Month: March 2024

Throughout the world around us, we take color for granted. We are gifted the gift of color through our vision. However, people with color blindness are not able to see the world around us. Color blindness is a condition that affects lots of people around the world. Most people are trichromats which is considered normal. However, people around us can also be dichromats. People with color blindness are now faced with challenges in the world. Simple tasks like putting on an outfit or even just seeing what color you should paint your walls.

Color blindness affects my life as my dad is color blind. He struggles daily doing simple tasks that affect his life. The rest of my family helps him out by helping him pick out his clothes or explaining the color of things around us. My dad owns a construction company and has faced challenges with picking out certain colors for his construction sites. Just recently, he was incharge of picking out colors for the lobby of his new work office. As they started putting the tile and painting the walls, my aunt (who works with him) noticed the colors were not matching and did not make sense. She went to him concerned thinking he was wanting the colors to look like that, but really he just had no idea he did that. My aunt tried to explain what the colors looked like since he could not see the colors fully.

There are many different types of color blindness. The rarest color blindness is called achromatopsia which is a condition where people only see the world in gray. The most common form of color blindness is having the difficulty of distinguishing red and green hues. This condition occurs when there’s an issue with pigments in the cones of the retina which are the cells responsible for detecting color. This affects people’s lives so much. Although color blindness affects lots of people, humans have learned to live life through this condition. Instead of viewing color blindness as a hurdle, we can use it to learn more about humans and to soon grow as a society.

Eliana Bluestone

3/17/24

PSYCH 100

Attachment

In this unit, we learned how children form their first emotional bond. When children are born, they form an emotional connection through bodily contact. Most of the time this safe connection is their mother who gave birth to them. Once infants develop a strong bond with their caregiver they develop a sense of fear when they aren’t around or when meeting new people. When infants are around strangers and their caregiver isn’t around, they start to become in distress. Infants want to be around their caregivers 24/7 and start to follow their every move. Developing these bonds is very important to infant development. If they don’t have this kind of emotional connection it can lead them to be withdrawn from other people because they do not know how to form these kinds of connections. This connection goes further than whether or not the caregiver is providing them food but more if they are providing them that sense of security. For example, the experiment that Harry Harlow conducted showed that a monkey preferred a “mother” that was softer rather than a “mother” who was providing food but was made out of wire. I was attached to my mom when I was younger and always wanted to be with her 24/7. My dog, Hank, is also obsessed with my mom. We adopted Hank from the shelter when he was 3 months old. Odds are he didn’t get to have a connection with his mother. Right when we got Hank my sister and I went on a week trip so my mom was Hank’s main caregiver. I think during that time period he got to develop an emotional connection to her. Now, Hank follows my mom around everywhere she goes and when she is gone he will just cry and wait for her to come back.

Sensation and perception are fundamental processes that allow us to experience and interpret the world around us. Sensation refers to the process of detecting stimuli from the environment and transmitting this information to the brain. Perception, on the other hand, involves interpreting and organizing this sensory information to form a coherent mental representation of the world. Together, these processes shape our understanding of reality and influence our behavior. Sensation begins with stimuli. We pick up physical energy from the environment and convert it into electrical signals that can be processed by the brain. For example, in vision, light is detected by the retinas in our eyes, which then transmit signals to the occipital lobe of the brain through the optic nerve. Perception involves the interpretation of these sensory signals to create a meaningful understanding of the environment. This process is influenced by various factors, including past experiences and genetics. For example, two people may perceive the same piece of art differently based on their unique experiences. One of the key principles of perception is the concept of perceptual constancy, which refers to the ability to perceive objects as stable and unchanging despite changes in sensory input. For example, we can recognize a friend’s face even if the lighting conditions or viewing angle change. Another interesting concept is the idea of sensory adaptation, which refers to the process of repeated stimuli becoming less sensitive with time, for example, if you were able to stare (without moving your eyes) at an object for an extended period of time that object would eventually vanish from sight. Another factor of sensation and perception is the concept of attention. The world contains far too much information for us to process all at once so we must select a few things at once to focus on at a time. This is called selective attention, which allows us to process information that is most important to us but leads us to focus on a limited part of our environment. This can lead to change blindness, or failing to detect visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere. For example, you may miss a gorilla walking across a room when you are focused on people throwing a basketball around. In conclusion, sensation and perception are complex processes that play a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the world. By studying these processes, we can gain valuable insights into the workings of the mind and develop a deeper appreciation for the richness of human experience.

