language

I wanna talk a little but about our native language: English. English is the number one most spoken language. It has over 1 million word and continues to grow every year. Since so many people speak English from all over the world, accents start to develop. Turns out young children are the best at mimicking accents. When talking about recreating accents what part of the brian is used? When dealing with a spoken language there are two areas that we need to talk about. Wernikes area and brocas area.
Wernikes are is the part of the brain that helps us understand speech while brocas area send the impulses to move the muscles to form the words. So by strengthening the neural pathways in these two areas a person will better be able to listen and understand a specific persons accent then duplicate it by sending the correct impulses to the mouth. An interesting case I heard about was a story of a woman who had a stroke and suffered damage to her left hemisphere. After testing the woman who was able to speak and understand language perfectly they realized that she could no longer understand numbers. I find this interesting because I would think that numbers are just a part of language. But evidently not. What is even more interesting is that she could not read words like "two", and if she was able to sound them out she did not know what they meant. This means that our brains to no interpret the word "eight" as a word but rather as a number.

The Theories of Emotions

You overslept. "Oh, no!" you think. "I'm going to be late for school." You get dressed quickly, grab your keys, and begin to drive to school. You're driving so fast that you hear sirens, and you immediately begin to react fearfully. Fortunately, the sirens pass you, and you don't have to worry about the police. So what exactly made you react the way you did? We covered three of them in class. The first one is the James-Lange Theory. This theory suggests that the stimulus (here, the police siren) causes your body to react (i.e. your heart begins to pump faster), which then causes you to react emotionally (you squeal in fright). It makes sense, and it explains what literally causes the emotion, but there's no cognitive element involved, a major flaw in this theory. The second theory we covered is the Canon-Bard Theory. This one suggests that once the stimulus appears, the body and emotions work with each other to react. In other words, once you hear the police sirens, if your heart doesn't pump faster, you won't feel scared. Though experiments (remember the "Confederates") shows that this could be true, in general this doesn't show any cognitive element and it doesn't explain what actually causes the emotion and the bodily reaction. The third theory is the Schachter-Singer Theory. This theory suggests that, since the body can act in similar ways for different emotions, there must be a cognitive element (an awareness that you are afraid) that appears at the same time as the body's reaction, which then causes the emotion. This theory makes the most sense, but its biggest problem is that it focuses too much on the process of the autonomic nervous system and not the central nervous system, which carries a heavy amount of importance. We decided in class that none of these theories makes 100% complete sense, and it seems stupid for the AP to include them as topics on the exam. However, it helps to remember that if you're ever freaking out when you see a question about one of these three theories, just think about what you're experiencing, and it may help you remember what each theory suggests.

The Drive-Reduction Theory

I found the drive-reduction theory a little obvious. You have a need for something, and in order to get it you have a drive. In order to get rid of the drive, you must get what you need. The most obvious example is eating. Your body needs food for energy and in order to function. Your body gives you a drive: it tells you that your hungry. The drive-reduction theory is pretty much what it sounds like. Believe it or not, its when the drive gets reduced. In this case, since your hungry you get food in order to get rid of your hunger. But lets say I'm at Mrs. Perl's house (yes, I'm using this example again), I'm hungry, and she says I should go take food. The only problem is that I'm too lazy to get up. How will my body get the food. Often times there will be an incentive. For example, if Mrs. Perl says that if I don't take food I'm not allowed back.

Hunger

Usually I post about something I find interesting, and something that I can apply to myself. This time I decided to switch it up and talk about something that I find boring. Hunger. When most people look at me they say that I am skinny because I don't eat. But I say no. I am skinny because I don't get hungry. When we were filling out the eating survey in class, I realized that I never really get hungry. I realized the only times I eat are just when I want to procrastinate, when I have nothing else to do, or when I'm at Mrs. Perl's house and she forces me to eat or else I don't get invited back. Seriously. I was about to start writing this but I decided it probably would be "better" if I ate some chicken before I started, and that's what I did. I do eat. Because I understand the importance of eating. Food provides energy for your body. But I am just not as naturally hungry as other people.

