Happy New Year!!!

IA Grades Have Been DELAYED

Due to being in the hospital all last week, grading the IAs has been delayed. That said, serious grading will begin Thursday.

Stay tuned for important UPDATES for January....

X Has Arrived!

Xavier is here! He was born on Christmas Eve.
We have been in the hospital since then!

I will respond to all posted questions tomorrow morning.

Cognitive Essay and Happy Holidays!

I am sorry that you all have this essay hanging over your heads during the break. I am confident you will do outstanding! Again, let's get ready to make IB Psychology history.

DUE on January 5th, 2009
1. JAS for Aserinsky & Kleitman
2. JAS for Cartwright
3. JAS for Hobson
4. NOTES for Domhoff
5. EXTRA CREDIT DREAM STUDY - NO LATE SUBMISSIONS
6. EXTRA CREDIT VIDEO: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND - NO LATE SUBMISSIONS

Cognitive Psychology Essay Options for January 7th, 2009
See Page: 212
Essay Options: 1, 2, and 4

I will be posting, within the next two-three days, a review video or videos which will cover the three essays. But please feel free to contact me with any questions! The first two days back will be review days and I will be at THS at 3pm on the 5th to hold a review session for the exam on the 7th. I will also try and hold a more brief session on the 6th after school.

Stay tuned for those videos!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!!
BE SAFE!

The below video is from Golfrapp. I saw them live two years ago. It was a great show!

Episode II: Activation-Synthesis and the Neurocognitive Theories of Dreams

Again, I apologize for the picture quality. I am using free software! Stay tuned for more critical updates Sunday night. Enjoy!

Dreams: Episode I: Freud

Hello Everyone!

Below I have posted the first of a series of videos (it is my lame attempt at making up for the lost snow days...I apologize in advance for the quality...I will get better at them I hope). For every video I post, feel free to participate by applying what you have read from the homework readings on dreams, posted lecture notes, and what you have seen in the video, and elsewhere, by posting comments. Such participation will be applied to your grade.

Linked below is the Extra Credit Assignment DUE January 5th, 2009!
CLICK HERE:::::EXTRA CREDIT DREAM RESEARCH OPTION
This extra credit assignment is a serious undertaking! Know that it is worth your while (20 points extra credit) but it is an effort for sure! Follow the instructions for how to recall a dream and contact me if you have any difficulties and/or questions.

Check the blog often for NEWS on the IA, Cognitive Psychology Essay, Dreams, and January's coming plans!

CLOSED: Friday Dec 19, 2008

Check back later today  for updates...Including tips for e-mailing me the IA. 

Sorry, I deleted the wrong post! Last night's was an historic dialog...

REPLAY: By Request:

NEWS from Dr. Unis

The below is relayed from Omar.

FROM THE WORDS OF MASTER DAVE UNIS HIMSELF! HE HASTH EMAILTH HISTH GOOD
TIDINGS TO ME BEHOLD THE WORD OF MASTER!!

"Hey, spread the word about this: If we don't have school tomorrow, you
guys can turn in your IAs to the Tigard Public Library's Children's Desk
and get priority grading status over those who turn them in tomorrow by
email. Turnitin.com is not working for Tigard High right now, so
we'll worryabout submitting those later. "The Massa of Disaster"

What is Beautiful is Good -- Reference page:

References

Dion, K. K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 285-290.

Dion, K. K. (1972). Physical attractiveness and evaluations of children's transgressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1972, 24, 207-213.

Tigard-Tualatin Sch. Dist.: Closed (Effective tomorrow - Thu Dec 18th)

The Plan for the Break

Although the end is near, we must make the most of our time from afar! I suspect we will be apart these last few days prior to the break, thus I will lay out the plan for winter break and make hints for January.

First and foremost, many of you are concerned about the IA (and rightfully so). Allow me to get that out of the way first. You should e-mail your FULL IA in one main attachment (or in as few as possible) in Word (.doc or .docx). DO NOT SEND MICROSOFT WORKS FILES -- THEY WILL BE CONSIDERED LATE. Feel free to send me a test fire! PDF works as well. This is DUE by MIDNIGHT This Friday.

Your IA will be graded as usual save the Discussion section. Given that you most likely will not get these back in time, REVISE your Discussion the best you can. Please, stick closely to the rubric. Too many of you have ventured away from this for some reason. The further you venture, the worse the score. I will grade the Discussion with the understanding that you did not have my feedback. Be careful and do your best work here. It is worth 60 points. Please do not send me the entire thing to read again. If you have specific questions, simply send the section you have a question on. I am currently overwhelmed with requests for revisions. Sadly, I am unable to keep up with the demand. If you send me a single question with the text, I can respond very fast! That is good for you and me!

