Gene Kang, Period 5

This video shows the remarkable memory of a chimpanzee. The chimpanzee participates in a game in which, after a random series of numbers are shown and then immediately concealed by identical blocks, it must correctly tap the cubes in chronological order. After watching the video, you'll quickly realize that the chimpanzee is definitely not using maintenance rehearsal, because there is hardly enough time for all the cubes to enter one's sensory memory and become encoded for storage, let alone repeat them in one's mind. Rather, the chimpanzee is most likely using elaborative rehearsal by making connections between the new information and the old information already stored in long term memory. Speaking of long term memory, another explanation to this incredible feat is the possibility that the chimpanzee may have just memorized the visual appearance of a specific number of "random" series via visual encoding, and the required hand movements that follow. You could argue that this could be short term memory, for a human being could easily learn the procedure in an hour give or take, but you must acknowledge the greatly inferior mental capacity of a chimpanzee, or any non-human animal for that matter, and thus, something that takes an hour for a human to learn may take months, if not years, for an animal. If this was the case, then the experimenters most likely used operant conditioning, specifically shaping, in order to get the chimpanzee to do what it has done in the video.

Beautiful Mind-Seokmin

This is not one of the recent movies, however, i personally enjoyed it a lot, and i thought it has some kind of relevance to psychology. This is a true story about a famous mathematician named John Nash who came up with Game Theory. He suffered schizophrenia, which is a mental disorder that displays split mind. One who has this disorder cannot distinguish reality from hallucination therefore experiences hard time dealing with others. If you have not watched it yet, go watch.

Sean Rowshandel

I have a bunch of links for you children today and we mustn't waste precious time on smalltalk.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623090705.htm

This is about a study that showed people to be more likely to want to listen to speech/someone asking them for a cigarette with their right ear, and that when they were asked to their right ear, they were more likely to give a cigarette. And this has been found many times previously to have the same result.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091119193632.htm

Part of this is cut off. Subjects in this were shown a computer screen with pictures and tried to put them in the same places the next day. The half who heard sounds that correspond to the pictures during sleep did better at putting the pictures back in their places.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118143259.htm

This is just another plasticity study showing that blindness affects size of parts of the brain involved with vision and hearing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0710-brain_scans_of_the_future.htm

Thought patterns of the past and future are really similar. Sounds about right.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091120000140.htm

Gamma waves and how they might affect thought.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081223091308.htm

So I thought I should add some about drugs, because those are usually lots of fun. This one is about cocaine making bees do 'the honey bee dance' more exaggeratedly, accept worse quality food so others can have better food, and just generally be more 'altruistic' to one another.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226193113.htm

"Activation of the glutamate receptor blocks hallucinogen-specific signaling and changes behavioral responses in mice."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120701.htm

Salvia peaks 'nearly 10 times faster than cocaine.'

Sorry this is so much, I hope it isn't.

Miranda Osterheld Round Two: Positive Reinforcement!

This video is pretty self explanatory. No, no, I don't think it could be any creepier or more ridiculous.



In this video, the baby's bizarrely adorable laugh is the positive reinforcement, which increases the likelihood that the man will make the "BLING" noise again. As you can see, this 'reward' never gets old and is on a continuous schedule of reinforcement, because the baby laughs every time.




In this 'instructional' self defense video, watchers would acquire knowledge of how to stop a mugger (most likely your friend that's tied up in the trunk of your car-she wants your money to buy crack!) by observational learning. Observational learning or social learning is efficient and adaptive. Kids are especially influenced by observational learning by watching their peers and parents. Good thing my little brother saw this video, so he's prepared with a gun when our neighbor is trying to mug him at the next barbecue.

The World Of Conditioning... SydZwick

So as most of you know, conditioning is part of our everyday life. From the time you are a little kid you learn, usual by trial and error, and with some classical, operate and vicarious conditioning what is right and wrong and what is nice and what hurts.

In this case, as 133,953,935 people have already discovered, Charlie and Harry are well on their way to joining the millions of people who have been affected by conditioning...
...It might just take them a little longer than most...

Pavlov's Law - Maggie Baxter

Okay, so we all have a pretty good idea about Pavlov's Law (Classical Conditioning). We know that he made his dogs drool, but its more interesting to think that we condition a human. In the video below that's what a group of kids did. They made an employee at a take-out joint associate the sound of the kids yelling with a customer coming in the door. After several times of yelling and a customer coming through the door, the employee looked up when the kids yelled expecting to see a customer come through the door. The video is a good example of our vocabulary words so take a look!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j85k8Epgas

Neggin Assadi --- Classical Conditioning

Ah Classical Conditioning... remeber Ivan Pavlov and his dogs? Of course you do ( you've just learned about it). But, what happens when it is applied to a different situation? Here's a video clip of a college student abusing his roommate through classical conditioning.

