Topical Blog Week #15 (Due Wednesday)

I decided to write about Kenneth and Mamie Clark and their Clark Doll Experiment because I was a little shocked by the results of it. It was also used in the Brown vs. Board of Education case to show the falsehood in the "separate but equal" doctrine. It was briefly described in the chapter, but I wanted to take a deeper look into it.

Clark and Mamie Kenneth both earned their bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University. Kenneth joined Mamie's work in her master's thesis of "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children." This work is what inspired the famous Clark Doll Experiment, which showed that effects of segregation on young African American children. Kenneth Clark was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Columbia and serve as President of the American Psychological Association. In 1946, the Clarks opened the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem.

In the experiment, the African American children were asked to choose between a black and a white doll. The dolls were exactly the same, except for their skin color. In the following order, the children were asked to answer the following statements:

“Show me the doll that you like best or that you’d like to play with. Show me the doll that is the ‘nice’ doll. Show me the doll that looks ‘bad’. Give me the doll that looks like a white child. Give me the doll that looks like a coloured child. Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child. Give me the doll that looks like you.”

Clark found that the majority of young black children said the white doll was the "good" one and that when asked to color a picture of themselves, they made their skin noticeably lighter than their actual skin tone. 44% of the children also said the white doll was the one that looked like them, showing their obvious favoritism towards the white doll. This study's findings were cited in the footnotes of Brown vs. Board of Education, overturning the "separate but equal" ideology behind segregation, as allowed by the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). They testified as expert witnesses, describing their findings and their effects on young children. This evidence helped persuade the justices that segregation had hampered the development of children in schools.

http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/kenneth_mamie_clark.html
This site provides biographical information on Kenneth and Mamie Clark

http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/clark.aspx
This link provides some more biographical information, as well as the use of the Clark Doll experiment in the Brown vs. Board of Education case.

http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-clark-doll-experiment/
This page discusses the Clark Doll experiment and its results, as well as several other replications.

Chapter 14.
1a) State what your topic is.
Jean Piaget

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
During this chapter it discussed cognitive psychology and other research areas in psychology. One of the other research areas was developmental psychology. Jean Piaget was discussed in this particular section because he has made a huge impact on developmental psychology. Piaget was able to conclude that children’s’ cognitive differs from adults through his studies.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Even though I have discussed Piaget multiple times in previous classes, I am still interested in learning more about his theories in developmental psychology. I think I am mainly interested in his work because it focuses on children. I find it interesting that Piaget applied his theories and studies to his three children. I am interested in learning more about his childhood and background and also learn more about his theories and opinions.

Jean Piaget was known as a developmental psychologist and philosopher. Piaget conducted multiple studies with children and created his own theory on cognitive development. Piaget was known for “creating simple demonstrations of complex cognitive phenomena”. He also referred his approach was genetic epistemology. Genetic epistemology studied the manner in the knowledge that developed within a certain individual. Piaget has created great importance on the education of children.

Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896 in Switzerland. He was his parent’s first child. His parents were known as Rebecca Jackson and Arthur. When Piaget was young, his parents encouraged his studies. This was a common trait that occurred in their family. Piaget grew up faster than most children. He quickly became interested in birds, fossils, mechanics, seashells and etc. His mother became interested in Piaget’s interest in science. When he was ten years old, Piaget had a fascination with mollusks. This encouraged him to attend the local museum of natural history. This became a common stop where Piaget liked to spend his time. At age 11 Piaget wrote an advanced paper on the albino sparrow. The next couple of years his papers were being to be published. No one was aware of Piaget’s age and was inspired by his work. After graduating from high school Piaget decided to attend the University of Neuchatel. He was interested in studying zoology. Piaget later received his PhD in natural sciences.
In 1918, Piaget spent a semester studying psychology at the University of Neuchatel. His main professors were Carl Jung and Paul Eugen Bleurler. This is where Piaget started to develop a deeper interest in psychoanalysis. In 1919 Piaget decided to go to Paris and spend the next two years at Sorbonne studying psychology. He was studying abnormal psychology where he was able to learn to interview mental patients. During this time Theodore Simon asked Piaget to work at Binet’s laboratory with him. He accepted this offer and started working on refining Burt’s reasoning test. “The tests were meant to measure child intelligence and draw connections between a child’s age and the nature of his errors”. His caused Piaget to question the way children learn and become interested in investigating the way children reason. This inspired Piaget to want to work in the field of experimental psychology.

In 1921 Piaget continued to study the way children learned and was invited to become a director of research at the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva. Piaget was allowed to work in the field of child psychology. He planned on studying the intelligence of children the next two years. Piaget’s results were then published in the first five books of child psychology. He was then asked to discuss and present his ideas in front of other Universities and faculty. However Piaget believed there was more to his ideas. Within the next few years Piaget got married and had three children. Piaget decided to observe his children’s development. “He looked at the genesis of intelligent conduct, ideas of objective constancy, and causality”. After observing his children, Piaget changed his mind on his idea. Piaget was then able to finalize his main theory of cognitive development.

Piaget was able to identify four main stages of cognitive development. This was referred or called a Schema. The first stage is called sensorimotor period, which occurs during birth to two years old. During this particular stage children have a limit to their motor reflexes. However they start to build on these reflexes in order to develop difficult events through physical interactions. During this time children learn object permanency. Object Permanency is defined as “the knowledge that an object still exists when it is not in the child’s view”. Also during this time children begin to realize they are in control of their own movements. This allows them to know what the “appropriate” actions are and begin to develop more communication.

The next stage is called preoperational, which occurs during age two and lasts until about age six or seven. During this particular stage children begin to use mental imagery and language. They are also considered egocentric because they only focus of their own point of view. Also children think in a non-logical way. The third stage is known as Concrete Operational stage, which occurs at the age of sex or seven and lasts until the age of eleven of twelve. During this stage children begin to realize other’s point of view. They are also able to reason with concrete knowledge. This means their thoughts are now logical and they have systematic meaning. The last stage is called Formal Operational stage, which occurs at the age of eleven or twelve and continues on all the way through adulthood. During this particular stage people are capable of logical thinking and abstract reasoning as well.

http://www.biography.com/people/jean-piaget-9439915?page=1
I chose this particular website because it provided information on Piaget’s childhood and background.

http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/piaget.htm
I chose this particular website because it provided information on Piaget’s four stages of development.

http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/piaget.htm
I chose this particular website because it provided information on Piaget’s theory and influences to psychology.

1a) What chapter did you choose?
1b) Why did you choose that chapter over the others?
I chose to write about Chapter 15. I decided to write my blog over Chapter 15 because it discusses women and minorities in psychology. Women and minorities interest me because of their growth throughout the history of psychology. Also, I felt as though I could relate better to this chapter.
2a) What did you find interesting?
2b) Why was it interesting to you?
One thing I found interesting was the section discussing the future of psychology. I enjoyed reading this section of the chapter because it talks about new and growing divisions of psychology. I liked reading about the different divisions of the field and how far psychology has grown since it first started.
3a) What did you find interesting?
3b) Why was it interesting to you?
Eleanor Gibson was interesting to me. I found Gibson interesting because she invented visual cliff. The visual cliff is most known because of its usefulness with depth perception in infants. As well as when she started to attend Yale for her doctorate degree when she was discriminated against merely because she was a woman.
4a) What did you find interesting?
4b) Why was it interesting to you?
Kenneth B. Clark was interesting to me because I liked reading about his story. Clark was interesting to me because of his involvement with Brown vs the Board of Education. I found by reading this section that Kenneth Clark was a major contributor to the equalization of African Americans and whites within the educational system.
5a) What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? 
5b) Why wasn't it interesting to you?
I think the least interesting part of Chapter 15 was the last section of the chapter when it summed up the book and recapped everything that had been talked about. This part was the least interesting because this was a short chapter and I honestly didn’t have a lot to chose from when deciding what was my least favorite part. Overall this chapter had several interesting sections and concepts to think about. As well as, it was the shortest chapter in the book so it was difficult to chose one thing that wasn’t that interesting.
6) What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I think that one thing I read about that will be most useful to me to understand the history of psychology will be the section that discusses Kenneth Clark. I think Clark will be the most useful to be because of his involvement in the Brown vs the Board of Education Supreme Court Trial.
7) How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
This chapter builds on several different chapters that we have read. Women and Minorities have been discussed several times during this textbook and this chapter relayed heavily on minorities and women. These topics have been discussed thoroughly in many chapters in this book and this chapter only talked about these concepts.
8a) What topic would you like to learn more about? 
8b) Why?
I would like to learn more about Kenneth Clark and his contributions to the field of psychology. I would love to learn more about Clark because I think what he did for education is important in more ways then one. I wish the chapter would have elaborated on his accomplishments more then it did.
9) What ideas related to what you were reading (what did you think about) did you have while reading the chapter?
Who else contributed to the change of education? What would psychology be like today if minorities and women had been included in research from the beginning? Where would we be today without people like Eleanor Gibson and Kenneth Clark? What if women and minorities would have never been allowed into the field of education and psychology
9) Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Terms: Kenneth Clark, Eleanor Gibson, Minorities and Women, Brown vs Board of Education, and future of psychology

Once you have completed your search and explorations we would like you to:
1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
The topic that I will discuss is Kenneth Clark. Kenneth Clark relates to this chapter because it talks about minorities and the involvement of minorities in the educational setting. I chose to discuss Kenneth Clark because his contributions regarding education inspired me to explore more into his life and work. I thought it was interesting that he was involved in education reform. For example the text stated that Clark was involved in Brown vs. the Board of Education. I found this interesting because ending segregation is a major time period in history that I feel passionately about.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Kenneth Clark stated that a "racist system inevitably destroys and damages human beings; it brutalizes and dehumanizes them, black and white alike." This sums up Clarks mission quite well, because he believed in education and not separating people in education. Clark’s research with children of color was the groundbreaking argument to win the Brown vs. Board in 1954. Clark didn’t only have strong views regarding educational segregation but other racial issues as well.
Kenneth Clark was a well-known psychologist and educator, and widely as a racial civil rights activist. Clark is known for a well-conducted research study regarding children and how they perceive themselves and others. It was a strong study that changed showed that the segregation in schools violated the constitution. Therefore, making a strong argument against racial segregation. Clarks study consisted of black students who graded black and white dolls on how they felt about them. As well as how they perceived themselves. The results of this study support Clarks argument and made him widely known for his efforts.
Although Clark made several huge contributions to the field of education and ending segregation, he became slowly pessimistic in regards to his work. He believed that many politic figures, white and black, were giving up on the fight for equality. Clark grew more unwilling to fight because of these issues. Although very intelligent Clark admitted that he was naïve to think that the end of racial segregation would be in 1960. He quickly found that this was not the case. He also stated towards his death that he did not look up nor praise famous African Americans because they could not be compared to poor black people in real life. He also mentioned how upsetting it was how pessimistic he had become in the last several years and how he wished it wasn’t so. Clark became increasingly unhopeful because he had such high expectations for the racial movement. Therefore when racial issues weren’t solved in the 1960 he became more unhopeful and pessimistic.
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://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/clarkk/
I chose this site because it gave a good overview of Kenneth Clark and his life, as well as a couple important reasons I wanted to know more about him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/nyregion/02clark.html?_r=0
I chose this site because it gave a bunch of important imformation that I used to discuss Clark and his life. It gave several great points in regards to Clarks work and movement.

http://www.nndb.com/people/883/000115538/
I chose this site because it confirmed over information that I found. This site also gave a nice overview of Clarks life and contributions that he made during it.

