![]() Looking at any given high school, you can find typical social groupings such as the jocks, the nerds, the cheerleaders, the goths, the basket cases, and so on. These cliques may seem simply like the stereotypical adolescent groups, but they actually are very important in the development of a teenager’s sense of self. One of the most important social tasks of teenagers is this search for a unique identity. Before adolescence, young children are most strongly attached to their parents. However once adolescence hits, teenagers decrease their attachment to their parents and move increasingly toward peers. Because of this, friend groups are extremely influential on the adolescents in them. As these teenagers attempt to create their own identity, they may experiment with different social groups and even different identities. James Marcia proposed one method to understanding identity development. To assess the stage of identity, Marcia asked adolescents a series of questions involving their exploration of and commitment to issues of occupation, politics, and religion. After reviewing the results, Marcia was able to classify the adolescents into one of four categories: identity-diffusion status, foreclosure status, moratorium status, and identity-achievement status. These categories range from individuals with no firm commitments to the issues to individuals with a stable and coherent identity formed from personal experiences. Studies of the adolescents who go through Marcia’s stages of development also show that the road to a teenager’s identity is not a clear one. Some teens may adopt the beliefs of their parents, the first opinion they've heard. Others might spend a long amount of time trying different identities and beliefs before settling on one. Again, it can be seen that a teenager’s peer group is monumentally valuable in providing information about the self-concept. These almost cliche high school cliques allow adolescents to explore different identities. Even more important, these friend groups can provide an invaluable sense of belonging and acceptance during a very confusing time for teenagers.
2 Comments
![]() In our lives, we see different styles of how parents treat their children. Many parents could be very strict to their child and not let them out of the house as much, while others are a little lax and leave some of the responsibilities to the children. Parents chose to stay with their kids and keep watch of them such as when they are dealing with problems, other parents choose to leave their child with a babysitter and choose to work instead. So what makes a good parent? Does it depend on the parent’s own background style of how they were raised? Let’s find out. All parenting styles are all welcomed, but it has to be adapted according to the behavior of the child. However, there are two things that should be known that this is considered “a must” for parenting: first, babies need a conscientious mother who does not do any bad intake of drugs, smoking, or alcohol during pregnancy in order for the baby to be healthy. Also, infants need caretakers who are consistently available and who are loving and supportive for their child in order to have a secure base of knowledge of what is right or wrong. However, if the mother is an adolescent, then there is a higher rate of academic failure for the child because the mother is not as prepared compared to mother who have gone through older age. Though mothers and crucially helpful in a child’s early developmental skills, fathers are also a big help in the process of child development even though they are not as physically involved as much as the mothers. However, if there is a father figure in the child’s life especially early on, the child would gain skills such as being cognitively and socially competent and one who is more emphatic towards others. Based on the diagram at the top, there are two major stimuli to determine the parent style: more or less demanding and more or less responsive to the children’s desires. The spectrum is being authoritarian, authoritative, rejecting-neglecting, and permissive. Both being authoritarian and permissive are both in the opposite ends. One is parents who is way over protected and responds in a strict accent and one type is lack the sense of authority and gives all of the responsibilities to the kid. Both authoritative figures such as authoritative or rejecting-neglecting styles which is around the middle of the spectrum. Each of the four parenting styles has their own strengths and weakness. For example, if parents used the authoritative style, then kids would have a better psychological adjustment, school performance, and maturity. There are also some cultural backgrounds which support why certain parents would choose certain styles. Overall, each child is different and parent must be adaptable to these changes. Though the focus is on child and their development, parent must in return love and support each other to create a relationship that mother and father contribute to household tasks. In result, parents have a more intimate relationship as husband and wife as well as mother and father and they are in a more happy and successful relationship. Red Ribbon Week is an annual week devoted to bringing awareness to the harmful effects that drug and alcohol use can have on one’s life. To commemorate this year’s Red Ribbon Week, a post about the drug crisis in America seems fitting. Currently, drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50, says The New York Times. Moreover, this death toll is continuing to increase at an alarming rate. This can attributed primarily to the opioid crisis. Each day, more than 90 Americans die after overdosing on opioids. It is important to be informed about opioids and their detrimental effects in order to help combat the opioid epidemic in American society.