The uncondition stimulus ( US) : The airsoft gun being shot at the roommate

The unconditioned response ( UR): The roomate flinching

The condition stimulus ( CS) : The sound the button makes

The conditioned respose ( CR): the roomate flinching

US ---> UR ( Unconditioned Reflex)

CS + US ---> UR ( Conditioning)

CS---> CR ( Conditioned reflex)

Megan Darnell

After we talked about the Little Albert experiment in class the other day, I was curious as to what other unethical experiments were most famous in psychology. I found this top ten list and surprisingly, there are experiments SO much worse than Little Albert (believe it or not).

CLICK HERE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF

Sean Rowshandel

Annie Gauf - Optical Illusions

These two videos give examples of common optical illusions. There are three different kinds of optical illusions: physiological illusions are the idea of afterimages, literal optical illusions create images different from the objects that make then, and finally, cognitive illusions are "unconscious inferences." Optical illusions are effective because they change your perception of an object or image.

Maggie Baxter -Taste and Smell

Do you ever walk into the kitchen when your mom is baking a tasty treat and then BAM! you have an emotion come back to you from a memory you had with that treat. Why does this happen? Many of our likes and dislikes of taste and smell is due to the association of emotion. Smell receptors relay to the cortex which is the main cognitive recognition area of the brain and the olfactory receptors connect to the limbic system (emotion control area). So its no wonder that we have emotions and memories when we taste or smell. Here is a link describing how closely related the olfactory and glutamate systems are. Check it out!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WavjbJhiRAE

Conrad Berkompas- synesthesia.

This video is supposed to be kind of like the visual effects of synesthesia... This is such a cool condition that I had never heard of before AP psychology.

I did some more research on synesthesia... there are many different types of it. In one type, numbers, days of the week, or months of the year are paired with certain personalities. In another, different letters and numbers are seen in different colors. Overall, there are over 60 types.

It doesn't seem that psychologists care that much about synesthesia, probably because it doesn't really have that much of a negative effect on people. I think that the understanding of this disorder will just bring us closer to the understanding of the interactions within the brain.

I kind of wish that I had sinesthesia... I think it would make my life more interesting. Then again, it might get annoying. I guess it just depends on which type of syhesthesia you have.

Tara Senfi- LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE- SECOND VIDEO

This video is again on laughter, however it's more informative. Robert Kowalski describes why laughing is good for heart health. He shows how blood pressure can be lowered by laughter because of the signals it sends to your brain- the *serotonin* neurotransmitters. Also, how being in a bad mood and frowning can raise your blood pressure because of corisol and *norepinephrine* being released by the body.

For example, the documentary "The Secret" (which is all about the “law of attraction”, i.e. the power of the mind to help shape our reality) apparently features a lady who cured herself of cancer by purely watching comedies and telling herself repeatedly that she was in great health.

You should check out this for more information on THE POWER OF LAUGHTER!

Tara Senfi- LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE

This is a cute video made to show the significance of laughter! Laughter has been known throughout history to cure different types of illnesses from cancer to blood pressure. Laughter may be the best medicine, but even looking forward to having a good laugh can boost your immune system and reduce stress, according to US researchers at the University of California-Irvine.

"A clown is like an aspirin, only he works twice as fast."
Groucho Marx

"The art of medicine consists of keeping the patient amused while nature heals the disease."
-Voltaire

"Laughter in and of itself cannot cure cancer nor prevent cancer, but laughter as part of the full range of positive emotions including hope, love, faith, strong will to live, determination and purpose, can be a significant and indispensable aspect of the total fight for recovery."
-Harold H. Benjamin, PhD

Stroboscopic Motion

http://faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art105/img/muybridge_horse.jpg

And

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSrDnIVgVv0


Both of these links are examples of stroboscopic motion. Stroboscopic motion is an illusion when lights or images are flashed quickly and the brain perceives them as moving. A great example of stroboscopic motion is a flip book. One image is quickly replaced by another image with slight alteration to the original ,resulting is a 'motion' picture. The brain perceive these flashing images as a whole rather than seeing the pictures as separate images, following the concept of Gestalt Theory.