For this week’s blog post I decided to take an in depth look into the life of jean Piaget. I first became interested in Piaget with his stages of development and his idea of object permanence. What also interested me about Piaget was he seemed to act like a grown up at such a young age. Just by observing his actions throughout the readings, you could tell he was a gifted individual even at a young age. It also occurred to me that psychologists focus on other children and study children outside of their household. Piaget actually studied his own children and came up with his stages for development by looking at the intellectual growth of them. I think this will prove to be beneficial as results may have been skewed when psychologists would examine children at different points in time and may not have gotten an accurate representation like Piaget as he could see his children develop every day. His work in the development field interested me a great deal and I wanted to learn more about his theories and contributions to psychology.

Piaget was born in 1896 in Neuchâtel, in the Francophone region of Switzerland. He was the eldest son of Arthur Piaget who was interested in medieval literature and also a professor. Piaget developed an interest at an early age for the natural sciences. He especially became interested in Mollusks and published several articles by the age of 15. Piaget was very interested in zoology and ended up graduating with a degree in the natural sciences. Piaget also worked in marketing and promoting of the Binet Intelligence tests. Piaget did not focus so much on the fact of the children's answers being wrong, but that young children consistently made types of mistakes that older children and adults did not. This led Piaget to conclude that cognitive processes of adults and children must be different. In 1923, he married Valentine Châtenay; the couple had three children, whom Piaget studied from infancy. In the mid-twenties to the late twenties Piaget was a professor of sociology, psychology, and philosophy at the University of Neuchatel.

Piaget became interested in the development of children into adulthood and therefore concluded that there were four stages of development that everyone must go through. In his first stage, known as sensorimotor stage, there is a coordination of sensory input and motor responses, also, object permanence develops which means that an object is actually still there even if the object is out of sight. The second stage known as the preoperational period includes the development of symbolic thought, irreversibility, and egocentrism. This period included children 2-7 years of age. In stage three, the concrete operational period, mental operations applied to concrete events, mastery of conversation, and also hierarchical classification which included children age 7 to 11 years of age. In stage four known as the formal operation period, mental operations applied to abstract ideas, logical and systematic thinking occurred as well. This period included people age 11 and up which continued to develop through adulthood.

Piaget believed he could test epistemological questions by studying the development of thought and action in children and later into adulthood. As a result, Piaget created a field known as genetic epistemology with its own methods and problems. He defined this field as the study of child development as a means of answering epistemological questions. Piaget also applied schema to his work in which he developed three kids of intellectual structures. The behavioral schemata is known as organized patterns of behavior that are used to represent and respond to objects and experiences. The symbolic schemata is a set of internal mental symbols that one uses to represent aspects of an experience. Finally, operational schemata is internal mental activity that one performs on objects of thoughts. Piaget believed that assimilation and accommodation was used by children in order to create a schema or mental framework to perceive and interpret what they were experiencing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
This site provided good background information into the life of Jean Piaget. I enjoyed looking at this site to get a broad sense of what he did throughout his life and research more specific terms that he was interested in applying to the real world.

http://muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/piaget.htm
I used this site to get a basic understanding of how he described the stages of development as well as his work with his own children. I found the material in this site enjoyable to read about as it brings together Piaget’s life work and explains it in a way that it interesting to the researcher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEam9lpa6TQ
This video provided good information in depth into the development theories that Piaget proposed. I found it very helpful when wanting to listen to what others have said or noted when looking into the life of Jean Piaget.

1a) State what your topic is.
John Watson
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Watson was one of if not the most influential behaviorist in the history of psychology but he believed everyone should be a behaviorist. He thought everyone should be studying the environmental stimuli and the individual’s response as opposed to their mental life.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Watson interested me because he had such a huge impact on many parts of psychology, he was a world renowned behaviorist but also helped spark the field of cognitive psychology.
2) Watson was born on January 9th, 1878. He started school at Furman University, his mother wanted him to study ministry but one of his professors was able to take him under his wing and help guide his academic career. Although this professor was able to help Watson turn his life around, he still received very low grades, specifically in the few psychology courses he took while at Furman. His grades were decent enough to be able to go on to the University of Chicago.
Watson’s mother died shortly after he graduated from Furman, which allowed him to study philosophy, his real interest in life. After starting at the University of Chicago, however, Watson took a special interest in comparative psychology and enjoyed studying animals. Watson took philosophy courses with John Dewey, but often claimed it was hard understanding him so he stopped taking those classes. He also studied under James Agnell, and served as his assistant later on. In 1903 he received his doctorate and became a faculty member at the university for a while, he later transferred to the Johns Hopkins University.
At Johns Hopkins, Watson was a professor of psychology and also a lab director. Watson remained at Johns Hopkins for 14 years, and this is where he made his greatest contributions to the field of behaviorism. In 1913, he gave a speech on behaviorism, cutting the previously popular subjects of consciousness and introspection out of the picture of trying to figure out where conscious thought comes from, and proposed the objective psychology of behavior called “behaviorism.” For his time, Watson was considered a radical and his theories were not widely accepted at first. Although there were very many views on behaviorism, they all held in common that it was about the objective study of the natural science of behavior, as emphasized in theory and research. His most famous study is that with Baby Albert and the white rat.
Watson’s time at Johns Hopkins was cut short. He had been happily married to Mary Ickes, but was having an affair with one of his research assistants, Rosalie Rayner. He then divorced Mary, which was much publicized and led the administration at the university to demand for Watson’s resignation. Shortly after he married Rosalie Rayner and they moved to New York.
In New York, Watson started in the advertising business, studying what led people to make purchases. He made a few more publications before his retirement in 1945. Although he was bitter that he could no longer do experimental psychology, Watson made a good living in the advertising business and stayed with the William Etsy Company as the advertising executive for ten years. He and Rosalie had two children, Rosalie then became ill and died suddenly at the age of 35. Watson lived to be 80 years old.
3.) http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/watson.htm
This site gave great information about Watson’s academic and career progression through his life.
http://eweb.furman.edu/~einstein/watson/watson7.htm
This site had many photos and focused more on Watson’s personal life, which was interesting and helpful.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/637615/John-B-Watson/
This site I used as just general knowledge and background about Watson.

1a) State what your topic is.
Doll Studies
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Well in ch. 15 this topic was discussed because it was the studies of two minority psychologists and made an impact in the Brown vs. Board of Education.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I think it overall is a very interesting topic and since I had not heard about it before it made me want to look into it more. It seems like a very pivotal study and it had a lot of influence. I just wanted to learn more about how much of an impact it made.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info, examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own words using the information you have about the topic.
Well when I typed doll studies into google the first thing that popped up was a recent study conducted by Kiri Davis. She decided to make her own video and conduct her own doll experiment. She took 21 students from the Harlem Day Care Center and in her results fifteen of the children preferred the white doll over the black doll. Kiri feels these problems has existed for a very long time and it seems that the lighter a person’s skin tone the better they are or nicer they are. She said even looking in today’s black celebrities, there hair and skin seem to get lighter as they keep going. So they keep changing instead of embracing how they have always been. She interviews several people in her video as well and they talk about bleaching. Many people go to the extreme of bleaching their skin white in order to be more accepted into society, at least that’s how they feel. So one women said her aunt has been bleaching one of her daughters ever since she was six. I just can’t believe that someone would do that. It tells us that the problem of race still exists and influences these children psychologically. More than 50 years after this study was originally conducted the results are still the same, it’s almost as I nothing has change in the progression of race.
In the Clarks’ experiment they took 16 black students ranging from ages 6-9. Eleven of the children said the black doll looked bad and ten students said the white doll looked nice. Ten of the students also preferred the white doll to the black doll. So the results do not seem to vary from Kiri’s new experiment. This is the statement Kenneth Clark made about the conclusions of his research to the judge in the trial, “The conclusion which I was forced to reach was that these children in Clarendon County, like other human beings who are subjected to an obviously inferior status in the society in which they live, have been definitely harmed in the development of their personalities; that the signs of instability in their personalities are clear, and I think that every psychologist would accept and interpret these signs as such.” So he felt that the prejudice and discrimination harmed their development.
I really liked learning more about the case and actually being able to see what Kenneth Cole said about the study during the trials. So these findings really did impact the court case, of course we will never know how much, but it proved that segregated schools were not working and that needed to change. It is sad however that this problem still exists in minority children today. I work at a day care currently and we made sure to embrace diversity and have dolls of a variety of minorities represented. We feel this helps not only the minority children but the Caucasian children as well.

http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/class/common/dolls_in_brown_vs_board.html
This site gave a transcript of the case itself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqvJp2gXJI0
This shows the video Kiri Davis made about the experiment
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/New_doll_test_produces_ugly_results_2919.shtml
This is an article that talks about the Kiri Davis and original Doll studies.

