Week 4 and 5: Research Activities - Number 2

Dividing Attention in Everyday Life

Driving is a complex task, requiring the concurrent execution of various cognitive, physical sensory and psychomotor skills, and divided attention plays an important role in our lives. Most automobile accidents are caused by failures in divided attention because of mobile phones, loud radios and DVD players in vehicles during traffic. Research by the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that driver inattention, in its various forms, contributes to approximately 25 percent of police reported crashes. Driver distraction is one form of driver inattention and is claimed to be a contributing factor in over half of in attention crashes. However, as more and more mobile gadgets are being installed in vehicles, and vehicles having television, and websites on the vehicle dashboards, state of the art entertainment and driver assistance systems proliferate the vehicle market, it is like that the rate of distraction-related crashes will escalate.

When driving, drivers must continually allocate their attention resources to both driving and non-driving tasks. Because many aspects of the driving task become automated with experience, drivers are often capable of dividing performance or safety. Drivers can, however, be distracted by an activity or event to the extent that they no longer allocate sufficient attention to the driving task and their driving performance is compromised. In this sense, driver distraction results when drivers’ normal cognitive processes (i.e., attention-sharing) and adaptive strategies fail and drivers are no longer able to adequately divide their attention between the driving and secondary tasks and maintain driving performance at a satisfactory level.

Prior research has established that the manual manipulation of equipment (e.g., dialing the phone, answering the phone, adjusting the radio and DVD/CD player) has a negative impact on driving. In recent research, the focused is on the cell phone conversation, because it comprises the bulk of the time engaged in dual task pairing. In 2001 the American Psychological Society conducted a study designed to contrast the effects of handheld and hands-free cell phone conversation. The control group listened to the radio while performing the simulated driving task. Forty-eight undergraduate (24 male, 24 female) from the University of Utah participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to the three groups: radio control, handheld phone, and hands free phone.

The study consisted of three phases. The first phase was a warm up interval that last 7 minutes and was used to acquaint participants with the tracking task. The second phase was the single task portion of the study and comprised the 7.5 minute segments immediately preceding and immediately following the dual task port of the study. The third phase was the dual task portion of the study, lasting 15 minutes. Participants in the phone conversation groups were asked to discuss either the then going Clinton presidential impeachment or the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee bribery scandal (conversations were counterbalanced a cross participants).

Figure 1 Dual-task Performance during Driving.

Top panel: Dual task performance significantly increased the probability of a miss in the cellphone condition but not in the radio-control condition.

Bottom panel: Reaction time increases significantly for a dual task in the cell-phone condition but not in the radio-control condition.

 Reference

Strayer, D. L., & Johnson, W. A. (2001). Driven to distraction: Dual-task studies of simulated driving and conversing on a cellular telephone. Psychological Science, 12, 463. Retrieved from http://www.utah.edu/ September 21, 2011.

Young, Kristie & Regan, Michael, Regan. (2007). Driver distraction: a review of the literature. Monash University Accident Research Centre, Monash University. Retrieved from http://www.acrs.org.au/ September 21, 2011

Perception - The reality beyond matter

Perception - The reality beyond matter You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqnEGu8VF8Y

Perception is very profound, and perceptions are composed of electrical pulses that go through our senses and stay in the back of our brain momentarily. More than one scientist stated that matter is not real, and senses are projected images in the back of our brain. Projected images are composed of electrical impulses created by a Higher Being. Therefore, matter doesn’t last, and the electrical pulses are created by God. The video was afraid to mention God or the Creator. I have learned that individuals are composed of matter, soul, and mind.  

When we perceive a bird, the bird is not real but it is an electrical pulse that goes through our eyes and neurons and transmits momentarily in back of our dark brain atmosphere similar to a camera. The back of our brain is constantly dark, and the image is activated similar to a video. The video stated that this is amazing and most definitely is created all of the time by a Higher Being who is Almighty, and who lives from the beginning and until to the end like a circle going around and around. The Almighty Being never stops existing but provides the electrical impulses that zoom through our senses until it reaches our brains. The Almighty God in is complete control according to this video.

