.html
-Info on AI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#History
-General info on AI
http://www.essortment.com/information-artificial-intelligence-36302.html
-More info on AI
I decided to look at the future of psychology. I thought it would be interesting where some think psychology might grow. I wanted like to relate these factors to psychology’s past. I am interested in the future like most people are I think. We are curious and like to plan and day dream about not only our futures but also that of the worlds. I am extremely curious and that is one reason why I want to look into psychology’s future. I found not so much predictions of what will happen but more of an involved approach on what should happen.
In 2009 Dr. James H. Bray, APA President, wrote about the future of psychology in a short article “Vision for the future of psychology practice" He came up with four principles he thought should be guides for the future.
The first suggestion was titled “From mental health to health care providers: Providing integrated health care.” This means Bray wants psychologists involved more in the medical world. He believes psychologists should be involved more with mental health issues and there should be less general practitioners just prescribing medication. Bray points out “primary-care providers treat over 70 percent of mental health problems without assistance from psychologists.” He thinks many health problems are caused by psychosocial and lifestyle problems which the medical professionals do not treat and psychologists could treat if included more in the medical health-care team. Even though psychology has made a lot of progress from the days of insane asylums and lobotomies of the past it seems that psychological needs are not being met in medical settings. In 1942 after the return of so many more mentally injured soldiers versus physically injured soldiers there was a new push for more clinical psychologists. Still it would seem according to Bray that there is still a need for more psychologists to treat mental health issues. Doctors have learned to suppress symptoms but still need psychologists to cure them.
The second principle is “Integrating technology into practice.” This means Bray thinks psychologists need to use electronic health records (EHR). These should be because to “document psychological interventions requires knowledge and skill in accurately communicating to a variety of health professionals, while protecting sensitive and confidential patient information.” Technology has changed psychology in innumerable ways since it began and psychology needs to keep up to date to keep up with the future. Christopher Koch, the Psi Chi National President, says “The 1960's brought about significant changes in society and in psychology. Technology played a major role in these changes. The computer provided a better analogy for cognitive theories as well as a powerful tool for experimental research. As the information age began to unfold, there was an increase in the number of research outlets (both journals and conferences). The expanding scientific literature allowed (or forced, depending upon your perspective) researchers to focus on specific, even specialized, problems.”
Bray’s third principle is “Meeting the needs of our diverse society.” Given that the United Sates receives the most immigrants overall in an ever globalizing world means that we have very culturally and ethnically diverse needs to meet. He mentions helping those without healthcare coverage as well. Bray thinks psychologists need to be specially trained to work with multicultural populations and that these services should be included in funding. This idea is very far from the past when intelligence testing was done on Ellis Island and immigrants were turned away not because they were mentally deficient but possibly just due to language or cultural differences.
The Fourth principle is “Applying basic and applied scientific evidence to inform our practice.” Bray emphasizes the importance of “evidence-based practice” and calls it “our future.” The APA has created graduate programs to teach these methods but Bray thinks “we also need to integrate basic scientific evidence, such as neuroscience, couple and family process research, into our regular practice.” He thinks psychologists need to broaden their services, not just provide mental health services but to also move to bigger places in education, communities, organizations and in business. This has been an issue in psychology for a while, using psychology in an applied way. It seems that this demand has not gone away and that there is still a call to use psychology in as many areas as possible. Alli Mattu, APAGS chair, talks about how psychology is a hub science “a field that greatly influences other disciplines. Advances in psychology not only move our field forward, they advance science as a whole.” Mattu mentions Wilhelm Wundt and how his laboratory made it possible for psychology to become scientific. Mattu thinks that if psychology is to continue to be this hub and flourish it must see “trends, challenges and opportunities within and outside our field.” Mattu has four suggestions for graduate students of the future: embrace interdisciplinary research, demonstrate the efficacy of your practice, engage in empirically supported teaching and advocate for funding.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/02/pc.aspx
Dr. James H. Bray’s suggestions
http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_513.aspx
Christopher Koch talks about psychology’s future
http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2012/03/corner.aspx
By Ali Mattu, APAGS chair
After reading chapter 14, I decided to look more into eyewitness memory. Reading about Bartlett’s memory tasks influenced me to take a closer look. One of Bartlett’s memory tasks was for people to recall faces of 5 variations of military men on 5 separate flash cards. He found that people had trouble recalling the faces accurately so it immediately reminded me of a criminal line up where a witness picks out the culprit from a line of suspects. As I read on to the next paragraph, the text comments on how his results are similar to those of today’s eyewitness memories. I was interested in this, because these witness testimonies are highly important when convicting someone for a crime. It is scary to think that I could someday be convicted of a crime, because a witness couldn't recall what the appearance of the actual culprit.
