Monthly Archives: September 2014

Illusions occur when the brain attempts to perceive the future

“An illusion is a phenomenon in which our subjective perception doesn’t match the physical reality of the world.” (Nierenberg, 2009) In the Best Illusion of The Year Contest Arthur Shapiro and a couple of his friends submitted a project called “The Break of The Curve Ball” where their illusion was the effect of a baseball curve ball. The object of the project was to make you see how a curve ball looks at a batter’s point of view and why the abrupt shift of the pitch fool the hitter at different viewpoints with a physical effect and a perceptual puzzle all in one.
Arthur and his friends won this contest because they generated 2 different illusions. The first illusion is the rotating reversals where there were six rotating oval. When you look in the center, the six ovals are rotating counter-clockwise and when you look into your periphery the six ovals are rotating clockwise. The second illusion is the curve ball and it’s a single black and white ball moving with a blue circle near the edge. When you look directly at the spinning disk it will appear to fall vertically, then when you look at the blue circle the ball will appear to fall at a 20 degree angle. (Shapiro, 2009)
This type of illusion that Arthur created is called common fate from the Gestalt grouping laws that we learned in lesson 3 of perception. The reason why it’s common fate is because it’s based on movement like the hidden bird illusion. The object’s such as the rotating balls move together to make you perceive something at one viewpoint and then perceive something totally different from another view point.
Illusions main goal is to show you that you do not see what you think you do, but what your brain and visual system perceive and interpret. (Nierenberg, 2009) Arthur and his friends won that contest because they had the best example.

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. Cognitive psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience 3rd edition. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Shapiro, A. (2009). The break of the curveball. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://illusionoftheyear.com/2009/the-break-of-the-curveball/
Unit, C. (2009, October 13). Optical Illusions: When Your Brain Can’t Believe Your Eyes. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://abcnews.go.com/Health/EyeHealth/optical-illusions-eye-brain-agree/story?id=8455573

Can You Say Forgetful?

I am just about 20 years old but I am probably one of the hardest working people I know (not to toot my own horn or anything). I refuse to take less than 15 credits a semester no matter how my schedule looks. And I have one extracurricular activity that somehow has 4 or 5 roles that come along with it. In short I am on the go from the time I open my eyes at 6 am until the moment I walk in the house and crash on the couch around 12midnight.

Throughout the day I am getting emails, calls, and messages from people who need my assistance, my input, or in the words of Olivia Pope “handle it”. The only thing is I forget about 60% of the things that I should be doing or people I should be responding to. However I am very organized. I have a dry erase calendar that is propped up in my living room. My phone and laptop also have information for the month imputed and reminders are set and every week I make a to-do list. So how do I forget? Well half of what I need to remember never gets written down. When I go to open up my phone to make a note I end up forgetting why I pulled out my phone in the first place. That leads me to check the emails but as I start to read emails, I get asked to do something so I never respond to the email or write down that I need to go back to it. Of course it eventually hits me at a later time that I need to respond to this email, or call this person back and of course everything gets done.

I noticed that when I lay down I still am thinking about things that need to be done. By this point I have turned off my electronic devices and the lights are off so I don’t plan or writing it down. When I would wake up in the morning I would remember those things throughout the day a lot easier. For example if I said I need to call my doctor and schedule an appointment to check get my eyes checked as I am laying down going to sleep I would be more likely to remember to stop and call the doctor before the day is out, whereas if I thought about it while I was on the go during the day I would be more likely to forget.

As I was reading chapter 1 I was intrigued by the work of Steffan Gais and his coworkers done in 2006. They had high school students learn a list of 24 vocabulary words in English and German. One group studied the words and within 3 hours went to sleep while another group studied the words and stayed up for 10 hours before going sleep. 24-36 hours later both groups were tested and it was shown that those who went to sleep soon after studying got less wrong than those who stayed up for a long period of time after (Goldstein, 2011, p. 16).

National Institutes of Health has also done some research on sleep and memory. So far they have come to the conclusion that “sleep after learning is essential to help save an d cement that new information into the architecture of the brain, meaning that you’re less likely to forget.” Research has also shown that during sleep some memories are strengthened (Sleep On It, 2013).

