Topical Blog Week #4 (Due Wednesday)

The topic I chose to expand on this week is that of illusions. Chapter 3 talks about illusions and how our brains respond to them. However, I want to look into how our brains experience illusions and why it is so easy to trick our brains. This topic is extremely interesting to me because I particularly love illusions and tricking my eyes and brain into seeing or not seeing things. It is interesting to me that our perceptions don’t always match reality and that’s why many illusions are known as perceptual illusions.

In my research it talks about how we think we have direct access to reality but we really don’t. There are a lot of gaps in our vision and cognition and our brains work to stitch those gaps together. Part of the reason our brains have these gaps are because of our blind spot. Our brains compensate for that blind spot accordingly. It includes all of the information that it receives from our senses and then takes its best guess at what it might be. Our brains pick and choose information. So we notice the things that our brains think are important. We are able to process very complex information quickly and efficiently because our brains are able to take shortcuts. We don’t see a whole image but instead we recognize lines and motions and our brains form an image based on what it feels we should be seeing.

Another point that I thought was interesting is that our brains look for patterns in everything we do. We like to categorize and make sense of things so our brains automatically sort the information it gets and then find patterns in that information. One of our brain’s most important duties is to make sense of the information that it receives. But because of the gaps the information is never complete. In order to fill in the gaps our brains look to find patterns so that when we become consciously aware of the information it all makes sense and there aren’t any inconsistencies.

There are two things we must use in order to look and comprehend an illusion. Those two things are our eye, and our perception of the signals our eye sends to the brain to be processed. We only see what our brain interprets, which means that we are missing out on a lot of things that our brains don’t feel is pertinent information. It is interesting that so much of what we see is based on our perception which causes us to see what we want to see at times. Many times, our perception of an illusion is based on my expectations as well as on my experiences. The more often we encounter something, the more hardwired it becomes in our brains, and the more likely we will see that in the future. I think the most frustrating part about illusions is that even when we know it is an illusion we often can’t get our brains to see it for what it truly is. I viewed one particular illusion that looks like train tracks going off into the distance. There are two yellow lines drawn parallel to each other at different parts of the track. I knew they were the same length and yet the one further away looked so much longer it seemed impossible that they were the same. A pencil test proved to me that they were and it really makes your brain feel stupid because it knows and yet it isn’t getting the signals it should.

The idea of priming can also play a large role in how we interpret information. By setting out subtle clues our brains are almost tricked into thinking things. The video I watched does a good job of explaining our fast and slow thinking. Our fast thinking misses a lot because it makes quick associations and goes with what seems right. It takes our slow thinking a little while to catch up and questions the fast thinking’s conclusion. This is what causes the most frustration for me. I think you have to train you brain so that your fast thinking slows down a little and your slow thinking speeds up. Many of the “illusions” or plays on words that this video showed are things that I have or did fall for. My fast thinking took over even as I could consciously see my slow thinking trying to stop it and fix its mistakes. Our brains are so quick to fill in gaps that it misses a ton. It made me wonder what our lives would be like if we were only capable of fast thinking. I don’t think we could function because we would miss even more than we already do.

Illusions and How Your Brain Processes Them
http://memorise.org/brain-articles/illusions-brain-processes-00611.html
I chose this site because it gives a brief but detailed idea of how our brains process information and what our brains do that cause us to struggle with understanding some illusions. I like to find at least one source that can really summarize what I’m looking for so that I can then go into more detail about the parts that I’m more interested in.

Illusions: How Our Brain Can Trick Us
http://thebrainbank.org.uk/teaching-materials/brain-function/illusions/
I chose to use this site because it gave some good examples of illusions as well as went into more detail about how our brains process illusions. It also does some good question/answer segments that helped give me a better understanding of the process with which we see and then perceive what we’re seeing.

Brain Tricks: This is How your Brain Works
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiTz2i4VHFw
I picked this video to watch because it used a lot of good examples and actually exercised my brain and proved to me how my brain reacts to priming. I always try to beat illusions and not fall for them because apparently I don’t want to seem stupid but this video still got me and it was irritating but it also made me more hyperaware of how my brain functions especially through fast and slow thinking.