Eyewitness memory and identification plays a huge role in the judicial system today, and even though we put a lot of faith in these memories, they may not be as accurate as we would like to think. Even the smallest of details can be crucial, and be the deciding factor of whether or not the true culprit is brought to justice. Mistaking these details isn’t necessarily attributed to bad memory, but to how our brain functions. We don’t remember things as a whole; we remember bits of the whole and then unconsciously fill in the missing parts to form a memory. Another thing that may make eyewitness identification difficult is the fact that they are willing to do it. They want to help, and believe the cops are good and have the true culprit in the line-up during identification. Because of this, they pick a suspect that most closely resembles their recollection. Also, the composition of the lineup makes a difference, and it should not be suggestive. If the culprit was said to be back, a black man or woman should not be put in a lineup comprised solely of white people. Other factors that can influence these memories are stress of the situation, psychogenic amnesia, focusing on the weapon, and interference with other stimuli.
There have been many cases of mistaken identification and the cause of wrongful convictions. An example of this is the case of Franky Carrillo. Carrillo spent 20 years in prison after being wrongfully identified as a drive-by shooter. His mug shot was shown to the witness along with five others’, so the witness believed that it had to be one of the pictures. Carrillo just had the closest resemblance to the two shooters and was sentenced for two life sentences for a murder he did not commit.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dna/photos/eye/text_06.html
-Shows how unreliable memories are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_memory
-Gives examples of things that might influence our memories
https://death.rdsecure.org/article.php?id=583
-Franky Carrillo
I chose to write about Jean Piaget for this weeks blog. I have a strong intrest in education and child development and Jean Piaget is a legendary figure is this field. Piaget was largly a developmental psychologist, philosoper and is known for his work in genetic epistemology. Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896. He was the oldest son of Arther Piaget, a professor in medival literature at the University of Neuchatel and Rebecca Jackson, whom is recorded as being a little neurotic which may be the reason why Piaget got into psychology. Piaget was a very curious child and as a boy took an intrest in zoology and by the age of age of 11 had published an article on the albino sparrow. He was also had a good reputation for his knowledge for mollusks and had written many articles on them as well, which many people who read them thought he was an expert.
He then attended the University of Neuchatel and received his Ph.D. in the natural sciences. He then studied at The University of Zurich, but after just one semester left for Paris to work at Ecole de la rue de la Grange-aux-Belles. This was a school for boys that was started by Binet and run by Simon. While working with Binet and Simon on the Intelligence Test he noticed that children often got the same answers wrong and wanted to know what thinking led them to get the answer wrong rather than the fact that that the answer was wrong. This question of course sparked the idea for his theory of cognitive development that he would later develope.
Piaget then moved to Geneva and became the director of the Rousseau Institute. While at the institute he worked heavily in the field of developmental psychology. These workes would become the first five books to be published in the field. He also met and married Valentine Chatenay and they had three children that he would study heavily for his work. After this Piaget became the Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Neuchatel and would ultimatly finish out heis career at the University of Geneva.
One of Jean Piaget most well-known and in my opinion important findings was the theory of cognitive development, which is a Piaget's theory that explains the intellectual development of human beings. There are four basic stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations that a child goes through in their development. The sensorimotor stage which extends from birth to about two years of age. During this stage infant learn to use their senses and act on them. One of the major developmental milestones during this stage is the development of object permanance, which is when a child knows that an objects exists even when it is not present. The preoperational stage begins when the child is about 2 until about age 7. During this stage children begin to use symoblism and can use words and pictures to represent objects. They are also very self focused, called egocentrism. The concrete operations stage is approximatly ages 7 to 11. During this stage children begin to think logically about events. Formal Operations stage, which takes place after age 12 is characterized be the ability think abstractly and hypothetically about situations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
-Basic Info on Piagets life
http://www.piaget.org/aboutPiaget.html
-Info on Piagets life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_cognitive_development
-Theory of Cognitive Development
The topic I decided to do more research on was the “visual cliff” created by Eleanor Gibson. I chose to do this topic because after reading in chapter 15 about Gibson and her journey as a psychologist, I wanted to learn more about her and what she was most known for. I had heard of the visual cliff in my developmental psychology class during my first year, but I don’t remember much about it. I think this fits into the chapter because in chapter 15, it discussed the diversity of psychology and it recognized bringing women into the field and the lab. There was a lengthy section on Gibson I enjoyed reading and I thought since I already read briefly about her journey, I’d read more about what she contributed along the way.