Can I go to sleep every time I need to remember to do something? No of course not but at least when it comes to tests and quizzes I know that a good night’s sleep soon after studying will probably better my chances of me retaining the information I studied. And that is always helpful and useful information.

 

Contie, V., Defibaugh, A., Steinberg, D., & Wein, H. (2013, April 1). Sleep On It. Retrieved September 13, 2014, from http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/apr2013/feature2

Goldstein, E. (2011). Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. In Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Study While You Sleep

Measuring the Brain

With all of the topics that we have read in the course so far, there is one in particular that stands out to me as being incredibly interesting. That topic came in lesson two and it had to do with “measuring the mind”. For the longest time scientists thought that you could never study the brain, and that a person has to be dead in order for them to open them up and take a look inside. However, in 1924, Hans Berger changed that by introducing the electroencephalography and voila, the human brain came to life, even as the person was sitting there very much alive. Then there were the PET Scans, MRI’s and a multitude of other ways to take a look around a person’s mind. However, what happens when the person is not active, when they are asleep for example? Does the mind still process information or does it also take a siesta along with the rest of the body? The article that I found is called “To sleep, perchance to study: New research shows how brain learns while dozing”, and I found it particularly interesting because it answers that very question.

Every person in the world would like to go to bed, get a great night sleep and wake up in the morning having learned some new information. As a student I know I would. I would sure beat all of those late night study sessions with 2 hours of sleep. Scientists are now saying that it might actually be possible. This article states that while we are busy sleeping our brain does not sleep too, instead it stays up and is busy organizing and storing memories of events. “During sleep people are far from being totally shut down from the environment, the continue performing what they were doing before falling asleep and this can involve understanding the meaning of what is being said around them” is what Professor Sid Kouider said about the human brain and function. The experiment that was conducted included 18 volunteers which were outfitted with scalp sensors to detect brain waves. While they were awake the volunteers listened to a list that contained two categories of words: animals and objects. They were asked to push a button with their left hand for animal and right for object. The researchers monitored brain activity to determine which nerve cells were sparking during the activity. This was no surprise since the brain was awake and active for it to be responsive to the stimuli, however what happened next was amazing. The participants were taken into a dark room where the same experiment was conducted, only this time they were able to fall asleep should they choose. After the participants fell asleep, another list of animals and objects was read aloud to them, and the same parts of the brain that lit up before while they were awake and actively participating were the same ones that lit up now!

Professor Ken Pallar, a professor of psychology and the director of cognitive neuroscience program at Northwestern University said that these new findings show that people can indeed use their brains while sleeping. Pallar then proceeded to conduct an experiment of his own that involved music. He asked participants to learn a simple melody. Then the melody was played quietly for one half of the group while they slept and not for the other. It was no surprise that the group who heard the melody remembered it better than those who did not. However, all this great news and extra hours of sleep may come at a cost. According to Dr. Alon Avidan, a professor of neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center, the brain has too many tasks to do already when you are asleep. It has important functions that it needs to keep up with and if you try to overload it with other tasks while you sleep you may be doing more bad then good to yourself. If the brain does not do what it is designed to do during sleep, then sleep might not end up being that great and you might end up feeling more tired than you did before.

Like most good things in life, if they seem too good to be true, then they probably are. The amount of information that we have learned about the brain in the last six decades has been tremendous. Technology that was created such as the electroencephalograph, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and magnetic resonance imaging has given science a firsthand look at how the brain works. It has allowed researchers to be able to examine normal and impaired brain functions using noninvasive means. The images we have been able to see and monitor have saved countless number of lives and because of the techniques that we continue to develop in order to study the human brain we will be able to save countless more. Not only that, but we will be able to unlock the mysterious secrets our brain holds and continue to advance as a species, and that is pretty cool.

 

Reference:

Carroll, L. (2011). To sleep, perchance to study: New research shows how brain learns while dozing. Today Health. Retrieved from http://www.today.com/health/sleep-learning-new-research-shows-how-make-dozing-brain-work-1D80142412

Dr. Ford. Lesson 2. Cognitive Psychology.