Psychological rehearsal is defined as the “cognitive process in which information is repeated over and over as a possible way of learning and remembering it”. There are two different types of rehearsal, elaborative and maintenance, that the brain uses to process and learn new information. Maintenance rehearsal is used to commit information to short-term memory, which is then often forgotten in a short period of time. Have you ever looked at a phone number and repeated it in your head until you had the chance to get on your phone and dial it? This is an example of maintenance rehearsal.

I’m going to focus on the other form of rehearsal, elaborative. It is a type of rehearsal that is useful in transferring information into long-term memory. Examples of this would be using rhymes, puns, or mnemonics when trying to remember information. I’m sure you’ve heard of the mnemonic “Never Eat Soggy Waffles’’ when trying to learn compass directions at a young age. This is something that is in most people’s long-term memory for the rest of their lives. 

Elaborative rehearsal also involves thinking about the meaning of information and connecting it to other information already stored in the memory. This works very effectively by associating new information with already existing information in the long-term memory. In order for it to be successful, the person has to engage with the new information in a way that creates meaningful connections to previously learned things. Engaging with material you are trying to learn in different ways can help you remember the information in the long run. Examples of this would be working in study groups and explaining to others what a term means and how you can apply it to different situations and contexts. Or attaching a personal story to a term to help create a meaningful connection that will not be forgotten. Elaborative rehearsal can be very beneficial when trying to remember large pieces of information, such as sentences or even lists and paragraphs. 

A great example of using a mnemonic to remember information has to do with my father. As I decided to go to Penn State and rush a fraternity my dad shared with me some of the things about the brotherhood and house that he was required to know and remember when he was in college. As a student at Lehigh trying to become part of a fraternity he was required to memorize every brother’s first and last name. While at first this didn’t seem that hard to me, he explained that there were over 80 brothers he had to know. This seemed almost impossible, but he had a way of remembering it. He used a mnemonic, which in his case was 5 or 6 sentences long and each word’s first letter correlated to each brother who was a part of the fraternity. Then when he was required to write all 80 names on a piece of paper, he would start by writing out the mnemonic and then fill each name using the first letter to help jog his memory. To this day, 35 years later, he is still able to write down almost 90% of the brothers’ names. Through repetition and remembering the mnemonic he was able to store this information into his long-term memory and he can now remember each brother’s first and last name for years to come. 

Ultimately, elaborative rehearsal is crucial in being able to remember information and store it in your long-term memory. Through relating things you learn to personal life experiences, using rhymes or mnemonics, and being able to explain and define terms to friends and study partners, you can remember important information for the rest of your life. 

 

Sources:

• Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, February 4). Memory rehearsal. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_rehearsal#:~:text=Elaborative%20rehearsal%20is%20a%20type,information%20already%20stored%20in%20memory. 
• chris.drew.98031506. (2023, August 24). 10 elaborative rehearsal examples. Helpful Professor. https://helpfulprofessor.com/elaborative-rehearsal-examples/ 
• Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, November 6). Rehearsal (Educational Psychology). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehearsal_(educational_psychology) 
• Google. (n.d.). Never Eat Soggy Waffles Graphic. Google search. https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=8d12fa747601ad8a&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS1081US1081&sxsrf=ACQVn0_pC-2ZJXT_t1X5WMGLwmffbdCSLw%3A1710726184855&q=never%2Beat%2Bsoggy%2Bwaffles&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjBn7nU1_yEAxX3EFkFHU4hBcUQ0pQJegQIDxAB&biw=1470&bih=833&dpr=2#imgrc=bOs9-cO5I_iwUM 

With 10% of the male population being colorblind, everyone knows someone with this deficiency. For me, it’s every biological male on my mothers side of the family. Being a woman myself, I am not colorblind, but do however, possess the gene that could be passed down to my children. Being color blind means that you see color differently than most people and have difficulty telling the difference between certain colors.

