Schizophrenia

The video I watched about Schizophrenia was a good video that shows how people act when experiencing this disorder. I was shocked when the person was having difficulty to do tasks around the house.This type of video and the media videos such as movies or tv shows which show Schizophrenia use this to make the movies to be dramatic,suspenseful or unpredictable. The voices in the head of the person were manipulating the decision this person was making.When the person saw the pizza man at the door there was a sense of suspense and when the person got the pizza to look at it the person saw the pizza was making noises and moving so the person just threw it on the ground. A person with schizophrenia has a mental disorder that involves the thoughts,emotion, and behavior leading to how a person sees the reality by doing unusual things that a normal person doesn’t regularly do.There’s medication which helps people dealing with Schizophrenia to help people be able to live normal. The media these days shows good ways of Schizophrenia by showing people how this disorder affects a person’s life and the struggles they have to go through in everyday life.

Media Production Project: Attention, Students Put Your Laptops Away

The way people take notes is important to the way a person is able to learn in today’s society. In the present and future the advances of technology are increasing leading to students using tablets, or laptops in class to take notes. The number of students who type notes and the students who take notes by hand tend to have differences in the way of how they learn in class and their performance. Researchers believe the use of laptops can distract students because of multitasking and internet browsing. There are two hypothesis having to do with note-taking and those are the encoding hypothesis and the external storage hypothesis. The encoding hypothesis is the process of taking notes and being able to learn and retain from it while the external storage hypothesis is having to look back at the notes to learn.

There were 3 experiments conducted by Pam A. Mueller(Princeton University) and Daniel M. Oppenheimer (University of California,Los Angeles) to help inform the readers about which technique of note-taking is the most effective. The researchers gave the students materials such as the same type of laptops and materials for the longhand note-takers. In the first study there were 67 participants (33 male and 33 female, 1 unknown) and had to learn from 5 TED talks to learn and take notes from the session.Then, from there the students took a distraction task to distract the students from what they learned. After the distraction task students took a test, which resulted with longhand note-takers and typing note-takers were about the same results for factual questions, but for the conceptual questions longhand note-taking was more advantageous than typing note-takers. There was also a use of verbatim in students who type their notes meaning they type everything that is heard or seen while the longhand note-takers had less words because the students picked the information that was important to them.

The second experiment was the same but it had a little twist to it and it was to instruct laptop note takers to not take verbatim notes because this happened in the first experiment and led to poor results for students who type their notes.Students from the University of California, Los Angeles(151 students). There were 2 types of events were laptop and longhand note-takers separated into. Students who type would go to a nonintervention lecture or a lecture with an intervention afterwards. The results for longhand note-takers was better than the students who typed their notes. The laptop note-takers in the intervention lecture did better than the students with no intervention. The use of verbatim was still used and did not reduced the effect even when at the beginning of the study, it was instructed to not use verbatim to take notes resulting with longhand note-takers also taking the advantage since it had a lesser word count compared to typing note-takers.

The third study had (109) participants from the University of California, Los Angeles where they had to take notes about four different topics; bread, bats, respiration, and vaccines on individual monitors. The students would then come back a week later to be tested on the material. The researchers (Mueller and Oppenheimer) saw the results from the tests and longhand note-takers still outperformed the students who typed their notes. Students who write their notes by hand are able to process information to their mind when writing it down and are able to only pick the important information from a lecture. Students who type their notes have a difficult time to retain information because they usually type everything they hear or say and have too much information for the brain to process all at once.

These tests conducted how the performance of a note-taker can be affected depending on the note-taking techniques used to learn the material needed. The increasing popularity of laptops these days needs to be carefully evaluated on the learning experience because it could lead to poor performances in education. Long hand note-taking can have shorter word counts on a person’s notes but it will have the important information needed for the lecture. Typing notes in a verbatim manner can lead to excessive notes which are not really important to the lecture. The encoding and external storage of long hand note takers is more beneficial to them than the students who type their notes.

Link to News Article:

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160826

Link to Research Article:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797614524581

First Impression Post: Stress

In the Ted talk video, Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend, she talks about the topic of stress and how the body of an individual can make stress their friend not an enemy. KellyMcGonigal is a health psychologist who has experimented with stress and advising people how to prevent stress but she learnt that stress can also be good.Kelly talks about the hormone oxytocin that is released in the body when experiencing stress and how this hormone interacts with social interaction in the real world.I was shocked with the number of deaths of people dying because of the belief of stress. The numbers of people dying from the belief of stress was 182,000 that 43% of the USA population and is ranked 15 in the top causes of death in the United States. Kelly researchers have researched stress over the past 8 years which leaves me questioning how reliable and accurate are the results and statistics of the test.