Behold the Lamb of God by George Frederic Handel

Music for the soul, body, and spirit. Don't you know?

Messiah (HWV 56)^[1] is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.^{[n 1]}



Surely; and with His Stripes; All we Like Sheep by Handels

Music for the soul and spirit.

Weeks 2-3 Research Activities – (Sept. 5 - Sept. 18) Part 4

Frontal lobe:

The frontal lobe is an area in  the brain of humans and other mammals, located at the front each cerebral hemisphere and positioned anterior to (in front of) the parietal lobe and superior and anterior to the temporal lobes. It tends to be involved when sequences of thoughs or a ctions are called for. Frontal lobe – conscious thought; damage can result in mood changes.

Parietal lobe:

The parietal lobe integrates sensory information from different modalities, particularly determinging spatial sense and navigation. For example, it comprises somatosensory cortex and the dorsal stream of the visual system. This enables regions of the parietal cortex to map objects perceived visual into body coordinate positions. Parietal lobe – plays important roles in integrating sensory information from various senses, and in the manipulation of objects; portions of the parietal lobe are involved with visuspatial processing.

Temporal lobe:

The temporal lobe is involved in auditory perception and is home to the primary auditory cortex. It is also important for the processing of semantics in both speech and vision. The temporal lobe contains the hippocampus and plays a key role in the formation of long-term memory. Temporal lobe – senses of small and sound, as well as processing of complex stimuli like faces and scenes.

Occipital lobe:

The occipital lobe is the visual processing center of the mammalian brain containing most of the anatomical region of t he visual cortex. The primary visual cortex is Brodmann area 17, commonly called V1 (visual one). When you go to pick strawberries, your occipital lobe is involved in helping you find the red strawberries in between the green leaves.  Occipital lobe – sense of sight; lesions can produce hallucinations.

Reference

Bainbridge, David. New Scientist, 1/26/2008, Vol. 197 Issue 2640, p40-43, 4 p. Retrieved September 8, 2011 from EBSCOhost

Weeks 2-3 Research Activities – (Sept. 5 - Sept. 18) Part 3

The above figure was done by photoshop by looking, and the text was inserted by Word inserts. I took a screen shot from You Tube, and I cut the brain with the polygonal lasso tool. I place the brain figure on a white layer. I could screen and cust out the brain figure with text on it. So I perform theabove figure by croping and adjusting the size of figure above with photoshop and word. After I finished this document I will confert it to pdf so that everything stays in place.

Weeks 2-3 Research Activities – (Sept. 5 - Sept. 18) Part 2

Working memory is the ability to actively hold information in the mind needed to do complex tasks such as drawing, reasoning, comprehension and learning. Theories exist both regarding the theoretical structure of working memory and the role of specific parts of the brain involving in working memory. Research identifies the frontal cortex, parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parts of the basal ganglia as crucial.

I was advised to stare at Figure 2.6 on page 57 for 5 minutes with a break at 3 minutes for 20 seconds (no cheating?). This wasn’t hard because for five days I looked and read about human brains, and this task wasn’t hard. I use Adobe Photoshop to draw the brain picture below. I used the pencil tool, and the eraser tool for about thirty minutes. Below is the first brain that I draw, and it is almost close, but not close. I use Microsoft Word to place the text in each lobe. I was not able to color the parts with the brush too. So I will use the colors that are here.

Functions have been identified with each lobe, but the lobes also intereact. The four lobes, named after the bones of the skull lying direct over them in the figure on page 1, are the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. The lobes are involved in numerous functions.

Weeks 2-3 Research Activities – (Sept. 5 - Sept. 18):

Working memory is the ability to actively hold information in the mind needed to do complex tasks such as drawing, reasoning, comprehension and learning. Theories exist both regarding the theoretical structure of working memory and the role of specific parts of the brain involving in working memory. Research identifies the frontal cortex, parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parts of the basal ganglia as crucial.