Infants in the crawling stage of their childhood are more likely to have falls from more or less high places. Such places as the sides of their cribs, gates, and stairways are where most falls happen to occur. As the infants grow older they learn about those places usually from experience of previous falls. The invention of the visual cliff is used to test the depth perception of infants and help protect infants from having falls.
Eleanor Gibson and R.D. Walk were the masterminds behind the experiment of the visual cliff study. Gibson worked with Walk at Cornell initially researching the effect of an enriched rearing environment on learning in rats. The visual cliff came about as they tried to get more use out of dark-reared rats. They were surprised to see the rats avoid the glass-covered drop off area of the cliff meaning they could discriminate depth even with their lack of visual experience. Eventually they decided to perform the experiment with crawling babies. In the study, the psychologists put 36 babies on a countertop, one at a time. The countertop was covered with half solid plastic covered with checkered cloth and half clear Plexiglas. The mother of each infant stood on the other side of the Plexiglas. The crawling baby would encounter a gape where the Plexiglas begins and warning danger of falling and yet the solid feel of the surface left the infant questionable of if they’d fall. Gibson and Walk discovered that to make the assessment, the babies looked for the mother’s facial expression to decide on what to do. If their mother gave them a reassuring, happy expression, they kept crawling, but if the mother gave an alarmed, angry expression, the child would stop. At Cornell University, Gibson and Walk found that not only will children at the age of 6-14 months not crawl out onto a questionable surface, but neither will rats, pups, kittens and chicks. This experiment gives us the impression that infants who can crawl can also judge depth. Some children looked down through the glass and back away while other touched the glass with their hands and still refused to crawl across.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/29/visual-cliff-study/
-this source talked directly about how the experiment was administered
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1VPaBcT1KdY
-the video gives the prime example of how the study was administered
http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps05.html
-this source talked about how Cornell used the visual cliff experiment on not only human infants but baby animals such as chicks, kittens, lambs, pigs and dogs
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx
-this source emphasized on how the visual cliff came about and her journey before and after her creation with Walk
For our last topical blog, I chose to do it over Eleanor Gibson. I chose Gibson for my topical blog because after reading about her in the text, I thought she was an extraordinary woman and would love to learn more about her and the hurdles she jumped over to become the woman she did. Eleanor fits into chapter-fifteen because of her history in psychology as a woman.
Eleanor was born in Peoria, Illinois and attended Smith College. Gibson also met her future husband here, James Gibson. James Gibson was highly influential in Eleanor’s experiments. She stayed at Smith College and studied under James but left because they didn’t have a PhD. program. After Smith College she went to Yale in hopes of getting her PhD under Robert Yerkes. Yerkes simply refused and said that he didn’t have room for women in his laboratory. Not giving up she was able to stay at Yale and get her PhD under him. After getting her Doctorate, Gibson returned to Smith College to teach. Unfortunately, WWII came into play and her husband was asked to do perceptual tests for the air force. The couple then moved to Texas, then to California with the military. During most of this time Gibson was a stay at home mom, taking care of their two children. After the war, the family moved back to work at Smith College but a few years later her husband James was offered a job at Cornell University. However, the school had rules that married people couldn’t both be facualty members. So, Eleanor endured and continued to do experiments on her own. It was then that Gibson became famous for her “visual cliff”. This is the ability to perceive depth perception in young infants and mammals. After a long period of time, Gibson was finally made a professor at Cornell University where she focused her research on perceptual learning. Her visual cliff experiment is one of psychologies most famous experiments.
Gibson received great recognition for her scientific endeavors. She went on to receive the National Medal of Science from the president for her accomplishments. This is a big deal because not many psychologists receive this award.