Kelly McGonigal informs the audience that believing in stress is what causes negative performances in life but if you change your thought of stress then it will let your body change the response to stress. Stress can be help with a person’s social life by seeking help or helping a person out, be more outgoing, and it can help a person with giving them the energy to finish work before a deadline.I would use stress in a positive way by giving me the determination to finish my work before a deadline and to do better with my school work.

Motivation

My motivation to attend Austin College was that I wanted to go to a college where I could become a successful person and be able to have a high education. Since I’m the first member of my family to go to college I’ve decided that I worked hard through my high school years to get to where I am and I want to show everyone in my town that I made it to a college with a lot of prestige and honor.I want to be successful, because I want to help the people struggling in life to live a descent life by giving back to my family and community.Being successful and working hard is the incentive theory of motivation since that kept me motivated into going to this college by giving my full effort and having the desire to want to keep moving forward. The giving back to my family and the community is related to the hierarchy needs theory of motivation since it is part of the need to feel secure and stable and self actualization. The intervention to keep me motivated until I graduate is the achievement of earning a degree and being the first in my family to graduate college. Giving up is not an option for me so I must stay focus in my goals by being determined to always give my full effort through my years at Austin College.

Personality

I took 4 personality tests and two of them had similar results.The first test labeled me INFJ and the other test said ISFJ. I guess some traits are relate-able but then I wonder how accurate these tests are since I had different results on both tests. The second test described me as a working and loyal person which i do agree with that.The results lacked more information because I feel it only provided some traits not all of them. The third test had different results since it labeled my personality as an , extrovert, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, intellect imagination. These results were somewhat accurate since I am organized and do socialized when I want. This test is accurate in most of the traits that explains my personality and it did provide some feedback comparing the score of the test to other test results that have lower results.

The fourth personality test was just about choosing colors and did not ask questions.The outcome of the test was not accurate at all.It said, that I was not a responsible person and not organized which i disagree with those results. It was an easy test by just choosing colors, but I feel it was not accurate at all since by just clicking on colors can determine a person’s personality.Overall I think the most credible test was the third test.

Spotlight Post: The Effects of Divorce

Divorce can have both negative and positive effects on a child’s life. The high risks of divorce has a negative outcomes for both children and parents. In the first article I read, How Could Divorce Affect My Kids? has really good information and reasons of negative effects that a divorce can bring to a child’s life. The negative effects on a child are that it can cause emotional trauma, suffer academically, become delinquents, and develop an influence of drug and alcohol use. Parents who divorce have to deal with the child’s resentment to the custodial and absent parent because the children believe there is only one family relationship and, that is the mom and dad being together. A psychologist named Judith Wallerstein followed up a group of children from the years 1970’s- 1990’s with interviews over 5,10,15, and 25 years after the divorce happen to see their development and the effects the divorce had impacted their lives. She learnt that, even after 25 years the kids that suffered from divorce, keep experiencing troubles in life with fear of loss, failure, and fear of change or fear of conflict.Due to these kinds of effects anxiety builds up through the years of childhood all the way into adulthood which can have negative effects in future relationships.

Kathleen O’ Connell Corcoran’s article, Psychological and The Emotional Aspects of Divorce explains, that child’s reactions towards the divorce is affected by how close the child was with either parent before the divorce, the intensity and the duration the conflict between the parents been going on, and the ability for the parents to focus on the needs of the child after the separation of the parents. The children who suffer from divorce may go through child neglect if one of the parents no longer cares about him or her and focuses only in the new family or the life of the parent has created after the separation of the original family.Young children don’t understand divorce as easy as older children who do understand what it troubling the family leading for the young child to question the absence of one parent.Children would feel guilt, denial, anxiety, stress, depression, abandonment, low self esteem, lack of information, and anger or hostility.Children can be resentful leading them to become full of hatred and be vulnerable to get into bad decisions.This article is the most credible I think since it explains and provides useful information to the reader about the effects of divorce on children and parents.It also explains the process that leads to divorce and the statistics of divorce.

In the article, Divorce and Kids: 5 ways Divorce benefits Kids, by Dr. Shoshana Bennett for your Yourtango.com gives some points about the benefits for children when parents are divorced. Divorce can also have positive effects in a child’s life because all the tension between the parents is gone, meaning the child can relax without worrying about the parents conflicts. It can also lead to better relationships with parents because if the parents are happy then the kids can become happy for both of them instead of both parents trying to hurt each other. Children also get to experience both parents full attention since most of the times in a relationship one parent sometimes has more attention to the children than the other. Its also teaches the kids when parents divorce that is better to be in a healthier marriage than an unhealthy marriage.This article lacked more information about the benefits of divorce.In the article by Vickie Shemin, 4 Benefits Of Being A Child Of Divorce, shows that children can be fair minded, individual, high achievers, and emotionally intelligent. Children become more mature and learn to take responsibilities of their actions and wiser. The children learn to be more independent and learn from the mistakes that both parents made which helps them prevent those actions to happen again. I believe this article has some good points but can be controversial since not children feel these reasons lead to beneficial effects on divorce.