I was advised to stare at Figure 2.6 on page 57 for 5 minutes with a break at 3 minutes for 20 seconds (no cheating?). This wasn’t hard because for five days I looked and read about human brains, and this task wasn’t hard. I use Adobe Photoshop to draw the brain picture below. I used the pencil tool, and the eraser tool for about thirty minutes. Below is the first brain that I draw, and it is almost close, but not close. I use Microsoft Word to place the text in each lobe. I was not able to color the parts with the brush too. So I will use the colors that are here.

HAVING A GOOD TIME by Queen (band)

Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury (lead vocals, piano), Brian May (guitar, vocals), John Deacon (bass guitar, vocals), and Roger Taylor (drums, vocals). Queen's earliest works were influenced by progressive rock, but the band gradually ventured into more conventional and radio-friendly works, incorporating more diverse and innovative styles in their music.
Before joining Queen, Brian May and Roger Taylor had been playing together in a band named Smile with bassist Tim Staffell. Freddie Mercury (then known by his birth name of Farrokh/ Freddie Bulsara) was a fan of Smile, and encouraged them to experiment with more elaborate stage and recording techniques after Staffell's departure in 1970. Mercury himself joined the band shortly thereafter, changed the name of the band to 'Queen', and adopted his familiar stage name. John Deacon was recruited prior to recording their eponymous debut album (1973). Queen enjoyed success in the UK with their debut and its follow-up, Queen II (1974), but it was the release of Sheer Heart Attack (1974) and A Night at the Opera (1975) that gained the band international success. The latter featured "Bohemian Rhapsody", which stayed at number one in the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks; it charted at number one in several other territories, and gave the band their first top ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. Their 1977 album, News of the World, contained two of rock's most recognisable anthems, "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". By the early 1980s, Queen were one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world, and their performance at 1985's Live Aid is regarded as one of the greatest in rock history. In 1991, Mercury died of bronchopneumonia, a complication of AIDS, and Deacon retired in 1997. Since then, May and Taylor have infrequently performed together, including a collaboration with Paul Rodgers under the name Queen + Paul Rodgers which ended in May 2009.
The band has released a total of 18 number one albums, 18 number one singles, and 10 number one DVDs, and have sold over 150 million albums, with some estimates in excess of 300 million albums, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. They have been honoured with seven Ivor Novello awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Introduction

I work as part time system auditor for a temporary employment agency, and a volunteer cataloger for the Saginaw Public library. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in information systems from UTA, and a master’s of science degree in information system from UNT. Both of my under graduate and graduate education helped me a lot to apply technology in both of my professions.

At the present time I hold a reasonable amount of technology experience and expertise. I believe that we are all born with technology experience and expertise because the world system is getting wiser. I blame a lot of being proficient in technology because of my college and university training and education. I cannot give credit to my employment for giving me the opportunity to apply my technology acumen because when I work on tasks and assignments at my employment I have to be up and running in technology know how.

I hope to learn a lot about cognitive psychology so that I may help people to learn things that they perceive as complex. I want to make things easier for students as well. I was going to take a statistic class, but I didn’t complete the prerequisites and I am not an ATTD student so now I am taking this class. I am getting very interested in psychology and statistics because I want to gain admittance to a doctorate degree relating to educational psychology.

Cognitive Psychology Project 19

Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes including how people think, perceive, remember, and learn. As part of the larger field of cognitive science, this branch of psychology is related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.
Noam Chomsky helped to ignite a "cognitive revolution" in psychology when he criticized the behaviorists' notions of "stimulus", "response", and "reinforcement", arguing that such ideas—which Skinner had borrowed from animal experiments in the laboratory—could be applied to complex human behavior, most notably language acquisition, in only a vague and superficial manner. The postulation that humans are born with the instinct or "innate facility" for acquiring language posed a challenge to the behaviorist position that all behavior (including language) is contingent upon learning and reinforcement.^[37] Social learning theorists, such as Albert Bandura, argued that the child's environment could make contributions of its own to the behaviors of an observant subject.^[38]

Freudian Slip - Short

A Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of some unconscious ("dynamically repressed") wish, conflict, or train of thought. The concept is thus part of classical psychoanalysis.

