Illusions

Some of the illusions I went to, to look at were "Stepping Feet","Motions Induced Blindness", "Rotating Snake", "Fading Dot", "Mona", "Shimmer","Trapezoidal Window", "Café Wall Illusion","The Brick Illusion", and "The Hidden Bird."

I learned that our eyes deceive us and pretty much lie to us. They make us think something is happening when it really is just something else that is moving even if it is staying still. I also learned that our eyes are always moving, even if you don’t think you are moving, your eyes really are. They have to move to collect information in order to see.

One thing that surprised me was learning that even if my eyes are still they are moving by themselves to see images. So when the picture is still and has at least 2 different colors in a circle it seems like it is moving in a circular rotation, when really it isn’t. Our eyes sometimes lie to us.

When people say that they didn’t do something and another says yes you did I saw it with my own 2 eyes, they may have been deceived by their eyes. Everyone has a different perspective on things and how they see it. I could see one thing in a picture while a different person can see something different.

It doesn’t really change my perspective on the world. I see the world as I did before. I just now know that the reason why it seems like we see something moving when it really isn’t. And that our eyes can deceive us, but it doesn’t really change how I see the world.

Are You A Liar?

This blog was about people lying and how much they lie in order to make people like them. They experimented on three different groups; competent, likable, and a control. The people were on dates and while on the dates they were being videotaped. After the date was over they watched the video and told if they were lying or not. The result was that more people lie when they are talking about making themselves more competent. It was showed that the average number of lies for all groups combined was just a little bit under 3 for 10 minuets. The myth that men lie more then women was wrong while doing this experiment. When the lies were made into groups of feelings, achievements, plans, explanations, and facts the men showed to lie more about their feelings trying to make them seem likable and the women lied more about their feelings when trying to seem competent.
This study shows that people will lie about 3 times in 10 minuets just to make themselves seem more impressive to others. I know that I do lie sometimes to make myself seem better then I really am, but who doesn't? I'm pretty sure this study has shown that a lot more people then just me lie to others.

The Truth About Self-Deception

This blog is about self-deception and how people will lie to themselves about things. In this experiment, people reruited 30 students to do a "psychological and medical aspects of athletics" of course the students were being lied to. What they were really getting them selves into was an experiment on how people will lie make themselves feel better. The students were told to put their arms into cold water and see how long they could do it for. They were told it was somehow link to health. Really they just wanted to show people that they deceive themselves. After the participants were done putting their arms in the water they went on an exercise bike. While on the excise bike they were told that there are two different types of hearts, one heart was associated with poor health and shorter life expectancy. The other type was better health and longer life. After they were done with the bike they did the test again. The ones that got told that leaving your arms in the cold water for a longer amount of time was good and that they were healthier, stayed in the water longer then the first time. The ones that got told the cold water was bad stayed in the water for less amount of time.
This study showed that people lie to themselves to make them seem better. They well lie and look for evidence that supports their self-deception.

Chapter 6

In this chapter I learned about our senses and absolute threshold. They were very interesting to me because it told me how our senses work.

The absolute threshold is our awareness of things. It turns out we are right a minimum of 50% of the time. Every time we detect light, sound, pressure, taste, or order we are normally right over 50%, but for some it is at 50%. As we get older it is harder for our senses to detect these thresholds. The sensitivity to high pitched sounds declines, and makes it harder to hear.

The sense of touch is really interesting. It is a combination of other senses such as pleasure, warm, cold, and pain. Kinesthesis is also in our bodies, it is in our systems and it allows us to control our body parts such as how far we can move our arms or how far we can move our legs. If we didn't have kinesthesis in our bodies then we would hurt ourselves by hyper-extending everything in our body.

Another thing that intersted me was how or actually what we are hearing. I ncever thought that we heard different air waves, I thought our ear drums just bounced off sound into our brains. What it actually is is air waves. Air waves are bands of compressed and expanded air. When they are at different frequencies they make different sounds, letting us to be able to hear things that are happening around us.

