Tips for ACING Your Exams

Since exams are right around the corner and we have also just about finished chapter nine on memory, I would like give "my dear fellow classmates" some study techniques. The first thing you must do is study REPEATEDLY to boost long term recall. When you read a definition: say it to yourself, wait a few seconds and say it again. Another strategy is to make the material personally meaningful. To build a network of retrieval cues, take thorough notes in your OWN words. Give real life examples to help illustrate what you are studying. Mrs. Perl always gives us examples of her kids or things that actually happened to her. This is very helpful because it is a lot more relatable. Psychology is so easy to connect to your life! Also, don't forget to make as many associations as possible. This will make everything come together and not seem so random and out of place. Mnemonic devices are also very helpful in remembering unfamiliar items. For example, use ROY G. BIV to remember the colors of the color spectrum! The best thing to do before you stop studying is to find out what you DON'T know. Do not be overconfident when you recognize information. Test your recall first. Outline sections on a blank page. Define concepts at each chapter's end WITHOUT turning back to their definitions. Take practice tests, look over old tests along with test corrections. You do not want to make the same mistakes again. Also, something I've learned throughout high school is don't just memorize the answers and definitions but UNDERSTAND them.

On that note, I would like wish everyone great success on their upcoming midterms! This class has really been so amazing, and I'm excited to continue on second semester!

Pavlov and Conditioning

We recently learned about Pavlov and his experiment with the dog. Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate a certain noise with getting food, and he tested to see if it worked by only having the noise and watching to see if the dog salivated.

This interested me, and then I realized that something similar had happened with my pet.

I have a cat and, although I did not mean for this to happen, she has associated certain things with getting food. For example, whenever my cat hears my closet door open, she thinks I am feeding her (because I keep her food in the closet and usually I put food in her bowl when I open it). Whenever my dad walks into the kitchen she thinks she is getting food, because he usually gives her food. Even though we might not be feeding her, she thinks that he means food and my closet means food.

Additionally, if I would allow it, we would use positive punishment to train the cat not to sit on the table. Every time she jumps on the table, we spray her with water to teacher her not to jump on.

This week Mrs. Perl sent us an article about a woman who conditioned her husband, which was really funny. That led me to wonder about conditioning children, and then I wanted to know:

Do you think it is better to use reinforcement or punishment with children? Why?

Moods

Hello everyone,
While reading the section of chapter four that discusses how moods affect the retrieval of our memories, I immediately thought of our discussion in chumash class today. (sorry that I have to bring this up, but i ASSOCIATED the two together.) Anyways, I read that moods interpret how we view other people's behavior. This reminded me of how Mrs. Perl was talking about how our bad moods (because of our anger towards the school) affect how we view what she says, even when she does not say something negative. She gave the example that if she comes in and says, "good morning," we would take it as something bad because of our bad moods. I also read that if we are happy, we will recall events that see the world as a happy place, and if we are depressed, we recall sad events which darkens our interpretation of current events. This is very bad! I notice that in our class we complain a lot about everything that is going on before and during exams. We are all in bad moods which causes us to view every situation, like the changes in the exam schedule, as a terrible thing. In this section it also points out that when we recall information with a certain mood, like a happy mood, it will cause the mood to last longer. So, with this in mind, I think that since it is a very stressful time right now for all of us, we should try to bring about a happy mood and a more positive approach to this period of time before break (keeping in mind then when we finish, we have break yay!) If we do this, our happy moods can keep us alive through all this hectic craziness, and reduce our negativity toward the awful situations that we encounter daily in our lives.

Hello my dear fellow classmates,

Mrs. Perl sent us a lovely article this week. It explained why we dreamed and provided an experiment that was made in order to see if their theory was right. In the article they claimed that when we dream we recall our painful and troubling memories in order to soothe them. It was quite interesting and I believe that the scientists might have been right. But I would like to connect this article to something else. We are all familiar with the idea that getting over something painful and sad “takes time.” Some troubling events and memories take longer to heal than others, but hopefully the trauma, horror, sadness, anger of the memory does fade(although it might not be forgotten.) In time, you do get over the guy who broke your heart, that mean girl that called you fat, and that time you’re mom was “being mean” and punished you. Some of the more traumatic things such as the loss of a close friend, family member, the love of your life or a near death experience might take a longer to heal and might require a little help, but in the end(hopefully in most cases) the pain does fade. I always found it remarkable that time makes the pain go away. After having read this article I wondered whether it’s not really time that helps us get past things and let go of them. Is it just the fact that we dream that helps us get past them? However, dreaming only tales place every night and because some events might take longer to process and overcome the pain. So do you think that it was not really time but rather dreaming which takes time that helps us to get over certain things that happen in our life?

Nurture at least as important as Nature

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,716614,00.html

Here is an article that proves that nurture plays just as much importance in intelligence as nature does.

