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. 

Physical Punishment

While reading about punishment in my lovely psychology book, I remembered a conversation that we had this shabbos at the Perl's house. We talked about parents hitting their children as a form of punishment. Some of us felt that it is okay to hit their own child (maybe not hurt them, just a little hit) in order to punish them. It seems to be that nowadays this type of punishment is not considered normal, but not too long ago it was used by parents and even teachers in school with their students. And, of course, there are those who continue to use this form of punishment today. I read that physical punishment can lead to aggression, depression and low self-esteem, and will not necessarily be successful. If a parent hits their child every time they swear, the child might stop swearing at home but might continue to do so out of their home. This is very interesting to me. It also upsets me. I definitely do not believe in hitting a child because it does not seem like an effective punishment to me. But, I do believe that maybe a little hit could have some sort of positive effect in some cases. Do you think that this form of punishment is effective?

Hello my dear fellow classmates,

So as we all know we are learning about sleep and dreams this lovely week. I actually discovered something very interesting about a certain person (didn’t want me to blog about that person so we will just call her CLARA) and felt the need to blog about it. Clara has had insomnia (trouble falling asleep) since she was about twelve years old. This happens to many people for many different reasons and is therefore not the thing that fascinates me so much. Clara has the ability to lie down, close her eyes, and go DIRECTLY into REM. She doesn’t have to go through the stages that we must go to in order to reach REM, it happens automatically. Therefore, she can only sleep about two hours a night and not feel tired at all since REM stage is very crucial in order for us to feel rested. I must say that I am very jealous of Clara. I always felt that we waste so much time on sleeping and I hate the fact that we need so much sleep in order to feel rested. I would love to go directly to REM for about two hours every night and then I’ll be able to accomplish so much more throughout the day while feeling completely rested. What do you think about Clara’s situation?

Are You Sleep Deprived?

On page 278 of our textbook there is a table entitled: "Are You Sleep Deprived?" This caught my eye because I often feel very tired. There are fifteen questions that you answer true or false to. It says that if you answer "true" three or more times, you are probably not getting enough sleep. Well, I did the activity and I got true for ten out of the fifteen statements. This is probably really not good. Cornell University psychologist James Maas recommends that you go to bed 15 minutes earlier than usual every night of the week- and continue this practice by adding fifteen more minutes each week- until you wake without an alarm clock and feel alert all day. This led me to my question. Statement number one of the the activity is: "I need an alarm clock in order to wake up at the appropriate time." Obviously, I answered yes to this question, but my main question is why is that important? Why does that tell you if you're sleep deprived. Maybe some people are just really deep sleepers and need a loud noise to wake them up. I always wondered how my mother can just wake up around the same time every morning and why the idea of using an alarm clock never even crosses her mind. Does any one have any ideas? Do you need an alarm clock to wake up?

Fallingggggg

I don't know about you, but I sometimes experience what I think of as dreams where I am falling into nothingness. This is pretty crazy and I often am woken up by this or jump in my sleep! It is very odd, but I always assume that it is just some type of dream and move on with my life. However, while reading about the different stages of sleep, I noticed that the idea of falling or feeling like you are floating was mentioned. Stage one of our sleep does not include dreams. It is the lightest stage of sleep and only last about five minutes. During this time we are able to experience different hallucinations. So, I learned that the sensation of falling that I feel sometimes in my sleep in not a dream, but a hallucination! This seems pretty cool to me. I usually think of hallucinations as something that happens to crazy people, but apparently it happens to many people all the time! Since it is such a light sleep, one might easily wake up with a feeling of confusion and wonder what just happened..Well now you know!

Hello my dear fellow classmates,
So as i was studying for our lovely test for tomorrow i suddenly just had to stop when i got to the sensation of pain because i just needed to blog about it.
I was always very obsessed with the sensation of pain. I am like always in pain because i have so many issues with my body its ridiculous; of course all i do is complain all the time. However, i seem to forget that there is so much worse out there than the pain i experience. I always wondered how people who are tortured can endure that kind of pain for a long period of time. I would just go insane. The book also mentioned people who are able to control their pain-mind over matter. I found that absolutely fascinating. So here a few questions i would like to start with:
1. Do you really think thatthe whole mind over matter thing works?
2. Do you think that we are all born with it or can we become accustomed to it?(Before you answer that consider the following: millions of women are able to give birth and can endure the pain without any previous training. On the other hand, you always see in movies how there are these tough men(like Jack Bauer from 24) who have been exposed to pain so much that they grew accustomed to it) so which one is it?
3. Are there only certain people who can endure intense pain? If yes why?
4. Not all of you might be able to answer this question since you might not know what im talking about but ill pose it anyway: The character Gregory from the show house MD had his muscle thigh removed and is therefore constantly in excruciating pain. He must take very strong pain killers(vicodin) to get through the day. Why cant he "control" his pain?

Colors

We learned about the different colors and how we can perceive them. We learned that there are the trichromatic colors, and that cones are in charge for colorful colors and rods are in charge of black and white.
How do we know that we all see the same color named "green" since it can be that what I perceive as "green" is actually "red", but I was taught that a certain color is called a certain word. Is it possible that all of our worlds are differently colorful? What do you think?