I admire Eleanor Gibson for her perseverance and determination to not give up doing what she loved. She encountered many obstacles mainly due to the fact that she was a woman, but still persevered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_J._Gibson -- Wiki, great place to start as normal
http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/ -- Feminist website that recognizes great women achievers.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx -- APA website provided a thorough biography of Eleanor Gibson
I decided to learn a little bit more about Eleanor Gibson. I found her to be a very inspirational woman and I was impressed by her continued drive and motivation to succeed to psychology. She never let anyone makes feel like she couldn’t be successful because she was a woman. After all of her education, she was denied being able to be a professor at Cornell University because her husband was a professor there. So, she worked on research there and was working for no paid for many years. Despite her hardships she ended up being awarded the National Medal of Science in 1992. The visual cliff she created is something talked about a lot in psychology. The book didn’t go into a lot of detail about it, but as I read the information I gathered about visual cliff I remembered learning about it. This research dealt with babies and development. They were placed on the cliff and were encouraged to crawl forward because their mother was at the end of it. It is interesting that these babies have never experienced a drop-off yet they don’t move on this platform that is several feet from the ground and they can see the ground through this apparatus. Before she did her study on humans Gibson studied maternal-infant interaction with goats. This study looks at the natural response of the individuals in the experiment.
Not only was she an amazing researcher, but she was a great professor. All of her students loved her. She let her students do a lot of hands-on research. Her students described her as flexible, generous, and willing to give them a lot of independence as a graduate student. A lot of times they would be explaining and discussing an idea and think that she wasn’t listening, but the next day she would have a handful of articles and maybe even a few pages of notes from her. She always supported her students and gave them encouragement with their research.
http://psychologicalscience.org/index.php/uncategorized/in-appreciation-eleanor-gibson.htm - Gave me information about how her students felt about her.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx - Explained more about her research studies.
http://www.enclclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830905696.html - This website was a little more detailed in the background of Gibson than the book.
The person I wanted to research some more was Frederick C. Bartlett. The chapter talked about his constructing memory and what he referred to as schemata, where the memorizer organizes the material into “wholes.” Reading the section on constructing memory in this chapter got me interested in Bartlett.
He was born in 1886 in Gloucestershire, England. Growing up he had a private education, then went on to study logic and philosophy at St. John’s College in Cambridge. When he tutored at the University of Cambridge he started to get interested in anthropology and in psychology.
During the 1920’s and 1930’s he had publishing on cognition and memory. One of his “most famous studies” would have been the social process of remembering. In the year his publishing on Remembering was published, he was made fellow of the Royal Society in 1932. After this he became devoted to applied psychology. He became the director of the Applied Psychology Department at Cambridge from 1944-1953. Bartlett was also appointed to the order of commanders of the British Empire in 1941 and was knighted in 1948.
His interests were also in perception. Bartlett thought that our memories are not stored in one specific part of the brain, but are spread out. This is where Frederick Bartlett’s schemata came into place.
Bartlett did research on many topics one being on faint sounds who he worked with a woman named Emily Mary Smith, whom he later married in 1920. He also studied the way different people interpret and describe pictures. During Frederick’s time teaching in the experimental laboratory, more students graduate in experimental psychology.
http://www.bookrags.com/research/bartlett-frederic-1886-1969-lmem-01/ -royal society. British Empire knighted. Remembering publishing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Bartlett -Birth. Famous study.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Frederic_Bartlett -Interests. Schooling. Work
The topic I chose to write about was women in psychology and how they’ve changed over the years. I was very interested in how there are more woman than men in psychology today 2 to 1. This idea was bizarre for me to think about at first since all of the famous psychologists we’ve learned about today are men and men have dominated the field for many years. The first website I checked out was a timeline of major accomplishments women have had in psychology in the past till now. The book explained how women weren’t given the opportunity to get a degree in psychology until 1926, but the timeline explained how in 1891 a psychologist by the name of Mary Whiton Calkins established a psychology laboratory at Wellesley College and then was elected the first woman president of the APA in 1905. There was a lot of other notable woman in the timeline all the way up to 1950 that I was unaware of that was very interesting as well. I also watched a video on woman psychologists and their struggle on getting a voice in psychology. Woman weren’t able have a real contribution to psychology until the turning point of society in America in the 1960’s. There was a large social change when many young college students rallied to change face of woman equality in itself. They also talk about the woman’s movement which was not as popular as the civil rights movement. This movement was about woman treated equally in school and work alike. The woman in the video talked about the many troubles they faced in troubled times when woman tried to change their social structure, but were relieved when later they were given a chance. It was also very interesting to hear an older woman psychologist talk about the struggles of being a woman in earlier years in the process of become a psychologist. She told the interviewers about how woman were told that they didn’t have much say in relationships and virtually they shouldn’t be used in research studies because their opinions didn’t matter. The short clip was very eye opening to me after realizing how women were viewed and how they seem to have a much bigger role in society today. This concept of women’s role in psychology has changed drastically over the years and in the future I see woman continuing to take more leadership especially in the field of psychology.