1a) State what your topic is.
I decided to do a little research on the study of artificial intelligence.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

The chapter that I read for this week focused a good deal on artificial intelligence, and it closely ties in with the behaviorist desire to understand human behavior so well that we can artificially simulate it to be indistinguishable.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I’m very interested in this, because it is the fascinating culmination of psychology and technology as well as the conclusion to several philosophical questions, and leads to the asking of several more.

Upon researching artificial intelligence I found myself overwhelmed immediately, lost in a sea of information. I looked briefly into a multitude of topics involving AI. Starting from the philosophical basis, we can examine the broad concept of what is, or was, thought to be artificial intelligence. Descartes believed that AI was unobtainable, as machines could be utilized to produce results desired by people, but could not respond to things said in their presence the way a human would. This was a thought produced in a different time, where no one could have foreseen the technological advancements of the modern era. We do now have machines that can respond to things said in their presence, with voice recognition. This technology is not exclusive to government projects; it is utilized in household products such as phones and gaming consoles. Although Descartes was wrong in assuming machines would never be able to respond to the verbal commands of people, it can be reasonably inferred that his notion of intelligence was not simply regarding something’s capability of responding to auditory commands. Machines now have the ability to detect not only auditory stimuli, such as commands from a human, but they can detect visual stimuli and physically react in accordance with it. Xbox used technology that would scan the room that it was in and have virtual representations of physical people act in accordance with the physical movements of the people. There is also face recognition software that distinguishes between faces. As computers can now perceive visual and auditory stimuli, they can perform a whole new array of functions. Cars can utilize cameras and sensors, as well as location-detecting software, to drive without any manual functioning required from the driver. A prime example of this would be the blind driver who relies on this technology to not send him plummeting off of a bridge. But the ability to perceive and react to stimuli does not make something intelligent, or at least not up to par with human intelligence. The ability to think, this is the current notion of what artificial intelligence must strive to be. As noted in the textbook, computers can use algorithms and heuristics to make decisions similar to that of humans. The algorithm is the set of rules that must be worked through entirely, which will always produce a solution. The heuristic is a sort of shortcut, which may not guarantee a solution, but proves to be more efficient than an algorithm. The shortcuts used by heuristics try to skip steps that would not be beneficial in the finding of an answer, such as avoiding uncommon letter combinations when trying to solve anagrams. Current artificial intelligences use much more sophisticated means of producing answers. The science behind Siri, the lovable artificial intelligence personal assistant that comes standard with all current iPhones, uses probabilistics instead of linguistics. The benefit of this, aside from being able to work in more than one language, is that Siri can use context in scenarios that are otherwise ambiguous to produce an answer similar to that which you would get from a human. When asked for directions to mcdonalds, the AI doesn’t give you directions to every mcdonalds in the world, rather it uses probabilities and context, noting your location and assuming if you would like to go to mcdonalds then you would like to go the nearest one. The science behind these artificial intelligences is getting more complex, and making incredible breakthroughs. Current research is focusing on quantum computing and the implications of that on AI. All data currently is stored in binary code. In binary code, a character is represented as an 8 bit long series of 0s and 1s and is referred to as a byte. This is how all information is currently coded, stored, and read, as nothing more than 0s and 1s. Quantum computing will rely on qubits rather than bits. Whereas bits can only be a 0 or a 1 (or any 1 form of a 2 value criteria such as – and +, on and off, or true and false) a qubit has the ability to be anything between the 1 and the 0 and can actually exist as both simultaneously. This is a little confusing, but it means that the computing power would increase incredibly as information would take less space. This will allow for artificial intelligence to use more advanced algorithms that would ‘learn’ from previous experiences and, in theory, become exponentially faster and more efficient. The Turing test is the most accepted way of determining artificial intelligence, and requires a computer to give a response and a person to give a response to some question. If another person cannot determine what answer was given by the computer, then that computer is artificially intelligent. The philosopher’s have their own set of views, concerning materialism and dualism. Dualists believe that the mind is non-physical and cannot be represented physically, whereas the materialists believe that the mind can be explained physically which allows for the possibility for minds to be created artificially. The semantics about what it is to be intelligent are still being argued, but one thing is for sure, artificial intelligence is going to continue to grow and advance and whether or not it will be indistinguishable from humans is yet to be seen.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/quantum-computers-ai-artificial-intelligence-studies_n_3664011.html
I used this link to find out more about the functions and processes used by AI and the implications of quantum computing on these processes

http://www.prodpad.com/2013/11/the-artificial-intelligence-behind-siri-adam-cheyer-at-websummit/#lightbox[1985]/0/
This page told me about the science behind Siri, which had good information about probability algorithms

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/technology/the-rapid-advance-of-artificial-intelligence.html?_r=0
This webpage just talked a lot about modern AI and its vast applicability

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DcdgQpa1pUUE
This link shows a blind man behind the wheel of a self driving car to illustrate how advanced certain aspects of AI are.

For my topical blog for chapter 14, I had a difficult time deciding what topic I wanted to choose. Chapter 14 had many interesting ideas, topics, events, and people held within it. I finally decided to further research James J. Gibson and the psychology of perception. I found this area of psychology to be very interesting. This field of psychology is also one that I do not know that much about compared to other ones that have been more popular in the classes I have taken so far. The psychology of perception and James J. Gibson appear in the readings of chapter 14 because this chapter talks about different research areas of psychology that came about in the postwar era. The psychology of perception is one of these new research areas. James J. Gibson was a well-known name in this area of psychology because of the work that he did pertaining to the psychology of perception. Throughout this blog post I will further describe his history and his work that made him so famous in this field of psychology.
To start off with, there was limited information about James J. Gibson in our textbook, which I found interesting because many of the people discussed in these chapters are given a background of their life. This was not the case with James Gibson, so I was interested in finding more about him and his history. This proved to be a little bit more difficult than what I thought because I could not find much information on Gibson by using the web. What I did find out about him is this: James Jerome Gibson was born on January 27th, 1904. He was born in McConnelsville, Ohio which is a smaller town about an hour and a half outside of Columbus, Ohio. There was not much information found about Gibson’s childhood, but he did graduate from Princeton University, where he also received his PhD in psychology.
James Gibson became such a prominent name in visual psychology after receiving his PhD. Through his work, Gibson rejected favorably the ideas behind and theory of behaviorism. Further on in life, Gibson studied the concept of optical flow. Optical flow is the apparent flow of the movement of objects in the visual field relative to the observer. A person can determine the optical flow using the pattern of light on the retina. Gibson’s work with optical flow helped tremendously with the training for pilots during World War 2. Gibson had to create training films for these pilots and from this he developed the ideas behind the theory of optical flow. The pilot would fixate on a point in the distance that seemed motionless while everything around them is moving away from that point, ending up flying over and around the pilot. The theory of optical flow became the basis for the more general theory behind visual perception. Gibson’s visual perception holds three key ideas which are optic array, textured gradients, and affordance. Optic array is basically just the patterns of light that reach the eye. Textured gradients are what the person perceives that gives information to the distance, speed, and other related ideas throughout visual perception. Finally, affordance is the attaching of particular meaning to visual information. Gibson’s ideas behind visual perception are very interesting and he wrote many books about this and related topics throughout his lifetime. I think that Gibson is a very interesting person to learn about, and I wish there was more information about him on the web. It was interesting to read about all the contributions Gibson had to psychology, especially the psychology of perception before he passed away on December 11, 1979 in New York. He definitely left behind his mark though in the world of psychology.
Perception is defined as the “organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment.” Therefore, the psychology of perception would include the study of all of this information. I think that this would be a very interesting field of psychology to go into because there would be a lot of information to learn from it that would only aid in further understanding of how people function. This type of psychology deals a lot with the pre-conscious innate aspects of the human cognitive system. Perceptual psychology also deals with the debate between nativism and empiricism. Nativists believe that people are born with all the perceptual abilities we need. Empiricists believe that we, as humans, are not born with perceptual abilities but instead have to learn them as we carry out our lives. Between these two beliefs, nativism is more popular but both have very interesting ideas behind them, as does the psychology of perception in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson
I used the website a lot in the second and third paragraphs of my topical blog post. This website gave me a lot of helpful information on the life of James Gibson and what he had accomplished and researched in his lifetime.
http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~kbroom/Lectures/gibson.htm
This website was helpful to me in understanding the ideas and research behind Gibson’s optical flow theory. I used a lot of this information in the third paragraph of my blog post. I found this website to be short but it was also to the point and interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_psychology
This final website helped me a lot with information regarding the psychology of perception. I find this area of psychology to be really interesting and this web site helped me write my final paragraph of my blog post.

Francis Sumner

He relates to the chapter as they mention the historic struggle minorities faced in the field of psychology. I was interested in learning more about him as he was briefly mentioned in this chapter and wanted to know more about his contributions to psychology.

Francis Sumner was born in 1895 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He attended to various elementary schools in Norfolk, Virgina, and Plainfield, New Jersey. After completing elementary school, he was self-educated with help from his parents. They would work extra hours just to be able to get the proper textbooks and reading materials for him. It was then at the early age of 15 years old, Sumner enrolled at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

By the time he turned 20, he graduated magna cum laude with special honors in English, Modern Languages, Greek, Latin, and Philosophy. At Lincoln, he formed significantly influential friendships including the president of Clark University, Stanley Hall, and James Porter who was the Dean of Clark University and a professor of psychology. The summer after he graduated at Lincoln, he enrolled at Clark and continued reading many books as he aspired to become a writer. A year after graduation, he received his second B.A. in English from Clark University.

He then returned to Lincoln where he was mentored by Stanley Hall and was approved as a PhD candidate. However, he was drafted in World War 1, which prevented him from starting his doctoral dissertation. When he returned from the war, he reenrolled in the doctoral program at Lincoln and began his dissertation title “Psychoanalysis of Freud and Adler”. As a graduate student he taught psychology of religion, mysticism, rationalism, experimental psychology, social psychology, and intermediate and advanced German.