Opioids are chemicals that increase activity in opioid receptor neurons in the brain and in the digestive system, producing euphoria, slower breathing, and constipation. This is possible because opioids have a similar chemical makeup as endorphins. Opioids can both be produced naturally and created synthetically. Common opioids include prescription pain relievers, heroin, opium, and morphine. When morphine was first created, it was meant to be a cure for opium addiction, Unfortunately, it turned out to be more addicting than the raw opium. When heroin was first produced, it was believed to be a stronger, but less addictive pain killer. Again, however, it was soon found out to be twice as addictive as morphine. Furthermore, the danger of heroin can be seen in the fact that it has a low safety ratio, the ratio of the dose that is likely to be fatal divided by the normal dose needed to feel the effects of the drug. Opioids function by activating the sympathetic division of autonomic nervous system. This causes blood pressure and heart rate to increase, typically to dangerous levels. Simultaneously, opioids also have an effect on the parasympathetic division. These effects include insomnia, restlessness, irritability, vomiting, as well as a strong craving of the drug. Opioids have a powerful psychological dependence in addition to severe withdrawal effects. This makes it almost impossible for abusers and addicts to quit using these drugs. Overall, the use of these drugs ultimately leads to major physical and psychological harm. Getting enough sleep is an important part of keeping good health. However, it isn’t always attainable. As a high school student, I can attest to the lack of sleep us teenagers get over the school year... and pretty much all the time. But many adults also don’t get enough sleep. According to a recent poll, about one-fourth of American adults say they get a good night’s sleep only a few nights a month or less. These people are suffering from a sleep disorder known as insomnia, defined as persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep. The amount of sleep a person needs varies with age. School-aged children and teenagers usually need at least 9 hours of sleep per night, and most adults require 7 to 8 hours per night. The most recent study by the National Sleep Foundation suggests that adults should get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, and yet Americans now average fewer than 7 hours. Getting enough sleep may be difficult when school and work demand early wake up calls. At the same time, we might stay up late during the weekends to enjoy festivities. But a consistent deficit of even 1 to 2 hours a night can have a significant impact on our health. Some of the effects of sleep deprivation include anxiety, obesity, hypertension, memory impairment, and, if severe and extended, may even result in death. But among the most common results of a prolonged lack of sleep is diminished performance. To get a feel of what our sleep patterns reveal about how we feel throughout the day, I created a sleep poll, recording the responses of 95 subjects. 86 were 17 or younger, and 9 were 18 or older. 54.74% of the respondents only get 4-6 hours of sleep a night and 37.89% only get 6-8 hours of sleep. 3 of the 95 people even get less than 4 hours of sleep. On the other end, only 4 of the 95 get over 8 hours of sleep. Of the 9 adults only 3 are getting the right amount of sleep. As for the 17 and younger crowd only 4 out of the 86 are getting enough sleep. Yet 89.47% of the subjects overall are aware of how much sleep someone their age should be getting. Finally, 80.00%, the majority of the subjects, showed that they feel drowsy throughout the day. These results verify that not getting enough sleep take a negative toll on our daily lives. As can be seen, good sleep is important to our health. So remember to get the right amount of rest. Sleep tight! ![]() Unless you were living under a rock, you’ll likely remember the two-year old infamous fiasco of “The dress.” Going viral on February 26, 2015, “The dress” was a photograph of a two-colored dress that ignited passionate arguments between the most peaceable of people. The dispute was over the colors of the dress, whether it was blue and black or white and gold. If you have not seen the dress, this dispute may seem incredibly irrational. How could the entire world be ensure of the color of a dress? Surprisingly, the answer is fairly simple: our perception of color depends on interpreting the amounts of light in a room of scene. Because the normal indicators of lighting are not present in the photo, people perceive the colors of the dress in different ways. Thanks to an ability called color constancy, we are able to assign fixed colors to objects under a variety of different lightings. However, the photograph does not give us these lighting cues as the striped dress monopolizes the majority of the photo. So we must make our own judgments about the lighting in the room in question. Some people viewed the dress as being white and gold in a dark shadow. The remaining population saw a blue and black dress, but washed out in a bright light. Quickly, after the image went viral, the answer was released. The dress was indeed blue and black. Still, this answer did not appease everyone as the debates still ensued and viewers were stupefied. Had the photograph included more of the room or more skin tones, there would have been more clues to the lighting in the room. With these cues available, this worldwide dispute could have been avoided. Still, it was fascinating phenomenon that astounded the Internet. Plus, who doesn't love a little bit of healthy debate? Learning about the structures and functions of the different anatomical regions of the brain is one of the most confusing and complicated units in introductory psychology. Part of the learning process in my classroom has always included different activities to visualize and label the different regions of the brain. Sometimes that included markers and big sheets of newsprint and once we even used cauliflower and food coloring (that one was kind of a disaster).