Regarding this Week's Readings
Wednesday (12/17)
Read pages: Freud and Dreams: 279 AND Read pages: 302: Unromancing The Dream - JAS

Thursday (12/18)
1. Review your Notes on Dreams
Read pages: 308: A New Neuocognitive Theory of Dreams - Take Notes on theory, applications, and analysis

Friday (12/19)
1. Dream Analysis: The Wolf Man page 319

Please use the blog as a classroom in that if you post questions, I can answer and others can learn from it!

EXTRA CREDIT DREAM RESEARCH OPTION
This extra credit assignment is a serious undertaking! Know that it is worth your while (20 points extra credit) but it is an effort for sure! Follow the instructions for how to recall a dream and contact me if you have any difficulties and/or questions.

Over the break, if you wish, view, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and write a 1-2 page response on how the neural network model of information processing would explain and evaluate the movie's premise.

January will be the final unit of IB Psychology: Dysfunctional Psychology. I will be designing the plan in the next few days. Although I will not be with you, I will be online and willing to help. I plan to make a few appearances in January to go over Eating Disorders and Schizophrenia. I will also be posting videos to the blog and the sub will play these files in class. So, be sure to check the blog often!

In short, e-mail me any questions and/or concerns!

Have a wonderful winter break! I will miss you all in January so keep me posted on how things are.

I leave you with a video...of course. This is one of THE BEST videos. It is all about dreams! So enjoy!

Tuesday from Home

1. PLEASE stay tuned and check the blog often for key updates
   
2. Check eSIS for grade updates 
   

Tuesday (12/16) -- from home
1. Read/Study Notes on Sleep and Dreams PDF OR
Notes on Sleep and Dreams - PowerPoint Version

2. Read/Study Introduction to Freud PDF OR
Introduction to Freud PowerPoint Version

HW: Read pages: 289: To Wish Upon Dream - JAS
If we are out past Tuesday, I will be posting PodCasts for Dream theory...stay tuned.

CLOSED

Tigard-Tualatin Sch. Dist.: Closed Tuesday December 16th. 12 month district office
employees and district office administrators report as safety allows. (Effective
tomorrow - Tue Dec 16th) UPDATE

Welcome to Freudian Psychology

Because we are missing a day of school (and maybe more), I have posted the lecture notes on Freud. (click the link to access the PDF file). WARNING: when we go over this in class, I will discussing much more information than what is here. So, review these notes and come prepared to ask questions AND write more notes down on this document during lecture. I have printed copies at school so no need to print your own.

Stay tuned for more UPDATES as new breaks on school status and our changing plans...

The Week Ahead

Enjoy the snow day everyone! Don't lose site of the IA however! It is still due Friday! Take Monday to work on your IA! No new homework is assigned for Monday night.

Tuesday (12/16)
1. Finish Notes on Sleep
2. Introduction to Freud
HW: Read pages: 289: To Wish Upon Dream - JAS

Wednesday (12/17)
1. Finish Freud and Freud on Dreams
2. Notes on Dreams
HW: Read pages: 302: Unromancing The Dream - JAS
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE IF WEATHER PERMITS

Thursday (12/18)
1. Notes on Dreams
HW: Read pages: 308: A New Neuocognitive Theory of Dreams - Take Notes on theory
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE IF WEATHER PERMITS

Friday (12/19)
1. Dream Analysis: The Wolf Man and Others
HW: EXTRA CREDIT DREAM RESEARCH OPTION

NO SCHOOL MONDAY

Tigard-Tualatin Sch. Dist.: All Tigard-Tualatin School District schools and
facilities closed Monday (Effective tomorrow - Mon Dec 15th)

WEATHER REPORT

CHECK BACK TONIGHT FOR UPDATES ON SCHOOL AND HOMEWORK...DEVELOPING...

Dreams: the Unknown Country

The Final Week Together: Dreams

BREAKING NEWS

Will be announced tomorrow

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE SHOWING NEXT WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY

Happiness Is

You may think your attentive spouse, your loving children and your good friends are what make you happy. But something else may be going on: The people they're connected with are making you happy too.

So suggests a new study proposing that happiness is transmitted through social networks, almost like a germ is spread through personal contact. The research was published Thursday in BMJ, a British medical journal.

It's the latest in a growing body of work investigating how our social connections - neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, fellow congregants at church and other associates - affect us. The premise is that we live in a social environment that shapes what we do and how we think and feel.

"We've known for some time that social relationships are the best predictor of human happiness, and this paper shows that the effect is much more powerful than anyone realized," said Daniel Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness" and a professor of psychology at Harvard University.

