Internal Assesment : Eye-witness reports: Loftus and Palmer (1974)

The Loftus & Palmer study was a psychological study carried out by Elizabeth Loftus and Palmer in 1974. The aim of the study was to investigate whether or not an eyewitness’s memory can be changed by information supplied to them after an event. Loftus and Palmer also wished to discover whether or not a person's memory can be influenced by this information.

The purpose of the study was to determine how memory is influenced by circumstances and prompting surrounding memory storage and recall. Previous studies had established that memories were not necessarily accurate representations of actual events but were actually constructed using past experiences and other influences. Loftus & Palmer carried out two studies. The first was tested on forty-five students split into five categories, each with nine students. The second was carried out on one hundred and fifty students. In the first study forty-five students from the University of Washington were shown seven film clips of car accidents. The clips ranged from five to thirty seconds long. After viewing each clip the students were asked to write a report on what they had seen. They were asked a series of questions about the videos. The critical question in this study was "At what speed was the car traveling?" The five categories of students were asked this question but with a different verb. Loftus and Palmer wanted to see if the verb influenced the students answers.

Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is an observable improvement in health or behavior no treated by a medication or administered treatment. Placebo is a substance that produces and effect similar to the active substance or to an antibiotic. Most common placebos may be , fake surgery and fake therapies .

The idea of the placebo effect originated with the scientist H.K Beecher. Beecher found out that about 35 percent of 1085, patients who took a pill containing no active ingredients experienced an improvement in their condition. 
In ten out of fifteen studies made by Beecher , 67 percent of the patients seemed to improve as a normal course of there illness and not attributable to placebo. In another study, a third of the patient’s symptoms improved with a placebo for treating there colds.  Another of Beecher’s studies was that when he took drug treatment to their patients and change it with placebo , instead of worsen there symptoms it improved them , because the actual drugs caused side effects that the placebo didn’t.

There are a lot of factors that can affect many treatments and the evaluation of those treatments. That make it very difficult to be sure just what it is about an involvement that produces improvement or superficial improvement. An example of these factors is that Beecher only showed the percentage of the patients that improve their conditions not of the percentage that didn’t improved with placebo effect.

Finally I think that the placebos are fake substances that make our minds thinks were improving but we are not , it might be good in some cases , and bad in others. It can be bad , because not always imaginary treatment can treat like a real treatment does , that’s because not all injuries or viruses are easily treated , and more if treated only mentally . “Vitamins and herbs are real. Placebos are only imaginary.”

Are All Memories Alike? Gender/Cultural Differences

Sex Differences In Memory: Women Better Than Men At Remembering Everyday Events

There have always been a difference between men and women , beginning  with the physical part ending with the mental part . Scientists from Sweden proved that the differences between men and women or sex differences have todo a lot with episodic memory , and have proven that women are better in episodic memory . First women are better in episodic memory tasks like remembering word , pictures about things . Like if a couple would get lost , the men would remember how to escape and the women where she left the keys or were is there cellphone . Men are better at remembering symbolic non-linguistic things.


Women can remember facial features better , like in a test were various faces were given to females , they had to recall the faces . The results show that in between the female,male, or just faces options the women pointed more in the female faces . This shows that women can identify better female faces than rather males.  Women can do better the task of recognizing familiar odors , than man . A variable that affects this sex differences can be education .


The results say that female are better at episodic memory , at specific events . The probability of genetically based memories between male and female are not known still .

The culture of memory

Kids when are little , might have 2 to 4 years when they don't really remember about the events that happened . This situation is called childhood amnesia . Researchers had discovered various ways that kids remember events since childhood  between different cultures all over the world . 

The difference between cultures , like with american children and asian children .People who grew up in societies that focus more on personal history, like the US, will have earlier childhood memories than those people who grew up in an environment whose value interdependence is placed above those of personal history, like Asia.

An important model called the social-interaction model meant that our autobiographical memories don't develop just away , but we develop them when we are children and recall them with adults over again , enabling us to remember with more detail.