I believe children who are affected by divorce have more negative effects than positive effects because it leads to a low self esteem and causes more harm than good.The increase of divorce through the years can lead to problems in a child’s life causing trauma. It also affects the children’s way of living and future relationships.I believe that divorce for children is something serious and it can damage a kid’s living conditions.

Sources:

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/divorce-and-infidelity/should-i-get-a-divorce/how-could-divorce-affect-my-kids

http://www.mediate.com/articles/psych.cfm

http://www.mediate.com/articles/SheminVbl20160415.cfm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/divorce-and-kids-5-ways-d_n_1519485.html

Intelligence

In the video for Brown Eyes vs Blue Eyes, Jane Elliot conducted an experiment dealing with the discrimination and how it affects others in society.For example, in the video she divided the class in two separate sections.One with brown eyes and the other with blue eyes. She told the kids that the children with blue eyes are more superior than the children with brown eyes. This caused a conflict with how the kids behaved in recess causing one of the kids to hurt another kid because he felt offended. The kids with brown eyes did not like the discrimination and when the kids grew up, they came to a reunion with their 3rd grade teacher. One of the students at the reunion felt hatred towards Jane Elliot because she did not like the idea of using discrimination for learning purposes. This experiment led for the student’s learning experience to be affected by how they are treated. When they are treated badly or hated by others it can cause low results in school grades but if they are treated as they are part of society they will have better grades. The self esteem affects the student’s behavior and learning abilities.I have not had that experience in school but if it did happen to me I would be disgusted. The students should learn in an environment where its not as discriminatory or full of hatred so they feel comfortable to focus in their education.

The Stereotype Threat video was about how stereotypes are used to show what advantages and disadvantages the people have. In the video it showed that the instructor of the test was going to test the athletes in their athletic abilities and the second test was about using strategy for sports. The African Americans did better in the athletic ability test than the white athletes but the white athletes did better in the second test dealing with strategies in sports. This stereotyped test showed intimidation on a person’s weakness making the test takers do bad on the test or good depending on their weaknesses. I believe stereotype threats are not a good idea because it can cause negative effects. The school can improve by mixing topics into one whole lecture.

The Pygmalion Effect and the Power of Expectations video explains the reason why children who have potential in learning do much better than those who don’t have the same potential.Children who are more knowledgeable receive more attention from the teachers because he or she is willing to learn the material.A kid with a low effort of learning doesn’t receive the same amount of attention than the kids who do learn more.In schools there are kids willing to learn and others that don’t want to learn. This could be improved by having tutorials and paying more attention in class when having trouble with a subject in class and motivating them to do better instead of putting them down.

Sensation and Perception

Everyone has different perceptions of how people see the world in their own way. Some people have the skills to use multiple senses to understand something.In TED talks Daniel Tammet explains how he uses synesthesia. Synesthesia is the production of a sense being stimulated by another sense causing multiple functions to help understand what is happening in a situation.For example, when a person is blind they use their touch and hearing senses to be able to walk around in the environment or a person could combine numbers with colors to understand what they see.I thought synesthesia was some kind of disease before I saw TED talks but its just a condition of how people see life in their own way.

Synesthesia is a condition not everyone has but there are people in this world who do have it. I didn’t know about synesthesia or what it was until I watched the video which provided me with information explaining how the perception of human beings is different. I believe that people dealing with this condition can understand what others don’t. They can see things that other people don’t see because of synesthesia but if the person doesn’t understand what is happening he or she could be dealing with difficulties to understand.Perception is the way we see the world and how we understand it.

Study Habits

In this impression post I will be talking about my study habits and what I could do to improve my study skills for the upcoming exams this year. My study habits are not great and I always tend to have a habit to start studying until the week that the test is on. I don’t start studying for the test until 2 or 3 days before it is test day. I usually study for 4 hours and take a break every once in a while when I’m tired of reading.I did not do so well on the first psychology test like I expected it to be because my studying skills and time management were not good enough.

Studying in college is different compared to high school because there is more information that needs to be understood before an exam and trying to learn it all in one day is not good for the memory. I need to improve my study skills by trying to read my notes at least one a week before the test, create some flashcards, and seek help if I don’t understand a concept from the lecture.I also need to work on improving my time management because if I don’t, then I will have to worry about doing other assignments from other classes, readings, and studying for the test will be difficult to achieve. I also need to try and get enough sleep before the exam because it will prevent me from being too tired to remember what I have studied.If I want to do better on my next exam I will need to find a way to improve my study habits.