Internal Assesment - Stroop effect

       

  The Stroop Effect is one of the most-studied phenomena in psychology. This effect shows how the brain deals with conflicting interference. The test is easy to administer, and works in a variety of contexts. This experiment was first conducted in 1935 by J. Ridley Stroop and was first noted in the Journal of Experimental Psychology

          The procedure of this study is that the words will be printed in 3 forms, one all in black ink, then another one in colored ink correspondent to the color the words spell and the last also in color ink but not representing the word spelled. Then to present these words to a certain number of subjects and measure the time they take to finish reading each form. Objective of this experiment is to see how fast is the human reaction time to something that is considered to be a really fast reaction that is barely processed through the brain. This means that when we see the partial beginning of the word, our brains already forms the shape of the word and says it, but the point of this is not to read the words, but the color of the ink of the word. The word themselves has more influence over the mind than the colors. This is due to certain cognitive processes seem automatic in the sense that they do not require effortful thought or seem beyond our conscious control. There is also the consideration of the way you show the words. What if you put colored ink to nonsense words? Would you still have trouble saying them? Probably not. So in order to have a conflicting stimuli for the brain, we right the words of the colors instead of nonsense words.

          There are a couple of reasons behind this. There is one that states that the interference is caused by only one area of the brain is dominating the response of other functional areas. One is the Speed of Processing Theory: the interference occurs because words are read faster than colors are named. The other one is Selective Attention Theory: the interference occurs because naming colors requires more attention than reading words. Another way to explain this is that words are read faster than colors are named, two responses compete to be the actual response produced (this causes the interference), similar to a race to see which will come out first (reading words will always come out first).

The Placebo Effect

          The Placebo Effect is a sort of reaction a patient have when they think they have been treated but are actually not. The most common placebos we see are sugar pills and fake surgeries. It shows the power of the human mind and that sometimes the pain can be reduced by psychological means. It can also be the power of the positive thinking.

          The thought of placebos in modern times came from H.K. Beecher’s study. He looked at 15 clinical trials and found out that 35% of the 1082 patients had satisfactory results being administered with the placebo effect. This is the evidence at the time that supported Beecher’s study. But many after found a lot of wrong issues with his results and data. In 10 of the 15 clinical trials Beecher used earlier, 66.7% of the patients improved as a normal course of their illness, and thus, was not an effect of the placebo. Also in another case, the patients improved after 6 days, but that was a normal result and they would have improved even if they didn’t take anything at all for their cold.

Another important issue with his results was that he only recorded the ones that were successful, and didn’t take into account the patients that deteriorated; therefore there was a misleading direction in the data he presented.

          My personal opinion of the placebo effect after reading all of that is that maybe it does exist, but one shouldn’t depend on it to save a life. Obviously if a patient’s status is critical, it would be unwise and unorthodox to use the placebo effect hoping that it would work. I think the placebo effect works best on more trivial things, such as the pressing of buttons and air conditioning. The mind is a very powerful thing, and perhaps it may trick our body into thinking it is in a condition it is actually not.

Sex and Cultural Differences In Memory

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220104244.htm

Sex differences in memory:

          There has always been differences between sexes, and their capacity of memory is one two.  The findings of psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman in Sweden did determine that sex differences have a lot to do with their episodic memory, a long-term memory build on personal experiences, by which give woman an advantage.
          The differences between the sexes is that women are better in verbal episodic memory taks (ex: remembering words, objects, pictures) and men are better at remembering symbolic non-linguistic things. Another case is that women can remember facial feature better than men, especially those of other females. Also that women recognize familiar smells better. But another thing that affects this is education, which have a big influence on these sex differences.
          Althought the chances that genetically-based differences between the capacity of male and female memory is not clear, results from experiments show that females have the advantage to episodic memory.


http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep05/culture.aspx

Cultural differences in memory:
         

           Throughout a child's life, it is normal for the child not to remember events that happened below the age of 4 or so. This is called "childhood amnesia". But researcher now have discovered the fact that between different cultures, the time when a child can actually remember something is very different, the largest difference up to 2 years apart.
           The main difference that could be found was between american children and asian children. People who grew up in societies that focus more on personal history, like the US, will have earlier childhood memories than those people who grew up in an environment whose value interdependence is placed above those of personal history, like Asia.
           These difference are also explained by the social-interaction model developed by Katherine Nelson. This models says, our autobiographical memories don't develop in a vacuum, but when we were children and we go over past events with adults, enabling us to remember more details.
          There have been many experiments done to understand these slight differences more. Like they tried to compare the earliest memories of Asian-American immigrants to those of native asians and americans and try to figure out a pattern. So overall, this is not a really precise theory, but they are working on it to prove that it is.

Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is losing memories slowly and gradually. No one can identify the causes yet, although the most common trait is that people get this at an old age. When people get this, their identities fade away slowly, causing an incredible amount of pain in the families of the affected. They have nursing homes especially made to treat this, and a place for families to leave their beloved and to not worry about their loved ones being in danger at home, alone.

Although researches keep trying to find something that can stop this, all they seem to be able to find is a way to slow down this process, not stopping it entirely. In the early ages, no one seemed to know about Alzheimer’s disease. The main reason for this is because back then no one seemed to live over the age of 65, therefore the rareness of this disease surfacing. But now that human life has been prolonged to over 65 years old, the need for a cure is more and more demanding.

After reading and watching about this disease, it made me wonder about the mysteries occurring all around us, and I grew apprehensive. What if this disease someday attacks on someone in my family? What if later on I actually get this disease too, and can't remember anything from my childhood to my family? With this question, it lead me to think about  the importance of life. I understand now why people everyone keeps saying “live in the present, not the future”, because later on in life, the present is all you have because you can’t be yourself anymore in the future.

Some Short-Term Memories Die Suddenly, No Fading Summary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

          This experiment was conducted by researchers at the University of California. Before people believed that when memories are stored, some goes to the long term section and other go to the short term section. It is said that the ones that goes to the short term section goes unprocessed and groes more innacurate and imprecise by the second. But the researchers proved them wrong.
          They discovered that their subjects could hold temporary memories (like color and shape) for atleast 4 seconds before the memories suddenly disappear, though until then they remained quite accurate.

          To test the accuracy of short-term visual memory, Weiwei Zhang and Steve Luck designed experiments to measure two things. The probability the memory could be held and the precision of that memory. Both of the tests were tested on 12 adults. The first test was to show them 3 squares with colors, flashing for one tenth of a second. Then after 1, 4 or 10 seconds, they are shown a spectrum of colors with the 3 colors that appeared before, only that now they are colorless and one of them is highlighted. They ask you to select a color in the spectrum that best resembles the highlighted square's original color. The closer they click to the color, the more accurate. The second one is basically the same, except it tests shapes. 
          They concluded that the subject either had the memory, or doesn't, depending on how close they choose to the color/shape. Also that the probability of having the memory lies between 4 and 10 seconds, and the memories did not slowly "fade away".
          This can be important in real life because  it would provide away to help us avoid the confusion that might occur if we tried to make decisions on the basis of weak, inaccurate memories. Also that they are incorporating these findings into research for short-term memory dysfunction in people with schizophrenia.

The Memories You Want To Forget Are The Hardest Ones To Lose Summary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815105026.htm

          This discovery was conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It mainly says that very emotional, painful, shocking memories are are the hardest to forget, especially if they are visual ones. An example it presented was that when you see a footage of soldiers coming back from war, it is more emotional than simply reading it in a headline in the newspaper.
           Keith Payne, an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences said that it is easy to forget neutral (as in simple, basic) memories such as a phone number or directions, but to intentionally try to forget an emotional one is really hard. Even a "mild" memory is hard to forget because when people are trying to forget it, they need to mentally separate it first and then block it of the ones you don't want to retrieve. Emotions obstruct this process because you make a connections of these with other parts of your life making it harder to isolate.
          The experiments they conducted is to show a word to subjects, such as "murder". By simply showing the word, the subject may or may not have any reaction to it in contrast to the emotions they have while looking at a very violant picture or footage. They found out that not only it is hard to intentionally forget unpleasant memories, that the pleasant ones are also hard to forget.

          These studies contributes to understanding how emotions limits mental control and whether by trying to intentionally forget an event can actually cause more pain. But also, if the motivation is enough, individuals with help of some coping strategies can overcome the effects of these memories.

New Understanding Of How We Remember Traumatic Events Summary

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm

          Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland were the ones who conducted this experiment and discovered why very poignant events can cause some traumatic effect on your long term memory.
          It states that for a long time, the ability of the brain to remember fear or trauma had been crucial to our long term survival, but some of those memories causes a negative reaction rather than one that will help us. It is said that in the amygdala (located at the back part of the brain) that when it encounters situations like the traumatic ones we had before, it releases a stress hormone.
          The Journal of Neuroscience published a paper by QBI's Dr Louise Faber and her collegues have shown how the brain's "adrenaline" called the noradrenaline affects the amygdala  by influencing chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for the formation of memory.
          This discovery can help in real life because it teaches us more about the effects a traumatic event can have on you and maybe understand more on how to treat patients with post-traumatic stress or anxiety disorders. It gives us a clearly understanding of how these emotions and memories are formed.