Terminology: illusions, activated, perception, vision, cognition, blind spot, image based, patterns, priming, associations, brain functions

The topic that I wanted to do more research on this week was attention. I did not really come across a person that really stood out to me in the reading so that made it hard to do the normal topical blog that I like to do. I did notice that this chapter brought up the point of ADHD/ADD quite a bit, so I would also like to research the effects that attention has on the disorder and vice versa. I find this kind of topic very interesting knowing that I do suffer from ADHD. I know plenty about the disorder, but reading it in this chapter was also very interesting because I now know what the disorder all encompasses. I look forward to the research on the topic this week, so I can have some more clarity on the topic for many different reasons that pertain to me. I plan to find out more about attention in my initial research so I have a basis on the topic that the book did not include. Then I will do my best to research the topic of ADHD, while trying to incorporate personal experiences and thoughts. I believe that this will help me understand the information on a greater level.

The first article that I found had to deal with the different aspects of attention. The article did an awesome job of further explaining the totality of what attention is in cognitive psychology. The beginning of the article talked about the cocktail party theory that we learned about in the chapter. Why is it that when fully versed in conversation we can hear our best friend calling out our name? Why is it that we do not hear the other conversations that are going on around us? This all has to do with attention. The article then took it to the next level describing a couple of phenomenons that happen dealing with attention. The first important thing that that was touched on was the failure of selection. The failure of selection happens when we are at a party or some social gathering. When we are talking or socializing with a person why is it we can only hear what they are saying...why are we not picking up on what every other conversation is talking about? The failure in us hearing the conversations of every other person in the room is just our ability to block out unneeded information. To prevent the brain from overloading to the point were we can not process anything, it will shut out information that on is not attentive too. I found this very interesting, and I could relate this topic to myself. It happens to me when I am reading and fully engaged in a book. I will be so immersed in the story that I will not hear anything else that is going on. Someone could literally be screaming my name and I would not have a clue. This is because my brain is so attentive on the book that it blocks out the information that I choose not to be attentive to. The second phenomenon that this article talks about is very interesting as well. The failure of space is basically not being attentive to the things around us. There was a study that was done that tried to understand how much people are paying attention. A person would walk up to a random person and ask for directions. While this was going on two people would be carrying a door and a person would be walking behind that door. The person that asked for the directions would then switch places with the person behind that door. ONLY fifty percent of the time the person giving the directions would notice that there was a switch. This happens because people are not paying attention to the person that they are giving directions to, but trying to recall the correct directions. I found this to be very interesting because I sit there reading the article and think to myself how could you not realize that a switch had occurred? I thought that this article was very helpful in the understanding of attention, and the expansion of knowledge that the book did not cover.

The second article that I came across was a study done on ADHD. Suffering from the disorder I could relate to much of the article about the symptoms that occur when someone does have the disorder. Someone with ADHD is impaired in their ability to focus, sit still, and impulsivity. The disorder occurs in about 5 to 8 percent of children. What will happen is that if not controlled it will continue from adolescence into adulthood. I began to notice the signs when I was younger, and attending grade school. Trying to focus on the teacher became extremely difficult, and my grades began to suffer because of my lack of attention. I was given tests similar to those that the chapter talked about. I was asked to say the color that was written out on the paper. What made this difficult was that the written out color was filled with a different color that did not match the written color. The inability to stay attentive to this key task was a giving tale to diagnoses. What was interesting about his article was the brain structures that were identified as areas of where attention occurs. The daMCC, DLPFC, and the VLPFC are areas that this study found that were associated with abnormalities in patients affected by ADHD. I feel that there is a lot of information that is still yet to be learned about the disorder. It would be interesting to take the time and do more research to get a better understanding, so I can fully understand myself.

I was not sure what I wanted to look into more for my last source so I just tried to find the most interesting and knowledgeable article that I could find that would help me to understand attention. The article that I came across had to deal with selective attention. When I was reading the chapter I was a little confused in this section, and did not fully understand the message about the topic. This article helped in my understanding of selective selection, along with Broadbents dichotic task. Selective attention is a lot like shining a flashlight into a dark room. You can only see a small amount of space. This is because your attention is focused on a confined amount of area. The flashlight is a lot like humans ability to process information. If we were to look at the room with all the lights on it would be hard to take in all the information, and things that are in the room. What our brains will then do is focus on an area of the room, so our brains are not overloaded with information. The dichotic task was set up by Broadbent in his attempt to see if this was true. He had participants where headphones and then the patients were given information into both ears. The information would be completely different, and the participant would be asked to tell back what they had heard. Since Broadbent knew that a person cannot switch back more than twice in a second, he knew that the person could only return on message. This proved that a person who is listening to two completely messages at one time will shut out one of the messages in order to understand one completely. Broadbents theory stated that when you are at a party and someone says your name that you should not be able to hear your name because your brain would filter that out because of its attention on the conversation that you are engaged in. Treisman's theory was different than Broadbents in the sense that Treisman believed that the information that you did not want to pay attention to was completely filtered out. He argued that the information is processed at a completely lower level that the information that one is engaged in. The information that is coming in at a lower process level in stored into short term memory for a short period of time, then eventually lost if not process on a greater level later on. I thought this article was helpful in understanding selective attention and more importantly dichotic task. I was not really sure what the meaning of either was while reading the chapter, but this article did a great job of giving a visual example of how the experiment was conducted.

