Identity in a changing world

We learned about the Identity vs Role Confusion Stage, and I have recently been thinking that it is possible that in this day and age, it is an even bigger problem than 100 years ago. There are so many distractions in life now, that it may be harder for us to figure out who we are. We receive all types of messages, some very different from one another. Society is inconsistent about who people should be, and about what is acceptable or not. One day it is cool to have crocs, and the next day you are the biggest dork if you wear them. In today's rapidly changing world, I think that identity crisis are probably more common, difficult, and last longer.


I was wondering what everyone else thought. Do you think that it has become harder for us to form an identity?  Or possibly it has become easier because there is such a wide range of "socially accepted" things?

Little women article

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2097388,00.html

Hello classmates,
read this article. It is very interesting and related to what we discussed in class. Tell me what you think! Enjoy!

Gender develompent

Today in class we talked about genders and their differences. We discussed how nature and nurture both play significant roles in each gender. For example, there is a socially acceptable way for everything to be, like boys wearing blue and girls wearing pink. Boys will play with cars and girls will play with dolls. Children develop all of this and put it into schemas of how they are supposed live their lives according to what they see in the world around them. We also talked about how some girls might have more testosterone than they should, so they have male characteristics. They might be strong and therefore, they play sports because they are good at them. They might become tomboyish because they play sports and realize that they are good at them, or they might have the desire to play sports, even if they are noit so tomboyish, and become that way by hanging out with their friends who play sports with them. Some people are born with these traits and some acquire them from their environments.

I know a girl who is a transgender, so she is now a boy. She felt that she was born a man stuck in a woman's body, and that was not what she was mean to be. Does this mean she was born with a lot of testosterone and was meant to be a man? She says that she was born this way, so I believe that it is not something she inherited from the environment, but there are those who might. For example, gay people might not be born gay, rather, they see that it is a trend in society and begin to feel that they are gay. Do you think all people who feel that they are meant to be the opposite gender or gay are born this way, or do they inherit it from their environment? Or, do you think it could be the effect of both?

Hello my dear fellow classmates,
I must say i truly missed blogging over this break and am very excited to jump right back in and blog!
Anyway, so today in our awesome class we did one of our little personal survey thingies. I must admit that usually i hate those surveys; however, today i actually found it quite interesting because i realized something new about my life. Upon completing the survey that showed whether we trust or mistrust people, i scored the lowest in our class(6 out of 12)making me a very mistrusting person, whereas Sharon scored much higher(i think she was the second most trusting). Additionally, the second part of the survey tried to demonstrate whether we are well adjusted and independent or doubtful and insecure. Again,i got the lowest score(3 out of 12) proving that i must be a doubtful person and insecure about the decisions i make and Sharon yet again got a very high score. Now i do not question whether the surveys were correct or not-lets just assume that they were. Mrs. Perl found it very interesting, of course, that our results varied and after a bit of pondering, so did i. Therefore, i have a few questions that i would like you guys to think about as well
Why is it that Sharon and i have such completely different scores? We basically grew up in teh sam environemnt because we're only 14 months apart so what could have caused this difference? What do you think is our parents role in this?What is our friends' role in this? Do genes have anything to do with it? Anything else you want to comment on?
It might be a little awkward for you guys to comment on this because its about the psychological development of me and my dearest Sharon which is kind of personal but you should give it a try and give your honest opinion. I wont take offense(maybe sharon will.. hahaha)

