I’ve been working very hard to give students a thoroughly comprehensive and exacting preparation… good luck future psychologists! (seventh edition)
Here’s what we are reading today:
“Performance goals are when people try to be judged as successful by other people. “For example, if I’m a musician, I want people to applaud after I play. Or if I’m a student, I want to get a good grade,” explains lead author Eric Hamerman. Performance goals tend to be extrinsically motivated, and are perceived to be susceptible to influence from outside forces. Learning goals are often judged internally. “For example, a musician wants to become competent as a guitar player and perceive that he/she has mastered a piece of music,” Hamerman says. Since learning goals are intrinsically motivated, this leads to a perception that they are also internally controlled and less likely to be impacted by outside forces.”
“To control one’s dreams and to live ‘out there’ what is impossible in real life — a truly tempting idea. Some persons — so-called lucid dreamers — can do this. Researchers have discovered that the brain area which enables self-reflection is larger in lucid dreamers. Thus, lucid dreamers are possibly also more self-reflecting when being awake.”
“Scientists have long known that sleep, memory and learning are deeply connected. Most animals, from flies to humans, have trouble remembering when sleep deprived, and studies have shown that sleep is critical in converting short-term into long-term memory, a process known as memory consolidation.
But just how that process works has remained a mystery.
The question is, does the mechanism that promotes sleep also consolidate memory, or do two distinct processes work together? In other words, is memory consolidated during sleep because the brain is quiet, allowing memory neurons to go to work, or are memory neurons actually putting us to sleep?”
“Cognitive neuroscientist Kent Kiehl discusses his research and personal experience working with “those without conscience.” Scott and Kent demystify the historically fascinating illness as it relates to criminal activity, genius, evil, flourishing, the brain, gender and treatment.”
“In the end, the actual danger to the public was very small and the response from media was overblown. But the incident did reveal an important pattern about how public health and government agencies can better frame and control the information spread through social channels during emergency events.”
““Identifying brain profiles that differ from the pattern observed in typically developing individuals is crucial not only in that it allows researchers to begin to understand the differences that arise in ASD but, in this case, it opens up the possibility that there are many altered brain profiles all of which fall under the umbrella of ‘autism’ or ‘autisms,’” said Marlene Behrmann, the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon and co-director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.”
“Women rate emotional images as more emotionally stimulating than men do and are more likely to remember them. However, there are no gender-related differences in emotional appraisal as far as neutral images are concerned. These were the findings of a large-scale study by a research team at the University of Basel that focused on determining the gender-dependent relationship between emotions, memory performance and brain activity. The results will be published in the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.”
10 Comments
smorri07 · January 29, 2015 at 12:05 pm
Considering the massive impact social media has on our day to day lives, I found the article on the spread of fear within social media to be extremely relevant and thought-provoking. Specifically the point which stated that visuals spread faster than words. As powerful as words are, a picture is worth a thousand of them, and we are “visual creatures” after all. The fact that images on social media have such an enormous impact on the public’s perception of a situation means that we must be that much more careful with the images that are posted online and what we are putting out there for the public to see. Also, this means what is shown on the internet, social media, and news stories need to be extremely secure from terrorism and abusive use to protect the public from fearful attacks and panic.
jwatso02 · February 7, 2015 at 3:39 pm
I am fascinated by lucid dreaming, and I think society as a whole is as well. This seems to be evident in the movie The Matrix, or more recently, Inception. I have woken up before feeling sad, happy, etc. and wasn’t sure why until I remembered a dream. It seems to me that dreaming allows us to fulfill our conscious and unconscious desires, meet our greatest fears, and work through current and potential future problems. By dreaming, we think beyond the constructs of reality, and have much more creative freedom, so we can work through these situations in ways we perhaps wouldn’t have thought of before. It is very interesting that this translates to an actual increase in creativity.