Judaism's Acceptance Problem

This past summer I had the unique experience of working for the Sierra Club, helping arrange their summer programs. As part of my internship I attended one of the week long summer camps that I organized, coming as a participant. I was surprised to find out that over half of the other attendees were part of the LGBTQ community, openly identifying with their orientation. Having always been part of the sheltered Jewish community, the experience was quite eye-opening. I learned quite a lot about the LGBTQ community and what exactly it means to be part of it.

When I returned from my intern experience I set about researching why exactly the Orthodox Jewish community has such a negative response to LGBTQ members. I had expected a good track record considering the centuries of abuse we have suffered by the hands of our oppressors. I had expected that we would have done a exemplary job on accepting LGBTQ members considering that they were thrown into the crematoriums with us. I had expected to find that the renowned Jewish kindness would have extended to accept and support these people.  I was quite shocked at what I found. Orthodox Jews, it turns out, seem notorious for bad treatment of LGBTQ members. Students that have come out in schools have been kicked out and community members have been ostracized for revealing their true selves. It was with disgust that I read about the lawsuit against JONAH and what the organization had done. The archaic behavior of the religion does not seem to fit with the values that it apparently upholds.

Orthodox Jews have an acceptance problem. We, of all people, should not be discriminating against people. We need to move past our prejudices and accept these people for who they are, just as others accept us for who we are.

Eating Disorders

I want to take the fair position on 2 issues that are often seen in very negative lights. Two of the most prevalent eating disorders in the world are Anorexia and Bulimia.  People often overlook that these are actual psychological problems that the person suffering cannot solve by just "eating again." It is unfair and unreasonable when people think, "well, why don't they just start eating? What's so difficult?" These people don't know the truth. These are real problems that can't be fixed "just like that."

Anorexia is an obsessive desire to lose weight achieved by refusing food. In it, a person's weight drops below 15% of their normal weight, and they still feel overweight. It is more common in prominent White cultures where people want to show control over their environment. But still, it is a psychological issue that is potentially very harmful. Therefore, it should be discouraged and ended as soon as possible but NOT mocked.

And bulimia is a medical condition where one has insatiable eating. It is a process of binging and purging. Some people with bulimia only do the binge aspect, but the majority both eat great amounts at one time and then force themselves to vomit. This is another issue that should be dealt with seriously for it is also a psychological disorder. 

Sensitivity is really what I'm stressing. People have these problems, and they know it, and they aren't happy, so there's no need for others to make them more unhappy.

Social Motivation

Peer pressure is the darndest thing. So much of what we do is motivated by what others do. Last year in Gov we learned about political socialization. That's the process by which we develop our political views. We develop much of our political opinion based on the political opinion of others. This is just one of many examples that displays society's affect on who we become. We are motivated to wear certain clothes, listen to certain music, eat certain foods, all by society. We're all puppets in a world controlled by one grand puppet master. That master isn't God, it's some narcissistic dude who eats pancakes and plays video games all day, only breaking to check in on the human race. Ah, I'm rambling now. Anyway, it's sad how much our lives are controlled by society. I wish it wasn't this way.

Nature vs. Nurture Continued

     Earlier in the year, Mrs. Perl mentioned that the debate of nature vs. nurture was an ongoing debate that has many sides to it. The debate actually continues when looking at Skinner vs. Chomsky's contributions to the nature-nurture debate over how children acquire language. Skinner, a pro-behaviorist, takes on the nurture side to the debate of language-development. He says that we learn language by the familiar principles of association, where we put things of similar sights and sounds together to make words. He also focuses on imitation of words and syntax that we model after others and reinforcement, where we are smiled and hugged by our parents when we correctly say something.
     On the other hand, Chomsky takes on the nature position, and believes that we are born with language acquisition devices that are biological and that prepare us to learn language. His evidence lies in the species-wide presence of language and its underlying universal grammar. Children have an incredible capacity to learn new vocabulary, and this is a uniform sequence in the stages of language development.
     The nature-nurture debate lives on...