http://www.feministvoices.com/past-timeline/ - Feminisim in Psychology timeline
http://www.feministvoices.com/video - Video about woman’s movement in psychology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfxwf-or3qg – Clip of Carol Gilligan giving here psychological experience in being a women in a man’s world back in the day.
For my blog post, I decided to discuss the the court case of brown vs the board of education. Chapter 15 discussed the discrimination against minorities in psychology's history so this fits right in. This case was interesting because it helped changed the definition of segregation in this country. While segregation was initially viewed as fully constitutional, this case broke that belief and insisted that it was, in fact, unconstitutional. Occurring in Kansas, Brown vs. the board of education was brought to the court by thirteen parents on behalf of their children-students. They tried to enroll in the school closest to them, but were instead directed to segregated schools. While the court initially ruled that it was the law that schools be segregated, the supreme court ruled unanimously that it was unconstitutional. This case helped to end segregation in America and helped minority peoples gain more respect in all fields of academia.
a cool video about the case
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTGHLdr-iak
have to put this page on here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
some more helpful info
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html
I’ve chosen to look for more information on lobotomies. Even though I find them completely disgusting and I am unable to even think about the details of a lobotomy without feeling sick, I still think that they are interesting. It is crazy to think about what would have possessed someone to try this procedure in the first place. Where did they get the idea to jab an ice pick into someone’s brain. What part of the situation lead them to believe that this would be a good idea. Lobotomy was one of the leading topics of Chapter 13. The information I have found and my exploration fits with the chapter well as it expands on our readings from week 14, chapter 13. This also fits with chapter 15 (which I read for this week) as it talks about contemporary psychology and the brain to behavior relationship. The who purpose for lobotomy seems to have looked some at the contemporary aspects and trends that were apparent in relation to the brain. I believe that these trends contributed to the thoughts that shoving an ice pick into someone’s head would be a good idea. I’m interested in this topic as I think it is absolutely crazy and off the deep end! I figured that if I thought it was crazy, I should probably look into why and be able to back my opinion.
It’s incredible to think that brain surgery was a precursor to lobotomies. It is further impressive that they were performing brain surgeries before the 1900’s. The lobotomy procedure also resulted from experiments on dogs. Original lobotomies were also performed on chimps?!? It’s crazy to think that Golz, a german guy, would remove portions of dog brains (temporal lobes). It’s crazy to think that someone originally had to think that it would be a good idea to destroy parts of the brain. This has evolved from dogs to chimps to people. It didn’t seem to get any less horrific along the way.
Another crazy thought to me is that brain surgery began in the 1890’s. I feel like other surgeries consisted of bleeding people and amputations. Medicine was still very primitive at that time. IT IS SHOCKING that they would even be thinking about the brain. All surgery was pretty barbaric. I’m flabbergasted as well to think about the fact that they believed this would all improve mental health.
Why did this German man name Golz decide to take a chunk of a dog’s brain out in the first place? From the research, I have found that most of the thoughts of lobotomy all followed a chain of experiments back to Golz and the dogs. He made the discovery that the removal of some of a dog’s temporal lobe made it less aggressive and more docile. Golz one discovery with the dogs led to Burkhard’s attempt of similar surgeries on schizophrenic individuals in a Swiss mental institution. While it did make some of them calmer, a third of them died in the process. Yet this was seen as a success? WHAT!?
Instead of the idea of lobotomy coming to an end and discontinuing the studies, a man at Yale, Jacobsen, looked at lobotomies in the prefrontal and frontal cortexes in chimps. They too were found to be calmer afterward (Could it be because they were half brain dead!!!????) Another man at Yale, Fulton, even tried to agitate the chimps after they experience a lobotomy. He tried to create experimental neurosis through the presenting of conflicting signals. Yet the chimps didn’t react.