On June 14, 1920 Sumner received his PhD from Clark where he became the first African American to receive a PhD degree in psychology. He then later became a professor at a variety of universities and although he was refused by research agencies to fund him, he still managed to publish several articles. His main interest was in understanding racial bias and supported educational justice. Also with the help of Howard University’s president, a separate department of psychology was established and Sumner was appointed a full professor and head of the department in 1930.
http://psychology.okstate.edu/museum/afroam/bio.html
I liked this website because it was organized nicely with Sumner’s contributions and affiliations and basic information such as where he was born and raised and when and where he died.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~knigher/personal%20biography.htm
I enjoyed this site because it gave great detail on Sumner’s life and all of the universities he attended and was affiliated with.
http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/sumner-prosser.aspx
I liked this website because it included a lot of the basic information for me to understand what Sumner accomplished in the field of psychology.

B.H.

My topic is memory from chapter 14; this topic relates to this chapter because it describes the work that Bartlett went through. His main argument was that research on memory should be focused more so on the attributes of the memorizer and less on the nature of the stimulus materials. He sought that someone memorizing something actively organizes material into meaningful wholes referred to as schemata, compared to passively accumulating associative strength as the result of practice and repetition. His example is death, through experiences and different cultures, schemata will be developed to paint certain perceptions on dying. What really got me interested was a video on ted.com, Elizabeth Loftus is an expert who studies false memories, she went on to show how our memories might not be what they seem and how implanted memories can have real-life repercussions. She went on to describe the “fiction” of our memory.

Loftus starts off the video on how it is shocking that she studies not when people forget but when they remember. She describes a case relating to Steve Titus, a wrongly accused rapist that was found guilty due to false memory. A study was done that showed 300 people in prison were researched and the findings came out to tell that information backed up that ¾ of those people were wrongly accused due to false memory. Memory is not built like a recorder; it is constructive like a Wikipedia page where you and other people can make changes as they please. Certain simulations and exercises were conducted where information was suggested towards the patient. It showed that suggestive information blurs our perceptions and misinformation can distort and change out memory. Psychotherapy also can influence memory, in therapy people were suggested to bizarre memories like drowning, being lost as a child, being attacked, even being possessed by demons.

A lot of people were upset with Loftus looking into false memory. It was considered a disturbing trend when a mother who was assumed of beating her daughter was found not guilty. The daughter then sued Loftus even though during her investigation nothing had the daughters name involved. False memory can have repercussions like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and etc. Even though someone can show confidence, detail, and emotion doesn’t mean that the person is telling the truth. In conclusion, Loftus’ quote at the end says it well “Memory like liberty…is a fragile thing.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory.html
This website provided me with a video on false memory, it went on to describe how fictional and nonfictional memory is and how it can be manipulated in certain suggestive activities.

1a) For this final blog post assignment, I chose to look at the life of Frederick Bartlett in more detail then what the textbook did.

1b) The topic relates to the chapter well since we talked about some of the contributions that Bartlett made to the field of cognitive psychology. I wanted to research this man for myself to see if there was more that could be learned from his involvement in this area of psychology.

1c) I am interested in Bartlett because of the ideas he presented as they relate to the study of memory and more specifically the idea of schemata. His work in psychology as it involves memory was very interesting to me when reading the textbook for this weeks early blog post. I decided to revisit the subject in order to discover more about Bartlett's contributions for myself.

Bartlett was born and raised in England. His childhood was not exactly easy because of a run in with pleurisy when he was young. Even though he experienced this, he was still able to function at a normal level later in life and even pursued athletic endeavors during his later school years. He initially earned a degree in philosophy but when he started to pursue a master's program, he switched his area of study to sociology and ethics. While he finished his degree in moral science at the University of Cambridge, he met Charles Myers who was the director of the psychology laboratory at the University. He became well-acquainted with the man and eventually replaced him as head of the laboratory when Myers was drafted into WWI. Bartlett was withheld from joining the war effort due to the physical limitations he carried with him from his childhood illness.

It was during the time as head of the psychology lab that Bartlett began to narrow his interest area within the field of psychology. He heard about the Jean Philippe experiment which we have studied earlier in this class. He assumed a similar study on the same topic varying the amount of time between the reproduction of the material by the subjects as well as what material content was view in the experiment. His work with this subject area is what formed the base of his doctoral thesis. The thesis had many anthropological and psychological ideas and included thoughts on how cultures pass on written and spoken dialog to future generations. His goal was to understand how various thoughts and ideas of a culture can be transformed into many different forms including arbitrary and symbolic states.
During his years at Cambridge, one of Bartlett's goals was to move the psychology department into a higher state of recognition within the school itself. He personally invested time and fiances in order for the department to gain higher regards and respect from the University.

Bartlett's theory on memory was a new and different approach to the view previously held by those during his era. The original idea behind memory was that it was an isolated function of the brain. This idea was referred to as trace theory and includes the thought that new thoughts and experiences leave prints on our brain. When an individual is exposed to something that is similar or reminds them of their previous experiences, the brain simply associates those ideas with the previously imprinted thoughts from past experiences.
Bartlett introduced a new concept that implied that memory was a separate function of the brain but actually functions with the environment. Memory is than the process of bringing together multiple areas of the environment they we continually find ourselves living in. This idea that the mind and memory are not separate entities was crucial to Bartlett's theory.

http://www.academia.edu/2781315/Bartletts_concept_of_schema_in_reconstruction

This source helped me to understand what made Bartlett's theory different from the other approaches to memory that had been previously talked about in our class. By understanding a little better as to how his approach clarified memory as a function of the brain, I was able to see how his theory influenced the thinking of his day and even into our modern approach to studying memory within the psychology field.

http://www.bartlett.psychol.cam.ac.uk/Intellectual%20Biography.htm

This website did an excellent job of mentioning the focal points of Bartlett's career that helped direct him to conduct research in the areas that he did. I was able to gain a better understanding for the mindset behind the experiments that Bartlett conducted by reading the material from this source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Bartlett

This website helped me gain a better understanding of the early years of Bartlett. Not very many sources I looked up had information on his early years. I don't usually use wikipedia for information especially as it relates to school assignments. However, for this particular case, it was one of the few websites offering much detail on Bartlett's childhood and early years in college.

For week 15 topical blog I decided to research more about Kenneth and Mamie Clark. They relate to this chapter because there was a section about their research and doll experiment. I wanted to know about these two because of my major being in Education and I thought it was really interesting to learn about. I also chose this topic because I have never heard of them before which also shocks me in a sense. Kenneth and Mamie were two African American’s who were very influential people in the history of psychology.
Kenneth was the first African American to earn a doctorate in psychology, to hold a permanent professorship, and to join the New York State Board of Regents. He was an outstanding psychologist and overcame many roadblocks being that he was a man of color. He also assisted corporations with racial policies and minority hiring programs to give back to his community.
Mamie started her career by studying self-perception in black children as a graduate student. While she was studying at Howard University, she met Kenneth Clark and they soon got married after that. Together they researched self-perception in black children and published three major articles. Mamie also became the first African American women to receive her doctorate in psychology. She was also rewarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Silver Medal because of her research/experiments. Mamie had an even harder time then her husband because not only was she an African American, but she was also a women in a very man prominent field of study.
Both of them studied the way black children seemed to prefer white dolls over black ones which was called the doll experiment. In this experiment they asked black children to either choose a white doll or a black doll to which they thought looked more like them. Most of the children asked actually chose the white dolls because they thought that they looked “nicer.” To outsiders, people were shocked, but to the Clark’s they had a feeling that’s how it was going to go down and it is very sad. Because of this experiment, this was brought to court and it was called Brown vs. Board of Education. It went to court so that it could show the people that in schools where blacks and whites were integrated, the term “separate but equal” didn’t hold to be true. It showed that blacks weren’t being treated equally which was against the law and needed to be addressed and changed. The African American children would state that they thought the black doll was considered the bad doll or child. It just went to show that African American’s were still being treated harshly by the whites and they were not accepted into the education system.
Sources:
1. http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/kenneth_mamie_clark.html This source was very helpful, but brief. It was helpful because it gave simple but factual facts about the two of them and a little bit of background about their lives and how they got to where they went.
2. http://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/the-clark-doll-experiment/ This source was a great one because it went in detail about the actual experiment with the dolls and the results.
3. http://psychology.about.com/od/womeninpsychology/p/mamie-phipps-clark.htm This was a great source because it gave a lot of information about Mamie Phillips (Clark) and how she got to be where she was. Her struggles, her education, and more information on her research with her husband.

A.S.

1a) State what your topic is.
Women in psychology.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
In this chapter there was section on women in psychology’s history so this is where I got my interest from.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was interested in this topic because I am a women and studying psychology. I wanted to better understand what women in psychology’s history have gone through to get where they are today.
2)
There are multiple barriers that women have had to overcome in psychology. There were quite a few things that they were excluded from when trying to get involved and study psychology. There were only a few women in psychology’s history and it’s because they weren’t allowed to be and if they were they were ignored. However, this is starting to change and more psychology courses are starting to mention the important women in psychology’s history. These women are; Karen Horney, Mary Ainsworth, Leta Hollingworth and Christine Ladd-Franklins. Mary Ainsworth, Mary Calkins, and Karne Horney are the only three that I remember hearing about and taking time to talk about in some of my other psychology courses. Ainsworth was known for her experiment “strange situation’ which was to examine early childhood attachment. Overall she was an important contribution to child development and the attachment theory. Mary Calkins is important in psychology’s history because she was the first women president of the American Psychological Association. Leta Hollingworth was someone that I didn’t know before researching women in psychology’s history. She did work with exceptional children and what factors would help to nurture these individuals giftedness. However Karen Horney is the women that I remember the most about. She did work with neurosis, feminine psychology, and self psychology. She also was important because she challenged a lot of Freud’s theories about women. This next women in psychology is someone that I haven’t heard mention until my gender psychology course this semester. Sandra Bem is contemporary compared to the other women I mentioned. She developed the Bem Sex Role Inventory which measures traditional gender roles and characterizes things like masculinity and femininity. I feel that there are a lot of important women in psychology that have made big contributions. They may not have been talked about much in some psychology courses because they were left out and not even included in some things. I see that from doing this research that each one of the women in psychology’s history made an impact on it and I feel that they can be just as good in this field as the males in psychology.
http://psychology.about.com/od/womeninpsychology/tp/important-women-in-psychology-history.htm
This website provided good example of women in psychology’s history as well as discuss each one of the main ones.
http://psychology.about.com/od/womeninpsychology/
This website provided good example of women in psychology’s history as well as discuss each one of the main ones.

http://voices.yahoo.com/forgotten-contributions-women-psychology-10650.html?cat=4
This website provided good example of women in psychology’s history as well as discuss each one of the main ones.

http://books.google.com/books?id=E58Aihg6BbMC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=womens+contribution+in+psychology&source=bl&ots=5YYc_D2rQb&sig=ZCrotbTrc4TVrpBv2Eh5rKZexiE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6sOvUqKfGoaTyQGHpICYAQ&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=womens%20contribution%20in%20psychology&f=false
This was from some sort of book on women in psychology and it had a lot of information on each one of the women in psychology that I mentioned in this paper.