Hierarchy of Needs

When originally studying Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs we discussed how once a person is able to fulfill their drive to complete the first part, they continue on to the second. The pyramid with physiological needs, than safety, than social, than ego, and finally ending with self actualization. We originally said a person begins with the basic necessities in life, and then slowly develops more complicated drives. When looking at this with more detail I had thought of a slightly different concept. A person begins by developing a drive for human necessities, such as hunger and thirst. After assuring himself these necessities he continues by gaining a drive for a sense of safety. Some may see this as a completely different drive, but I see this as an assurance that the first step will always be there. The same is for a sense of belonging. A person develops a circle of friends who, no matter the situation, will be there to help him out and ensure he will be safe. To be sure he always has a circle of friends, the person is required to build up an ego, other people looking up to him. This way there will always be a group of people who want to join his circle of friends. Finally the person must accomplish things so he will always have a high ego. This is done through completing challenging tasks and creative projects.

I Want to Create a Language

Before I make a language, I have to think to myself, "What types of rules and sounds do I need to create to make my language successful?" Well, every language has letters, whether the letters are a, b, c, d or alef, bet, gimel, daled; it doesn't matter, but every language needs letters. Every language also needs phonemes, which are the most basic sounds, and morphemes, which are the smallest unit of sound that still has meaning such as a prefix or a suffix. For example, in the word "absolutely," there are supposedly 3 morphemes: ab, solute, and ly. My language also needs grammar or a set of rules so that everybody can be able to understand the language and communicate with one another. Looks like I'm good to go. I've got the basic parts of language down; now it's time to create it.   

Eating Habits During Long Weekends

I absolutely love long weekends due mainly to the fact that we are out of school for one extra day. The only problem I have with long weekends is that it seems that my eating habits change from eating because I am hungry and actually need to eat to eating because I am bored and have nothing better to do. Especially during the summer, I find myself in the pantry a lot of times constantly eating chips or cookies, but then I realize that I am not really hungry. Also, today, I was watching some football and I was not particularly hungry but I saw a nice box of cheese balls on the top of the fridge so I took it down and started eating because there is nothing better than eating some good cheese balls even if you are not hungry.
The moral of my story is that we should try to eat three large meals a day and some healthy snacks mixed in throughout the day instead of constantly snacking on unhealthy treats, and the next time you are sitting at home and the cheese balls on the top of the fridge are screaming at you, "Eat me! Eat me!" Stop, think about the possible repercussions  and then open the pantry and take a healthy snack out, and you will feel better as a result.

skiing

this past monday i had a ton of fun skiing with my friends in hidden valley. my only complaint is that at the time they were making snow. this is really annoying because when you are speeding down the hill and the falling snow hits your cold face it really hurt. the only way to stop the pain is to wear goggles. my goggles happen to have not been clear. they were a little tinted. (this is useful for when it is sunny.) one interesting thing i noticed was that after some time, even though the goggles were shaded, everything looked perfectly clear as if i was not wearing the tinted goggles at all. at first i thought it was because of sensory adaptation but then i remembered that we learned that our eyes do not adapt in the same way as our other senses so i wondered why everything looked normal. that night it hit me. COLOR CONSTANCY!!!!! that was the solution to all my problems. our brain calculate the average illumination conditions of a scene and then subtrack those conditions. so when i put the goggles on everything looked blueish but then my eyes subtract blue from everything so that color will remain constant of what i know it to be. color constancy is the reason why a blue object will look blue no matter what light you look at it under. color constancy is responsible for a really cool trick that i dont think we mentioned in class called the land effect.  (take a look at the link below)
http://www.grand-illusions.com/acatalog/Land_Effect.html
the land effect is basically a picture that only contains one color but because of how our vision works we subtract that main color and we can see other colors as well. it is really cool.
the picture in the link is only red but it looks like it contains other colors as well.
when i take my goggles off i experience another phenomena we talked about in class the opponent process theory. since my blue cones kept on firing over and over when i took the goggles off all the yellow rushed in and everything looked a shade closer to yellow (just like we had experienced in class).

