Chapter 9

This chapter is called "Motivation and Emotion."

The question is: What are Maslow's Hierarchy of needs?

Maslow was one of the early humanistic psychologists and he rejected the dominant theories of psychoanalysis and behaviorism (branches in psychology) because he was looking for a more positive view of human behavior. He proposed that there are several levels of needs that a person tries to meet before they can achieve the highest level of personality fulfillment, which is self-actualization, the point where people have satisfied lower needs and "achieved their full human potential." These needs vary and range from fundamental deficiency needs (such as food/water) to growth needs (such as the desire to have friends). In order for people to achieve the highest level (self actualization), the other fundamental levels must be accomplished first.

The lowest level consists of physiological needs such as food, water, and rest. Once those needs are met, safety and its associates are the next level. The level above safety consists of belongingness and love needs. Above that are esteem needs; feelings that involve feeling accomplished or earning the esteem of others. Above esteem needs are cognitive needs. This consists of learning only for the sake of gathering knowledge and the natural curiosity that all people (to some extent) have. Above those needs are the aesthetic needs, which include the need for order and beauty, so basically the artistic aspect of people. Above those are the self-actualization needs which are considered the highest for self accomplishment. And once all of those needs are met, and someone has accomplished as much as possible for themselves, the transcendence needs come in. These consist of helping other people reach self-actualization.
When it comes to the levels of needs, according to Maslow, people can move up and down all the time. Also, peak experiences are defined as moments in which self-actualization is reached, even if it is only temporarily.
Here is a more visual demonstration of the hierarchy:

Chapter 8

This chapter is called "Development Across the Life Span" so basically, human development. And after looking at most of the chapter, it mainly focuses on the creation of life, which at this point in our schooling, has been taught multiple times so instead of focusing on that, I'll talk about something else in the chapter that seemed interesting.

The question is: What are the stages of language development?

There are multiple theories on language development but the more modern theory focuses on environmental influences on language such as "child-directed speech." Child-directed speech is defined as the way adults and older children talk to infants and younger children with a higher pitch, sing-song like speech; basically, the way you generally expect an adult to "talk" to a month old baby. Also, when it comes to understanding and producing language, infants have a receptive-productive lag which means they are much better at understanding compared to producing.  

There are 5 stages of language development that every child (regardless of language or geographic location) experiences. The first is called "Cooing" and occurs after 2 months of being born, and is summarized by vowel-like sounds. After 6 months, "Babbling" occurs and this is when consonant sounds are added to the already used vowel sounds. Also, this is around when deaf children start to increase hand signs/gestures and decrease babbling. Then, just before the age of 1 or around 1, children acquire one word speech but generally, children mean more than just the one word that the say. For example "Juice!" could mean "I want juice!" or "I drank my juice!" After about a year and a half,children develop telegraphic speech or very simple sentences such as "Daddy go bye-bye." After this period, children slowly learn more words and proper grammar, and by the age of 6, they become nearly as fluent as an adult, although the vocabulary levels obviously aren't the same.
 

Chapter 6

So the next chapter we're reading revolves around memory, which means this blog will probably have a bunch of boring factual information on memory. The question is:

What are the main steps or processes involved with memory and how does memory work?

There are 3 steps in memory.
The first process in memory is to get sensory information into another form that the brain can use. This is also known as encoding. An example of encoding could be any sound someone hears. When someone hears a sound, the ears turn the vibrations in the air to neural messages (from the auditory nerve) and from that, the brain can interpret the sound and classify it as a sound that is known or a sound that has been heard before.
The second step is to hold on to the given information for some period of time in a process that is known as storage. The period of time always varies and depends on the system of memory being used. Some information is held just long enough so it can be worked with, generally somewhere around 20 seconds. In a different system of memory, people hold onto it longer, such as knowledge in Psychology or Chemistry that needs to be known for the next test.
The third and final step is generally the most problematic phase in terms of memory, which is getting useful information out of storage for use, also known as retrieval.


There are 3 theories, or models, that suggest a basic explanation for how memory works.
One is called the information-processing model and this model is generally the most comprehensive according to researchers. It assumes that the processing of information for memory is similar to the way a computer processes (encodes, stores, and retrieves) memory and information.
The parallel distributed processing model suggests memory processes take place at the same time over a large network of neural connections.
The last model is called the levels-of-processing model. This suggests information is more "deeply processed"  or basically processed by its importance.

Chapter 5 in Psychology

Okay, I think from now on each of my blogs are going to have a question (pertaining to psychology) and an answer to that question. This week, the Chapter is devoted to learning.


Question: What is "operant conditioning" and what are the more significant concepts?

Operant conditioning is defined as "the kind of learning that applies to voluntary behavior" (White 180). One of the more important concepts is called reinforcement, or any event that when following a response, increases the probability that the response will occur again. The concept of reinforcement can be basically represented by the question "What's in it for me?" Generally, reinforcement is a consequence that is somehow pleasurable to the person, animal, organism, etc. There are two main types of reinforcers, primary and secondary. A primary reinforcer is something that fulfills any basic need such as hunger, pleasure, thirst, etc. A secondary reinforcer is something that receives its importance from being associated with other primary reinforcers. Here is an example that illustrates both concepts; someone hires you to move furniture and you are allowed to pick from 2 rewards: $25 or an ice cream cone. Anyone that understands the concept of money would choose $25 without having to think about it for long. Money is an example of a secondary reinforcer because the paper itself is next to useless, but that money can be exchanged for more valuable primary reinforcers such as more ice cream or anything else. To someone that doesn't understand money, for example, a three year old, the more probable choice would be the ice cream cone. Since the ice cream cone satisfies a basic need (hunger) it is considered a primary reinforcer.  The reinforcing properties of an ice cream cone do not need to be learned unlike the properties of money (ice cream/food/ basic needs are learned about much earlier). Also, there are two main types of reinforcement, negative and positive. Positive reinforcement is the addition of something pleasurable or wanted, therefore negative reinforcement is the opposite or removal of something pleasurable/wanted.  