In order to build something entirely digital for our blog, I decided to turn to the new diagramming feature on the popular vocabulary learning site Quizlet. In order to increase the originality of the process, I decided to construct an original diagram on the classroom whiteboard and have students record a fully detailed description of their assigned portion of the brain. There is something about having students record their voices that increases the ownership and importance of a response- I am hoping it also helps with retention. The result is impressive, but could be improved, for instance, definitions should not include the name of the region- or else it cannot be used for study purposes. Also, after using the diagramming feature, we could have more accurately highlighted the specific portions with a lasso-type tool. Please take a moment to share this inventive method of studying the exterior portions of our brain anatomy! Have you noticed that it is easier to understand what someone is saying when you are looking at them versus when you cannot see them? This is due to sensory interaction. Sensory interaction is the working together of different senses to create experience. We experience sensory interaction when we eat or watch a movie, since the senses are used at the same time. Likewise, the visual aspect of the speech is as important as the hearing aspect. The McGurk Effect displays this, as it is an error in perception that occurs when we misperceive sounds because the audio and visual parts of the speech are mismatched. In this video, the person’s lips make the shape of “bah” and “fah”, and the audio all the way through plays “bah”. However, we hear a change in sound when his lips shape the word “bah” and when his lips shape the word “fah”. This illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound. The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound.
Another example of sensory interaction is synesthesia. Synesthesia is an experience in which one sensation creates experiences in another. Examples are experiencing color when tasting a particular food or by hearing sounds when seeing certain objects. Also, sensory interaction include the experience of nausea that can occur when the sensory information being received from the eyes and the body does not match information from the vestibular system. ![]() In places around the world, there is a war at different periods of time in history. Though each war is different, there is one common topic that goes around in all wars: friendly fire. Friendly fire is the accidental shooting of one’s solider such as during a battle or during lookout in the nighttime. So why does friendly fire occur? Why might soldiers mistakenly fire on their own soldiers? Well, in the study of psychology there is an accurate answer to that. Friendly fire can be analyzed using signal detection analysis. This is a technique used to determine the ability of the perceiver to separate true signals from background signals. Based on the picture, there four possible outcomes to detect if your signal was accurate: a hit, a miss, a false alarm, or a correct rejection. The spots a person would want to receive is and a hit and a correct rejection because it is a correct response whether the stimulus is present or absent. Based on a specific experiment one chooses to experiment on, such as friendly fire during war, it creates two measures: sensitivity and response bias. People with sensitivity refers to “the true ability of the individual to detect the presence or absence of signals,” much like people who have better hearing or eyesight than people who have a lack of these senses. Another measure is the response bias which is a behavioral tendency to respond “yes” to the trials. In the examples of friendly fire, when a soldier has to look keep watch for any potential threats: one must have a good reflexes or good sense of their surroundings to make the right call of when to shoot. However, depending on the person’s psychological state, one can fluctuate their response bias whether or not to make the right move. When a person is uneasy, they might adopt a lenient response bias. Whether or not this is accurate, your brain still delivers a warning signal. As a result, this can be a good or bad result, which in turn can save or lose lives in war. ![]() Everyone knows that the brain has two hemispheres—the right and the left—which perform specific functions. However, the lesser known but equally important organ called the corpus callosum, is essential to communication between the two hemispheres. The corpus callosum is located above the thalamus and under the cortex. As the largest bundle of nerve fibers in the body, it allows the two hemispheres of the brain to connect through neural messages. By providing a highway for communication, the corpus callosum allows the two hemispheres to synchronize and coordinate. For example, the two hemispheres are lateralized; the left hemisphere will control the right side of the body while the right hemisphere will control the left. One interesting demonstration of brain lateralization was an experiment in 1955 by Ronald Meyers, who discovered the function of the corpus