Prototypes of People

Psychology says that we have preconceived notions of concepts, called prototypes. Therefore when someone says animal, the first thing I think of is a tiger, my prototype of animals. As the description continues, my envisioned picture does as well. The farther it goes from my prototype, the less I think of it as an animal. We all have different prototypes for all types of things, be it fish, tables, or teachers. As we learn more information, or prototype changes, reflecting the new info that our brain now has.

We all have prototypes of people as well. We think of Asians as being super smart, driven, and at the top of their class. Many of us have negative prototypes of Muslims, allowing the few radical Islamic terrorists form the prototype for over a billion people. And Justin Baker had his own prototype of a Jew. He had never met any Jews but he didn't let that stop his mind from forming the bigoted prototype that led him to vandalize our property in Jackson.

Although our mind automatically forms these prototypes and assimilates the info we learn into these notions, it is important to keep in mind that not everything we think is correct. That not everything we believe is right. It is paramount that we strive to form the most complete prototype that we can, ensuring that we don't have chauvinistic prototypes.

Sleep

Many people, including myself, struggle with waking up in the morning. Learning about the sleep cycle and the way our sleep cycle works allowed me to adjust the time I go to sleep, or wake up, so that morning would be a little easier. Our bodies run through a certain cycle each day in fluctuation body temperature, release of hormones, tiredness, hunger, and more. Our varying levels of sleepiness are controlled by the amount of melatonin released by our bodies. When sleeping our bodies also go through a cycle, going through 5 different sleep stages. The longer we sleep the more REM sleep, stage 5 sleep, we get as the amount of NREM we get slowly disappears. After each period of REM sleep our bodies slightly wale up, making it easier to be fully woken up. Each cycle takes roughly 90 minutes. I have been able to adjust the time I wake up in the morning so it is as close to a multiple of 90 minutes as possible.

Illusions

Drawings can really tell you about the way we see things. Even though artists originally did not know the reasons they painted things the way they did, the way they perceived things when drawing allowed psychologists to lear more about the way we see perceive things. The most prominent cue seen in art is depth perception. Our mind sees things higher up in our vision to be farther away, relative vision. Artists are able to use this information when painting or drawing by positioning things that are supposed to seem farther away, higher up on the page. Sometimes when creating a picture artists can not place things high on the page and must find a different way to make them seem closer or farther away. When this is the case artists use the depth perception of relative size, the idea that larger objects seem closer closer while smaller objects seem farther. The third method an artist uses when trying to achieve a sense of depth in a two demential painting is by using interposition, the idea that objects that cover up parts of other objects seem to be closer. Artists do the same things our retinas have to do, turn a three demential scene into a two demential picture, and amazingly they do it in a very similar way.

Memory

When spectating on a court case one can see the possible effects of memory distortion. Lawyers are required to be extremely careful when asking questions, interviewing eye witnesses, and assuring the fact their witnesses memories have not been distorted. In class we discussed the ease in which a person's memory can be distorted. A person can skew a persons answers to questions based on the wording of their questions. In an experiment constructed by Elizabeth Loftus subjects answers about the same accident could have been different because of the word used to describe it, in her case smashed versus tapped. This can be extremely helpful, or detrimental to a lawyer when trying to defend his client. The lawyer can word his questions in a way that causes the witnesses memory to be distorted. There is also the idea that if a lie is repeated enough times, or if a person tells themselves something enough times they begin to believe it as fact. This could effect a case in multiple ways. If the jury has access to media that constantly repeats their opinion as to the guilt of the defendant they could potentially conclude in a different, incorrect result. It is important for a person to do their best to focus on the facts and not the ways in which people are trying to change them.