"Researchers have long overestimated the role our genes play in determining intelligence. As it turns out, cognitive skills do not depend on ethnicity, and are far more malleable than once thought. Targeted encouragement can help children from socially challenged families make better use of their potential."

This is very interesting since it validates what we have learned in class.
"IQ Increases with Each Year Spent in School".."By contrast, IQ increases with every year a child spends at school. During World War II, some children in Holland started school late because of the Nazi occupation -- with momentous consequences. "The average IQ for these children was seven points lower than for children who came of school age after the siege," Nisbett says. "

This will hopefully make you happy and have a positive attitude that you are in school.

Young Wild and Free

This past week as I was driving home from school an extremely vulgar song was playing on the radio. Usually, I don't pay much attention to lyrics of songs but because of our discussion on psychoactive drugs in class, the song Young, Wild, and Free definitely got me thinking.

Here is the chorus: So what we get drunk
So what we smoke weed
We're just having fun
We don't care who sees
So what we go out
That's how its supposed to be
Living young and wild and free

Yes, I know its pretty awful. But through our new knowledge of stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens, we can confidently argue that living young and wild and free is not as fun as Wiz Khalifa seems to think it is. For example, cocaine (a stimulant) is a fifteen minute dump of all neurotransmitters. It results in an intense high, BUT after just thirty minutes a crash of agitated depression occurs as the drug's effect wears off. This, in no way, seems 'fun' to me. Who would want to feel this quick depressive crash? Interesting fact: In national surveys, 5 percent of high school seniors reported having tried cocaine during the past year. This is pretty scary. Alcohol (a depressant) is a major issue, especially for teenagers, because it is considered 'harmless' because it is so easy to get. Alcohol causes a lack of inhibition/awareness. It not only depresses one's pre-frontal cortex but also one's reflexes. One cannot react as quickly and can't judge properly, the reason for many car accidents under the influence of alcohol. The problem is that drunk people think they're okay because they have no inhibition. It's almost like they have no control over themselves which is pretty scary when you think about it. LCD (a hallucinogen) is probably one of the most frightening things that I learned in psychology thus far. The effects of an LCD trip can include seeing weird images and distorted people and feeling the sensation that they're not in in their own body. One also becomes very panicked. They think they can fly and end up either dying or badly injured.
I would like to conclude with the following: As seen in all of these examples, these psychoactive drugs are in no way, shape, or form 'fun' or give you a sense of 'freedom.' When I think of freedom, I do not think of seeing weird images or acting in a crazy way. Freedom is not not being yourself. It should be that you act yourself and feel comfortable with who you are and you are IN CONTROL of yourself. Acting like an idiot does not make me feel free, it makes me feel stupid. Under the influence of these drugs, people THINK they are free (as seen through someone who believes he can fly), but in reality they are overly restrained.

Psychology Survey

I have decided to make a psychology survey :

1. What is the your favorite part that you have learned in psychology until now?

2.Which chapter did you like most?

3.What do think had the most relations to your everyday life?

4.What are you excited to learn?

5.Was that class what you expected?

Noise Cancelling Headphones

Chapter 5 was about sensation, and we discussed how noise and sound are processed in the body. Because we have a test on chapter five next Wednesday, I thought it would be interesting to refresh our memories about something.

Now that we know how sound is transduced: How can headphones "cancel" noise? How is it possible for certain headphones to block out all noises but the music?

Active noise canceling headphones very structures creates a barrier that blocks high frequency sound waves. They also actively erase lower-frequency sound waves. How? They create their own sound waves that mimic the incoming noise in every respect except one: the headphone's sound waves are 180 degrees out of phase with the intruding waves.  (See above picture) The two waves- one coming from the headphones and one coming from the ambient noise- have the same amplitude and frequency, but their crests and troughs are arranged so that the crests of one wave line up with the troughs of the other wave and vica versa. The two waves cancel each other out, a phenomenon known as the destructive interference. In the end, we can listen to the sound we want to hear- the music!

Things for you to comment on so that you may actually comment:

1) Do you think that something like this, if developed further, might help people who are unable to focus on only one stimulus? 

2) Did you realize that something that seems so easy is actually quite cool and miraculous?

3) Do you think that we really need to have noise cancelling headphones? Is it not enough for us to just listen to music and ignore the other stimuli?

4) We also said that after a stimulus keeps going and is not new, you tire of it and tune it out. Do you think that if you played a song on repeat for a while you would stop realizing you were listening to the music?

5) Have you ever fallen asleep while listening to music? Do you find it weird that we cannot remember the songs that were playing and aren't annoyed by the loud music pumping into our ears?

Suggestions for further research: How much do we damage our ears by putting loud music directly into them on a regular basis?

*I found out how noise cancelling works at electronics.howstuffworks.com.