The Stroop Effect

          This effect is named after John Ridley Stroop, who discovered this in 1930. It is an experiment to measure the amount of time it takes to react to different stimulates. There are 3 types of stimuli to this experiment. The first one is to write colors with black ink. In the second one, the names and the color ink used are different, and in the third one, there are squares with a given color.

Then, you are given the task of reading the colors. At first, you read the colors written in black ink. And then, with the second one, you have to read the color of the ink used to write the color, and not the word itself.

          When you do this experiment, what you will encounter is that when you try to do the second one, your brain can’t react fast enough, causing you to momentarily begin to say the word that appears instead of the color ink.

          The reason behind this strange phenomenon is that because we have been reading throughout our whole live, and sometimes, when we see the beginning of a word, we can pretty much guess the rest of it and say it, without really actually finishing reading that word. So the words themselves have more influence than the ability to name the color without processing the word, making you stumble a bit. That is called the Speed of Processing Theory. There is also another theory, Selective Attention Theory, which basically says that the interference occurs because naming colors requires more attention than reading words.

The Myth of Multitasking

         

           Multitasking has been considered by many psychiatrists to be a myth because our brain can’t actually do two things at once. Sure, you can walk and talk at the same time, but that’s because you are using two different parts of the brain while you do so, so it doesn’t affect much of your performance. But some other cases like writing an essay and watching the TV at the same time, it seems like you are doing two things at once, but in reality, you are just switching back and forth. So there is no such thing as multitasking.

          The term “response selection bottleneck” refers to when you are doing many things at once; you actually have to prioritize them and then do it one by one, like filtering them first. This usually shows how you slow down and can’t perform as well as when you are only doing one thing at a time, with your undivided attention.

          David Meyer says that multitasking releasing stress hormones and adrenaline is important because if you keep multitasking, excess amount of these things will be produced and can cause a long-term damage. This can lead to the loss of short-term memory. Although his research also says that maybe, with training, your mind can switch back and forth more effectively, although never actually reaching the term "multitasking"

          Russell Poldrack found that you can actually learn when you multitask, but that learning is less pliable and more direct, making it harder to call back this piece of information stored. His research shows the different parts of the brain used to learn and to store new information when they are not focused. And since we are designed to focus,  we are not being as efficient as we thought we are, because the information is not stored in the part of the brain that makes it easier to retrieve.

          The author concludes that if we keep on multitasking, we are not being more efficient, but on the contrary, our brains don't work as well as when you are concentrating on only one thing at once. This is important because it affects everything in our daily lives. Companies, for example, will maybe earn less than a profit. Students will probably score lower on tests. The author also states that in the future we will invent new devices to help us overcome the unintended attention towards other things and to set mental limits when we try to do too much in a short amount of time. Or maybe we will simply adjust and those things that used to be a distraction, like phone ringings, getting emails, television sounds, will merely be some very distant background noises that doesn't affect us much anymore.

Observations of the BaMbuti Pygmies

          The BaMbuti Pygmies is located in Congo, Africa. They are hunter-gatherers and one of the oldest indigenous people in Africa. They are classified into four distinct cultures, each speaking a different language. They live in a tropical rainforest in the Forest of Ituri. They are the shortest of the pygmies, with an average of 4 feet 6 inches. Their culture is very different from our own and the African Pygmies are one group of people whose lifestyle has changed very little despite various foreign invasions.

          Colin Turnbull was a Britsh-American anthropologist who did many studies on the BaMbuti Pygmies. This study made him well known since it made a lot of contributions to the study of perception and how it affects the way we live. He said “The identity of the BaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Congo with the forest itself goes beyond their social life; they are also psychologically conditioned by their environment. This can best be illustrated by some observations that I made during a recent field trip in their country.”

Turnbull first realized that distance affects perception was when he was with a pygmy called Kenge and when they saw buffalos in the distance, Kenge actually asked what kind of insect are those. And while they approached the buffalos, Kenge was shocked at what at first seemed so small, is actually immensely huge.

The reason behind this is because pygmies’ natural habitat is the forest, so they hardly ever see things that are further away, thus their lack of knowledge that things at an distance looks smaller than it actually is. This proves that you are what you’ve seen and experienced, so no two person’s perception is the same.

Colin Turnbull

          Colin Turnbull was a famous British-American anthropologist whose work on the African BaMbuti Pygmies is one of the most important works that made him a famous intellectual in the 1960’s and 1970’s. He was raised primarily by a series of German nannies and was educated at the prestigious Westminster School, where he became a renowned organist. He considered his privileges to be a duty to help those people of color, in other words, people who are discriminated.

          Turnbull first became interested in African ethnology on a motorcycle trip in 1951 during which he viewed East Africa, the Congo, the Sudan, and Egypt. It was on this trip that he first visited the Pygmies. He then met the BaMbuti tribe, which he considered to have social institutions more humane and more sophisticated the ones that were practiced in western civilization. The people lived in peace not because they were ordered to by the laws, but because of their wish to be united and to be treated equally amongst themselves.

          Later on in his life, in 1959, he met his partner Joseph Towles, with whom he exchanged marriage vows the following year. After his partner’s death, Turnbull donated all his research to the College of Charleston, and he insisted that this donation was to be named only after Towle’s name alone. He then died in Virginia in 1994 due to a complication of AIDS just like his partner.

What factors influence our perception?

There are internal and external factors that affects your perception.

      The internal factors are those that origins from inside of oneself. Like emotions, intelligence and your senses. So because no two people are the same, when they face the same situation, their reactions will be different. Our internal perceptions build when we experience something, especially when you were little. For example, I like Saturdays because it was a break from school and you don’t have to worry about homework until the next day. This started when I began school in kinder garden, so from then on, I perceive Saturdays as a day to relax and enjoy.

 Another thing that I like that is due to internal factors is those games that you have to spot differences between two pictures (which is influenced by our senses), because I can almost always find them.

The external factors are those that affect you from the outside, like places, people and culture. I like to use an umbrella under the sun, and everyone thinks that’s normal in Taiwan, but then when I went to Chile and did the same thing, people was staring and muttering “but it’s not raining! What is that for?” and so now I almost never do it and consider it weird when someone uses an umbrella under the blazing sun too… I also don't like buses, due to injury caused by a  buse when I was 6...

Perception is Reality

          The definition you see on a dictionary for perception is : the representation of what is perceived. Then if you look up reality, it will say : all of your experiences that determine how things appear to you. So we can deduce that the phrase "Perception is Reality" is right in a way, because we all have different lives, so we have different perceptions. So it is safe to say that everybody's reality is different. Reality is based on how we live and see this world. Imagine that you are a cat,  but if you've been place in an enviroment that only contains dogs, it is very probable that the cat is going to think that it's a dog and behaves like one and have no idea what a cat really is.

          My perception is constantly changing by itself. I think it is because i lived in many countries and they are all very different from each other. Maybe the perception that lasts the most in your brain is the one that you get in your infancy and childhood. So when i went back to Taiwan from Chile, everyone says that my personlity is not like one of a Taiwanese person. Well mainly they think that it is rude to get up in class to throw out trash, but I don't consider it rude at all, in fact, I think I'm doing something good by cleaning after myself.

Why did I take IB Psychology

   Well, I have to say that the reason I took this class is because I decided to try out for the full IB student program, and one of the six group subjects is psychology. Although there weren't other options in school, I think that I would still have taken this class because it is always very interesting to know how the human mind is working. When I think about psychology, what usually come to my mind is psychologists helping you in daily life to deal with the problems you can't solve alone. And in a way, helping others is helping yourself. I wish to be able to help others when i finish this course.