Slips of the tongue and the pen are the classical parapraxes, but psychoanalytic theory also embraces such phenomena as misreadings, mishearings, temporary forgettings, and the mislaying and losing of objects.
In general use, the term 'Freudian slip' has been debased to refer to any accidental verbal slips of the tongue.^[1] Thus many examples are found in explanations and dictionaries which do not strictly fit the psychoanalytic definition.

For example: He: 'What would you like—bread and butter, or cake?' She: 'Bed and butter... Whoops!'^[1]
In the above, the woman may be presumed to have a sexual feeling or intention that she wished to leave unexpressed, not a sexual feeling or intention that was dynamically repressed. Her sexual intention was therefore secret, rather than unconscious, and any 'parapraxis' would inhere in the idea that she unconsciously wished to express that intention, rather than in the sexual connotation of the substitution.

For Unto Us a Child is Born - Handel Messiah

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning, 360-member, all-volunteer choir. The choir is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS Church). However, the choir is completely self-funded, traveling and producing albums to support the organization. The choir's current music director is Mack Wilberg.^[1]

Called "America's Choir" by U.S. President Ronald Reagan,^[2] the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is made up of 360 men and women, all members of the LDS Church are in good standing. Although many choir members live within close proximity of the famous Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah, some members commute long distances for practice and the Choir's weekly television and radio broadcast. Choir members are not paid for their participation, travel expenses or performances. There are many husband-wife combinations and some families have participated in the choir for generations.

The choir was founded in August 1847, one month after the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. Since July 15, 1929, the choir has performed a weekly radio broadcast called Music and the Spoken Word, which is the longest-running continuous radio network broadcast in the world.^[3] At the end of the choir's 4165th live broadcast on July 12, 2009, the show's host, Lloyd D. Newell, announced another milestone that the show had just hit: the completion of its 80th year in existence. The show has been televised since the early 1960s and is now broadcast worldwide through some 1,500 radio and television stations.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's sound is often said to be world-famous, and instantly recognizable. When recording, the choir is usually accompanied by the Orchestra at Temple Square, the Tabernacle's famous pipe organ, or both. With the completion of the Conference Center, a larger auditorium directly adjacent to Temple Square, the choir now has two halls available for performance.

The minimum age for participation in the choir has recently been reduced from 30 to 25. Choir members are currently limited to twenty years of participation, or until the member reaches the age of 60, allowing new members to join the choir on a regular basis. New choir members participate in The Temple Square Chorale training choir, a combination music theory/performance school.

Mental Processes of Cognition

Cognition is the scientific term for mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. It is also used in a branch of social psychology called social cognition to explain attitudes, attribution and groups dynamics.
The term cognition (Latin: cognoscere, "to know", "to conceptualize" or "to recognize") refers to a faculty for the processing of information, applying knowledge, and changing preferences. Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial, conscious or unconscious. These processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, anesthesia, neurology and psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, anthropology, systemics, computer science and creed. Within psychology or philosophy, the concept of cognition is closely related to abstract concepts such as mind, intelligence, cognition is used to refer to the mental functions, mental processes (thoughts) and states of intelligent entities (humans, human organizations, highly autonomous machines and artificial intelligences).