http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~ashas/Cognition%20Textbook/chapter3.pdf

This resource was helpful in helping me understand attention and then further expanding on the different aspects of attention.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3055423/#!po=13.7097

I liked this article because it talked about the relation in ADHD to attention. It also was helpful in understanding a little more about myself.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/attention-models.html

I liked this article because it gave me a better understanding of what selective attention, and the experiment Broadbent did with the dichotic task.

1a) State what your topic is.

This week I decided to research synesthesia.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

The chapter was about sensation and perception, and synesthesia is essentially the misperception of sensory stimuli as being in the form of a different class of sensory experience. Also, at the end of the chapter it said for further reading I could look into synesthesia.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I’m interested in this topic because it’s pretty ‘out there’ and we still don’t know everything about it, and I enjoy reading about things that exist, but aren’t entirely understood.
2)
Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of a particular sense causes experiences of a separate un-stimulated sense. In other words, people with synesthesia (synesthetes) perceive sensory input with an additional sensory experience. There are many different types of synesthesia, and it can likely occur between any type of sensory experience. Because of all of the different types, scientists use the “X-Y model” where “X” represents the inducer, or what the stimulus is, and “Y” represents the concurrent, or the additional sensation that is perceived. The most common type of synesthesia exists between days of the week and colors, so that people attribute specific colors to the days of the week. It is important to note that these crossovers of sensations are involuntary and automatic. They are also spatially extended, consistent across time (but not between individuals), and are highly memorable.

In the case of ‘grapheme color synesthesia’, synesthetes may perceive certain letters or numbers to have their own colors. Not every synesthete with grapheme color synesthesia perceives the same colors in response to the same characters. However, synesthetes with this particular form of synesthesia consistently perceive these graphemes to have a specific corresponding color. Before neural imaging, they determined who had this particular synesthesia by having participants say what colors they saw in their head for each character that was shown, and then retesting them after a length of time like a year. The researchers could tell who had synesthesia by the precise consistency of their answers.

In the TED talks lecture that I watched, a genius synesthete mentioned how his grapheme color synesthesia helped him notice patterns in writing styles, with the example of an alliteration sticking out with all of the words starting with ‘L’ being shaded blue. This was very interesting, because the alliteration that he used as an example was from a book published from a known synesthete, Vladimir Nabokov. Galton and other prevalent psychologists studied this condition in the past, but because of the behaviorist revolution, the cognitive processes involved were simply ignored or even disputed. After cognitive psychology became prevalent again, people started doing more research. Nowadays, researchers can freely study synesthesia, as their neuroimaging techniques provide clear evidence that there is a unique phenomena occurring in the brains of these synesthetes.

Regarding what goes on in the brain of these synesthetes, there are currently three neural models that attempt to explain this. The first model is the ‘local cross-activation model’ hypothesizes that the cause for synesthesia is a sort of neural mix up between adjacent parts of the brain that interpret sensory stimuli. This makes particular sense in the case of grapheme-color synesthetes, as the visual word form area of the brain is adjacent to the color-processing region. This model suggests a mechanism for synesthesia to occur, involving prenatal neural connections and a genetic mutation causing these pathways not to prune. This means that although it would be more common for adjacent brain structures to be linked in the case of synesthesia, this model does not prohibit synesthesia between separated areas of the brain. The second model is the ‘long-range disinhibited feedback model’, which states that synesthesia could be due to disinhibited feedback from some ‘multisensory nexus’ such as the temporo-parietal-occipital junction. They claim that the synesthetic effects occasionally associated with psychedelic drugs offer some support for this theory as they would reduce the action in this multisensory nexus. The third model, the ‘re-entrant processing model’ is a sort of hybrid of the other two models. They go on to say that these models are not mutually exclusive and that certain neural mechanisms may be attributed to the different types of synesthesia. Although this gets to be a little confusing, I find it pretty interesting and I anticipate learning more about it when I can.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627305008354
This link extensively discussed synesthesia, but I focused primarily on the neural models that they offered. Special bonus: A main contributor to the research presented here is my personal favorite neuroscientist, V.S. Ramachandran
www.purlla.com/about/synaesthesia/forms-of-synaesthesia.html
This link discussed some of the various types of synesthesia and how they are experienced.
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_tammet_different_ways_of_knowing.html
This link contains the TED talks lecture given by Daniel Tammet, a brilliant synesthete.