Previous research by the authors, James Fowler of the University of California-San Diego, and Dr. Nicholas Christakis at Harvard, has concluded that social networks influence obesity and tobacco use by altering perceptions of acceptable weight and desirable behavior.

Now they've turned their attention to the emotional realm, exploring how social ties influence our moods and our sense of well-being. Their primary finding: People who are surrounded by happy people are more likely to be happy themselves. And it's not only people in our immediate circles who make a difference - it's the people surrounding the people we know.

Imagine several pebbles thrown into a pool of water that send ripples outward, said Fowler, an associate professor of political science. Each pebble represents a happy person and the waves the impact of that person's mood on others. This impact, his study found, extends through several degrees of separation, to the friends of a person's friends.

Some experts question whether the researchers' statistical methodology can support that conclusion. It's difficult to sort out cause and effect in this kind of research and the authors may not have done so with enough rigor, said Charles Manski, a Northwestern University economics professor who studies how inferences can be drawn from social interactions.

He asks, is it that one person's happiness makes another person happy, or could it be that another factor experienced by both people is affecting both?

Say two friends are watching a TV show together, and one laughs after the other does, Manski said. It may look like the first person's chuckle is the cause of the second, but the jokes on the TV show might inspire both reactions.

Christakis said his research factored out such mutual influences. The study asked the subjects - 4,739 participants in the famous Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts - to complete a survey including four questions relating to happiness three times between 1983 and 2003. They also provided information about social contacts, which allow researchers to map their connections.

The study found that happy people form clusters and the happiest people are those most centrally located in the clusters.

"If you imagine the fabric of humanity as a patchwork quilt, it turns out if you're happy or not depends on if you're in a happy or unhappy patch," Christakis said.

"We postulate that people who are in closer, more frequent contact with each other are more susceptible to catching each other's moods," Fowler said.

The researchers stress that personal factors such as jobs or marriages also affect happiness and that although happiness may fluctuate, people tend to return to a personal happiness "set point" over time. It is this relatively stable emotional condition they examined in the paper, not the fleeting moods people experience day to day.

Richard Suzman, director of the division of behavior and social research at the National Institute on Aging, said the line of research holds "enormous promise in helping us improve interventions aimed at helping people change behaviors and improving public health."

Such interventions may involve targeted programs designed to alter social networks that influence behavior. The institute on aging has provided funding for Fowler and Christakis' work.

An editorial accompanying the report in BMJ called its conclusions "intriguing" but advised caution. Framingham, a relatively small community, may prove unique in ways not yet understood, wrote Peter Sainsbury, director of population health in Sydney South West Area Health Service in Australia.

As for whether unhappiness is also spreadable, Fowler and Christakis plan to look at that topic in upcoming papers on loneliness, depression and social networks.

Scientists ask: Is technology rewiring our brains?

NEW YORK - What does a teenage brain on Google look like? Do all those hours spent online rewire the circuitry? Could these kids even relate better to emoticons than to real people? These sound like concerns from worried parents. But they're coming from brain scientists.

While violent video games have gotten a lot of public attention, some current concerns go well beyond that. Some scientists think the wired world may be changing the way we read, learn and interact with each other.

There are no firm answers yet. But Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatrist at UCLA, argues that daily exposure to digital technologies such as the Internet and smart phones can alter how the brain works.

When the brain spends more time on technology-related tasks and less time exposed to other people, it drifts away from fundamental social skills like reading facial expressions during conversation, Small asserts.

So brain circuits involved in face-to-face contact can become weaker, he suggests. That may lead to social awkwardness, an inability to interpret nonverbal messages, isolation and less interest in traditional classroom learning.

Small says the effect is strongest in so-called digital natives - people in their teens and 20s who have been "digitally hard-wired since toddlerhood." He thinks it's important to help the digital natives improve their social skills and older people - digital immigrants - improve their technology skills.

At least one 19-year-old Internet enthusiast gives Small's idea a mixed review. John Rowe, who lives near Pasadena, Calif., spends six to 12 hours online a day. He flits from instant messaging his friends to games like Cyber Nations and Galaxies Ablaze to online forums for game players and disc jockeys.

Social skills? Rowe figures he and his buddies are doing just fine in that department, thank you. But he thinks Small may have a point about some other people he knows.

"If I didn't actively go out and try to spend time with friends, I wouldn't have the social skills that I do," said Rowe, who reckons he spends three or four nights a week out with his pals. "You can't just give up on having normal friends that you see on a day-to-day basis."