The Developing Child

The video discusses the develop of babies over time. We see that at each stage of infancy, new abilities develop. This is where the nature-nurture debate comes in. Is it nature that determines the development of infants or is it nurture and experience. John Locke believed that a baby is like a blank tablet devoid of any knowledge and skills and that experience determines who they will become. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that people are born with all the skills and qualities that make them who they are. In 1800 the debate was sharpened by the discovery of a wild 12 year old child, a naked, savage boy who had grown up in the wild alone. He was a child with no experience to human nurturing at all, only nature. A doctor tried to civilize him, and at first it seemed to be working. But after 5 years nothing changed. He died at the age of 40, not able to speak or behave like a normal person. This case seems to favor the nature debate, but others still believed that we are more the products of our environment. So how do heredity and environment affect the development of a child?
Because of the new technology and scientific discoveries, we now know that babies come into the world with much more abilities than we originally thought. Right after birth, a baby can turn in the direction of a voice and reach out its hand. Babies are also born with likes and dislikes. For example, they love the taste of vanilla. They also immediately recognize their mother’s speech.
Something very interesting that I learned from watching this video was that children are born legally blind. The reason is because they do not have enough cone cells in their retina nor are there enough connections among the neurons in the visual cortex. However, both develop VERY rapidly. At three months, a baby can detect differences in facial expressions. All of this shows that babies are actually a lot less helpless than we once thought them to be. In fact, they are meeting the three basic tasks of infancy: getting sustenance, defending against harmful stimulations, and making social contact.
Infants also prefer novelty over familiarity. They will get bored of doing the same thing over and over again. This is an example of habituation. They also prefer complex shapes with various colors. We can study this by taking the baby’s heart rate or examining their visual contact with the object.
Scientists also discovered something called object permanence which was something new I learned. Object permanence is the idea that objects will continue to exist even when hidden. At first babies think that when something is hidden it doesn’t exist anymore. It is not until 3.5 months that a baby will learn that just because the object is hidden doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore.
The video showed a very interesting experiment regarding how children understand symbols. A 2.5 year old child does not understand that the place where the toy is hidden in the small model, is hidden in the same place in the large model. However, a three old would be able to. It’s amazing to see how much children develop in such small increments of time! This also was something new that I learned. Who knew that 2.5 year old would not be able to understand where the toy is hidden in the big model, but only 6 months later, the child can understand the concept and put the pieces together.
We learned that biology nor experience individually are our destinies. Rather, it is both nature and nurture working together. A baby might be born shy, but the environment, such as how his parents raise him can modify that shyness, allowing him to later become one of the most outgoing, lively ones in the class!

The Developing Child

The video begins with the discussion between nature and nurture. This has always been a question over time. However, as we learned, nature and nurture work together.

-children are born with certain senses that allow them to get what they need. Although they cannot really see when they are born, their eyes and bodies will shift in the direction of a woman's voice, preferably that of the infant's mother.

-Watson saw infants as "flesh with few responses." This proves that babies are born with certain senses.

-William James saw babies as a great blooming, buzzing confusion.

-babies are born with dislikes as well as certain hearing functions, so they can hear their mother's voices

- interestingly, babies will also fall asleep to the sound of a heartbeat. (This is probably because they are more comfortable being close to their mother's body.)

-I also found it interesting that when babies are born they are legally blind!

-at birth, neural connections are not formed, but they form rapidly as the child gets older.

- we can tell the babies' preferences by what they look at the longest and even by their heart rate.

-habituation is when the child becomes used to the same thing (they might lose interest quickly.) but when they encounter something new, they are able to understand that it is new to them. This is known as dishabituation.

-Piaget used demonstrations to show that a child's mind is different than that of an adults, which was not known before his time. He looked at their perception of change and discovered unsuspected differences between them.

- In other research it was found that infants, as young as three months old, will understand that when an object "disappears" it is not actually gone.

- studies were also done on children and how they understand symbols. A child of two and a half will not easily be able to find a large model of a toy snoopy after being shown the same toy in a smaller version being placed in the exact same spot, but a child a little bit older will be able to do so.

- It was also found that when babies begin to crawl they have a fear of heights.

- We learned that children are born with certain biological character traits, such as shyness, which can be changed over time due to learning and environment. This brings us back to the debate of nature vs. nurture and how they are intertwined.

I found it very interesting how quickly children grow and change over the course of a few months and years. They develop so much from the time they are born to the time they are seven etc! It is also very cool to me that babies are born with certain senses and abilities that we do not even notice because all we think they do is cry. However, we learn that this is what helps them get what they need to grow and develop.

*This very long video is explains how children develop over time.

* In the 1800 a young boy was found and they soon discovered that he had lived in the wild his entire life. He was named Victor and was taught how to become a civilized man. At first the teachings worked, however, after five years nothing changed and when he died at the age of forty he was still unable to speak or behave like other civilized human beings.

*A few minutes after a baby is born its exes will turn to the direction of a voice and their head will turn toward the direction of a face. They will try to move their hands towards something they can touch.

*Experiment shows that babies are very much aware of what is going on around them and respond to stimulus. When something grabs their attention they react my looking at it for a longer time. As soon as they get bored, they look away from the object.