In regard to the brain patterns in autism, I have worked with children with autism, and (from my experience) they tend to be on sensory overload. Routine is very important because what may seem like a calm environment to me is a more chaotic environment for them. This is because they are noticing things I don’t and fixating on things I disregard. Of course, these fixations can be used to one’s advantage. This is definitely the case with Temple Grandin; since she was a young girl she was able to take the perspective of farm animals and fixate on life as they saw it through their eyes. Through this ability she created her career and legacy by designing innovative livestock equipment. It is fascinating and consistent with what I’ve experienced that these differences in those with autism be attributed to neurological differences. The fixations and compulsions of those with autism can seem very similar to an anxiety disorder such as OCD. Anxiety disorders are caused by disrupted activity in the amygdala and its overactive processing of fear and anxiety, so I don’t think it is a far-fetched idea that autism would be as well.
rspatric · February 8, 2015 at 2:30 pm
I read the article on how emotions are processed differently by men and women. I thought it had some interesting links about emotion towards memory. I wonder if men would perform just as well as women on a memory test with images or words that held no emotion. Because women are generally better at verbal skills, it makes them able to express emotion better. However I would like to think men are just as emotional, it’s just harder to tell because they don’t express emotions as well.
najavier · February 14, 2015 at 12:52 pm
I try not to be so superstitious. However, sometimes I avoid certain actions that could lead to having bad luck or make an effort to do things that may give me good luck. Then, depending on what the superstition is, I can feel tense or hesitant or even more confident and comfortable avoiding or engaging in an action. What I found interesting about this article is the aspect of internal and external control and how one type is seen more in performance goals while another in learning goals. Just recently, one of my classes took an assessment that was measuring one’s sense of external and internal control. The takeaway that we learned was how important it is to have a sense of internal control. Those who carry that belief tend to achieve more or continue to pursue a challenging task longer. So, now I’m wondering if following superstitious practices are done to compensate an individual’s lack of internal control, such as when faced with performance goals?
rspatric · February 15, 2015 at 10:33 am
The lucid dreaming article what rather interesting. I can see the connection between metacognition and lucid dreaming. While one is lucid dreaming, I would think you’d have to be very aware of your own consciousness and thinking to understand that you are in a dream state. I would love to know more about the follow up study on metacognition, and if people can train themselves to lucid dream. I have never been able to lucid dream myself, but I have talked to people who have and it seems like a very exciting experience.
kmmcnult · February 16, 2015 at 11:25 am
I read the article about cramming because I have some friends who pull all-nighters and I wanted to have some evidence to back my argument. The article’s purpose was to see if the mechanism that promotes sleep also is responsible for memory, or are they different properties that cooperate. By inhibiting the DPM, flies kept buzzing and not sleeping. It was found that sleep and memory overlap, and this is a good baseline to help them with human testing. This will help more research to be done, and lots of concrete evidence to be made about sleep and memory and will especially be helpful in the academic and working environments.
amartcp · February 16, 2015 at 10:55 pm
I read the article about cramming. I have roommates that cram and pull all-nighters quite frequently for some of their classes, and I wonder how they do it and if it works! One of my roommates has a quiz in Organic Chemistry every week, and seems to stay up all night before every quiz. I know there are some that she has done well on, and others, not so well. Reading this was interesting, because I think that sometimes her body was telling her to go to sleep to solidify what she learned, but she would push passed that and maybe not do so well.
Just for myself, I know I cannot run on no sleep. There comes a point where I do not retain any of the information I am studying. I try to study a little bit everyday so I can get my sleep in. I have also found that after a good amount of studying, no matter the time, I am always really tired. Maybe this is my body telling me to sleep to help remember this information! Very interesting.
elliehirahara · March 10, 2015 at 10:16 pm
Cramming was an ongoing thing I would do in high school and for some fortunate reason, it would always work in my favor. I would often pull all nighters and be able to function with no sleep. I finally realized that in college, doing this was not the best idea. I realized that trying to cram information the night before and getting no sleep just results in me not being able to retain things the morning after. Getting a good nights sleep is such an important role when taking tests and doing certain tasks. From my personal experience, the night before a midterm, instead of staying up all night and studying, I went to bed instead and ended up doing very well on it.
rspatric · March 12, 2015 at 12:19 pm
I read the article on sleep and memory. I wonder if this is not just a human trait but if it applies to animals as well. Do animals that sleep less have shorter memories and less intelligence perhaps, whereas animals that sleep often have greater memories? the study seemed pretty accurate. I know I do not function well on little sleep, and it becomes hard to focus on class or tests. Does studying right before bed make it easier to remember subject matter?
vimorris@calpoly.edu · May 1, 2016 at 4:24 pm
The summary for the Awareness of Thinking article was intriguing to consider as it describes the association between lucid dreaming and self-reflection. I am curious to know if lucid dreaming is more likely to come in waves or if it is mostly consistent throughout ones life. For instance, if someone becomes increasingly self reflective due to additional experiences in their life will lucid dreaming increase? I would consider myself to be self-reflective however I would not necessarily identify myself as a lucid dreamer, this leads me to wonder if there are variations in self reflection.