1a) This week I am doing my topical blog on Eleanor Gibson.


1b) This chapter discussed a lot regarding the barriers and struggles that women fast in the past regarding entering the field of psychology and becoming accepted. It discussed Gibson’s life, her success and awards she was granted as well as all that she contributed to the field such as the visual cliff.


1c) She seemed like such a determined women. Even when she was denied jobs and opportunities she still was able to persevere and accomplish so much. She became a prominent figure within developmental psychology so I wanted to look more into her life.

2)
Eleanor Jack, popularly known as Jackie, was born in Peoria, Illinois, to a middle class family. Her father worked as a businessman selling hardware. Her mother, Isabella, graduated from Smith College. Eleanor continued the tradition and attended the university as well. She was very drawn to experimental psychology.
She met her future husband, James Gibson, at Smith as well. James became well known for his ecological theories of perception. They were both attending a graduation party where Eleanor was serving punch and James, a professor, greeting parents. Rain led to a ride home from James after the graduation party. The following day she rushed to get her classes changed so she could join James’ advanced experimental psychology course. Her love for psychology grew alongside her love of James during her masters at Smith under the supervision of Gibson. He was very influential in Jack’s life regarding her pursuit in psychology. The two were marred in the year of 1932, halfway through her masters program.
As Smith wasn’t offering Ph.D programs in psychology, Gibson left to quickly do a year at Yale. She aspired to do research there with Robert Yerkes in his chimpanzee lab. Gibson however, was shown the door after Yerkes stated that he did not allow women in his laboratory. She ended up partnering with Clark Hull, even though she did not always agree with his strict theories regarding behaviorism. After receiving her Ph.D. she began teaching back at Smith with her husband.
World War II however called James into the Air Force to develop perceptual tests for pilot selection and the two moved to Texas and California with the military. During this time Eleanor was stayed at home and looked after the couples two children. After the war they were able to return to Smith but left for Cornell a few years later when James was offered a position. Though because of an anti-neoptism rule, which banned married couples from being hired within the same department, Eleanor was not able to become a faculty member. She instead became a research associate.
Along with Richard Walk, the two developed the visual cliff which is what Gibson is best known for today. They were featured in Life magazine and this became one of psychology's most famous experiments. After sixteen long years, in 1965 she was made a professor at Cornell and finally received her very own lab. Her primary focus concerned perceptual learning and in 1969 she published Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development. The book had much success and received that years century award. Eleanor as well received the National Medical of Science in 1992, given to her by President George H. W. Bush. This medal is rarely awarded to psychologists.
Throughout Gibson’s career she faced a lot of gender discrimination. She however worked towards creative alternatives which would aid in advancing her closer to her goals. She never gave up. Some statements regarding her difficulties said, “I did have a theme, a sort of direction, and opportunities, even very unlikely ones, can sometimes be bent to one’s theme,” and, “Couldn’t I just set out to work on the research of my choice? No, I couldn’t. One needs a lab, and I didn’t have one.” Her responses to the obstacles she faced in career showed much success. She went on to contribute so much to the field and received many honors. Ironically, after receiving the National Medal of Science Eleanor stated, “It has a picture of a man, of course!”

3)

1.http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/

This site gave media links to interviews and such which was nice. It included some background information regarding where she grew up and the early start of her academic career. It got into her relationship with James Gibson and his influence on her. It as well discussed their career paths together and struggles that she faced. Towards the end it included a list of her works and photos.

2.http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx

This site talked a lot about the visual cliff. Like the first site it included a lot of information regarding her academics and relationship with her future husband. It discussed difficulties she had, like trouble with yerkes for example. It as well talked about research she did and works she wrote. It included a lot of in depth information.

3. http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/gibson.html

This site included information regarding how she got into her career, discrimination she faced, her academic career, areas of interest, accomplishments and her overall contributions to the field of psychology.

1a) Trends in 2013 and 2014 in psychology.
1b) The realm of psychology has changed quite a bit over the past few years because of the new advances in the world. The chapter talks about how understanding the present requires knowledge of the past. Also, with diversity in psychology the different types of studies occurring have changed as well.
1c) I was interested in the trends of psychology because I realize they are not the same as they were back then, and they will continue to change as well. I wanted to know what we are relying on today and what may be done to change these options into even better uses for developing studies.

The trends in 2013 have moved from a personal type of treatment to cognitive therapies to help people and their mental illnesses. These cognitive therapies are cost-effective because of their demand for treatment sessions compared to interpersonal treatments that require countless sessions with a therapist. Also, the use of a computer in treatment has changed drastically. The use of a computer allows a patient to stay at home and work by themselves on their mental illness instead of visiting a counselor or therapist for a one on one session costing quite a bit for the patient. The counselor also saves time because they are not required to track the patient continually because the program does that for them. The program keeps records for the patient and counselor to review when they do schedule a time to meet and discuss the progress. The computer also allows for video chat. Instead of meeting in the office, which could be a ways away for a patient to travel, the counselor and patient can speak over a video chat about the problems they are having or the progress they are making. This may allow a therapist and patient to meet more often.
The Internet allows for psychologists to publish their work and it be viewed by the public at all times. Instead of constantly contacting a professional, looking up their works and studies in the library is an alternative. The journal and articles are also available to students doing their own research. This type of trend is extremely beneficial. We are able to find works related to our topics and discover who has studied the specific topic before us as well. When writing a research paper I find it difficult to want to look and search for a book that will take me quite a while to read when I can just look in the database and find the peer-reviewed article of studies I am interested in. This allows for an abundance amount of information available at the click of a mouse.
These advances lead to less time in the office and more time elsewhere. One question about this is whether the practitioners and counselors will continue to be successful in their work. Will they continue to care about the patients? The work might not require them to be physically present, but they are still required to get the job done, and that is helping the patient.
The types of studies today seem to be shifting as well. Quite a few studies are focused on social media and the effects of video games on children. Even television time has been a question asked and studied in psychology. These shifts come from the advances in the world. We study the circumstances these are beneficial or the effects they have on people, but the outside world just focuses on the profit and milestones being made. New ways to test these certain studies is also coming into play.

I chose this website because it really gave a breakdown of what trends are occurring in 2014. Some I had never even thought about.
http://neoacademic.com/2014/03/05/unpacking-the-top-10-io-psychology-trends-for-2014/#.VIdamr6kTww

I chose this website because it talked about the way data is expressed to the public. It focused on the research side of topics instead of practitioner side of things.
http://blog.terakristen.com/internetpsychology-trends-for-2013/

I chose this website because it spoke about 2013 in greater detail about the trends occurring in psychology.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/02/21/trends-in-psychology-2013/

1a) State what your topic is. Perception

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. Psychology of perception is an idea brought up in the chapter, and Gibson was the man they highlighted when discussing it.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Perception is interesting, and there have been debates surrounding perception since the beginning of recorded history between philosophers and now psychologists.

Perception is something that is has puzzled many brilliant minds for hundreds of years. Perception has been agreed to be based on the information we receive from our sensory organs and the processing of it. The issue with perception is how exactly it works, senses do their part, but that only explains part of the puzzle. How do we arrange what an object is, how do knowingly large objects seem small, and small objects can appear large in contrast? One psychologist that dealt with perception in a great manor was James J Gibson. He focused understanding why we saw the world as we do.

To explain this he did multitudes of research. One aspect of his research was an idea of the focus of expansion. The idea of the focus of expansion is that when we are in motion, we will be focusing on one object in the distance. That object stays stationary in our perception, and everything else seems to be moving past us and going behind us. This movement of objects behind us is what he called optic flow, which makes sense because optic is dealing with the eyes, and flow is something that is in motion.

Another part of Gibson’s research was his idea of bottom up processing. This theory states that any sensory information is gotten and analyzed in one direction. It starts with simple analysis of raw data to more detailed and difficult analysis through the visual system. What this means to me, and I may be wrong, is that it works much like a firework. A firework is first shot into the sky, it then explodes and outwardly reaches until its final form and clear object representation is met. With gathering sensory information, it starts basic and expands from there, such as I’ll see a brown figure, then I notice legs and a body, then I recognize it as a dog. This is how this idea of bottom up processing works.

Although Gibson was mentioned in the chapter, there are many more people who do a lot of work with perception and not all agree with his stance on things, some psychologists argue for a top down processing. This theory state that most information is lost by the time it reaches the brain and we have to guess what we perceive based on past experiences in life. This theory was presented in 1970, two years prior to bottom up processing in 1972. This theory is directly opposite of Gibson’s and the psychologist, Richard Gregory, has substantial claims to support his idea. One example is that perception can be ambiguous in nature. There are many optical illusions out there, where the same figure is presented but you can see it in two different ways, there is a lot more to this example, but the idea is that it starts at the topmost brain functions and works down to decide what the object is truly doing.

Overall perception is a fascinating thing, because much like philosophers have been asking, how can my senses tell me what is true in my perception when my senses are easily deceived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF0ArkVDrT8 this video gave a detailed explanation of Gibson’s ideas on direct perception.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html This website gave details on Gibson and Gregory’s perception theories and outlined videos and examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson This website gave a very detailed example of James Gibson and his life and work.