*another experiment showed that a two year old couldn’t find a snoopy that was hidden in a big room although it was previously shown to her in a small model room. However, a three year old was able to find snoopy in the big room after shown to her where it was hidden in the model room.

*I didn’t know that babies are basically blind when they are born with 20/500 vision. This is because they don’t have enough cone cells in their retinas and they don’t have enough connections among the neurons and visual cortex to process visual information fully.

*I didn’t know that babies like contours objects over plain ones, complex over simple ones and whole faces rather than pieces of faces.

* I didn’t realize that children actually have to think so much more than we do because they have so much more that they have to figure out.

The Developing Child

This video discusses how babies develop over time and what their abilities are. There was, of course, the nature and nurture debate- are babies born as noble savages corrupted by society, or are they blank tablets upon which nurture writes?

In 1800 something weird happened. People found a little savage boy who had grown up in the wild, and was around the age of 12. A doctor names him Victor and tried to civilize him, and at first it worked. But after 5 years nothing changed, and when he died at the age of 40, he could not speak or behave like a normal person.

This leads to the question: What are we born with and what do we learn?

Now we know babies come into the world able to perform all sorts of feats. A few minutes after birth, a newborns eyes turns in the direction of a voice. His/her hand reaches out to make contact, and the head moves to face a face. They even have likes and dislikes- they smile at the smell of bananas.

*Interesting sidenote- when babies are born they are legally blind because they don't have enough cone cells in the retinas and there aren't enough connections between neurons.

Babies can comprehend the world around them because they react to stimulus. They prefer complex shapes, can see new colors, and get tired of objects quickly.

through tests people could see that in a year, from 7 to 8, a person could understand more.

*The test with the liquids being poured.

3 things I found interesting:

1) At first babies think that when something is hidden it ceases to exist. If I understand this correctly, it could be why babies love peekaboo. When Sharon and I were at Dollar Tree and the baby was laughing like a maniac when Sharon played peekabo, maybe it is because the baby is so shocked to see the face/object reappear. It is amazing and delightful to them.

2) Situation: A model room of an actual room- same setup and same colors. Little snoopy is hidden, big snoopy is hidden. Can child find big snoopy after seeing little snoopy hidden in same spot? A 2 year old could not, but a 3 year old could. I wonder why? And it is so interesting that within 12 months we can just develop like that.

3) Monkey's can be shy. That's adorable. They cling to their moms like we cling to our moms when we are babies!

Discovering Psychology

Psychology is the scientific study of the behavior of individuals and of their mental processes

Psychologists use reearch to predict and sometimes control behavior, the solutions for the practical problems then sometimes help individuals and society.

Study mental processing because:
-facinating and challening
-Improve education
-Reduce stress
-Promote peace
-some obseve behavior in specially arranged conditions measuring and testing it

reason to study behavior is because its a window to the workings of the human mind.
Some study the wide varity of different organism (to only humans).
Even small behavious can give us clues to our behavior

Psychological behavior watch teenage girls students as they meet their new young male teacher.
They laugh once he is because they might be: nervous,excited,to show how cool they were, because of anicipation, arousal, self concious or the most common one: typical reaction of adolessant girls.

I always wondered why girls laugh and scream after something exciting happends like they talked to a boy, but this really explains it and helps me look at the word in a psychological way.

*Cortex-wrinkly thing made up of millions of networks of nerve cells.

*Orchestrates talents and skills- music, solving mathematical problems, face recognition, etc.

*Two halves of the brain- are asymmetrical but each has different skills and abilities.

*Left brain controls right side of body and right brain controls left side of body.

*Corpus collosum-carries impulses to and from each halve of the brain.

*Corpus collosum is sometimes cut in order to avoid seizures in some epileptics.

*Allows us to study the different properties of the two hemispheres. *Vicky saw a picture of a girl on the telephone in her left visual field. It was perceived by both eyes but then brought into the right hemisphere. Even though she understood the full picture, she was only able to say woman and was unable to fully express what the picture was. The reason for this was because the left hemisphere is responsible for language expression and since the information was in the right hemisphere she couldn’t say it. However, her right hemisphere enabled her left hand to write what she understood in the picture.

* I mostly knew all of this because Mrs. Perl taught us so well. However, I didn’t know that in the end once she wrote the word telephone she’d be able to say it and that her brain hemispheres do communicate, in a way. I thought that that was very interesting.