Humans are able to see color because we have photoreceptor cones, behind our retina in the eye. The three cones receive red, blue, and green light, allowing us to see colors across the rainbow. As we learned in class, most people are trichromats, meaning they see the world normally, through the three photopigmentation cones. However, dichromats are people who don’t have a functioning third cone. Depending on their type of colorblindness, dichromats can’t receive either red, green, or blue light. The lost color gets replaced by a beige, neutral tone. Colorblindness is a genetic trait that gets passed down through family generations. It is something you are born with and wouldn’t wake up with on a random day later in your life.

Although I personally do not have a color blind deficiency, I am still affected by it and have my own experience. Every biological male on my moms side of the family is colorblind. I do not have a brother, so the closest colorblind male to me is my uncle. Since this is a genetic gene I possess, my future son will most likely have the color deficiency along with my nephews and grandsons.

Learning this in psych class was very interesting to me because of the connection I could make with my family and even with some of my friends. I knew that colorblindness was a hereditary trait but I didn’t know the details of it or how the different cones function.

Sources:

Andreo, Cary. “Color Blindness – A Guy’s Guide: What Every Man Needs to Know About Their Health.” Clemson University Open Textbooks, https://opentextbooks.clemson.edu/btugman2021/chapter/color-blindness-2/. Accessed 17 March 2024.

“Color Blindness in Clinton in Clinton, CT.” Clinton Eye Associates, https://clintoneye.com/services/color-blindness/. Accessed 17 March 2024.

 

One of the things I always looked forward to after school was field Hockey. I loved the sport so much and all the time it was something I just loved doing. During my senior year we were playing against one of our rival schools in a highly anticipated game. I was so excited to be doing what I love, then all the sudden the field hockey ball hit my finger. This caused my finger to immediately swell and tingle so bad resulting in me having to get off the field and go to an urgent care as soon as possible. I felt like my whole world was coming to an end. They immediately put my finger onto a huge splint which made my hand feel and move so uncomfortably. For days it was all I felt. Just a huge piece of metal constantly messing with my senses. After a few days I noticed that I started to forget that the metal splint was even on. At certain times I would indeed forget because my body had gotten so used to it. In my psych 100 course with Professor Wede one of the main topics I learned was sensory adaptation which is diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation. An example we learned in class was, “Put a bandaid on your arm and after a while you don’t sense it”. This is exactly how I felt with my splint. After a while I didn’t feel it because my body got used to the new stimulus that was occurring on my body. According to an article it states, “While sensory adaptation reduces our awareness of a stimulus, it helps free up our attention and resources to attend to other stimuli in our environment” (Cherry). This summarizes what I learnt in class about sensory adaptation.

 

Reagan Balaam 

03/17/2024 

Psychology 100 

Utilizing Schemas  

In this unit we learned about development through schemas, assimilation, accommodation, and how we use them in our everyday lives. We learned that schemas are mental concepts that organize information. Past experiences are used to predict what will happen in future situations. The use of assimilation and accommodation are also used when we have new experiences or meet new people. Assimilation of information uses previous experiences and leads to predicting that new information will be the same. Though predictions are not always accurate, accommodation is used. We adjust our feelings or actions when things are not how we expect them to be. I can relate this to many experiences I have had and continue to use it in my everyday life. One experience in particular where I noticed myself using accommodation was interviewing for my first job. From what I have heard about applying for jobs and the interview process, I thought that all interviews were very formal and included answering questions on the spot. When I applied to work at a frozen yogurt shop, I expected the interview to be as I had thought it would be. But when I walked in it was very informal and not very question based. The boss was super nice and chill, and I found out I got the job on the spot. Through this experience I used accommodation, I had to change what I was expecting to what was actually happening. After having this experience, I was able to add more information to my schema about the interview process. Overall, though it may not be apparent because it is something we do without even thinking about it, everyone uses schemas on a day-to-day basis. Experiences are taken and put them into groups in our head. When having new experiences, we use this knowledge and either assimilate or accommodate and continue to add information to our schemas.