How Long To Form A Habit

This article on pschblog was asking how long it took to make a habit. Most people think it is 21 to 28 days, but that is only what a doctor wrote in a book because he noticed his patients recovering from an amputation. The end result was that everyone is different and it depends on what you want to make a habit of. In this article they had 96 participants to try to make eating a piece of fruit with lunch or doing a 15 minuete jog everyday a habit. They then were asked to record how automatic it was for them to do this each day. The graph of these recordings showed that it was easier to make a habit of eating a peice of fruit with lunch then running 15 minuets, but the average amount of days to make a habit was 66 days. Even though this study showed that it took about 66 days, creating a habit could take anywhere from 18 to 254 or maybe even longer. They also noticed that if you miss a day it doesn't have a major effect on forming an habit.

This is a very interesting article because in our freshman orrientation class we learned that it takes 30 days to create a habit. It is very interesting because now I know that my class didn't give me correct information and that it makes me think that that class wasn't that good for me to be in.

Current Event 4

In the chapter if talks about babies and how they don't like to be held by strangers or even sometimes people they know, they would rather be held by their own parents. I can relate to this because my family has a lot of babies. When I wanted to hold my little cousin she cried so loud for her mom to take her back. I was very sad because I really wanted to hold her, she is so cute. When I gave her back to her mom she instantly stopped crying. So her mom tried to give her to me again to see what would happen, sure enough she started to cry even louder then the first time.
When I read about stranger anxiety with babies I found out why she wanted her mom back. Babies don't like it when they are away from their parents they are content with them and most of the time don't like to be departed from them. In the book they had an example of one baby playing with her toys and with her mom in the room, as soon as the mom left the baby for very distressed and wanted her mom back. When the mom came back she wanted her mom to never leave her again. When I gave my baby cousin back to her mom and her mom tried to give her to me again, she cried louder. I think that is because she didn't want to leave her mom again so she wanted to make her mom realize that she did NOT want to be held by me but by her.

Chapter 5

In this chapter I have learned more then three things for sure but the three that I am going to type about are Piaget, babies and how they act, and the three different types of parents.

Cognition is all the mental activites associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. Jean Piaget researched child and how they responded to things. For example he gave them tests and noticed that the ones they got wrong others also got wrong. In his study he found out that children's minds aren't developed like adults. His results found that a typical new born to 2-year-olds have a mind set of experiencing new things just by the 5 senses. Two to seven-year-olds don't logically think they act by what they see, they don't really think for them selevs. 7 to 11-year-olds think logically about events, they think for themselves and can grasp concepts. Twelve through adulthoods are becoming more mature and can think with logical reasoning.

Babies develop an anxiety for their parents. If they are approuched and taken away to be held by a stranger, they sometimes cry and reach for someone they know or recognize. When babies are with their parents they are happy and can play with ease, when the parents leave they are distressed and cry. When the parents come back the babies just want their parents and be comforted by them.

There are three different types of parents, authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Authoritarians, they are the type of parents that are very strict and don't let you get away with anything. Permissive parents are very laid back and don't really care what you do. Authoritative parents have a little bit of both types. They are strict but also let their child or children do things and get away with some things. Children with Authoritative parents nomally grow up to have a high self-esteam, self-reliance, and social competence usually have warm, and have concern towards others. Children with authoritarian parents are less social skilled and self-esteam. Children with permissive parents are more aggressive and are immature when they grow up.

How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation

This is an article that I found on psychblog. It happened to be very interesting to me. These two professors took 51 pre-schoolers between the ages of 3 and 4, they wanted to know if the kids would draw pictures better if they were given a reward, not given a reward, or give them a reward but not until the end would make a difference. In this study they took each pre-schooler one by one into a room for 6 mins. After about 3 days they did it again and compared data. The data showed that kids proform better if they draw first and then get a reward. The kids that knew they were getting a reward didn't have good preformence with the pictures. The kids that knew they weren't getting a reward did almost as well as the ones that didn't know they were getting a reward until after.