1.A. Dyslexia and Cognitive Subtypes

1.B. This post will focus on strengths and weaknesses of dyslexic individuals which encompasses a discussion of saccades and perception. All of these topics are covered in chapter three and so this topic will relate very well to concepts covered in chapter 3.

1.C. I am interested in this topic due to its ramifications for how different individuals may view the world, society or problems differently. I also think this is an interesting topic to think of from an evolutionary psychology standpoint. I am also interested in looking at issues in a holistic way rather than focusing only on strengths or weaknesses. As a result I enjoy examining issues that are largely framed in either a negative or positive context.
2. An example relevant to this post is conceptualizing dyslexia as being something defined by deficits. My first source highlights the importance of understanding saccades in understanding differences in reading ability between dyslexics and non-dyslexics. Saccades are the jumps an eye makes while it reads. The eye must make many ‘jumps’ as it tries to read and for non-dyslexic people this becomes an almost automatic process. It does appear to be true that dyslexic individuals have less control in making these jumps than non-dyslexic people. Reading it seems is not the only area that researchers have discovered deficits with respect to dyslexic individuals.

In my second source cognitive subtypes of dyslexic individuals are examined. These researchers found three subtypes of dyslexic individuals, all three subtypes are characterized by their deficits. Some have auditory or more visual based problems or combinations thereof. These differences in perception did not appear to be disputed or contentious as I read various potential sources. I myself would not contest these findings that dyslexic individuals have more difficulty in saccade control or visual/auditory processing.

Though many researchers are concerned with altering deficits, others seem more concerned with nurturing strengths. In my third source, researchers also speak about having identified subtypes of dyslexic individuals. Here however these groups are divided based on strengths. They speak about one type that is able to see/identify “connections” or see the big picture that others do not see and that literally dyslexic individuals tend to be wired differently. It’s not unreasonable to hypothesize that having multiple types of wiring for brains is evolutionarily advantageous. In addition, it may be that those larger haphazard saccades translate to a more scanning/searching type of resting state for the eyes. During caveman days this may have meant being more likely to spot something of interest such as food or predators. With the right perspective these differences in visual/auditory processing and problem solving seem not to be deficits but simply different from what is the norm.

http://www.lookingforlearning.com/assess/sac.htm Our book discovered saccades and this was an easy way to very early tie in my topic tightly with something discussed in the book and establish my point about the view of dyslexia largely as a deficit.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18389017 (link for free pdf on right side of page) This source reinforces the deficit based view of dyslexia point that I am trying to make. Also, it introduces the concept of different cognitive types of dyslexic individuals and that these cognitive differences translate to experiencing dyslexia somewhat differently than other subtypes.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/dyslexic-advantage/ This article allowed me to introduce a different perspective, that one can think of dyslexia in terms of strengths as well. It also allowed me to communicate that when recognizing that dyslexia entails both cognitive weaknesses and strengths it is much easier to view dyslexic people as different rather than malfunctioning.

