The Invincibility of Man

It was interesting learning about the various different forms of sensory perception and the experiments commissioned to discover our abilities. I was not surprised when we learned that we tend to be overconfident in what experiments would work on us and how we would not have the 'wool pulled over our eyes.' Although some would call this bold stupidity, I think it is what has allowed the human race to advance to such incredible proportions. If not for our thoughts of invincibility, we would never venture into the unknown. We would not venture past our comfort zone-failing to discover so much of what the world has to offer. It is this thought process that led to the Titanic and Lance Armstrong's 'small step.'

Pioneers

The Young-Helmholz Trichromatic Theory suggests that we see different colors based on the interaction of three main cones in our eyes. The theory has its problems, but no problems that couldn't be fixed by a simple solution. The fascination I have with theories such as this one is how. How do these people come up with these things. You could give me a full, in depth image of an eye and I will never be able to come up with something like that. I could study eyes for a year and still be completely lost. But Young and Helmholz came up with a theory that solves the fascination with how we see an array of colors with only three color specific cones. The best part of the theory is that when a solution came up (how can there be red-green color blind and not yellow if red and green make yellow) it was easily solved with another theory: the Opponent Process Theory. I find it amazing that people take the little things in life for granted. The complexity of looking across the room is something to cherish. Some people aren't so lucky.

Pay Attention!

Selective inattention is defined as, "The screening out of stimuli that are threatening, anxiety-producing, or felt to be unimportant." It is basically when you are paying attention to and focusing on one specific thing so much that you don't realize when other things happen. There are 5 different examples of selective inattention. One is inattentional blindness. Inattentional blindness is when you are not paying attention to something but it is happening and you don’t realize it because you are paying attention to something else. For example, the basketball passing/gorilla video we watched in class. Change blindness is when for example, I am giving you directions and another guy comes by with a big board and I switch with that guy so now he is giving you directions. You would not realize that I switched places with him because you are so focused on the directions. Choice blindness is when for example, I give you a choice, "which paper do you like better: red or blue?" You tell me red and the next day I ask you why you like the blue paper better. Even though you said you like the red paper better yesterday, since I make it seem like you said you like the blue paper better, you begin to tell me the reason why you like the blue paper better. Now, the obvious response to learning about choice blindness is, "There is no way that I would do that when given two choices." That is a clear example of choice blindness blindness. Choice blindness blindness is the overconfidence to say I would never perform choice blindness. Last but not least, deaf blindness is when someone is talking to you and someone switches places with him, you wouldn't realize they switched places because you were so focused on what they were saying. Selective inattention comes in many forms and applies to our everyday life.

Color Blindness

When I am watching an NFL game I always wonder if the green turf that I am seeing is the same color as the turf that my buddy next to me is seeing. What if he detects a different color than I do? Well, the simple answer is that one of us would be color blind, which is the inability to see colors that the rest of us can see.
The reason why some people are color blind is because there was a problem with the development of the retinal cone that percieves color.
I am especially engaged in this because I would like to put myself in the shoes of someone who is color blind for one day, and see how different the world would be.
You go shopping and you can't tell what color the shirt you want to buy is. You take cheese out of the fridgerator and you can't tell if it is moldy green or not. You are watching a Boise State college football game and you can't tell what color the field is (by the way, it is blue). So many things that we take for granted like percieving color, someone who is color blind can not do. It is sad, but at the same time it must be cool for 2 guys who are color blind to go walk around with someone who is not and they just look at random objects and try to guess what color they are, and the guy who is not color blind can tell them if they are right or not.
Next time you look around, try to think about what the world would look like to a color blind person and be grateful that you can see colors because not every one can.

Color blindness

I always wondered, how would a person know if they are color blind? Even though they see a different color, they still call it the same thing we do. Even though my question was not answered learning about colorblindness was very interesting. Learning about how we have three sets of color partners that go to the brain fascinated me: black and white, red and green, and blue and yellow. The colors a person would be blind to always seemed random, but after leaning about it this week everything was so much clearer.

Complexity of Color

     Every second of every day, as long as your eyes are open, you are seeing color - unless of course you are red-green or blue-yellow colorblind. But otherwise, you are picking up on many of the discrepancies in life through their different colors. Before last class period, I did not really understand how an object can be one color and not another, how different objects can have the same color and be different shades of that color, as well as how some colors can be noticeable brighter than others. Well, this past Wednesday I found the answer. 

     First let’s analyze how an object becomes a certain color. It is all based on the wavelengths of each light energy wave, which is the distance between the top of one wave and the top of the next wave. For example, longer wavelengths, like 700 nanometers long, are the color red. But shorter wavelengths, like 5 nanometers long, are X-ray wavelengths and are undetectable by the human eye. 

     Amplitude determines a color’s brightness and intensity. Amplitude is the height of each wave. The taller the wave, the more intensely bright the color will be.

     And lastly, the purity of the color is determined by Saturation. Saturation is the simplicity of each wave, which is the degree to which the wave is perfect and symmetrical. The choppier the wave, the less pure the wave color will appear. 