Hypnosis

Maybe I'm just going to do all of these blogs about psychology topics.. I mean I am "studying" and doing this blog at the same time so why not. Alright, anyways, this week one of the concepts in Chapter 4 was hypnosis. Hypnosis is defined as "a state of consciousness in which a person is especially susceptible to suggestion" (White 147). There are 4 steps that every hypnotists follows in some way. These steps are to  tell the person being hypnotized: to focus on what's being said, to relax, to "let go"/accept suggestions easily, and finally, to use vivid imagination. The main component is the "accept suggestions" part. People can be hypnotized only when they are active and alert, also if they are willing to be hypnotized. Overall, 80% of people can be hypnotized, but only 40% are good subjects for hypnosis. The most susceptible people are usually those who fantasize/daydream a lot, have vivid imaginations, and people who are able to get "really into" whatever they're doing.
There's a table in our textbook that has some interesting information regarding what hypnosis can do. According to the book, hypnosis can: help people relax in situations that would normally cause stress, remove pain, alter sensory perceptions, and actually create amnesia during the session (for a brief time). There are also some myths that aren’t true, hypnosis can’t give extra strength, enhance memory, or regress people to some time in the past.
There are 2 main theories on why hypnosis works, one deals with dissociation and the other deals with a sort of social “role-playing.” The dissociation theory is somewhat self explanatory; it suggests that people are able to dissociate with a certain part of their brain/thoughts and sometimes their body. The social “role-playing” or cognitive theory suggests that people who are hypnotized aren’t really in a different state of mind, they are “merely playing a role” and that role is… a person being hypnotized.

I'm not sure if I believe it, but anyways, here's a random guy using hypnosis to get out of a speeding ticket: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gcQDuv_Kb0

Chapter 2 in Psychology

Alright, now it's the second blog and of course I still can't decide what I'm going to blog about, so I'll just do what I did last week and be boring/talk about what I'm learning this week in Psychology. This week the chapter we're reading is titled "The Biological Perspective" which basically means you're going to be forcing yourself to read all of this unless you genuinely like Biology. Anyways, the chapter starts off by talking about the Nervous System and its components. The Nervous System can be summarized as a large network of specialized cells that carry information to everywhere in the body. This system is made up of two smaller systems called the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems. The Central Nervous System's main components are the brain and the spinal cord. The brain deals with information and sending orders to the body and the spinal cord is a pathway for the brain. The Peripheral System, overall, is also a pathway but it is a pathway to and from the Central Nervous System. Overall, The Peripheral System does everything that the brain and spinal cord don't do. Such as: regulating the body, helping with skeletal muscle movement, maintaining body functions, saving energy, dealing with stress, and others. Here is a simple diagram that more simply describes both systems.  
The second concept in this chapter is the structure of a neuron. A neuron is the specialized cell in the nervous system that deals with messaging. Since neurons are messengers, their structure, like any specialized cell, is unique and designed for what neurons do. The part of a neuron that receives messages is called a dendrite. Numerous dendrites are attached to the soma (or cell body) which contains the nucleus and can be considered the center of a neuron because the soma is what keeps the cell alive and functioning. The axon is another fiber attached to the soma and instead of receiving messages like dendrites, axons send messages away. The axon is well covered by fatty substances called myelin. The purpose of myelin is to increase the speed of electrical impulses (messages) by having them jump from node to node (gaps in the myelin). The myelin also protects the axon as well as its electrical impulses (messages) the same way a plastic coating stops wires (such as a copper computer or telephone wire) from interfering from each other; it is an insulator. Below is a diagram that shows the structure of a neuron. 

Chapter 1 in Psychology

Well I really can't decide on what to blog about for this first one, so I'll be unoriginal and talk about someone I recently read about for Psychology. He was known as the "Father of Modern Psychology" and was arguably the most famous psychologist throughout; his name was Wilhelm Wundt. The overall idea of psychology started in Leipzig, Germany in 1879 when Wundt, in his laboratory, attempted to apply the scientific method and other scientific principles to the human mind. In his lab, students from various parts of the world came to study the structure of the mind.  Before psychology, Wundt focused on physiology and was a physiologist, he studied various topics that related to the brain such as reaction times, relfelxes, etc. He wanted to add reasoning to the different structures so he came up with an overall idea that is still talked about today. This idea, which focuses on mind structure and other (more basic) elements is known as structuralism. Structuralism, therefore was said to be created by Wundt. After Wundt, William James expanded his theory of structuralism and other psychologists came up with different theories that argued with what Wundt and James thought. Another important contribution Wundt had for psychology is called objective introspection. This is where someone is trying to understand the reasoning behind their own thoughts or basically asking “Why?” to anything that crosses the mind. An example of this would be placing a pencil or any object in someone’s hand and having them tell you everything and anything that crossed their mind. This experiment was considered the first attempt to “bring objectivity and measurement to the concept of psychology” (White 7).  Although Wundt didn’t provide many of the newer ideas in psychology, he was the first to attempt to think of psychology as a science. Below are some pictures of Wundt himself.