There an abundant of experiments explaining this cultural differences affecting memory . Some are studying Chinese-American immigrants to see how their early childhood memories compare with those of native Chinese and native Americans.  Here is the scientist Leitchman explaining its findings  "Right now we're really refining it and working out the wide variety of mechanisms that cause it."


Sites:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm

Alzheimer’s Disease

I learned that Alzheimer’s is a brain disease that affects memory, thinking , and behavior. I learned that the symptoms develop slowly over time and usually get worse too , becoming brutal enough to interfere with daily tasks. I learned that Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. I also learned that Alzheimer's is not a normal part of aging . Finally I learned that Alzheimer's has no current cure, but treatments for symptoms are available and research continues.

The greatest risk factor is increasing in age, and the majority of people with Alzheimer’s disease are from 60 and older. Alzheimer’s is not necessarily of old aged , like 5 percent of the people with the disease have early onset Alzheimer , that appears when you are in your 40s or 50s . Alzheimer is a progressive disease, where its symptoms get worse over years . In its early stages, memory loss is calmed but in the last stages of Alzheimer's, people lose the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to their environment. Alzheimer is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States . Alzheimer cant be cured , but can be slowly temporarily treated to slow the worsening of the symptoms and to improve the quality of life with those with Alzheimer .

Concluding I think that this disease , is a problem because it can appear to people like from nowhere . I say it’s a problem because its harsh and painful to some people , to have not only memory loss more than that . I am proud that scientists are keeping it up with the research in treating the disease .

Memory Articles

New Understanding Of How We Remember Traumatic Events

Neuroscientist at the University of Queensland called Dr Louise Faber conducted this experiment , the purpose of this experiment was to discover a way in which to explain how emotional events can sometimes lead to disturbing long term memories. This experiment was conducted by scientists that have uncovered a cellular mechanism underlying the formation of emotional memories . Which occurs in the presence of a well known stress hormone. Second Faber demonstrated how noradrenaline or the brains adrenaline , affects the amygdala by controlling chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for memory formation. The result of this experiment was that it was a new way of understanding form long term memories in the amygdala .This experiments and its results can be applied to real life because it can help other scientists to elucidate new targets, leading to better treatments for conditions such as anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm

Some Short-Term Memories Die Suddenly, No Fading

To test the accuracy of short-term visual memory, Weiwei Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar, and Steve Luck, a professor of psychology. These two conducted two experiments in witch the could measure two things : the accuracy of a short-term memory and the probability that the memory still existed. Each test was given to 12 adults . The two test were similar , in the second one they used shapes instead of colors . The experiment was conducted first with three squares ,  with different colors , flashed on a computer screen for a tenth of a second . After four o ten seconds a full spectrum appeared that had all of the colors . Three squares repeated but now all of them were colorless and only one was highlighted . Adults were to recall the color of the highlighted square and to point on the wheel the area were the most closely matched is. Each adult repeated the test 150 times . When the adults retained in there memory the color they could click in the wheel near the are of the color they had projected , but when the color had disappeared from there memory they clicked randomly in the areas of the wheel . “either had the memory or didn’t have the memory,” Luck said, “and the probability of having it decreased between four and ten seconds. The memories did not gradually fade away.” This experiment can be applied to real life because it can provide a way to avoid a confusion that might come up if we might make decisions in our daily life .


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

Early Scents Really Do Get 'Etched' In The Brain

Yaara Yeshurun and researchers of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel conducted experiment . In the experiment the researchers presented adults with a visual object together with one, and later with a second, set of pleasant and unpleasant odors and sounds while their brains were imaged by functional magnetic resonance imaging. A week later, the researchers presented the same objects inside the fMRI and tested participants' associations of those images with the scents and smells. The researchers stated that people remembered early associations more clearly when being unpleasant . The first olfactory associations revealed a unique activation in brain regions . Researchers stated that they could even predict what a persons memory would reveal later based on the test in the first day . The results show that theres something particularly special about early memories of smells .Yeshurun said. "In our paradigm, initial and later olfactory associations were remembered equally well, but only first associations had the unique brain representation." The results can help in real life because they can  suggest ways to strengthen particular memories.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105132448.htm

Memory

1. Explain the concept of sensory memory.

Sensory memory is the earliest stage of memory . In this stage sensory information from the environment is stored for a very brief period of time , for no longer than a half second for visual information and 3 0r 4 for auditory information.