Problem Solving

In class we discussed the different methods to problem solving and how our thought processes and human nature sometimes get in the way of us being able to find the best solution to a problem. We often  suffer from the inability to look at a problem in a new way, fixation. This could refer to the mental aspect, the way in which you go about solving the problem, mental set. It also could apply to the inability to see the use of an object in a way other than the way it has been used it the past, functional fixedness. Having learned about these natural obstacles to problem solving we now know they exist. In the future when we are trying to solve a difficult problem we cold remember what we learned here in class and apply it, allowing us to solve problems better in the future.

Different languages are different, but the same

Language is a pretty complex thing. Whereas we all see the English language as pretty simple since we speak it all the time and don't even think about it, there are a lot of smaller parts that go in to making English what it is, and for that matter making any language what it is. It seems weird, at least to me, that there are things all languages have in common. I mean, English has a lot of letters that = one word, Hebrew can combine lots of words into one word using specific letters that have more meaning, and Chinese uses one symbol that stands for an entire word. So how do all these languages connect? They all have a basic structure.
There are 3 parts to the language structure. The first are the phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. In English, there are 40 phonemes. Even though there are only 26 letters, phonemes include sounds like "ch, th, and qu."
The next part of language structure is the morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest linguistic units that have meaning. For example, the word "dogs" has 2 morphemes: "dog" is the subject word and the "s" implies plural.
But now that we have all these parts to words, the words have to make sense. That is how we get to part 3 of language structure: grammar. These are the rules of language that enable us to communicate with and understand each other. One part of this is the syntax, the way words are ordered, and the other part is semantics, the rules used to derive meaning from morphemes, words, paragraphs, (and the list goes on). So in English particularly, you would say "fat person" to imply that fat modifies the person. And even though the syntax is different depending on which language you are speaking, it is still syntax nonetheless, and every language has specific syntax that works.
So overall, even though different languages seem totally different, they all have structure, and this means that every language has phonemes, morphemes, and grammar.

My Chinese Class

My Chinese Class

     I love taking Chinese with Dumei Yang. Despite my affinity for the class, however, learning Chinese as a language certainly isn't easy. There is so much to language. All languages have the same basic structural units. Phonemes are the basic units of sound in a language. Morphemes are the elementary units of meaning. 

     What makes it so hard to learn a new language is that I never learned Chinese at birth (of course). At about 4 months of age, infants babble, making a wide range of sounds found in languages located all over the world. By about 10 months, their babbling contains only the sounds found in their household language. Around 12 months of age, babies speak in single words. This one-word stage evolves into two-word (telegraphic) utterances before their second birthday. Shortly after that, children begin speaking in full sentences. 

    Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, studies show that picking up a new language becomes much more difficult after the ages from 0-7, and even more difficult than that after ages 8-16. I, now 17, am facing great difficulties picking up on Chinese, which is so difficult in that there are so many different sounds and letters. 

    It has also been interesting for me to watch how Rabbi Lubetski speaks to his children. He talks to them in hebrew at a young age, so in that period where children learn languages most, they will be able to pick up on both the Hebrew and English. Kudos to Rabbi Lubetski.  

Creativity

Creativity is a very important aspect of life because if you are creative than you have a chance to go far in life. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and many others have become very succesfull based off of their creative minds. There are a couple of important things that consitute a person as creative or not:

1. Expertise - You have to have a basis of knowledge. This is not the most important thing, but it is one of the things you just need.
2. Imaginitive Thinking Skills - You have to be able to make connections and explore things in a new way.
3. A venturesome personality - You have to want to risks and go out on a limb for some of your ideas. Even if you do not think it will succeed at first, you have to try and try again. 
4. Intrinsic motivation - Arguablly, the most important aspect of creativity. You have to be self driven, and want to go out and make sure your ideas come into fruition.
5. A creative environment - You have to be surrounded by people who want the best for you, and they also have to be creative.

