Many of us probably had some trouble solving the word problem in chapter 12 this week, one possible cause of this was a term we learned just before being introduced to the problems, functional fixedness. Functional fixedness is the inability to use an object as anything other than its initial purpose. For example, it might be difficult to reach something off the top shelf when we only have a chair and want a ladder. What some might not realize is that they can climb on top of the chair having the same effect as a ladder. As we have seen functional fixedness can have effects on your daily life but can it have effects on problems that are even more complicated? Functional Fixedness Stops You From Having Innovative Ideas explains how functional fixedness might be more detrimental than we thought. Yet it isn’t all bad, this fixedness acts as a short cut to solve problems we’ve faced before and solve them faster. (Harpley, 2017) This same short cut is what prevents us from making new ways to solve the same problem. Why would we create a new way to get something off the top shelf if we already know a ladder can solve that problem? A five-year-old hasn’t had time to learn this short cut, so their ability to innovate would be better than an adult much to their demise. While I was attempting to solve the tower of Hanoi problem I had initially moved on after only making three moves since I couldn’t figure out what to do from there. I had created this image in my head that a small piece could only go on top of the medium piece but once I realized I could put it on the large piece and freed a space for the medium piece, I was able to progress with the problem and eventually solve it. Having an idea of an object set in stone can be very taxing on how we solve problems. If you are in a position where you have to come up with innovative ideas to solve old problems in new ways, practicing these problems are the way to go. It’s a muscle we didn’t even know we could exercise.

Works Cited

Harpley, A. (2017, July 30). Functional Fixedness Stops you From Having Innovative Ideas. Retrieved from Nielsen Norman Group: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/functional-fixedness/

My father has lived a long and harsh life, being born into an abusive family and having lived through a few incidents while in the military, there are times he will talk of his PTSD. He will sit down after having watched a movie that included either topic and he will shine some light into those parts of his life. He copes with it in healthy ways and it hasn’t severely hindered his activities but it is present. It manifests itself more when he is reminded of it by something else, a retrieval cue. This powerful tool has been experimented with and it has shown than it can be beneficial but it can also cause great harm as in the case with PTSD.

A retrieval cue is anything that helps a person remember anything associated with that retrieval cue. “PTSD is a disorder that develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event,” pervasive thoughts disrupt the afflicted individual and they relive that moment. (Health, 2016) A retrieval cue will trigger the memory and the person will experience the fear and the threat to various degrees. As time goes by the person might only remember semantic information and not so much episodic information on the episode that caused the trauma but those specific retrieval cues will flood the person with episodic information, on daily conversations they might not be able to tell you exactly what happened but when a retrieval cue is presented they will feel as though they were there. While stationed in Germany, my father witnessed a terrorist bombing during Oktoberfest which left a huge mark in his life. He could talk about the event during a regular lunchtime meal but in other occasions you can see through his facial expressions that he is vividly recalling the moment.

In War Wounds That Time Alone Can’t Heal, we get a better view of how PTSD affects the individual. PTSD is explained as a “violation of your moral compass that you felt unable to forgive yourself, undeserving of happiness, perhaps even unfit to live” while the person can be self-destructive. (Brody, 2016) The person engages in self-destructive behavior such as drinking in order to numb their own thoughts. I expressed how retrieval cues can be detrimental yet some people live in constant thoughts of the events as though they never left that situation. The process of healing involves letting those thoughts dissipate, clearing your moral compass and accept the situation. From there it’s about managing those retrieval cues and not letting them be so pervasive.

It’s a lengthy process that doesn’t necessarily need the involvement of a therapist as my father was able to not become into a deranged person but handled it as best he could. Of course, it is recommended to do so but it is possible to do without. It’s interesting to think how retrieval cues and priming can affect how you think and what you recall. Seeing or hearing a stimulus that can then help the person remember a plethora of information relating to that stimulus. PTSD happens to be a negative aspect of both terms but with help its severity can be far less than anticipated.

Works Cited

Brody, J. (2016, June 6). War Wounds That Time Alone Can’t Heal. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/war-wounds-that-time-alone-cant-heal/?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FVeterans%20and%20Post%20Traumatic%20Stress%20Disorder&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest

Health, N. I. (2016, February). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Retrieved from National Institute of Mental Health: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml

Ever since we can first remember, one thing has always been constant in our lives and that is physical pain. From falling down to breaking a bone, each and every one of us has felt some form of physical pain. As children we cry to this pain out of sudden fear and shock from whatever caused the pain but as we got older we faced certain situations where pain was the least of our concerns. For most of us the onset of pain involved one our limbs being affected but what if we felt pain from a limb we no longer had? What of the mysterious phantom limb pain? A severe pain felt in an area you no longer physically have so how could it be cured or treated?

Dr. Tsao has devoted his life tot his peculiar infliction and has found an interesting solution, the use of mirrors. For example, if the person with phantom limb pain is missing an arm then a mirror is placed beside the arm they do have in order to trick the brain that there is a second arm. By moving the actual arm, the reflection mirrors the image giving the illusion of a real arm at your control. This significantly reduces the pain and has been quite effective. Exactly why it works remains a mystery. In the readings this week, we were given an insight into how we perceive pain. The main example was how we feel pain once we have paid attention to it. We could be bleeding long before we notice but we only really process the pain signals until we see or feel it with other senses.

Pain is a fickle sensation that really wants our attention. “The perception of pain can increase if attention is focused on the pain or decrease if the pain is ignored or attention is diverted away from the pain,” as children we found ourselves crying from the pain yet if we had friends around us they would try to distract us and calm us down effectively diverting our attention from the wound. The mechanics behind pain perception are equal fickle as pain itself. It seems as though diverting our attention is an incredible method of reducing pain, the mirror as a solution for phantom limb pain works in the same fashion. It serves to trick the brain into thinking we still have control over the limb that has been lost, this distraction reduces the pain a patient would feel.

It’s perplexing to think we can knowingly trick ourselves into reducing our own pain. The idea that a placebo can be so effective when there are no active ingredients at work but it is our beliefs that take the pain away. Like previously mentioned, the mechanics behind pain are still being discovered yet “we may get a better understand of how pain is perceived and how consciousness exists” based on the research from phantom limb pain.

Works Cited

Goldstein, B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology. Stamford: Cengage Learning.

II, S. H. (2018, January 28). Mirror Therapy for Phantom Limb Pain. Retrieved from Medicinenet: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=88097