Upon completing my abnormal psychology course I found the subject of schizophrenia an to be very interesting. I researched articles that allowed me to reflect across all the courses that I had been a part of during this semester. One of the most interesting factors that I read about was that ,it has been found that a decrease of sensory overload could cause a decrease in cognitive fragmentation, which is a commonly observed symptoms of schizophrenia (Sarnyai, 2015; 132). Previous research suggests that patients who suffer from schizophrenia also depict deficits in attention based situations (Sarnyai, 2015; 132). The research showed that when an individual with the disorder attempts to complete tasks there is an increased level of brain activity that deters the individual from focusing on one task at a time (Sarnyai, 2015; 132). The information gained from this study also theorized that the increased brain activity in a patient with schizophrenia also impairs the ability of long term memory processing (Sarnyai, 2015; 132). I never truly took the time before to realize that schizophrenia plays a key role on the ability form long lasting memories, which made me feel as if I had been ignorant to the subject before. After determining that my ignorance on the subject was not acceptable at all I set upon accoplishing a goal of forming a greater understanding of how schizophrenia can play a integral role in memory formation. When I attempted to compile a search of key words to learn more about schizophrenia, I came across many articles that stated the same conclusion that there needs to be more research on the subject of whether individuals who form a late onset of schizophrenia as to whether the condition is based solely on genetic attributions or if the disorder is also formed due to environmental pressures.  Overall throughout the semester I have strived to learn more about how the mind works, and have become facinated in the minds processes of forming memories. I know that memory formation is determined by repetative tasks, or the use of imagery, but I now want to strive for a greater understanding of how more psychological disorders are effected by the loss of long term memory formation. In a world where individuals value memories and events, I find it saddening that no matter our age, race, gender, and belief system we are still plagued with illnesses that deteriorate the mind and can potentially leave us as an “empty shell” of the person we once were. Overall I find that there is great importance in individuals to research and find cures in disesease that effect the mind just as much as all the other organs that lie within our bodies.

Sarnyai, Z., Jashar, C., & Olivier, B. (2015). Modeling combined schizophrenia-related behavioral and metabolic phenotypes in rodents. Behavioural Brain Research, 276, 130-142. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1560646137?accountid=13158

Memory Reconstruction and Alzheimer’s disease, not always what you think it would be like when you deal with a family member who suffers from Alzheimer’s. For the past 6 years since my grandmother passed away my grandfathers Alzheimer’s has progressively gotten worse. We knew eventually he had the potential to suffer from the disease that steals your ability to make new memories. The hardest part of being a family member that has to remind their loved one that they in fact do know you is that you know its an everyday occurrence and that there is no cure. In my opinion it is not the person who has Alzheimer’s that suffers, it’s the family and friends. The loved one has no idea that they suffer from the illness and that in fact their very ability to make memories has been robbed from them. Memory reconstruction has been identified as the ability to recall events from the past, information about the world around us, and what is currently going on in the present. A person with Alzheimer’s can only recall events from the past and is missing two components of memory reconstruction and formation in a sense. Yes they can identify what is going on around them and what the world is like, but no matter how many times they recall this information or bring it to their attention there is still the potential of never being able to permanently remember everything about their daily lives once the mind has fully succumbed to the disease. I find it truly amazing that once you show a person who has Alzheimer’s a picture from their past that they are more apt to remember more and even momentarily beat the disease that is controlling their memory processes. The increased spotlight that is being shined on the disease truly will generate more knowledge on the subject and hopefully will help to cause a cure for the disease. In the words of Jeffrey Kluger, “Suffering is always hard to quantify- especially when the pain is caused by as cruel a disease as Alzheimer’s. Most illnesses attack the body; Alzheimer’s destroys the mind- and in the process, annihilates the very self.” From my personal family experience it is one of the cruelest diseases known to man that kills the memory and holds a person in their own personal mental jail. To live a life where you’re a prisoner of his or her own past memories.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/alzheimer.html

As my son is approaching a year old this coming Sunday I am reminded of the strides that he has made over this past year. The most relevant milestone that relates to what we have studied throughout this class would be the process of object permanence. Object permanence is a form of short-term memory that all children develop during their first years of growth. Overall I have to admit my son has had a quite rough time with his short-term memory. Easily I can describe my son as a “momma’s boy”, this may be attributed to the fact that he does not have a father in his life and the majority of the first year he only ever spent time with my immediate family and myself.

The short-term memory component of our lives is designed to store information for short periods of time. Jonathan, my son, has a hard time dealing with his short -term memory on whether people are present or not. His cognition of object permanence is slowly beginning to increase; for the most part he panics and begins to cry and scream when he realizes he is in a room all alone. Jonnie can watch you walk from one room to the next and within less than five minutes he begins to panic and start crying while crying out momma, he then tries to walk from the room he is in to the connecting rooms in hope to find someone. Another way that I can describe my sons development of short term memory is that he will hand me a toy and if I put it behind my back he will try to search for where I placed the toy. After a few minutes of searching he will stop looking and will find a new toy.

When I present the toy to him again he gets very excited and runs over to retrieve the toy from my hand. This could be an ideal example of how the short-term memory works. When a stimulus is not present then my child does not realize that I still had the toy and it did not disappear. But when I make the toy resurface his face lights up and it as if he had found his long lost favorite toy. Although his brain is small and rapidly developing and advancing in knowledge daily, it is easy to see his short term memory forming in this very impressionable time period.

Overall the growth of a child from infancy into becoming a toddler is a spectacular time span to watch developmentally and cognitively. Over the short span of an child’s life, a rapid development of personality and understanding of the world is formed. It truly is an amazing time period to be able to watch, short-term memory formation is one of a child’s first large developmental hurdles to overcome and is one of the toughest milestones to teach the developing brain of an infant.

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.