Chapter 3 Topical Blog
The topic that I chose to learn more about is the concept of illusions. Illusions, as described in the book, are when the image you perceive does not match reality. When a person thinks that they see something, but it is actually something else, it is an illusion. An illusion can also be both of those things. The book shows many examples of different illusions. There is one example in particular that can be portrayed as two things. One way it can be seen is as a young girl looking away from you. The other way it can be seen is as an old woman looking at you. This is a great example of an illusion because when you look at it, you aren’t sure at first what you are really seeing. It also shows us that you cannot see both of the images at the same time. You either see the young girl or you see the old woman.
The topic of illusions relates to chapter 3 because this chapter is all about sensation, perception, and attention. Illusions are described under the portion of the chapter that goes over perception. Illusions are all about how you perceive things. And they show us that what we perceive might not always be reality. Illusions tie very well into chapter 3. People can see illusions. But I also think that people can smell, feel, and even taste illusions. I think that all of our senses can deceive us.
I read in my research that, in fact, all of our senses can deceive us. It seems that what I guessed was correct. The website I went on was very deep and philosophical about the matter. It showed me that reality is solely what I perceive. I have my own reality. Everyone has their own reality. I wrote of this in my chapter 3 blog. I have a different reality than someone who is colorblind. And someone who has 20/20 vision has a different reality than myself because I need glasses or contact lenses. Everything around us is not what it seems. I read that everything we experience and perceive throughout the day are just things that our mind has created for us. It also says that everyone perceives things differently, which is also what I predicted.
There are two things that I am reminded of in reading this. The first is Plato’s allegory of the cave. Say that there are people tied up in a cave. There is a fire behind them, but they cannot turn around to see it. All they can see is the cave wall with the different shadows reflecting from the light of the flames. They are kept there for years. After a while, all they know are the shadows. They know the shadow form of a human, they know a shadow form of a tree, and they know the shadow forms of everything else around them. This has become their reality. But once they are set free – into what we know as reality outside of the cave, will they think what they see are illusions? They will see new forms of humans, trees, and everything else around them. So what is reality really?
This also reminds me of when I was young and I found out that I needed glasses. I kept getting moved closer and closer to the board in grade school because my teachers realized I couldn’t read what was being written. I didn’t know any different. I just thought that their writing was getting progressively worse and progressively smaller. I never knew that I needed help until my mother took me to the eye doctor. He showed me various images and then he sent me home with a new pair of glasses. I still remember the entire way home like it was yesterday. I peered out the window and gazed at every little detail. I could see the numbers and letters on license plates. I could make our facial features of people walking down the sidewalk. And I could see every individual leaf on the tree in our front yard. I hadn’t noticed that my reality wasn’t the same as everyone else’s until I had my eyes checked. This also shows that our realities are forever changing, and they are all different. If this is the case – if reality is what we make of it – then what are illusions? How do we decipher illusions from reality if we all see things differently?
Okay, now that I’m getting way to philosophical, I will change my train of thought. I also wanted to find out what makes us see illusions differently. What I read about online, was how people see illusions differently. There were no answers as to why. It was hard for me to find any information on why people see illusions differently. It was so hard for me to see the old woman in the example in the book. But it was easy for me to see the young girl. I’m sure that for some people it is easier to see the old woman than it is to see the young girl. The only answer that I found online was that people perceive things differently. This does make sense. If everyone perceives things differently, then they will also see illusions differently. Once I started thinking about it, I realized the answer was simpler than I thought. If different people have different views of reality, they will also see things that aren’t real differently.
Some people see more illusions than others. In my research I found that schizophrenic patients see more illusions than others. They think that they see things and hear things that others don’t. They also think that people can hear their thoughts. So I have learned that there are some people who are more apt to see illusions rather than others. And I don’t mean to turn this entire blog into a philosophy paper, but I have some other points to make. If these patients think that these things they are seeing are real, then who are we to say that they are illusions. If I see something, and I am certain that it is real, then why would I believe anyone else if they said it wasn’t? I think that the discussion of illusion can be scientific, but I would rather discuss it in a philosophical point of view. I think that the discussion of what is an illusion and what is real is always going to be up for interpretation.

Terms: Illusions, Perception, Sensation, Attention, Reality

http://www.peterrussell.com/Reality/RHTML/R2.php
This website was more philosophy driven. The reason I chose it was because it really captured my attention regarding the concept of reality vs. illusions. It might not have had many facts about illusions, but it made me think very deeply about the concept.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/think-different-jan-11/
I used this website because it has a lot of good information on why people see illusions differently. It showed the relation between differences in reality and differences in illusion.

http://www.world-schizophrenia.org/disorders/schizophrenia.html
I used this website because it had many facts about the mental disorder schizophrenia. I chose to talk about schizophrenia because it is a mental disease that involves many different types of illusions in patients.

1) I am doing my topic on attention and ADHD. A large part of the chapter focused on attention. When I read the subject on attention it made me think about how I pay attention to my environment. This chapter also made me think about how people with ADHD have a much harder time paying attention. This chapter did not directly talk a lot about inattentiveness in particular, but I do feel as though ADHD is an important topic within cognitive psychology.

2) The most widely accepted cognitive model of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD is not focused on attention, but on the impulsiveness of those with a diagnosis. Generally speaking, those with ADHD are less controlled then others. It is this impulsiveness and lack of control that then leads to being easily distracted, which is then equated into inattentiveness. Those with ADHD are also impatient, restless and unable to stay on one task for long periods of time. Emotionally, those with ADHD also struggle, as they tend to react to situations immediately and overtly.