This study shows that giving rewards to kids isn't always the best thing to do. If they know already that they are getting a reward they don't have to worry if they did good or bad. This reminds me of my team. There is this one girl on there that knows she is going to get to play no matter what. So, she doesn't have to worry about screwing up of giving up a lot of points because she isn't going to go out of the game because of it. It sucks because she has a really bad additude too, I think it has something to do with that she knows she is going to get to play no matter what and she doesn't care.

Chapter 4

In this chapter I learned about twins, identical and fraternal. This chapter was very interesting with all the different things about twins. How they vary from everyone else and how fraternal twins are just like regualar brother and sisters. Even though they are twins in reality they should just be brother and sister or brother and brother or sister and sister, but because they are twins their mind set is that they have a twin so they should somewhat be a like.

I learned that identical twins have the same copy of genes, just not the same amount of the copied genes. Because they don't have the same amount it is a reason why sometimes one twin is very ill when they are born and one is healthy. Fraternal twins are like I said before they don't have the same copies as each other so they are just brothers or sisters.

Another thing I learned in an identical pair of twins if one of the twins gets a disease it is 60% more likely for the other twin to have the same disease later on or it could be around the same time as the other is diagnose that the twin will get it. If a pair of fraternal twins has a twin with a disease it is 30% more likely that the other will get it. Another things about twins that I learned was about divorces. If an identical twin gets divorced then the other one has 5.5 times greater the more likely to get divorced, fraternal 1.6 times.

The last thing I'm going to talk about on here is about our enviroment and how it effects us. No matter what you say how and where you grow up has an effect on you. For example if I wouldn't have grown up in a small town I might be not as courteous as I am today. In a bigger city people aren't as friendly or nice to others as people in a smaller town. In a smaller town people know almost everyone in the town and everyone gets a long with a lot of people. Yes I know that everyone doesn't get along with everyone but there are more people that get along with each other then don't get along. I also think it would have an affect on me as a person because my family is very family oriented, I think if I didn't live so close to my family that my sisters and I wouldn't go to family gatherings or family events.

Do our parents matter?!?!

Okay for our homework assignment we had to write about our parents. I guess I never really thought about it before, but yes our parents matter a lot. They have a lot to do with how we are and how we grew up. So I guess they are the reason we are who we are today. They really make a differece in my life, they are always there for me when I need them the most. They are also there when I don't want them to be. But I know they are just trying to make me the best they think I should be.

In the assignment it asked to think about if I was in a different family how would that effect my life? Well, I found out that it would probably change my life a lot. If I lived with one of my friends I wouldn't have had a father to grow up with, no male presence at all. In my family my dad was the one to yell and punish me, so I always cried to mom about it and she was always there to tell me it was going to be okay and not to worry because my dad still loved me. If I didn't have two parents one would yell and I wouldn't have anyone to cry to and tell me things would be okay. My friend also doesn't have any siblings so I would only have one sister instead of two. That would effect me too because if I wasn't liking one of my sisters one day I would just go to the other one and play with them and didn't have to deal with the other one that was making me mad.

All in all parents are very important, they make you, you. If you don't like what they tell you or what they say to you just remember they still love you and they are only hoping that they are doing the right thing. So, go home and tell your parents thank you for making you who you are today.

Chapter 3

This chapter had a lot of surprising and interesting things. If a person is not fully blind they are still able to see a little, right? Well of course the answer is yes, but what I learned with the dual processing, the eye sends information to different parts of the brain and allows us to see a little. There is multiple parts, if one part is damaged then your mind can fill in the rest of the little you do see. For example, this one person had too much Carbon Dioxide while taking a shower and is now partially blind. She is able to recognize and discriminate objects. Her brain activity is normal in the area concerned with reaching or grasping objects, but damaged in the area concerned with consciously recognizing objects.