Natural Born Thinkers

Brandon Proctor

 

In the world of baseball, most successful athletes are what we call five-tool players. They are able to run, hit, throw, catch, and… oh think! Growing up playing baseball I always considered baseball to be a game of instincts rather than one that required a great deal of game planning. I would sometimes wonder how I was able to react to the ball thrown or hit towards me when I only had seconds to make a decision. Most of the time, it seemed my best games were when everything seemed to come naturally. Little did I know back then that while I thought the decisions I made that made me successful on the playing field occurred due to no thought process taking place, in retrospect my mind was operating faster than I could run into the outfield fence.

As a pitcher and centerfielder during my glory days, I relied heavily on three senses, sight, hearing, and touching. To be able to stand in the outfield and hear the baseball sound like it had been thrown by Zeus from the heavens as it collided with the baseball bat let me know immediately that I needed to take a few steps back. I would use my sight to judge the depth of how far and fast the ball was travelling, the trajectory, and how soon it would be before it landed on the ground.  During my glory days, I credited my ability to track down fly balls to being the next Ken Griffey Jr., but what was really happening? The sound waves delivered from the bat connecting with the ball would enter my brain where they would then be converted into electrical signals that allowed the auditory part of my brain to hear the ball being hit. After I recognize the sound, signals are sent to my motor area which sends signals to my muscles allowing me to take the proper action to make the catch.

There were plenty of times when I thought the pitch thrown at me while in the batter’s box was surely headed over the fence, only to realize it was in the catcher’s glove. I realized how necessary it was to have the correct perception of what was really happening. A changeup, a pitch thrown deliberately slower to obstruct a hitter’s timing, would sometimes look exactly like a fastball depending on how hard it was spinning. If I expected the pitcher to throw a fastball next and my brain used top-down processing, seeing the ball was rotating like a fastball so it must be a fastball, then I would surely whiff at the next pitch. However, if I perceived the world I was in using bottom-up processing, I would notice the ball was rotating the same but approaching me slower allowing me to wait back on this pitch giving me a better chance to make contact.

As much as I would like to say I was a natural at the game of baseball, I would have to grant a lot of credit to my brain for being able to process information so quickly that led to me being successful. The amount of information that can be processed and acted upon within fractions of a second are astounding considering that any sport requires you to make quick decisions. Having signals delivered and a correct perception of the world around you can determine the outcome of many things we do in life. Sometimes you have to wonder, is your mind playing tricks on you?

Daycare Drama and Conditioning of Behaviors

This summer I took a role as a teacher in a daycare setting working with one year olds. I could easily relate with working with one year old children as a profession for the time being because I have a ten month old at home myself. From day one I watched as the children’s behaviors shifted and changed in front of me. One little boy on my first day was so happy and not an ounce shy, while all nine of the other one year old children in the room were very timid and shy especially in the presence of other certain staff members. I began to notice that the children’s behavior was directly influenced by who the other staff member was in the room with me.
While working with Chelsea, the full time staff member who worked solely in the ones room I noticed that the children’s behavior was more lackadaisical when listening to her instruction; sit down on the rug, fold your hands, feet off the tables, don’t climb on that, and so on. As with behaviorism, Chelsea never seemed concerned with why the children were behaving this way, she was only ever concerned with what the behavior they were exhibiting was.  Now when Meghan or Joan were in the classroom the children’s behavior completely changed in a way such that they played with the toys nicely and properly and did not climb on the toys and furniture in the room. I myself found an approach that the best way to interact with the children was in a manner of conditioning where when a undesired behavior occurred I removed the cause of the bad behavior,i.e. a toy, music, or separated the children that were misbehaving with each other.
The children soon stopped exhibiting the negative behaviors when they realized that everything would stop until the bad behaviors stopped.For example two children were arguing over a toy hitting and crying and yelling at each other, I would stop them from arguing by taking away the toy that was causing them to fight, and instruct them that we do not fight over toys we share. After numerous encounters of the children arguing over the toys it became apparent that by not sharing then the toys they wanted would slowly disappear and not come back until they started sharing. The older children in the one year old room that were getting ready to transition into the two year old room, were the first to realize what was happening. Soon enough the children started to treat my presence in the room to be like that of Meghan and Joans. By conditioning the children’s reactions to my reaction to the behavior they were exhibiting I was curbing their behaviors.
As with B.F. Skinners theory of Behaviorism I wanted to better understand that environment and how it affected the behavior of the children. A key factor to whether the children’s behavior was good one day to the next also depended upon which children showed up to the daycare. On days where only 4 or 5 children were present there were little to no incidents of bad behavior. But on days where all 10 children were present there was more and more negative behaviors occurring; such as hitting, biting, pushing, and pinching. By giving the children tangible rewards I noticed the larger group of children behaved better when all together. I found this to also work for my co-worker when she was having a bad day I informed her if she gave the children instruction on what she wanted them to do without telling them why she wanted such tasks done the children were more apt to listen and follow her instructions. The less information she gave the children and the less frazzled she got the more the children payed attention and listened to the instructions.
Overall after I showed Chelsea that she needed to take a step back from the situation and to not read into every behavior, she realized that bad behavior could be dealt with without having to know the direct reasoning behind the children’s behavior. With operant conditioning behaviorism was easily maintained and curtailed so that the children would work cohesively together when given instruction even when they were only 1 to 2 years old. By looking solely at behavior it was much easier to change a child’s reactions than to try and understand why the child would bite or fight over a toy with another child.

Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization

In order to explain how we perceive objects, a group called the Gestalt psychologists took the lead from Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inference and focused on what they called perceptual organization. Psychology.com defines the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization as how we see and experience different perceptual phenomena in the world around us. These theories of visual perception were first identified in the 1920s and are still used today in every aspect of our lives.

According to Gestalt psychology, the whole is different than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, Gestalt psychologists established a set of laws to explain this idea. The Law of Similarity explains how items that are similar tend to be grouped or clustered together. In example (A) you see horizontal rows of circles, but if you changed the picture so none of the circles are filled in you might see vertical rows of circles, or both. The Law of Pragnanz is when reality is organized or reduced to the simplest form possible. In example (B) we see the image as a series of circles rather than as many much more complicated shapes. The Law of Proximity is when objects near each other tend to be grouped together.  In example (C) the circles on the left appear to be grouped in vertical columns, while those on the right appear to be grouped in horizontal rows. Law of Continuity is when lines are seen as following the smoothest path.  In example (D) people tend to mentally form a continuous line. The black dots are seen as continuing the first segment of the line which is then non-related or separate from the red dots. The Law of Closure is when objects grouped together are seen as a whole. In example (E) we tend to overlook gaps and complete contour lines so we see familiar shapes and images.

(A)law-of-similarity  (B)Pragnanz[1]  (C)Proximity

(D)gestalt-continuation  (E)law-of-closure

When learning this concept a few familiar images came to mind; specifically Mac, IBM, and USA Network. You’re probably wondering what computers and a television network have to do with this theory, but I ask you to think about their brand logos. Companies have become proficient at these laws and regularly integrate them into their advertising. The Mac logo can be perceived as a smiling face, or a profile of a smiling face. The IBM logo is an incomplete image where blue lines of different lengths are arranged without touching, yet we perceive three letters. The USA Network logo uses the law of closure to create its insignia when in reality there is no “S”. Companies want you to buy their advertised service or product, and what better principle to use to send this message. In commercials you remember that catchy jingle, obnoxious volume level, unique images, etc. In the same regard, advertisers target the message toward potential customers using gestalt principles that catch your eye.

mac

IBMusa network          When we look at the world around us we don’t realize that our brain is given all sorts of visual input and then makes sense of our surroundings based on these fundamental ideas. You might not have even realized the thought and effort behind company logos until I mentioned it today in my blog. Here are a few other logo examples I challenge you to imagine before you type it into google: World Wildlife Fund, McDonalds, Major League Baseball (MLB), Texaco, NASA, and the Girl Scouts.  In summary, Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization make sense of what we see and advertising uses this idea to effectively grab your attention.