There has been progress in the understanding of our brain and processes, but there is still much left to discover. However, researchers have found that some areas of the brain are involved in functions more so than others. Our executive control systems, which cognitive psychologists most often attribute to keeping our impulses in check, are located in the prefrontal lobes of the cerebral cortex and in the connections between the prefrontal cortex and action inhibiting parts of the brain. Dopamine is the most found neurotransmitter in some of these connections, which is important to remember, as the drugs most often used in the treatment of ADHD are stimulants, and prolong the action of dopamine in neural synapses.

Researchers into ADHD have focused on the prefrontal cortex and dopamine. What research has found is that those with ADHD, compared to other people, may have a slightly higher reduced neural mass in the prefrontal cortex, reduced activity in some parts of the prefrontal cortex while performing tests of executive function, and fewer dopamine receptors in certain parts of the brain that receive input from the prefrontal cortex. However, there has been no biological marker that has been reliable to use as an aid in diagnosis.

The incidence of ADHD is now being reported as 8% of children in the United States. It is three times more common in boys than girls, which equates to 12% of boys as being clinically diagnosed as having ADHD. Then, a new study released earlier this year indicated that about 30% of those with a diagnosis of ADHD as a child carry this diagnosis into adulthood. Those that suffered with ADHD as children have a higher incidence of mood disorders, anxiety, and substance abuse. That being said, ADHD may not always be the cause of the symptoms present, but that of a mood or anxiety disorder. Being out of control of one’s attention and behavior in school can then begin a cycle that only makes a child’s behavior worse, as well as make it harder to foster relationships with their peers.

While typically ADHD is treated with at least one medication, especially for the school year, cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to improve the symptoms of ADHD. In this kind of therapy, skills are introduced that teaches a patient how to solve problems and to write down distractions, instead of being distracted by them, for instance. Cognitive behavioral therapy can also teach skills for handling challenges and overcoming negative thoughts. For children, CBT is often used as a way to praise behavior through rewards and praise, which motivate them to keep calm in school. CBT, by design, teaches new life skills in a way that is easy for those involved to apply it to situations in their lives. While CBT is not seen as a cure for those with ADHD, it can help children manage their symptoms and have a more successful school year.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201008/the-adhd-personality-its-cognitive-biological-and-evolutionary-foundations

This website provided quite a bit of information on ADHD, and possibly what causes ADHD. Even though it was a blog the professor knew quite a bit about ADHD

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/03/05/time-to-pay-attention-what-the-newest-adhd-research-is-telling-us/

This website had information on ADHD in adults. It also provided ways that may make children with ADHD have a much better time.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/on-parenting/2010/08/24/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-can-help-with-adhd

Medication has been a major source of helping a child deal with ADHD, but this article showed that CBT may also be able to help them.

1.
a) My choice of topic this week is on optical illusions. I liked illusions for a very long time. So I thought that I would pick a topic that I was interested in. Also to figure out things that I didn’t know about illusions was fun to learn. I like to learn things that are new.
b) This relates to the chapter because it is on how the brain senses and perceives the world. So our computational brain can show what it perceives of the things that happen in our world. Our world is about sensation and perception of what is around us.
c) I really like learning about how optical illusions affect our metacognition. Our brains create things for us to see that aren’t actually there, so being able to tell why it does what it does. There are things that can affect our thoughts and all the things that affect our lives because illusions are everywhere.
2. There are many types of optical illusions that have different effects on the brain. Something fun to learn about illusions is that it stems from the Latin word “illudere” meaning “to mock,” so your own brain is literally mocking itself when you are looking at illusions. When you see illusions you are not actually seeing what you think you are, the picture is set up to fool you.
A famous illusion was discovered in 1994 by E. Lingelbach, called the scintillating grid illusion. This is similar to the Hermann grid that was discovered in 1870 by L. Hermann, when he was reading a book by John Tyndall. In these illusions you see a grid of black squares that have grid lines have dots in the center of the integrating spots where the squares are. These illusions are to show that the brain is using top-down processing to create black dots in the empty white spots with black dots. It is your brain filling in data where it isn’t really at. Your brain is trying to create things that fill in spots, and because the area around the white dots is black your brain automatically fills it with black.
The Phi motion that was discovered by Wertheimer in 1912 shows motion without any motion at all. The illusion is out of dots in a circle that have a plus symbol in the center. The dots seem to rotate as you look at them, then as you look through the side of your vision the rods in your eyes are very sensitive to the illusion and so are the cones.
Illusions can be seen differently for each person. Their eyes and brains are effected by the illusion that is being seen. Each person’s brain functions differently so illusions are different for people when they are seen.