Naturally, why wouldn’t this then lead to the performance of lobotomies on humans? (What the heck this is crazy!). I think that it was all because of WHO decided to do lobotomies, Moniz was one of the first people to work with lobotomies and people. I think that he was able to take part in this insanity because he had been successful, for example, he has improved brain x-ray techniques and had been successful in previous work with the brain. He was a predominant and acclaimed leader, researcher, and individual. Of course others would follow him. It seems that the brain was looked at almost like an electrical circuit. The cutting of a few specific wires (aka nerves) in different areas of the brain (like the frontal cortex and thalamus), would “short circuit” the mental health problems. It was this idea and the surgery that followed this belief that became known as lobotomy.
It’s interesting that even thought the results showed that not all patients became calmer, they continued to act they were working perfectly. Even though he continued to perform and advise about lobotomies, some of the research I found said that Moniz advised that lobotomies only be use when everything else had been applied and the situation was “extreme”. I am in shock that he won a Nobel Prize for his lobotomy research. That just shows the differences of the time and the fact that he must have thought that what he was doing was amazing!
I find it sad yet incredibly ironic and humorous that Moniz had to stop performing lobotomies because one of his former patients shot him in the back. It’s ironic because, supposedly, lobotomies were performed to calm people down. Still, even crazier and more sick minded and shocking than Moniz is Freeman. Freeman started performing lobotomies in 1936 and he was known for “ice pick” lobotomies (as if lobotomies couldn’t get any more gruesome). I’m still shocked by how crazy this practice as a whole seems now. Looking back at the information makes me wonder what benefits lobotomies had to today’s knowledge.
As if lobotomies were inhumane enough, they also used electric shock to get people unconscious. I wonder how much they were or could have been aware of what was happening. What would they do if someone woke up early. Further, I can’t believe that the shock was strong enough to make them go and stay unconscious. What damage did it cause to the heart?
Even more, I wonder if it wasn’t the shock that made people more calm. Maybe being electrocuted calmed people down or affected a completely different part of their brain. You never know, the lobotomy itself may have had nothing to do with keeping people quiet and calm.
My final source talks about a scene from a move where a man who undergoes a lobotomy and becomes a vegetable. They deem the procedure to be a success because he’s calm. However, they took a man who had nothing wrong with him-other than that he stood up for his rights and against abuse. He was said to be aggressive for this reason. Once the lobotomy was performed, he life was basically over and he no longer could function. He was essentially, intentionally handicapped. Even if lobotomies were believed to successfully calm someone down, even the research points out that it lowered their quality of life and basically took away the life and person they once were.
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/lobotomy.html -provided an excellent overview of the history of lobotomy
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/07/24/inventing-the-lobotomy -discusses how lobotomies became popular and grew in practice and “success” as well as how they disappeared and became known as dangerous and unhelpful.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/lobotomy.htm -Gives some humor, seriousness, and real life relations to lobotomy as it talks about a movie called, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.
I chose to look into the theory of cognitive dissonance; I was really intrigued by the experiment done by Leon Festinger. I think that although we might not here the term we see it all the time in our society. When something is of benefit but doesn’t quite fit with what our morals tell us we naturally try to alleviate the amount of discomfort we feel. Often times this alleviation seems to come in the form of justification as in our society we don’t like to give up pleasures.
Finding information on this topic on the internet was rather difficult. Most of the websites said the same things and most simply spoke of Festinger’s study. I did find a site that discussed using cognitive dissonance as a therapy. The example was for someone with an eating disorder. This same site also talked about how to deal with cognitive dissonance. The basic advice was that the person should use that feeling to evaluate their beliefs. When feeling as though one is violating a moral conviction he or she can stop and examine said conviction. At this point the individual is able to reason the why of his or her belief and then make the decision for future behavior accordingly.
The chapter had a small piece on the study done by Festinger and began to discuss how psychology was becoming more and more important in everyday life. The application during this time period grew tremendously. I thought the site that talked about what to do with the feelings and how we use them for good showed the application of psychology.
The only thing that I felt the one site should have addressed was that perhaps the time of the feeling is not the best time to evaluate once convictions. At the time of the feeling would be too easy to dismiss a belief not because of invalidity but because of our need for instant gratification and to justify our actions.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/10/19/fighting-cognitive-dissonance-the-lies-we-tell-ourselves/
This site had a lot of application concerning Cognitive Dissonance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=korGK0yGIDo
This video was narrated by Dr. Zimbardo and was interesting to actually hear the participants of the study justify their actions.
http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/stephens/cdback.html
This site had some interesting information on the theory.