1a) State what your topic is.


My topic is Mamie Phipps Clark.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.


This subject relates to the chapter because Mamie was a minority in the field of psychology. She was an African American woman who wanted an education for herself. She was involved in her community and cared about children of all ages. Mamie did not let discrimination stop her from obtaining her degree in psychology. Being African American at that time must have been rough, but being an African American female at that time in history had to be nearly impossible.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.

I am interested in Mamie Phipps Clark because she is an inspiration. She grew up in a privileged household and did not let anything get in her way of obtaining her goal. Mamie not only got her master’s degree, but got her doctoral degree as well. It is inspiring that a minority person could get a degree of such prestige given the timeframe she grew up in. It is hard to obtain a doctoral degree now, but Mamie overcame all odds and proved that women were capable of receiving such remarkable degrees.

2)

Mamie Phipps Clark and her husband Kenneth were both African American psychologists who got married and became a team conducting research about children. They founded the north side Center for Child Development in Harlem. Kenneth was a professor at City College of New York and was the first Black President of the American Psychological Association. They are both known for their experiments with dolls, and children’s attitudes toward race that they conducted in the 1940s. Their research findings contributed to the ruling of the United States Supreme Court ruling that segregation in the public education system was unconstitutional.

Mamie was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Her parents were Harold and Katie Phipps. Her father was a doctor, so Mamie experienced a privileged childhood. Her mother, Katie, would help her father with his practice and also was a main source of Mamie’s education. While Mamie and her siblings grew up during the Great Depression, she had a good childhood. Mamie lived in a white community because her dad was so well-off, but she was forced to attend segregated schools. Mamie graduated high school at 16. After high school, she attended Howard University in Washington D.C. as a physics and math major. She was discouraged from this and was convinced by her future husband, Kenneth Clark, to become a psychology major. Mamie’s senior year of college the two got married. They had two kids—Kate and Hilton. In the fall of 1938 they went to grad school at Howard University for their Masters in psychology. Mamie became interested in developmental psychology while she worked at an all black nursery. Her thesis became her most famous research.

Mamie’s thesis while at Howard University was known as the doll studies. These studies were aimed at children to see if they had a preference for the color of a doll’s skin. These studies found that there was a clear preference for the white doll among all children in the study. It showed that racism was prevalent in young children and that racism later became self-hatred. The preference for the white doll amongst the black children shows that segregation harms children.

Mamie later went on to receive a doctorate degree in psychology at Columbia University in New York. Her faculty advisor was Dr. Henry Garrett; he was known to believe in segregation. Mamie was able to work things out and became the second African American to receive a doctorate in psychology at Columbia—the first being her husband. After she graduated she had a hard time finding a job. The jobs she was qualified for were being given to under qualified men and even white women. She was forced to settle for jobs that she was highly overqualified for, but in the end it was worth it. She found a job through connections and established a center that aimed to improve social services for troubled youth in Harlem that is still in business today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_and_Mamie_Clark
This article gave me a lot of information regarding doll studies that the couple performed.
http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/clark.aspx
This website gave me information about Mamie and Kenneth both. It also gave me plenty of background information on Mamie.
http://www.feministvoices.com/mamie-phipps-clark/
This article gave me a lot of information regarding her college career and how she got her degrees.

Eleanor Jack Gibson (popularly known as Jackie) was born in 1910 in Illinois to a middle class family. In her time, women were seen as second class citizens; they were thought to be inferior to men. This made school a struggle for Eleanor. This became a huge problem when she later entered Yale University since women were not allowed access to the laboratories. Cafeterias, or libraries on campus. Her gender also made it impossible for Eleanor to listen in on the Fruedian lectures that took place at the University. Eleanor muddled through the discrimination and was able to receive her PhD in 1938 from Yale after she obtained her bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Smith College.

After college, Eleanor married and had children. It was on a family trip to the Grand Canyon that Eleanor stumbled upon her most famous discovery, the visual cliff. The visual cliff had to do with depth perception in infants. Eleanor wanted to test to see when children gained the knowledge and understanding of depth perception. To test this, her and colleague, Richard Walk put infants and placed them on a table with a checkerboard lay out on one side and glass on the other. The checkerboard pattern went from the one side of the table down to the ground under the glass. This gave the appearance that the table just dropped off. They then had the child’s parent stand on the other side of the glass end of the table to see if the child would crawl on the glass to get to the parent. Their findings showed that 90% of infant 6 months and up would not go on the glass suggesting that age is when depth perception emerges in a child. Depth perception is a vital part of life. It helps us to understand how far away objects are from ourselves and from other objects.

Eleanor Gibson also studied reading skills development and perceptual development in children. Gibson came up with the theory of descriptive features. She realized that young children just learning to read had issues differentiating certain letters such as N and M or q and p. This was because these letters looked so similar to one another. These trouble letters were part of the confusion matrix that she had also developed. After researching this, Eleanor used her finding in an attempt to show reaction time and errors between letters with similar and different features.

Eleanor Gibson not only overcame the struggles of discrimination to receive her education, but she went even further to become a famous psychologist. Her hard work paid off. In 1992, she was awarded The Nation Metal of Science from the president as well as other awards issued by the APA. She continues to be a recognized force in psychology and her work is inspiring due to the barriers she had to overcome to get where she got.

http://faculty.frostburg.edu/mbradley/psyography/gibson.html
This helped to explain her work better, especially visual cliff

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx
Great overview of her life and work

http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/
More detailed look at her life and education

1a) Gordon Allport

1b) Gordon Allport was talked about extensively in this chapter about his studies in personality psychology, there have been many different theories and studies done in personality, his is one of the most recent studies.

1c) I’m interested in him because I have always liked learning about personality because it’s always changing, also just how different people are as a whole it has always been fun to watch different interactions.

2) Gordon Allport is considered to be the founding father of personality psychology, he went to Harvard where he got his PhD. While studying under Hugo Munsterberg. Allport spent a lot of time thinking up his theory of personality, one of the most memorable and important moments of his life was meeting Freud. He went to his office in Austria and sat down, and began telling a story about a boy who didn’t like to touch or be around dirt. This was just a harmless story that Allport was telling to break his nervousness with meeting the great Freud. Allport, younger was making his own assumptions of what was happening to the boy, he said it was from his mother, that’s why the boy behaved this way. Right now this sounds like just a regular conversation between two psychologists bouncing ideas and theories off of each other, but then Freud took it to the psychoanalytic realm of things and asked if the boy was him. This was the turning point where Allport knew that psychoanalysis went way too deep for personality, and then he had some experience in behaviorism and realized that didn’t go deep enough. So, with all of these experiences he had through his young career he knew how he wanted to do his theory in personality.

Allport’s theory was very simple in a way, he had two different types of motivators in people that had an effect on what everyone did. The first one was opportunistic functioning, this was past-oriented, biological, and reactive. He looked at this and sad it was not as important as the other function, which is called propriate functioning, this was the opposite of opportunistic, what propriate functioning is what Allport thought could describe human behavior so much better. This was proactive, future-oriented, and psychological; this made things a very easy for Allport in how to conduct his studies, he had a much laid out plan on what to look for and where to put different. In his theory he had a 7 step process if you will, of things that will happen in one’s life, the steps are: sense of body, self-identity, self-esteem, self-extension, self-image, rational coping, and propriate striving. His theory in this part never really caught on, but the part of his theory about traits, these were his descriptions of what makes up each and every human. He has the most thought about theory that really was the first humanistic theory in history, his work went on to inspire a lot of psychologists throughout time.

Towards the end of his life Allport worked at Harvard, he worked there from 1930 to 1967. He actually was the one who founded Harvard’s sociology department. In 1939 Allport was elected as president of the American Psychology Association, this could have been his biggest accomplishment, it is a great honor to be the president of the APA. In 1963 Allport got the gold medal from the American Psychology Foundation, he also won the most distinguished science contribution the following year. He was one of the most decorated psychologist of his time, he published countless books and had countless awards. He worked all the way up until his last day in 1967, he really changed the landscape of psychology and made the science completely different.

3) http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/gordon-allport.htm
This was a good website showing what his early life was like and what experiences he had that helped shape his theory.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/allport.html
This gave a great overview of what Allport’s theory was and how it worked with its parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Allport
This is a good website talking about his life and his accomplishments towards the end of his life.

1a) Eleanor Gibson

1b) This chapter was about linking the history of psychology to present day. Eleanor Gibson embodies this as a psychologist. She powered through stereotypes of women being inferior and was recognized by Former President George Bush Sr. for her scientific contributions. This connects the past barriers for women in the education system and ties it to the freedom that we now have as equals to men.

1c) I am interested in this topic because her story is one that is empowering to women. Every time I think about complaining because of tests, homework, or projects I want to think about Gibson’s struggles, as well as the struggles of many other women, and her contributions that allowed me to even have a fighting chance at an education.

2) Gibson attended Smith College, a liberal arts college for women in Massachusetts, and became interested in psychology. She earned her bachelors, masters, and married a teacher from that school. After her completion at Smith College, she wanted to earn her PhD. She went to Yale hoping to work in Dr. Yerkes laboratory. When she went in for a meeting he asked her why she had come, and Gibson told him that she had hoped to work in his laboratory. After hearing this, Yerkes stood up, opened the door, and said that he did not have women in his laboratory. Determined to earn her doctorate, Gibson pursued other options until she was allowed into Dr. Clark Hull’s laboratory (Goodwin 2012). She eventually received her PhD from Yale in 1938 and began teaching at Smith College. This was interrupted in 1941 when her husband was recruited by the Air Force to test visual perception for pilots. Gibson and her family moved to Texas and then to California. During this time, she stayed home with her children (Feminist Voices). After following her husband during the war, they moved to Ithaca, New York where her husband was hired at Cornell University. Because of anti-nepotism rules, she was not allowed to work at the university with her husband. She worked for 16 years as an unpaid “research associate,” and earned her money by winning several competitive and prestigious research grants. When Cornell removed its nepotism rules in 1972, Gibson was hired on as a full professor. Gibson was named the Susan Linn Sage Endowed Professor of Psychology in 1974, and in 1980 was named professor emeritus. In recognition of her contributions, former president George H. W. Bush presented her with the National Medal of Science in 1992. This is the highest honor a president can give to a scientist (Goodwin 2012). While Gibson’s story is amazing, I wanted to learn more about her contributions in research that made President Bush and many others present her with so many awards and prestigious titles.