3. http://www.nobeliefs.com/puzzles/illusions.htm --- I liked this cite because it shows the great illusions and gives good information.
http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/illusion.html --- This cite gives great information that is well sorted into pages, that can be looked at your own pace when you need to see the separate parts of illusions.
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/illusions/ --- this cite gave some interesting background information on illusions.

1a) The topic I am interested in learning more about is illusions.

1b) Illusions was discussed in the chapter along with psychophysics which is when people study the relationship that is between both the physical world and the psychological experiences people have with the changes of the world.

1c) I would like to learn more about it. The reason I am interested in learning more about it is because I have heard a little about illusions so I would like to learn more.
2) Illusions come from perception and sensation. Humans have sensory receptors near the surface of the body, but there are also some sensory receptors that are internal as well. The most well-known illusion is optical illusion, which is with a person’s visual. Illusions are a “distortion” of the senses. They can also happen to any of the human senses. Illusions can only happen when the eyes are open, as soon as the eyes close, the illusion goes away. It is thought that there is a possibility for some people to keep the illusion going even after they shut their eyes, by doing this their brain would have to create realistic pictures by using “the mind’s eyes.” They happen because of the perception the brain makes. Others occur because of “biological sensory structures” within the environment. One reason illusions may come is because of contrast in the lighting and brightness. Many people share the same distorted reality. Illusions are different from hallucinations. Illusions are a distortion of sensory. Hallucinations are a distortion where there is no stimulus.
Some people have illusions because of a disorder or an illness, just like hallucinations or delusions can come from.
There are a few different types of illusions: optical illusions, auditory illusions, and tactile illusions. Optical illusions are visually perceived images that may be misleading. Auditory illusions are illusions of hearing sounds from an object that are equivalent to a sound of something else. Tactile illusions are illusions from the sense of touch.
Some illusions can be dangerous to people. There is a term called vertigo, and this is an example where our balance and equilibrium come into play and work with the visual world. For example, a person who flies an airplane at night or in a cloud in which there are no visual focal points, it can be easy for the pilot to become disoriented. They are unable to tell if the aircraft is gaining or losing altitude or even the direction it is turning. Pilots are strictly to follow and watch the planes gages, because of this reason.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion
I chose this website, because it gave the basic information about illusions and a list of the different types of illusions there are. I also chose this website because it made the distinction between illusions and hallucinations.
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/optics/illusion.htm
This website explained that the eyes have to be open in order for the illusion to stay, as soon as the eyes close, the illusion will go away. It also told how illusions can occur.
http://www.sandlotscience.com/EyeonIllusions/whatisanillusion.htm
This website talked about the sensory receptors in our bodies. Gave an example of the airplane and why pilots must rely on the gages.

1. The topic that I chose to research further this week was selective attention, specifically the in relation to auditory signals. This topic relates to the chapter because it is one of the subjects mentioned in the discussion and because it relates to many of the other topics discussed as well. I chose this topic because it has been brought up briefly in previous classes and it has always seemed interesting to me and I wish to know more about how selective attention works. It was also one of the primary things that I thought about while reading the chapter this week because I could relate it to a video I had seen previously on the subject, which I described in my Chapter 3 post on Tuesday.

2. The websites I found while researching the topic of selective attention related quite well to how the topic was outlined in chapter 3 of our textbook. Like the book, they all discussed the various theories related to the subject of selective attention, mentioning the main models devised throughout the years and their basis of reasoning.
The first model devised for this topic was referred to as the bottleneck theory of attention. This theory stated that since only one source of information could be attented to at a time a filter existed in order to weed out the unimportant or unattended stimuli while allowing the attended stimulus to be processed, much like a bottleneck or as one website described it, a Y. This theory led into Broadbent's "filter model" in 1957. Broadbent's model claimed that information from the various stimuli presented in a situation entered a sensory buffer which would filter out information unrelated to the stimulus that was given attention. Broadbent's model was essentially an expansion upon the bottleneck theory. Broadbent also experimented with the subject, utilizing what is known as a dichotic listening task to study the phenomenon. In his test of dichotic listening tasks, Broadbent would simultaneosly send one message to the subject's right ear (such as a 3-digit number) and a different message to their left ear (a different 3-digit number). Participants were told to listen to both messages and repeat them individually. Broadbent found that subjects would make fewer mistakes when repeating the information based on what was heard in each ear individually as opposed to repeating both sequences of numbers in order of presentation. This led to the conclusion that each ear acts as its own channel and that a person could only focus on one at a time.
The other primary model discussed across my sources was the Attenuation Model developed by Treisman. This model followed the same initial theory of the bottleneck and filter models. It differed however, when it comes to what it done with the unattended information being processed in the filter. Unlike Broadbent's model in which unatteded information is discarded completely, the attenuation model claims that this information is turned down like a volume level on a radio instead. Treisman's model works much in the same way as Broadbent's, with the attenuated information primarily being lost. However, in Treisman's model, if one of the channels that is unattended includes your name or another factor likely to get your attention, there is still a chance that you will hear it because the information isn't completely discarded. This has been referred to as the cocktail party phenomenon.
All in all, this subject was a very interesting one to read about and could be related easily to everyday occurences, which made it even easier to relate the information and understand it. I think I will look up more information about the visual side of this subject in the near future and also try to find even more information relating to the auditory side as well.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/attention-models.html
This site was very helpful as it outlines both Broadbent's and Treisman's models well and draws comparisons between the two.