2. Give an example of sensory memory.

An example can be when a shooting star passes your sensory memory acts fast because when it disappears you have the image still. Thanks to your sensory memory.

3. What is the capacity of our sensory memory?

Our sensory memory can hold a large amount of unprocessed data but only for a short time because it fades away.

4. Describe the concept of short-term memory.

Short-term memory also known as working memory , is the info we are currently aware of or thinking about . Like first we have the sensory memory so if we think or recall that memory for 2o seconds it becomes a short term memory . 

5. What is the "magic number" as it relates to short-term memory and who conducted the experiment which established this measurement?

George miller conducted this experiment and it relates to short term memory because it describes that the human brain can only remember in detail 7 stimuli presented at a time.

6. What is chunking?

 It refers to a stradegy for making more efficient use of short - term memory by recoding information.

7. What has been determined to be the ideal size of "chunks" for both letters and numbers?

Two psychologists mentioned that there two , three, and six . Those are the ideal numers for chunking for letters as well as numbers .

8. Which mode of encoding does short-term memory mostly rely on, acoustic or visual?

Acoustic

9. Explain the duration and capacity of long-term memory.

The duration of a long term memory is that its stored permanently so in other words its stored for a lifetime , till you die. The capacity can be defined as infinite because theres no limit for what you can store in your mind. 

10. Explain in detail the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory.

In 1968 Atkinson and Shiffrin made a theory that outlines three stage in memory : sensory,short-term, and long-term memory .

Sensory memory: Sense organs have ability to retain information in a sort of unprocessed way trough a stimulus for less than a second. 

Short term memory: Allows us to remember us information long enough for us to use it

Long term memory: is the memory that continues and never stops. You can store a lot of information and remember it whenever you want .

11. Identify three criticisms or limitations of the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model of memory.

The model contains shallow processing which leads to a fragile memory trace that is susceptible to rapid forgetting . In the case of sensory memory, the model does not acknowledge the neural activity. The model which consists of the "stream of memory" is said to lack internal consistency.

12.Explain the Levels of Processing Model of memory.

This theory rejected the idea of the dual store model of memory. This popular model postulated that characteristics of a memory are determined by it's location.

13. What is maintenance rehearsal - give an example.

Maintenance Rehearsal is the process of repeatedly verbalizing or thinking about a piece of information. Your short term memory is able to hold information about about 20 seconds. An example might be like when i have to remember the pizza number like for a short period of time so i repeat the digits a lot of time .

14. What is elaborative rehearsal - give an example.

 This involves deep processing of a item to-be remembered resulting in producing a durable memory , in other words to associate a unmeaningful thing with a thing that has meaning to you.An example might be , you need to remember the term "neuron." In order to permanently commit the term to your memory, you look up what it means , find out its purpose , look at a diagram and study its parts, and think about how it relates to things that you already know . If you do this several times , then you will be more likely to remember the term.

15. Who developed the Levels of Processing Model and the concepts of maintenance and elaborative rehearsal? 

Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart presented this theory .

Meeeeemory

Memory is when we can recall,retain , and store information and experiences . In more understandable words memory is the ability to travel back in time in your mind that develops during your lifetime. 

In the class of IB psychology we were given four videos of How is your memory . We were suposed to pay attention , by the way i didn't . So i had to watch them again , by the way more work . This doesn’t matter the most important thing is the information i learned. 

First I learned keywords that are key if learning memory like i am doing right now. First I learned what dementia meant , it means when you start to loose you're memory at a old age , and it never stops till you die . I learned a type of amnesia , it means when you loose part or total of your memory . I learned a new thing that I didn’t knew that there pills that manipulat your memory.