More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates warned about a different information revolution - the rise of the written word, which he considered a more superficial way of learning than the oral tradition. More recently, the arrival of television sparked concerns that it would make children more violent or passive and interfere with their education.

Small, who describes his modern-day concerns in a new book called "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," acknowledges he doesn't have an open-and-shut case that digital technology is changing brain circuitry.

Still, his argument is "pretty interesting and certainly provocative," although difficult to prove, says brain scientist Tracey Shors of Rutgers University.

Others are skeptical. Robert Kurzban, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, said scientists still have a lot to learn about how a person's experiences affect the way the brain is wired to deal with social interaction.

Life in the age of Google may even change how we read.

Normally, as a child learns to read, the brain builds pathways that gradually allow for more sophisticated analysis and comprehension, says Maryanne Wolf of Tufts University, author of "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain."

She calls that analysis and comprehension "deep reading." But that takes time, even if it's just a fraction of a second, and today's wired world is all about speed, gathering a lot of superficial information fast.

Wolf asks what will happen as young children do more and more early reading online. Will their brains respond by short-circuiting parts of the normal reading pathways that lead to deeper reading but which also take more time? And will that harm their ability to reflect on what they've read?

Those questions deserve to be studied, Wolf says. She thinks kids will need instruction tailored to gaining reading comprehension in the digital world.

Some research suggests the brain actually benefits from Internet use.

A large study led by Mizuko Ito of the University of California, Irvine, recently concluded that by hanging out online with friends - sending instant messages, for example - teens learn valuable skills they'll need to use at work and socially in the digital age. That includes lessons about issues like online privacy and what's appropriate to post and communicate on the internet, Ito said.

Rowe, the 19-year-old, said he and his buddies often debate whether technology might actually be bad for you. That includes kicking around the argument that computer use makes people socially inept.

Of course, he added, "we spend a lot of time on the computer and still have totally normal and perfect social lives."

Body-swap illusion tricks mind in new study

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Shaking hands with yourself is an amusing out-of-body experience. The illusion of having your stomach slashed with a kitchen knife, not so much.

Both sensations, however, felt real to most participants in a Swedish science project exploring how people can be tricked into the false perception of owning another body.

In a study presented Tuesday, neuroscientists at Stockholm's renowned Karolinska Institute show how they got volunteers wearing virtual reality goggles to experience the illusion of swapping bodies with a mannequin and a real person.

"We were interested in a classical question that philosophers and psychologists have discussed for centuries: why we feel that the self is in our bodies," project leader Henrik Ehrsson said. "To study this scientifically we've used tricks, perceptual illusions."

It sounded intriguing enough for me to try it, though entering the laboratory on Monday, I was having second thoughts.

The first props I saw were two kitchen knives, three naked dummies and a prosthetic hand sticking out from behind a curtain.

"You have the right to say stop at anytime if you feel uncomfortable," said Ehrsson's colleague, Valeria Petkova, as she rubbed my left hand with electrolytic gel and attached electrodes to the middle and index fingers.

She assured me I was not in any danger. Still, a nervous tingle rushed through my body as she placed the headset over my eyes.

In the first experiment, the goggles were hooked up to CCTV cameras fitted to the head of a male mannequin, staring down at its feet. Through the headset I saw a grainy image of the dummy's plastic torso. I tilted my head down to create the sensation I was looking down at my own body.

At that point, it didn't feel very real. But when Petkova simultaneously brushed markers against my belly and that of the mannequin, the effect started setting in. As my brain processed the visual and tactile signals, I had a growing impression that the mannequin's body was my own.

That was good fun, until the gleaming blade of a bread knife entered my field of vision. Petkova slid it across the dummy's stomach, sending shivers down my spine and a pulse of anxiety through the electrodes. My heightened stress level was illustrated by a spike in a computer diagram shown to me after the experiment.

"Approximately 70-80 percent of the people experience the illusion very strongly," Petkova said.

Apparently, I was one of them.

The second experiment was more benign. This time my headset was connected to cameras mounted on a round hat that Petkova was wearing. We faced each other, extended our right arms and shook hands.

Now that was weird: I was supposed to have the sensation of shaking hands with myself. The illusion wasn't perfect as I couldn't quite recognize Petkova's grip as my own, even though that's what the goggles meant to make me believe.

Perhaps the session was too short. The actual study, in which 87 volunteers participated, consisted of repeated sessions that gradually provided more accurate data. The results were published in PLoS One, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.

The principle finding was that under certain conditions a person can perceive another body as his or her own, even if it is of an opposite gender or an artificial body.

"These findings are of fundamental importance because they identify the perceptual processes that make us feel that we own our entire body," the study said.