http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/arousal.htm
This site was helpful much in the same way as the first one while also providing some information that was left out in the first website. It also discusses later models that tried to merge what was learned by Broadbent and Treisman with new knowledge that had been gained about memory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM3FZOR2XdA
This video does a good job outlining how the theories of attention work both through illustrations and descriptive language

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4
And this is the moonwalking bear video I mentioned on Tuesday. It relates to the overall subject of selective attention but not as much to my main focus of auditory signals. I just thought I would throw it in for fun.

The topic I picked for my blog this week is Selective Attention. I find this topic very interesting and I wanted to take the chance of going more in depth and learning more about it. The audio and the visual are both equally as interesting as the other in how they work. Attention was a main topic in the chapter this week and when I saw the box at the top of page 95 it made me want to look more into why we pick to see/ hear the things we do. When I was first reading the box I didn’t understand what was going on but once my eyes caught the bold letter’s I realized that it was it’s own statement. I was easily able to read the bolded words without the other words getting in the way.
Selective attention is the process of paying attention to one stimuli while there are many happening. Everyday people are selectively paying attention to one thing. One of the more interesting things I saw while researching this topic was the “invisible gorilla.” In their experiment they have participants set up to watch a video they are asked to count how many times the people in the video wearing black and white shirts passed the ball. As they were passing the ball a gorilla pass across the screen. At the end of the video they ask them question pertaining to the gorilla but no one saw a gorilla. They were so focused on counting the ball being passed they didn’t pay attention to anything else. In this video they show inattentional blindness (not noticing an unexpected visual when doing an attention- demanding task). I think this is a good example for the visual side of selective attention. It shows that paying too much attention to one thing will make you miss others. Another good example of this would be texting and driving. It is such a big thing right now everywhere in trying to stop this. The video is a perfect example of why it shouldn’t be allowed. If you are texting that is demanding you focus so you are missing what you are viewing on the road.
Another type of selective attention is auditory. In auditory selective attention it can take in as much sound as it wants but only some of it gets transmitted to the brain. Children use selective hearing with pleasant things instead of things they don’t want to hear. So if a mom tells their child they want them to clean their room and they will get a treat the child will block out cleaning their room but not the treat. There is a phenomenon called the cocktail party problem. This is people being able to filter out words and sounds to concentrate on one person or conversation.
I picked this topic because of the very interested information from it. We experience both of these everyday. Most of the time we do not even realize it.

I wanted to look a little more at illusions. The way that our brain reacts to the illusions is something that I think is neat, how a thing that is so complex like our brains can be so easily tricked. We don’t have don’t have control over our reality even though we would like to think so There are a lot of gaps in our vision and cognition and our brains work to stitch those gaps together. Something that I think was interesting is that our brain looks for a pattern in everything that we do. When we get tricked or an illusion is put in front of us it’s constantly looking for the pattern or a way to make sense out of it. There are a couple things that need to happen to understand an illusion. We need to see it first it and then it gets sent to our brains to be processed. We can only see what our brain tells us what we see. the neat and confusing thing is that we only see what we want to see ( if that makes any sense) I think a cool part about illusions is that even when we know it is an illusion we often can’t get our brains to see it for what it truly is. The on that comes to mind is the duck and rabbit picture. I know that there is a duck there and I have been shown it but when I still only see rabbit every time that I look at it and it takes time work to see the other.
http://memorise.org/brain-articles/illusions-brain-processes-00611.html
I got some general info

http://thebrainbank.org.uk/teaching-materials/brain-function/illusions/
gave me some examples to look at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiTz2i4VHFw
I like the examples it showed and tested my mind