Developing Through The Lifespan

I have always been interested in child's psychology. I find the things they say and do just fascinating. So one thing I found very interesting was the fact that as a child, we learn by assimilation and then accommodation. Our whole thought process when we are young is basically a guess and check. The second thing I learned was the whole page about autism. Autism, a disorder marked by communication deficiencies and repetitive behaviors, goes after more boys than girls. The fact that Autism makes the person unable to communicate with others, in our world, almost impossible to interact with humans. Not being able to get a thought across through words is just a hard life. The third thing I learned is Erickson's stages of psychology. I found them interesting because of the issues in each stage. I think they fit pretty well. This whole chapter was very interesting on the human brain through the lifespan. There is a little cartoon on page 223 that is called "Too Much Coffee Man". I think it definetly explains our life in like 15 words.

Nature, Nurture, And Human Diversity

I learned that fraternal twins are not completely the same, they develop from two separate eggs. They can look the same though, but not usually.

I learned that separated identical twins growing up in different environments can still psychologically be identical. The two Jims had the same names and same traits right down to the name of their dogs. That is just weird.

I learned that heritability of certain traits can be in siblings, like Venus and Serena Williams. They are both very could at tennis, but, on the other hand, having to very athletic parents doesn't mean that their child will be athletic.

In the video Natural Selection/Evolutionary Psychology I found it interesting that some of our genes have been passed down from our ancestors in the caveman era. The survival instincts are deeply imbedded into our brains, it won't come out until we are in survival mode. I just thought that it was very interesting that some certain genes could be passed that far along.

In the other video, I thought their findings were somewhat true about what we are looking for in the opposite sex. Men are looking more for a home maker and women are looking more for a provider. In our day and age though, it is getting less common because our gender equality. Still, I think that, like the survival skills, it is in our brain to think this way.

Heritability

My mother and I are good cooks. I think this is more hereditary because her mother was a good cook too. We do not have the same political views, however. She is more democratic and I am more of a conservative republican. I think that is environmental because this is how I personally feel.

I think genetics have to do with some of my traits, but I think that my environment has shaped me as a person more. I was baptized Lutheran, but I do not go to that church. I go to a Christian church with my grandmother on my dad's side. The environment has helped me be more social and outgoing as a person.

The exercises helped me realize that heritability has to do with all your traits and ones that you might have thought were your own.

Twin Studies

The twin studies can help prove the concept of nature nurture. In certain studies, twins who grew up in different homes showed similarities in life choices. This proves that genes can influence personality.

If one twin is more nurtured by the parents than the other twin, then the more nurtured twin could grow up with more confidence than the one that didn't get as much nurturing; even though they both have the same genes, their personalities can differ because of the nurturing of the parents.

If parents are more nurturing to one child than another, they can the one while hurting the other. The first child could be more outgoing and social, the second child could be more shy and quiet; all because of how the parent nurtures the child.

Using twin and adoption studies, behavior geneticists can estimate the heritability of a trait.

Consciousness And The Two-Track Mind

I thought the studies on selective attention and selective inattention were very interesting. How we can completely ignore something while we are set on a task I think is very true. When I am trying to do my homework, I almost always try to shutout every other thing in a room. If my mom walked in I probably wouldn't notice.

I also thought the whole segment on sleep was interesting. I know I need to have a more consistent sleep schedule because I am always falling asleep in my classes. I would like to find out more on why we dream about what we dream about. There reasons stated in the book were suffering a trauma, something you were doing right before bed, or some stress.

I was very surprised to find that I unconsciously associated Native Americans with foreign, this was surprising. I know I don’t have a prejudice towards them though. I just thought that this test was more kind of telling us how we were raised. Like I said in the previous blog, I wouldn’t be surprised if the generations after us unconsciously had a prejudice against Arabian races.

Implicit Association Test

I think that this test kind of showed that we might be brought up to see things a certain way. That our unconscious minds can control our unconscious actions; or something of that nature.

In the back of our minds, we might have some kind of preferences with certain races. I think kids growing up these days might have an unconscious prejudice towards people of the Arabian nation.

I was not aware of some of the prejudices in my unconscious mind, although I think it was more me associating races as foreign other than my own.

I really don’t think I am prejudiced against anybody or a certain race. So, in my mind nothing changed, but it did show me how I unconsciously associate some races.

The Brain And Behavior

I played four activities and one I found interesting. The activity was called "Chance." This game proved to me that chance, in some cases, really isn't chance. Schrodinger believed that order was nothing more than statistical regularities. I think that he is right. I mean chance happens because of order. Our visual system is programmed to look at the order instead of the chance. But if you stop and think about it, without chance, there would not be order. I don't think I will be buying any lottery tickets soon, but it was interesting to know.

I watched the man with two brains and thought that the brain really is very complex. When you see something on the left it goes to your right brain, when you see something on the right it goes to the left side of your brain. The ability to speak resides mostly in the left hemisphere, and the right hemisphere can recognize faces. It is all very interesting. I would like to find out more about the inner workings of the brain.

In this chapter, I learned many things. First, I used to think that depression was caused from stress, or other outside forces. It also can be caused by an undersupply of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Second, I thought that the nervous system controlled everything. There are many systems within the nervous system that control the certain functions of the body. Thirdly, I thought that our evolutionary brains had evolved, but in the brainstem has automatic survival functions. This whole chapter was pretty enlightening though.