The second thing I found interesting and surprising was in the book it had a story about one person who got in a car accident and was not consciously aware of anything. When the doctors took a scan of her brain they found something that said differently. when they asked her to think about playing tennis her scans told them that she was responding to what they told her to do even though her body wasn't moving. I found this very interesting and didn't know that could happen.

Another thing I learned was I now know why there is a law against talking on your cell phone while driving. I always thought this was a stupid law because it's just like you are talking to a person next to you. But if you are talking and holding the phone to your ear you can cause an accident. I see how this is a law because as I read, you might think you can multitask, but what your mind is really doing is switching from one thing to the other without realizing it. If your are talking with your arm up and driving your are doing more things then if you were just driving with one other person. But I still have one question then, If your do it all the time wouldn't your subconscious do everything for you, like it said, your subconscious is doing things you don't even notice you are doing, so it just feels like your are just focused on the road?

One thing that I don't really agree with in the book is that they say that there are genes to becoming an acoholic or can be able to be addicted to drugs. I strongly disagree with it because I believe that it is how you grow up and what is around you. My dad smokes and is addicted to it, I would never in my life smoke. You also hear about children with two parents that smoke and they don't smoke. It's all about your surroundings and how you got brought up with peer pressure and such.

Current Event 3

Since I found out that I have been doing my current events kinda wrong, I was just talking about what happened to me, I now know that I have to blog about something that happened to me that involves the chapter. So, I have going to talk about my dreams.

One night I had a dream that I was with my boyfriend at someone's house. A lot of my other friends were there as well. I was having a lot of fun until I got a call from my mom. She was very frantic and was crying, so I asked what's wrong, what happened? She told me that my house was on fire!!! I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I told my boyfriend that we have to go now! He didn't care and just wanted to stay. I told my mom that I didn't know what to do because I didn't have a ride back to my house, I was in Marathon. She then proceed to tell me that the house was burnt to the ground...my dad was in the hospital with severe burns and my dog, Cassie, didn't make it out of the house on time. Needless to say I woke up crying.

I may have had this dream because that day I was super super tired and couldn't' fall asleep when I wanted to. I was at the person's house the day before and my boyfriend and other friends were there, so that's why I dreamt I was at that house. I think because I didn't get a lot of sleep that my mind was thinking about bad things and had a nightmare. After I woke up I tried going back to sleep but I could only think about my dog dying, my dad in the hospital and that I have no house to go home to anymore. Some how I made my self go to sleep for 5 and a half hours, then I had to get up for school. For school I didn't want to do anything and I just wanted to go home.

IAT

When I took one of the test, I was surprised by what my results were. The test I took was what color skin do you prefer dark or white? I know that in my mind it doesn't matter what color you are I don't judge by it. My results said a different thing. It said I STRONGLY prefer white vs. dark. Maybe I didn't really do it right or something because if it had something to do with the amount of wrong clicks then that would explain why I got the results I did.
I think what this test was suppose to show me was that I can behavior or act differently then what I think I do. You could have a different side to you then what you think, but I do know that I don't have a problem or care what color people skins are. When others come up to me because they are friends of my friends, that are a different color, I talk to them just has I would if I was talking to one of my friends.

Chapter 2

In this chapter I read a lot about the brain and how it functions. It tells the body to do a lot of different things and if one part of the body isn't working right it sends a message to the brain and it tries to fix it or the body just can't function. The brain acts as one and it can't do two things at once. For example if you put a pencil in both hands and someone told you to draw circle with your right hand and a square with your left, you can't do it. Unless, you are the man with two brains. Because doctors cut the part where the two brains connect his brain has two independent parts. He is able to concentrate on two different things and be able to do and act upon the different things. Your brain also to do with what and why you do things you do, so basically if you didn't have a brain you wouldn't be here because your brain does everything. While researching, scientist for out that your brains act and are associated to brains of mice and chimpanzees. That didn't really surprise me because we always learn that monkeys are very smart and that we came from them originally. This chapter was very interesting and I think I learned a lot of things of how the brain works and all the functions it does.