Ehrsson said the study built on a previous experiment known as the "rubber hand illusion" in which participants were manipulated to experience a rubber hand as their own.

Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, said the Karolinska study was a "step up" from other research on the subject.

"This goes beyond other recent studies, where you've taken ownership of rubber hands and rubber legs," said Spence, who was not involved with the study.

His only concern was whether there might be any lasting effect on participants.

"The questions is what happens if you did it much longer? If you were in there for days and weeks. Would it be like something out of Total Recall?" Spence said, referring to the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger science fiction movie about a virtual vacation that turns into a nightmare.

Ehrsson suggested the findings could be applied in research on body image disorders by exploring how people become satisfied or dissatisfied with their bodies. Another possible application could be developing more advanced versions of computer games such as Second Life, he said.

"It could lead to the next generation of virtual reality applications in games, where people have the full-blown experience of being the avatar," Ehrsson said.

Nap without guilt: It boosts sophisticated memory

WASHINGTON - Just in time for the holidays, some medical advice most people will like: Take a nap.

Interrupting sleep seriously disrupts memory-making, compelling new research suggests. But on the flip side, taking a nap may boost a sophisticated kind of memory that helps a person see the big picture and get creative.

"Not only do we need to remember to sleep, but most certainly we sleep to remember," is how Dr. William Fishbein, a cognitive neuroscientist at the City University of New York, put it at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last week.

Good sleep is a casualty of the busy modern world. Surveys suggest few adults attain the recommended seven to eight hours a night.

Way too little clearly is dangerous: Sleep deprivation causes not just car crashes but all sorts of other accidents. Over time, a chronic lack of sleep can erode the body in ways that leave us more vulnerable to heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses.

Perhaps more common than insomnia, however, is fragmented sleep, the easy awakening that comes with aging, or, worse, the sleep apnea that afflicts millions, who repeatedly quit breathing for 30 seconds or so throughout the night.

Indeed, scientists increasingly are focusing less on sleep duration and more on the quality of sleep, what is called sleep intensity, in studying how sleep helps the brain process memories so they stick. Particularly important is "slow-wave sleep," a period of very deep sleep that comes earlier than better-known REM sleep, or dreaming time.

Fishbein suspected a more active role for the slow-wave sleep that can emerge even in a short power nap. Maybe the brain keeps working during that time to solve problems and come up with new ideas. So he and graduate student Hiuyan Lau devised a simple test: documenting relational memory, where the brain puts together separately learned facts in new ways.

First, they taught 20 English-speaking college students lists of Chinese words spelled with two characters, such as sister, mother, maid. Then half the students took a nap, being monitored to be sure they did not move from slow-wave sleep into the REM stage.

Upon awakening, they took a multiple-choice test of Chinese words they never had seen before. The nappers did much better at automatically learning that the first of the two-pair characters in the words they had memorized earlier always meant the same thing - female, for example. So they also were more likely than non-nappers to choose that a new word containing that character meant "princess" and not "ape."

"The nap group has essentially teased out what's going on," Fishbein concludes.

These students took a 90-minute nap, quite a luxury for most adults. But even a 12-minute nap can boost some forms of memory, adds Dr. Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School.

Conversely, Wisconsin researchers briefly interrupted nighttime slow-wave sleep by playing a beep - just loudly enough to disturb sleep but not awaken - and found those people could not remember a task they had learned the day before as well as people whose slow-wave sleep was not disrupted.

That brings us back to fragmented sleep, whether from aging or apnea. It can suppress the birth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, where memory-making begins, enough to hinder learning weeks after sleep returns to normal, warns Dr. Dennis McGinty of the University of California, Los Angeles.

To prove a lasting effect, McGinty mimicked human sleep apnea in rats. He hooked them to brain monitors and made them sleep on a treadmill. Whenever the monitors detected 30 seconds of sleep, the treadmill briefly switched on. After 12 days of this sleep disturbance, McGinty let the rats sleep peacefully for as long as they wanted for the next two weeks.

The catch-up sleep did not help: Rested rats used room cues to quickly learn the escape hole in a maze. Those with fragmented sleep two weeks earlier could not, only randomly stumbling upon the escape.

None of the new work is enough, yet, to pinpoint the minimum sleep needed for optimal memory. What's needed may vary considerably from person to person.

"A short sleeper may have a very efficient deep sleep even if they sleep only four hours," notes Dr. Chiara Cirellia of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

But altogether, the findings do suggest some practical advice: Get apnea treated. Avoid what Harvard's Stickgold calls "sleep bulimia," super-late nights followed by sleep-in weekends. And don't feel guilty for napping.