What Gibson is most known for is her work with Richard Walk at Cornell University while she was still a “research associate.” Gibson and Walk studied dark-reared rats and studied their depth perception. Gibson and Walk used a sheet of glass and on one side (near side) the patterned paper was right underneath the glass and on the other side (far side) the paper was several feet below the glass. They hypothesized that since the rats were raised in the dark, that they had not developed the necessary perception abilities to be able to see that the “cliff,” and because of this the rats would wander around on the glass both on the near and far side. What happened was the opposite. The rats stayed exclusively on the near side. They continued to study this with many other animals, and eventually moved to crawling babies. The mothers would be in the room and attempt to get the babies to come over to the far side. The infants almost exclusively stayed on the near side. Gibson and Walk coined the term “The Visual Cliff” from their research, and the study using the infants was published in the Scientific American (Feminist Voice).

As someone who is not entirely interested in perception, I did not understand the significance of this experiment. I wanted to know what its application was to psychology. Defined the Visual Cliff is an “apparent, but not actual drop from one surface to another” (About Psychology). At first scientists thought that the perception of the cliff was a result of both physical and visual maturity. A study of three month old children came out showing that this was not the case. When the infants were placed over the “edge” their eyes widened and their heart rate and breathing changed. The only issue with this is why they feel the fear. They do not understand the consequences of being over the edge which is falling. This fact only comes when they start crawling because the way they learn is by taking tumbles (About Psychology).

When Cornell University finally allowed Gibson to become a professor, they gave her a laboratory of her own. Three years after this, she published her book “Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development.” Gibson resisted a feminist view of her life, but later in a talk called “A Lab of One’s Own,” she did acknowledge that the fact that she didn’t have a laboratory of her own for so many years did have an impact on her career. Even when receiving the National Medal of Science, Gibson remarked that the medal had a “picture of a man, of course” (APA).

3) http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/

I used this website because it helped fill in the blanks of Gibson’s biography, as well as help me get a start on the Visual Cliff research.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx

I used this website because I was interested in the resistance to a feminist view of her life that Gibson felt.

http://psychology.about.com/od/vindex/f/visual-cliff.htm

This website was extremely helpful in my understanding of the Visual Cliff.

I decided to look at personality psychology.

Personality psychology relates to this chapter because it has spread greatly since WWII and has played a significant part in popularizing psychology. Personality psychology looks at the individual, rather than at what makes people similar. It was popularized by Gordon Allman, who published a book in 1937 that really took off. Allport criticized Freud’s psychoanalytic theory during a time which it was very popular. The book put their section on personality psychology in with other research areas, but the majority of what the chapter talked about was Allport’s life, and it seemed that personality psychology was just a small aspect of that.
I like personality profiles and have always found it interesting how people can be so different from one another, even within families. I think that it’s really cool how we have tests out there now that can explain so much about ourselves. I think that personality tests can really tell us a lot about ourselves that we may not know, and I feel that bits and pieces of these kinds of tests can be found in a lot of different places, like career aptitude tests. I also like the idea of cardinal, central and secondary traits. I won’t be able to take the Psychology of Personality class that UNI offers, as the spring is my last semester and it either wasn’t available or didn’t fit in with my classes, so I want to utilize this opportunity to learn a little more about personality psychology.
Personality psychology can be divided and studied in two different ways, according to Gordon Allport. Nomothetic references science that looks for general laws that can be applied to many different people, while idiographic tries to understand aspects of a person that is unique to them. There are a lot of definitions of personality, and many researchers and psychologists tend to pick and choose from the definitions as well as the areas that have studied personality. Some research that has been done on personality is empirically driven, while some is on theory development, and others still focus on personality testing, of which there are two major types. Personality testing that is projective assumes that personality is mostly unconscious and that individuals respond to stimuli that is ambiguous. The two tests that have been around for a long time and that are used most often are the Rorschach test and the Thematic Apperception Test. The Rorschach test involves showing a person a series of cards with ink blots on them, and how the person responds as to what they see show different aspects of their personality. The Thematic Apperception Test is when people are shown vague pictures of things and then told to tell a story based on these images, and responses are looked at for common themes, and responses are believed to be linked directly to unconscious motives. However, there is little evidence that is empirical that would support these methods. Self-report questionnaires are also used to test someone’s personality, but these assume that personality is accessible through consciousness. Some issues with self-report questionnaires are that people false-report because there is no true way to tell is a person is responding to the questions truthfully. These self-report tests are called objective tests, and appear to be more valid and reliable than projective tests. Theories on personality are pulled from a variety of other fields of psychology, and include evolutionary, biopsychological, humanistic, social cognitive, behaviorist, and psychoanalytic theories. There is also trait and type theories, of which don’t fall under another field of psychology. There are many specific theories within these fields that pertain to personality, and so I am going to examine just a couple of the most interesting ones to me. First, Freud’s tripartite theory of personality emphasizes the id, ego, and superego. This is interesting because based on which part of your psyche is in control shows what your personality or psyche is like. If the id is in control, you are experiencing the psychotic psyche. A healthy psyche is when the ego is in control, and a neurotic psyche is when the superego is in control. The id operates based on primitive instincts, the ego operates on reality, and the superego operates on values and morals. Eysenck developed his personality theory based on factor analysis and found that people’s behaviors could fall into two categories; neuroticism/stability, and introversion/extroversion, and later added a third trait to this theory called psychoticism which is a lack of empathy, cruel, aggressive and troublesome. Cattell didn’t agree with Eysenck and felt that they needed to look at a larger number of traits in order to get the best picture of a person’s personality. Cattell recorded three sources of data to develop his 16F Trait theory; Life record data (L-Data), a questionnaire (Q-Data), and objective tests (T-Data). Using fact analysis, Cattell identified 16 personality traits that are common to all people, and identified surface traits and source traits, Surface traits are obvious and can be identified easily by others, where source traits are less visible to others and underlie other aspects of behavior. Some of his 16 traits are Intellect, anxiety, open-mindedness, tension, sensitivity, liveliness, and aggressiveness.

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Personality_psychology.html
Basic background on personality psychology, different ways that personality is studied

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_psychology
Different theories of personality, personality tests

http://www.simplypsychology.org/personality-theories.html
Specific theories on personality: Freud’s tripartite, Eysenck, Cattell, basic background stuff

1a) Women in Psychology’s History: Eleanor Gibson
1b) This topic relates to chapter 15 because its entitled to linking psychology’s past and present. Women in psychology have had barrios in their way throughout history and this chapter covers ways they have conquered them. These barriers have made advancements in psychology faced by not only women but minorities too. Eleanor Gibson has made many contributions to psychology.
1c) I would love to learn more about Eleanor Gibson and her interests in the field psychology. Her boldness inspires me to read more. Learning more about why she became interested, her family background, and her contributions would be something that I would enjoy.
2) Women have made a huge impact on psychology and the route to get where we are today wasn’t easy. It shows by reading the difficulties and barriers that these women had to face and experience. Eleanor Gibson was interesting to read about as well in the category of women in psychology. In 1992, so not too long ago she was awarded the highest honor a president can offer to a scientist, such award was for a lifetime of research on topics ranging from the development of depth perception to the basic processes involved in reading. It was interesting reading about her life and how she became attracted in psychology. Gibson was raised in a middle class family, her father a businessman and her mother did not have a career. After high school she first became interested at Smith College where she learned to run rats in mazes and also studied psychology’s history and enjoyed her classes. I find it interesting that she married her professor at the time, James Gibson, today this would be considered unethical. She then went on and earned a doctorate at Yale. Her professor, Clark Hull, did not want to allow her in his laboratory and asked her to be dismissed from his class. Gibson refused to leave and the college managed to convince him of her abilities in which she completed her work. I find this very influential and it shows her boldness which I love. This shows one example of the barriers women faced in certain situations back then with the discrimination towards them. She became known for her experiment with the visual cliff which involved animals and crawling human infants. She was able to conclude that it, “showed their ability to perceive depth by avoiding the deep side of a virtual cliff.” For a great amount of time during her reading she did not have her own laboratory because it did not require one. She finally had her own lab and was set to do the research she had set up for on infants. I thank and look up to people such as, Eleanor Gibson, and the women and minorities in psychology’s history who have truly furthermore my knowledge on psychology and their boldness succeeding. All these efforts of these bold individuals have made such an impact and we need more of that in today’s society. Too often we are afraid to speak up and stand firm in or beliefs.
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_J._Gibson- brief and to the point overview of her life
http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/- more in depth outline of her background
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx- gave me a better understanding of the visual cliff

1a) The Lammily Doll

1b) The ‘Lammily Doll’ relates to the Clark Doll Study because I feel as though, as how the experiment shows, a lot people attribute their feelings about culture, society, and how they are treated to very small and miniscule things while there is a much bigger threat or incident present that nobody is really looking at.

1c) The ‘Lammily Doll’ is a recently manufactured doll in response to the Barbie Doll. People were unsatisfied with Barbie’s portrayal of the feminine figure and more over how she would exhibit traits of a ‘typical blonde.’ Thus, ‘Lammily’ was born. To its viewers, Lammily is a doll that exhibits a much more appropriate figure. Basically, Lammily is the ‘average’ or typical girl who younger girls can aspire to be without having to feel insecure about their body image. This is all good and fine however, but similar to how making a surplus of new black skinned dolls won’t solve anything, Lammily also will not solve anything. Both of these are simply concepts of a bigger picture. If more black dolls are made, racism will still be a thing. It won’t solve anything and more than likely the same results of the Clark Doll Study will occur. Similar to Lammily, people will eventually turn to Lammily and say that she too has an unobtainable figure, thus the fat shaming and skinny shaming insecurities of today’s youth will continue. What needs to be focused on, as expertly displayed by the doll study, is that these tools we use to mask the problem will never solve anything. What truly needs to be fixed is society itself.