callosum. He trained cats to press their nose against the screen when they saw a circle, but not a square. Then, he cut the optical fibers intertwining between the two halves of the brain, but he did not cut the corpus callosum. So, the left eye was connected to the left brain, the right eye to the right, and both brains were connected by the corpus callosum. Then, he trained the cats to do the same experiment, but only with the left eye. Then he tested them, but using the right eye. If the cats completed the experiment successfully, that would mean the information from the left eye had traveled to the left brain, through the corpus callosum and then to the right brain. The cats successfully completed the experiment, proving the corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres. Meyers took his experiment further by using the same experiment, but this time also severing the corpus callosum; those animals failed, since their hemispheres were not able to relay information to each other. Meyers' experiment proves the importance of the corpus callosum; however, what happens if one loses that integral connection between their hemispheres? In the case of some sufferers of epilepsy, surgeons may cut a part of or completely remove the corpus callusum in an effort to stop epileptic discharges from spreading from one side of the brain to the other. Luckily, the brain is a marvelous learning tool and can be taught to function despite obstacles. Those who have their corpus callosum removed, called split-brain patients, relearn how to perform everyday activities. There have been many studies on split-brain patients; one example is the detailed research experiments of Michael Gazzaniga, who has studied split-brain patients for five decades. One such experiment included a patient who looks at a computer screen that is divided in half, so that the right eye could only see the right side of the screen, and the left eye the left screen. Remember, the right eye of each patient is still connected to the left hemisphere, and the left eye to the right. So, when the right screen flashed a picture, the right eye sent the image to the left brain. Since the left brain is verbally dominant, the patient was able to name the picture aloud. However, when the same picture was flashed to the left eye, the left eye sent the image to the right brain, which could not speak the name of the image aloud, but could use the left hand to draw the picture on a piece of paper. Work cited: http://brainmadesimple.com/corpus-callosum.html http://hubel.med.harvard.edu/book/b34.htm http://www.nature.com/news/the-split-brain-a-tale-of-two-halves-1.10213 https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=zx53Zj7EKQE Today, there are many drugs that mimic neurotransmitters to influence our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. These drugs can reduce or boost the activity of a neurotransmitter.
An agonist is a drug that has chemical properties similar to a particular neurotransmitter and thus mimics the effects of the neurotransmitter. Agonists binds to the dendrites and believing that the drug is the neurotransmitter, decides to excite the neuron. An example of an agonist is cocaine. Cocaine is an agonist for the neurotransmitter dopamine. Since dopamine produces a feeling of pleasure when released by neurons, cocaine creates a similar feeling. There are two types of agonists: direct binding and indirect binding. A direct binding agonist attaches directly to the receptor sites. An example of a direct binding agonist is apomorphine which binds to dopamine receptors. On the other hand, the indirect agonist enhances the amount of neurotransmitters affected but does not have a specific agonist activity at the receptor. It works by working through other means. An antagonist does the opposite job. An antagonist is a drug that reduces or stops the normal effects of a neurotransmitter. When the antagonist is ingested, it binds to the dendrites and stops communication among the neurons. Caffeine is also an antagonist for adenosine, which reduces the adenosine’s effects. Because adenosine typically acts as an inhibitor at the synapse, inhibiting an inhibitor leads to behavior excitation. The antagonists also have direct and indirect acting antagonists. The direct binds and blocks the neurotransmitter receptors. The indirect prevents the release of neurotransmitters. An example of an indirect antagonist is the the drug Reserpine. Buprenorphine is a partial agonist. It activates the opioid receptors but to a much lesser degree than a normal agonist. Buprenorphine also acts as an antagonist, which means that it blocks other opioids while allowing some to suppress the symptoms. There are some differences between the agonists and antagonists. Agonist drugs works at the time of relaxation of muscles, while antagonist drugs works during the phase of muscle contraction. Also, agonist is a substance, which combines with the cell receptor to produce some reaction that is typical for that substance. However, antagonist is a chemical, which opposes or reduces the action. |
AuthorHello. Welcome to all things psychology. Enjoy! Archives
December 2017
Categories
All
|