 

References:

Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization by Kendra Cherry. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws.htm

 

Perception

Rebecca Wielgosz

Blog Post #1

Perception is how one’s mind takes information in and how they make sense of it. On a daily basis people use perception to pass judgment on others, whether good or bad. I believe that this is something that is unavoidable.
One example of a negative perception would be from my son. Don’t get me wrong my son loves and adores me. I am a single mother and have raised him by myself his whole life. Now that he is growing and maturing, turning 7, he likes to speak his mind when things do not go his way. He has a strict schedule when it comes to school. It has to be this way in order for him to do all the things that he wants to do. He goes to school, plays hockey, soccer, attends CCD classes etc. If I do not keep a strict schedule to bed time and homework, he would be miserable and not be able to attend everything that he wants to. Many nights he is fine and will go to bed on time with out a fight. But there are plenty of times that he has questions and fought with me to stay up well past his bedtime. Those nights I am perceived as the “mean Mommy.” I know deep down he does not mean this. But to a 7 year old and his perception, he is not getting what he wants. He is not at the age yet where he would know that I am doing the things I do for his own good so he can do well in school and succeed in life.
An example of a positive perception would be “looking at the glass half full” instead of half empty. This is hard for many people, including myself. Daily life stressors can cause us not to think this way but I believe if more people did, a lot of people would be a lot less stressed. It is easier sometimes to think of the negative instead of a positive future. If one looked at a positive perception of a future, they may be able to accomplish more. Perception can be a tricky thing. How someone perceives life on a daily basis can effect their entire future.

Semantic Regularities in Zen

 

In their use of setting, meditation, and koan introspection, Zen masters demonstrate a sophisticated knowledge of the tenets of cognitive psychology and an understanding of the mechanisms responsible for perception. Through various manipulations of the concept of semantic regularities in particular, they make the most of these principles to impart wisdom to their students, helping them toward their goals of realization and enlightenment.

In Goldstein’s discussion of the mechanics responsible for perception, he describes bottom-up processing in which a person perceives information coming in through their sense receptors, as well as top-down processing in which a person’s recognition of an object or situation is based on their prior knowledge, experience, and expectations. He describes the latter as a mental process akin to a very rapid form of problem solving during which our mind attempts to identify, label, and impart meaning to what we perceive. Semantic regularities are among the tools people utilize in top-down processing to use prior knowledge to impart meaning, and Zen masters make use of these regularities (both in language and in scene recognition) to aid their teaching. Like other Buddhist sects, Zen rests on the eight pillars which are guidelines relating to appropriate life and conduct. Two of these pillars are “right understanding” and “right practice,” and it is toward these two goals specifically that masters utilize their understanding of cognition to assist their students.

In the article “Dogen and Koan” the author insists that Dogen, “the founder of the just-sitting school of Zen” did utilize the koan as one method of teaching this “right understanding.” The koan is a method of Zen instruction that uses apparently nonsensical questions which encourage the practitioner to subvert or bypass their everyday sense of logic in order to perceive higher truths. Zen does not trust mere logic to bestow a sense of ultimate reality, and uses to koan to help overthrow logical processes. For example, when investigating the nature of the self, it is true that you are yourself, your familiar identity, but that is not the whole truth. You are also interconnected with every other entity in the universe, what Buddhists refer to as being “Buddha-nature,” that is to say you are both one and two and infinite simultaneously, or as the masters say, “not one, not two.” By contradicting logic, the master flips the notion of linguistic semantic regularity on its head to guide others toward a deeper conception of reality.

In contrast, the Zen master utilizes the concept of semantic regularities in a very straightforward manner as it pertains to teaching “right practice.” In Zen, the Sangha refers to the community or brotherhood, and Zen monasteries usually have a meditation hall, or zendo. On page 65, Goldstein writes, “semantic regularities are the characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes.” People will perceive what they expect to perceive in a given setting. A zendo is where walking and sitting meditation take place for a Sangha. Meditation is not undertaken with any goal in mind, it is the means and the end of practice, hence Dogen’s admonition, “just sit.” By using the setting of the zendo, people expect to realize a deeper sense of interconnectedness, and their perceptions fall in line with these expectations.

While in their oral teachings Zen are communicated through paradoxes and mystic irrationalities, in practice it is deceptively simple. In its philosophical underpinnings, it inverts the linguistic sense of semantic regularities to expand minds, in its everyday practice, relies on a practitioner’s semantic regularities in the zendo in order to guide one’s expectations in order to facilitate awakening.

Sources:

-Dogen and Koan: the Ultimate Truly Definitive unquestionable Smoking Gun. (n.d.) Retrieved September 12, 2014 from http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2014/08/dogen-and-koan-the-ultimate-truly-definitive-unquestionable-smoking-gun.html

-Goldstein, E. Bruce. (2008)Cognitive Psychology (Third ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.