Second these three keys had to do with three persons , so for reall this videos are amazing because its amazing of how they could interview people with this memory distortions and conditions.

The Stroop Effect

The Stroop effect is a psychological occurrence first described by John Ridley Stroop in the 1935. The Stroop effect had been fascinating psychologists because it appears to tap into essential operations of cognition, thereby offering clues to fundamental cognitive processes. There were two great experiments made , Stroop first compared reading a list of words printed in black with reading the same list of words printed in incongruent colors. Stroop found that there was little difference in reading time for the two lists. Stroop then compared the naming of colors for a list of solid color squares with the naming of colors for a list of words printed in incongruent colors. Its 74% longer to name color ink of incongruent words. The results of this two studies is that people are used to read word rather than identify colors.

The Stroop Effect test consists : 1. A person is handed a list of words matching the colors the words are describing . 2. You are asked to name the color of the ink used on each word . 3. They are timed for this first test 4. The colors of the words change place , they didn’t match anymore 5. You are asked to name the color on the word 6. You get timed for the second test

Stroop found out that practice made the time in which the task was being done decrease. That naming colors result much slower than reading them. 

You stumble because the brain is trying to pay attention to more than one thing . The brain tries to read and visualize what color or word it is so its confusing . That’s why the second test , were the words didn’t match was harder .

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-stroop-effect.htm

The myth of multitasking

1.Why is multitasking considered by many psychologists to be a myth?

Multitasking is considered to be a myth because in reality we cant do two things at the same time . The only thing we can do is to change of task so fast that we think that we are multitasking . One example is texting while speaking , you are going to text or talk in stead because you are gooing to think in one better.

2.To what does the term "response selection bottleneck" refer?

Marois found evidence of a “response selection bottleneck” that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once. As a result, task-switching leads to time lost as the brain determines which task to perform.

3.David Meyer has found that multitasking contributes to the release of stress hormones and adrenaline . Why is this important? 

This is important to know because stress hormones and adrenaline can cause long-term health problems if not controlled, and contributes to the loss of short-term memory

4.Explain what Russel Podrack found regarding multitasking.

His research demonstrates that people use different areas of the brain for learning and storing new information when they are distracted. Brain scans of people who are distracted or multitasking show activity in the striatum, a region of the brain involved in learning new skills . Brain scans of people who are not distracted show activity in the hippocampus, a region involved in storing and recalling information. 

5. What does  the author conclude could happen to our culture as a result of increased multitasking?

With crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks . Their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

Observations of the Bambuti Pygmies

The Pygmies are the nomadic hunting and gathering inhabitants of the Ituri Forest in Africa. The Bambuti are the most famous of the Pygmies and also the shortest with an average height of 4 feet 6 inches. The Bambuti hunt and gather food which they use for their own consume and for trading to their neighbors in exchange for goods and other material which are not available in the forests. The Bambuti show very little concern for afterlife and the dead are buried near the huts and the camp is abandoned.

Colin Turnbull was a Oxford-student Englishmen . Colin had an affair with the African Pygmies . He was a genius and a great anthropologist , but he was gay , he had found love with a poor African guy called Joe Towles . Colin described what happened in former Congo . When the Bambuti pygmy , went with him to the plains . Colin says “And then he saw the buffalo, still grazing lazily several miles away, far down below. He turned to me and said, 'What insects are those?' At first I hardly understood, then I realized that in the forest vision is so limited that there is no great need to make an automatic allowance for distance when judging size. Out here in the plains, Kenge was looking for the first time over apparently unending miles of unfamiliar grasslands, with not a tree worth the name to give him any basis for comparison... 
When I told Kenge that the insects were buffalo, he roared with laughter and told me not to tell such stupid lies.” This means that Kenge didn’t have experience of seeing distant objects and he saw them small at first . This observation Colin had is important for the study of perception because it lets you know that distant objects might get a different picture of what they really are .