Cognitive Psychology AQA

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed (in faculties such as perception, language, memory, reasoning, and emotion), represented, and transformed in behaviour, (human or other animal) nervous system or machine (e.g., computer). Cognitive science consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education.^[1] It spans many levels of analysis, from low-level learning and decision mechanisms to high-level logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research.^[2] In the same decade, the journal Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science Society were founded.^[3]

He Shall Purify the Sons of Levi

George Frideric Handel (German: Georg Friedrich Händel; pronounced [ˈhɛndəl]) (23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, and concertos. Handel was born in Germany in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. He received critical musical training in Italy before settling in London and becoming a naturalised British subject.^[1] Handel is regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time, and his works include Messiah, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. He was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Handel's music was well-known to such later composers as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt]), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical method of psychoanalysis for investigating the mind and treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst.

Freud postulated that sexual drives were the primary motivational forces of human life, developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association, discovered the phenomenon of transference in the therapeutic relationship and established its central role in the analytic process; he interpreted dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy, and a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.

Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6 May 1856, to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Příbor (German: Freiberg), then part of the Austrian Empire (1804–1867), now the Czech Republic.^[2] His father, Jacob Freud (1815–1896,^[3] was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother, Amalié (née Nathansohn), the second wife of Jakob, was 21. He was the first of their eight children and, in accordance with tradition, his parents favored him over his siblings from the early stages of his childhood. Freud was born with a caul, which the family accepted as a positive omen.^[4]
Despite their poverty, the Freuds ensured Sigmund’s schooling and education. Due to the Panic of 1857, Freud's father lost his business, and the family moved to Leipzig before settling in Vienna. In 1865, the nine-year-old student Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school. He proved an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors. Freud had planned to study law, but instead joined the medical faculty at the University of Vienna to study under Darwinist Professor Karl Claus.^[5] At that time, the eel life cycle was unknown and Freud spent four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an unsuccessful search for their male reproductive organs.

Freud greatly admired the philosopher Franz Brentano, known for his theory of perception, as well as Theodor Lipps, who was one of the main supporters of the ideas of the unconscious and empathy.^[6] Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his 1874 book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Although Brentano himself rejected the unconscious, his discussion of it probably helped introduce Freud to the concept. Brentano identified Thomas Aquinas as one of the earliest people to suggest the existence of the unconscious; Freud was thus perhaps unknowingly siding with Aquinas on this issue.^[7]

Freud read Friedrich Nietzsche as a student, and bought his collected works in 1900, the year of Nietzsche's death; Freud told Wilhelm Fliess that he hoped to find in Nietzsche "the words for much that remains mute in me." According to Peter Gay, however, Freud treated Nietzsche's writings "as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied"; immediately after reporting to Fliess that he had bought Nietzsche's works, Freud added that he had not yet opened them.^[8] Students of Freud began to point out analogies between his work and that of Nietzsche almost as soon as he developed a following.^[9]
Freud began smoking tobacco at age 24; initially a cigarette smoker, he became a cigar smoker. Freud believed that smoking enhanced his capacity to work, and believed he could exercise self-discipline in moderating his tobacco-smoking; yet, despite health warnings from Fliess, and to the detriment of his health, Freud remained a smoker, eventually suffering a buccal cancer.^[10]

Carl Jung initiated the rumor that a romantic relationship may have developed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896.^[11] Hans Eysenck suggests that the affair occurred, resulting in an aborted pregnancy for Miss Bernays.^[12] The publication in 2006 of a Swiss hotel log, dated 13 August 1898, has been regarded by some Freudian scholars (including Peter Gay) as showing that there was a factual basis to these rumors.^[13]

Freud was a "partially assimilated, mostly secular Jew."^[14] According to biographer Ernest Jones "Freud's Jewishness contributed greatly to his work and his firm convictions about his findings. Freud often referred to his ability to stand alone, if need be, without wavering or surrendering his intellectual and scientific discoveries, and he attributed this ability to his irreligious but strong Jewish identity in an antisemitic society, whereby he was accustomed to a marginal status and being set aside as different."^[15] Freud once described himself as "an author who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers—as well as from every other religion", but who remains "in his essential nature a Jew, and who has no desire to alter that nature".^[16]