Article Summary : Psych 302

Throughout this semester of Psychology 150 I have learned a great deal about several different concepts that I consciously, and sometimes unconsciously, find myself applying to my life. There are five different psychology topics I found that held the most relevance to my life. Some of these topics do not deal with myself exclusively, but they do affect the people I hold dear to me. The topics range from disorders to personality differences, and they all affect me in some way, both indirectly and directly.

In Chapter 7 of our What Is Psychology textbook, we learned about the importance, details and strategies of memory techniques. One type of memory is Short Term, which only last up to thirty seconds before forgetting. Whenever has to remember a number or a name, they often repeat the information multiple times so that the Short Term Memory can transition into Long Term Memory. In order for this transition to occur, the information must be constantly repeated, or important enough to be held in the permanent memory, which helps create a “folder” with all retaining information and reminiscing. Another way short term can become long term is using a method called Chunking, this breaks the bigger pictures into smaller ones for the brain to remember,

Following classical conditioning the data show a decrease in variability and in the latency between stimulus presentation and the response. There is also a change in trend from increasing to no trend.

They also found that childhood sexual abuse was the most common trauma that lead to PTSD symptoms. These findings are in line with previous research on this topic or similar topics to this one. Although childhood sexual assault was the common, the authors noted that being stalked and being threatened produces the most severe symptoms of PTSD in the regression equation. Another finding that was consistent with previous research is that sudden death of a loved one was a traumatic even experienced more frequently by the participants. Even though this was a very diverse group in terms of ethnicity, it still found that men experienced robbery and stranger assault more frequently than women. These findings are also consistent with other research. The authors expressed that because the diagnoses were not based on research-based diagnoses but from clinical charts it may not be as reliable. They also noted that there may be some groups that were not represented in the study, such as those living with SMI in the inner

Steve’s relationships with women are internally motivated, meaning he actively desires to participate in these behaviors. Based on Freud’s Oedipus Complex, Steve wanted to have sexual relations with his mother, and loved her, but as stated in the case study, “[Steve’s mother] did not give Steve the demonstrative affection and loving interaction he craved.” According to this quote, it is evident that Steve desires women’s attention but in his early years was denied by his mother, in other words, he faced rejection at an early age. As the case study later states, Steve has sex with many women and dumps them before things get serious. This is because he believes that women go out with him just for a meal and sex, and would break up with him

The narrator suffers from catalepsy, a physical condition in which the individual cannot move or speak for hours or, in extreme cases, for months. According to the narrator’s explanation, what are some of the ways that one can tell a cataleptic is still living?

Overall, this article describes numerous cases of people’s personality and behavior being drastically affected by various forms of brain damage, particularly to the frontal lobe. This is consistent with what we have learned about Phineas Gage and his dramatically changed personality. As such, the author, David Eagleman, concludes that humans are not really “free” and that we are all products of our brains’ physical state, meaning that the notion of all humans being equal in their decisions is fundamentally flawed. He therefore proposes modifying the criminal justice system so that sentencing is customized more for the particular offender, taking into account the functionality of the criminal’s brain,

* Predict: Offering predictions (or hypotheses) about how a given condition or set of conditions will affect

A hypothesis is an explanation that can be tested based on observation. A statistical hypothesis is testable explanation based on observation and different variables. A null hypothesis explains what the results of the experiment will be if the original hypothesis is wrong. An alternate hypothesis is the opposite result if there is or isn’t a null hypothesis. Semmelweis hypothesized that bacteria/virus filled extremities resulted in higher death rates.

My primary uses of time would fall under the category of sleep. It is quite ironic that this is the activity that I do the most; when in reality I feel like I sleep the least. Making this excel spreadsheet really put everything that I do in a typical week into retrospective. What did not come as a surprise to me is what I spend most of my money on. Aside from bills and rent, I typically find myself spending money on food and drinks.

In experiment 1, participants were instructed to press a key to determine if the stimulus was red, blue, yellow, or green. On the second half of the experiment, the stimulus appeared in grey with only one colored letter which was positioned randomly. Error rates for the experiment were below 2.5% for each condition, which is quite low. Experiment 2 was the same as experiment 1 except that there were 114 data collections instead of 288 and there were 36 practice trials instead of 72. According to experiment 1 and 2 it is suggested that the effect of

Two experiments were conducted; revealing false recall as well as false recognition in a list learning paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Furthermore, the results from the second experiment state that, participants “recalled the critical non-presented word on 55% of lists” (Roediger & McDermott, 1995, p. 808). Both the AMT and FTT can account for these results, by using different assumptions. However the AMT is able to provide a much thorough explanation for these finding compared to the FTT. The AMT suggests the spreading activation mechanism would accidently activate the lure word (critical non-presented word). As a consequence, this could increase the probability of participants mistaking the ‘lure’ word for one that was previously on the presented list. Arndt (2010) stated: “although activation is the primary process... activation alone is insufficient to explain why people behave as if lures were experiences in a particular encoding context” (p.2). Perhaps, in the other 45% of the lists where the lure was not recalled; this can be explained by the monitoring process. The monitoring stage helps participants determine between which words are produced internally and which were previously encountered; either at the time of encoding or

Taking a Psychology class has taught me a lot about others and myself. I have learned a lot in this class and the information I retained will stick with me for the rest of my life. The knowledge I have gained will help me in the future by allowing me to be a better actress, CEO, and mother. The most important topics I will need are Lifespan Development and Psychological Disorders. These subjects can be unknowingly important when crossing paths with other people.

Negative priming is following. Two stimuli are presented to participants and they are asked to react only to one stimulus and ignore the other. The observed responses are slow if the item

This research article was taken from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Journal. This specific issue had a total of ten articles, and while they are covering different topics and studies, some of them do focus on similar ideas. Psychology is all about the study of the mind, and how it has different parts intended for unique functions. It seems like a good portion of the articles for this specific journal deal with emotions and how the body interprets them. One article deals with the stress of different generations, while another deals with an individual’s willpower against sugar. There is an article about self-esteem and how that varies during a lifetime, as well as an article on cooperation. The article that will be specifically discussed in this research paper also has to deal with how the body interprets things when it comes to a stressful situation, such as a crime. It looks at how reliable eyewitness testimony is after traumatic events, specifically in regards to lineups.