So, when you think about facebook, apple, and all of the other great creations of the 20th and 21st centuries, you have to look at these 5 main aspects of creativity and apply it to each of the inventors.

Mark Zuckerburg

1. Yes, he is a genius who was accepted to harvard
2. Yes, hence he came up with facebook
3. Yes, that is why he had the guts to pursue his ideas even though it might backfire and turn out to be a waste of time
4. Possibly, who knows, he may have done it for the money, but I also think wanted to change the world and make it better for all
5. Yes, harvard is a very creative environment indeed

You can do this and apply it to each of the main innovators of our time and see if it all matches up, and in most cases you will find that it does.

How insightful!

Don't you just hate that feeling you get after almost every test: you're stuck on question 17, you've narrowed it down to two possible choices, but you just can't figure out which one. You look at the clock--3 minutes left. In an act of desperation, you choose E over B. You turn in your test, and when the bell rings, you want to punch yourself, because the answer was obviously B. If this has happened to you, you've just experienced insight. Insight is a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem. We've learned about insight before, but not in this context. Insight contrasts strategy-based solutions to problems (i.e. heuristics and algorithms). Whoa! I've just had an insightful moment (and no Gabe Goldstein, it's not that I need to go to the bathroom). Why would I study? I've literally just decided that it would make more sense to not study at all and rely on insight. Insight is bound to happen and work, and all I would have to do is sit there and hope it comes to me. How about it?

Seriously?

Seriously Chomsky? Seriously? You seriously think that our ability to communicate through language is innate? That's just stupid. Almost as stupid as you being as anti-Zionistic as you are. Riddle me this professor know it all, why don't we come out of the womb speaking? Why can't I pop out of my mom and ask the doctor what the hell is going on? Because speaking is not innate. I'm not particularly a Skinner fan, but he wins this argument. Skinner says that our ability to speak comes through operant learning, it comes through experience and rewards for speaking. Skinner is an idiot too, you can't say that cognition doesn't exist, but he's right in this. The only reason we learn how to speak is because we mimic what we grow up hearing. We learn to say things that our parents say. Is it fascination that we pick up on grammatical structure without being taught it? Yeah, sure. But that isn't nearly enough prove to legitimize Chomsky's proposal that language ability is innate. The only reason I learned how to do what I'm doing now, communicate through language, is because I've learned the language my entire life. There is nothing inside of me that was made at my conception that allows me to speak so fiercely and critically of Chomsky. I learned how to use language through experience. Through mimicking. I don't know what my first word was, but I am positive that it was met with, "Oh my God Sidney, he talked! He talked! He said ball! Oh my God!" As a child, receiving that (excessive) praise for saying a simple 4 letter word does nothing but compel me to do it again. If my parents are happy, it means more candy. There's nothing innate about that.

Problem solving

As you know, we have concepts of things in our mind, for example, sports. Then, we have prototypes to specify categories in the concept such as basketball, soccer, and football. But, how do we solve things if they do not fit our concepts of prototypes-if they are totally random. Convergent thinking is when there is one single answer. An algorithm is a step-by-step process to solving a problem that guarantees the correct answer. For example, if you are trying to figure out a 4 digit code, an algorithmic way to figuring it out would be to try every single possible combination until you get the correct one. A heuristic way means based on previous information, you solve the problem. So in my example above, a heuristic way of solving it would be to eliminate types of combinations that you never really see such as four of the same numbers or numbers that come right after each other in order etc. An insight is a way to solve a problem, and it is when the answer just happens to come to us out of the blue. Divergent thinking is when there are multiple approaches to a question. Creativity is a way of divergently thinking. There are five things you need to have in order to be creative: expertise/knowledge, imaginative thinking skills, a venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation/doing it because you want to and not for any rewards, and a creative environment where creativity is encouraged.