Author: sus826

Firstly, schizophrenia is a mental disorder that usually appears in late adolescence or early adulthood and is characterized by delusions, hallucinations, and other cognitive difficulties. There two categories of symptoms that a person who is diagnosed to have schizophrenia will present with. Those categories are positive and negative. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are when a symptom is added to a person’s current state. This would include delusions, inappropriate emotions, disorganized thinking, and hallucinations. These behaviors are abnormal and are because of an individual’s schizophrenia. Positive symptoms are often found to last longer than negative but are easier to treat. This differs from Negative Symptoms which are behaviors that have taken away from their usual self. A person who suffers from negative symptoms of schizophrenia would present with rigidness, monotone voice, being mute, and emotionless behavior or apathy. Simply, negative symptoms take away and positive symptoms add. Positive symptoms are behaviors that should not be present in an individual, while negative symptoms are behavior that are expected of a person. A person with schizophrenia may present with all the symptoms, some of them, or only negative or positive symptoms. Most individuals would present with a mix from both types of symptoms.
An example of these symptoms would include an individual with schizophrenia that exhibits racing thoughts, delusions, apathy, and a monotone voice. This individual presents with both types of symptoms, which is most commonly found in individuals with schizophrenia. The positive symptoms would be delusions and racing thoughts. The negative symptoms would be apathy and the monotone voice. While these symptoms are common, each individual person will present with a different mixture of symptoms. To treat these symptoms, a doctor will likely present them with medications such as and various therapies. Schizophrenia is lifelong struggle and affects one percent of the population.

Perceptual constancy is when your retinal image changes, but the percept surrounding that image always stays the same. An example of this is when you see a black dog in the distance that looks like your aunt’s German Shepard. The black dogs begins to run towards you and even though you see the dog change shape as it appears closer to you, you still perceive it as a dog no matter the distance, lighting, or view. While in the distance the dog also appears to be smaller, I still perceive it to be the exact size I know it is up close. This could be for any object that you are familiar with. Like a car, bus, bug, person, etc. You associate these objects as having a familiar shape, color, size, or even location. Therefore, no matter the perspective, lighting, or even distance, you will still see that familiar object.

In my own personal life, I use the CATA buses in State College quite frequently. So, when I see a bus turn the corner to head towards my bus stop, I know it is a bus because it has a color and shape that I am familiar with. No matter at what angle I view the bus or if I can truly see the colors, I still am able to associate some type of constancy with it, like color or size. If the weather is inclement and I have little visibility, but I can still see the shape enough, I am able to recognize it as a bus. I also associate the location with the bus. This means that I would not expect to associate these buses with another town or even in a place where such buses do not exist. Furthermore, even though I know that a bus turning the corner appears as smaller in my perception, I fully know that it is not truly smaller.

Sensory adaptation is diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation. This means that overtime if presented with a constant stimulus, an individual will begin to ignore that stimulus. The purpose of sensory adaptation is so that an individual can direct their attention on other stimuli in the environment around them. Sensory adaptation is very resourceful, otherwise our brains wouldn’t be able to comprehend all that is happening due to sensory overload. Our five senses are constantly feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling, so it would become very easy for our attention to be taken away from all of these senses. It is not voluntary, meaning that we cannot control whether or not we adapt to that stimulus. Such as, someone cannot choose whether or not they continue to taste a flavor.
An example of long-term sensory adaptation would be wearing a new bracelet. At first you put it onto your wrist and it feels strange. It is unnatural to your body and your nerves can feel it on your skin. While this may bother you at first, your mind begins to think about other things in your life and soon you forget you’re wearing it. This is the same for taking it off. You decide to remove the bracelet and suddenly you feel like something is missing, but overtime this feeling wears off and your attention is focused on something else entirely. This is body’s way of adapting and focusing your attention onto something else in your environment. An example of short-term sensory adaptation would be walking across a gravel road compared to a grass field. When you do this, your body recognizes that you are making that step into a different terrain but it does not keep your attention to this factor. Your brain quickly changes its attention to other stimuli it is either automatically drawn towards or selected to.