     Next time you open your eyes, notice how you’re not just seeing “color.” Rather, you are seeing a combination of the wavelength, amplitude, and saturation of a wave. 

falling asleep

After learning about how neuron communicate I was wondering what makes a limb "fall asleep". My initial thought was that it had to do with cutting off the circulation in the arm. But i was not so sure how loss of blood could effect the neurons because we never mentioned anything like that in class. Still since I knew that by laying on my arm I was cutting off the blood flow from my arm and that by laying on my arm my arm fell asleep so I thought that one caused the other. After researching it a little I realized I was wrong. I also realized that I assumed causation when I only measured correlation. Classic mistake. I found out that just like the circulation is cut off, the neural impulses are cut off with the pressure. I didn't know that could happen. The pressure squeezes the pathways and blocks the signals. When re opened some cells do not fire at all cause while others just fire randomly, this causes the tingling. What is also really cool is that you reaquire the ability to move you arm before you have feeling in your arm because your motor cells are thinner than your sensory cells. The thicker the cell, the longer it takes to be able to retransmit the information.

A New Theory

In class this week, we learned about a theory called the Young-Helmholz Theory, also known as the Trichromatic Theory. The theory basically states that there are 3 different types of cones, each one sensitive to a different color: the S-Cone, which is sensitive to blue, the L-Cone, which is sensitive to red, and the M-Cone, which is sensitive to green. The problem with the Young-Helmholz Theory is that it doesn't explain two phenomena. The first is the negative afterimage. After long stimulation of looking at colors, we tend to see a continuing image in reversed color when we look at a blank page. We participated in an example of this in class, when we stared at an x surrounded by four different colors for 20 seconds, and in the split second that the four colors disappeared, another four colors, each one a "reverse" of the color before, was visible for a very brief moment. The problem is, according to the Young-Helmholz Theory, is that we shouldn't even be seeing the "reverse" colors. However, the phenomenon I want to focus on is the second phenomenon: colorblindness. People who are colorblind can't tell a distinction between certain colors. There are two kinds: red-green and blue-yellow. So if you can't see the difference between red and green, you can still see yellow, which contradicts the Young-Helmholz Theory, which suggests that cones are stimulated based on wavelengths of light. So how can the Young-Helmholz Theory be reconciled with the contradiction of colorblindness? Easy: the Opponent-Process Theory, which states that with colorblindness, there's a problem with the channels leading to the brain, not with the actual retina itself. There. Problem solved. But if you've been paying attention in class, people like Bradley and Ethan have been trying to develop their own theory/law, especially after learning about the genius-ness of Weber's Law. So I've decided to come up with my own law: Addess's Law. You see, we know that the Opponent-Process Theory is a way to coincide with the problems seemingly present in the Young-Helmholz Theory. However, there's no law/theory that actually states the previous sentence. Therefore, Addess's Law states that the Opponent-Process Theory is a way to address the problems seemingly present in the Young-Helmholz Theory. So obvious, yet nobody's officially said it before...

Selective Inattention

    We are amidst a very exciting unit (and if you can't sense my sarcasm, then please do so as quickly as possible) dealing with perception and sensation, where we are learning about sensation, a process by which sensory receptors receive stimuli that change the energy flow (through transduction) into a neural impulse for our brains to interpret.
    I wanted to focus on selective inattention. Selective inattention can be described by the following example. You are watching at a movie theater watching a very intense movie that you have been anticipating for a while. During the movie, a man in the theater faints and people are screaming and calling 911. However, the movie is still playing, and as a movie-addict, you don't realize a man is having a heart attack in the theater because you are so focused on the movie. Selective inattention can be defined as follows: when you are so focused on one thing, you tend to not focus on other details going on elsewhere. Another concept that goes along with selective inattention is change blindness. Change blindness says that humans are so confident that we see everything but we will often not realize a change elsewhere. What I find so fascinating about this concept is demonstrates the human tendency to display overconfidence. In a video shown by Mrs. Perl in class, we were asked to count how many passes total thrown by several females as they tossed a ball. Most people counted the correct number, but very few noticed that while they were passing the ball, a gorilla walked in and the curtain behind the females switched colors. Everyone in the class was so confident we were correct about the total passes, that we were blind, so to speak, to the rest of the details.

New methods of learning

When I first learned that we were going to have block scheduling I was quite disappointed. I had read the studies that showed it didn't work and was not looking foward to the long periods. However, in AP Psychology the classes are not all just lectures. Mrs. Perl has had us do several projects that I thought were particularly useful in helping me learn the information. Without the longer period times we would not be able to do these projects.

When we were learning about the parts of the brain, such as the medulla or the parietal lobe, we had time to build a model brain out of playdoe. Hesitant at first, eager after the beginning, I found the project to be a particularly effective method of learning the location of the specific areas. At the end of the class I was quite confident in my ability to map out the brain, allowing my right-hemisphere to work its spatial magic.

The second project we did required a lot more writing and was in fact labeled as an assignment. I found it fun nonetheless and was glad that we were given in it. For the perception and sensory section of our books we had to formulate real-world examples of situations that each keyword would take effect. The setting for the examples was at a play, giving me lots of free room for my imagination to run wild. I had quite a bit of fun with this one.

Although I am still not a fan of the block scheduling system, I do appreciate and enjoy being able to do activities in class.