Colin Turnbull

Collin Macmillan Turnbull was a British American anthropologist that came famous with the popular books the forest people and the mountain people. The forest book from the Mbuti Pygmy in Zane, and the mountain people of the IK people of Uganda. Turnball was born in London and studied in Westminster school and Magdalen College. He studied politics and psychology in Oxford. In 1951 after he had graduated from Banaras Hindu university he went to Congo with Newton Beal .He studied the Bambuti pygmy’s at first, but then he encountered a job. This job consisted on building a boat for a Hollywood film. After he constructed the boat, he traveled to Canada , to work in a gold mine and geologist . Became us citizen after he had been named curator of African Ethnology at the American museum of American History . Then moved to Virginia and worked at the Department of anthropology and Sociology . Other professional work was Corresponding Member of Royal Museum of Central Africa and fellowship in British Royal Anthropological institute. Between all these grandness in his career that was his sexuality , he had a partner called Joe Towles. They lived as an opened gay couple in New York , and then in Virginia till Joes death . He died of AIDS , after Joe’s death Turnball stayed totally in shock, till he died by his own Aids. 

http://www.colinturnbull.com/
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/turnbull_colin.html

What factors influence our perception?

What internal factors influence our perception?
Internal factors mean or relate to the state of the individual.Habits are difficult to get away with , therefore individuals perceive objects, situations, and conditions differently acoding to their habits . An example is like , theres a retired soldier that throws to the ground when he hears like a car tyre. This example is perfect like of how hapits capture your perception. Motivation and interest , like hunger and thurst . Learning has a great part in the influence in our perception . Like a business manager has the obligation to teach his employees so they have more knowledge for there effective performance and behavior .

What external factors influence our perception?
External factors means that it concerns the environment and influences eternal to the individual . Intensity of the stimulus is implied that , when the more intense of the stimulus of audio or visual is , the most likely that they will perceive . Strong odor , or strong sounds will be more likely to catch attention the slow or low type of things . Size matters because it influences attention and recognition in a more effective manner .  Repetition of stimuli like a advertisement commercial in the television repeats the same brand over and over again , thats a form of repetition that gets your attention . Motion can be another influence because when someone is moving something , another one that is just still , people's stimuli of perceiving attention will go to the one moving the thing .

Things I like
-I like cellphones , because i can communicate with my friends faster
-I like apple , because it got me an addiction with Mac computers
-I like to win something , because i like the feel of being in the top
-i like psychology class , because we learn how to communicate with people better
-i like ice cream , because i feel sweet and cold at the same time , delicious

Things i don't like
-i dislike when people curse, because thats sounds like nasty and unrespectful
-i dislike when people are yelling , because that feels annoying to me and to other ears
-i dislike the fact of being suspended, because im wasting my own time doing anything
-i dislike exams , because if you don't make a perfect answer they take you points
-i dislike school sometimes , because we have to keep up rules that doesn't make sense

" Perception : is reality "

Perception is reality in a way because we are living today in society were interacting and relating with others is a sign of survival for success in this world. The perception of what we think might the other people think about us can affect us because its like a mirror and you see those things in you even do its not real. If the that person lived in an environment of love and support his perception of the world will be of success and open-minded because he would had past experiences in his head perceived very well. The person that grows up in a environment of sadness, screaming and dysfunctional , will have his perception of the world like that and might have mental problems. That’s because we might think were like suffering or something but in reality were not so that’s perception .Just as one object may give rise to multiple percepts , there’s an object that may fail to give rise to the perception . If the percept doesn’t have a meaning in the persons experience , he will likely not perceive it . In conclusion perception is reality ? That’s for you to answer.

Why is psychology important?

Psychology is important because it concerns the study of behavior and mental processes. Every thing we perform is related to psychology in a way.  By studying psychology we can identify how the mind and body of a person functions. Psychology changes the way of thinking of a person it can help him avoiding things that cause him stress, to manage time wisely , or to perceive things.