1a) State what your topic is.
Doll Study
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
The Doll Study is talked about in chapter 15 in relation to minorities and their impact on the field of psychology.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
It is a study I have never heard about, and I wanted to read more about it.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark were psychologists during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Their Doll Study was used to see whether or not segregation was seriously affecting black children and their self-esteem. The study used four dolls dolls with varying skin tones. Besides skin color, all of the other traits were the same. Children were asked things like which doll they would like to play with, which one was nice, and which one looks better. What they found was that both white and black children prefered the lighter skinned doll. The said that the darker one was “bad”. When given the option, children would even color the dolls a lighter color to achieve the beauty standard.
Today, not much has changed. As one of the sites says, children are infact not colorblind and are still prone to racism even if they are not fully aware of it. I believe that the media has made an impact on children as much as it has adults. TV shows support negative views of anyone that is not white. Although there are Barbie dolls that have darker skin, there are not nearly as many in comparison to those with lighter skin. Little girls tend to want the blond hair, blue eyed, light skinned doll. Even when the child’s parents try to get them to want the black Barbie, the child argues saying they want the pretty one. I work at a toy store, and I see this issue pop up all the time.

http://feminspire.com/how-racism-affects-children-the-doll-test/
This site gives a modernized version of the study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_and_Mamie_Clark
I used Wikipedia to get information on Kenneth and Mamie Clark

http://www.naacpldf.org/brown-at-60-the-doll-test
This site explains the original study.

1a) State what your topic is.
The topic I chose for this week is Eleanor Gibson.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Within relation to chapter 15, she is mentioned as a pioneer of women in the world of psychology, as she was the first woman elected into the SEP, and noted for being the founder of the “visual cliff” in infants.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in Gibson because not only is she a woman in the field of psych but she did great amounts of work with infants, and also rose above the hardships of being a woman during her time.

Eleanor Jack was born on December 7, 1910 in Peoria, Illinois. She followed in her mothers footsteps and attended Smith college in 1927. While attending Smith, she found she had a love for experimental psychology. She also found a love for James Gibson, who was a professor at Smith and would become her husband in 1932. After studying for her masters degree at Smith with her husbands supervision, she had to attend Yale University because Smith did not have a program for her to earn her Ph.D. In attending Yale she had hopes to work under Robert Yerkes, but when she approached him to work he said he does not have women in his laboratory. After this Gibson did not stop working towards what she wanted though. She went on work with Clark Hull, doing her work on the generalization and differentiation of stimuli, and earned her Ph.D. from Yale under Hull.

After teaching a Smith again after graduation, Eleanor and James moved to Cornell University where James was offered a job and Eleanor would continue to work as a research assistant. Her greatest contribution came while working with Richard Walk at Cornell. They conducted experiments to test the reaction of rats raised in the dark when they were crawling over a visual drop off. They tested this theory on other animals as well and found that many could differentiate perceptions of depth. Most notably she tested this on babies, using their mothers as an influence to crawl across the glass. After her study was published Gibson gained the respect she needed and went on to become a professor at Cornell with her husband. She soon went on to further her research on the study of infants and their differentiation and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1992.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx
This site gave a very detailed over view of Gibson life and accomplishments, especially her career in her later years.

http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson/
This site was very informative in the small details of Gibson’s life, more so in her relationship with James.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_J._Gibson
This site was short but kept the important information up front and was straight to the point.

1) For my last topical blog I decided to go with the most interesting topic I could think of in this chapter and that is artificial intelligence. I decided to focus on this topic because it is something that we have seen so much of in the last decade especially, but also since the beginning of time. The chapter that I read, chapter 14, talked about trait psychology as well as cognitive psychology again, but the term artificial intelligence just caught my eye. They briefly mentioned and discussed the term in the book, but I wanted to go further in-depth on the subject because it is just so interesting.

2) For this blog, even though it’s a history class, I decided to look mainly into the future of artificial intelligence. The three aspects I am going to talk about in this post are the association for the advancement of artificial intelligence (AAAI), some major artificial intelligence inventions that have come out, as well as where we envision our society going with artificial intelligence. I decided that these three things are important to look into because it’s amazing to look at not only what we have already done in the artificial intelligence field, but what we are doing to expand it, and what we feel like we can do. I am excited to look into these issues because part of looking into the future deals with understanding the past.

3) When researching about artificial intelligence, I came across a website for the association for the advancement of artificial intelligence, or AAAI. On their website, the association describes themselves as a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines. On their website I could look into so many different things such as artificial intelligence in the news and major activities that the association is involved in, and even join their membership or sign up for their magazine. This website was interesting to look into because it wasn’t government funded or backed by some giant science company, but was started by professors, scientists, psychologists, and just anyone interested in encouraging the advancement and understanding of artificial intelligence. It was just really cool to search around their site and see all the things that they have implemented and sought out to do. While it just seems like a giant fan club, with their conferences and magazines, they are constantly looking at and supporting the use of artificial intelligence around them.
One cool invention we talked about in class was Yamaha building a motorcycle riding robot. I did a little more research on the robot because it seemed a little sketchy to me. I found out that they have named it Motobot. Not only does the robot ride a motorcycle, but they have also programmed it to speak as if it needed to taunt its racing opponents even more. They have it saying things like "I was created to surpass you," and "I am improving my skills every day."
Motobot definitely is still in the works has a lot it can improve on, but right now Yamaha is taking things slowly. Yamaha says that, eventually, the goal is for Motobot to be able to ride an unmodified motorcycle on a racetrack at more than 200 kilometers per hour. The overall idea for this creation is to take the lessons learned over the life of this project and apply them to Yamaha's current business, with specific regard to rider safety and rider support systems. The researchers also hope to use the technology behind Motobot to "pioneer new lines of business." While this is something that we will have to wait a long time to see implemented in our lives, it is really cool to look at how far technology is coming and see what artificial intelligence can do.
While there are many advances that we are able to see in today’s technology with regards to artificial intelligence. There are many hopes and dreams about what we want to happen with artificial intelligence in the future but we will probably never see. While searching about artificial intelligence, I came across a movie with the title. I watched the trailer for it, and found out it’s a story about a robot who looks like a human and is able to feel things, and especially can feel love. It was interesting to watch and see how many movies and fantasies are out there about how life will be like in the future with our artificial intelligence, but in all actuality, we aren’t able to ever get our technology to be that advanced. It’s fun to have those things in movies, but in all honesty, I don’t think we will ever be able to come close to some of the inventions and technological ideas that we see in some movies. I especially don’t think that we will ever see someone invent a robot that can feel love.

4) Links:
http://www.aaai.org/home.html
this link is the website for the Association of Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and was able to show me the efforts and cool things artificial intelligence is involved with today
http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2015/10/28/9626782/yamaha-motorcycle-robot-self-driving
this link helped me understand more about the motorcycle driving robot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqS83f-NUww
this link is the trailer for the movie artificial intelligence which shows what people think technology will be like in the future

Terms: artificial intelligence, trait psychology, cognitive psychology, technology, robot, invention, future, history

1). The topic that I choose to further research was on Eleanor Gibson, the book briefly mentions her. This second to last chapter is focusing on other researcher in psychology. This chapter focuses on how psychology grew after the world war 2. That cognitive psychology started to remerge, shifting the focus of most research from behaviorism to cognitive. I find most female psychologist very interesting, they were not very popular back then, due to how women were viewed. That she helped contribute to perceptual psychology and broke through this idea of women’s sphere. She is most known for now as a developmental psychologist. She also looked at other aspects of psychology.
2) The three main aspects that I would like to discuss is Gibson background, her famous experiment with the visual cliff, and if she had any other contributions. I find that looking at individuals up bring and there background on there education really helps give a full understanding on how this individual came to the conclusion that put them in this history book.
3) Eleanor Jack Gibson was born on December 7, 1910 in Peoria, Illinois. It was a middle class family, her father was a businessman who sold hardware. Her mother, did not have a job, but she had graduated from Smith College. To keep the family tradition going Eleanor began studies at Smith. At Smith she took a class from Kurt Koffa, a German professor. She did not find him very interesting. He was mostly focused on self promoting himself. Here at Smith she met her future husband, James Gibson. It was at graduation garden party at Smith College where she, served punch. After meeting him, the nest day she rushed back to campus to change her fall class schedule to include James’ advanced experimental psychology. After she received her MA, she went to Yale to study under Yerkes, but he refused stating that “ no women in the laboratory”. Which at that time was very common for women to be treated that way. After the world war, they moved and both of them worked at Cornell. Due to the principle saying married couples could not work together, she worked as a underpaid research associate, she was allowed to say solely on her ability to earn high paying grants. Soon after this she teamed up with Richard Walk , in 1960 the discovery of the Visual Cliff happened. Like most experiments, they used rats, it called for the use of dark-reared rats. They had constructed this visual cliff, it was a sheet of glass over patterned paper. On the ‘near’ side, the paper was directly beneath the glass, on the ‘far’ side the pattern was several feet below the glass. They had predicted that dark-reared rats would be more likely to walk on the near and far sides, since they had failed to develop depth perception in the dark. But instead, they found that the the dark-reared rats chose the near side, and consistently avoided the far side. After this discovery they wanted to expanded on this research. They began by testing a variety of different animals and experimenting with details the cliff. The last part of the experiment they used babies. They used a total of 36 babies. They would put the babies on the cliff to crawl. Then they would use the presence of the babies’ mothers to motivate them to move on to the cliff. Despite the encouragement of their mothers, 27 out of the 36 babies who left the center of the cliff. Only three crawled onto the glass of the deep side. After this experiment they published in Scientific American soon after that it had became one of psychology’s more famous experiments. She also began looking at the concepts of Nature vs. Nuture, she is now mostly known for being a developmental psychologist. Some of her publications include, “ Principles of perceptual learning and development” published in 1969. She also published “ Perceptual learning and development: An ecological approach to perceptual learning and development.” In 2000. She had a total of 5 publications. I find it kind of funny, that how most of the women in this history of psychology, are all told NO, that they are not allowed to do this or that. But no matter they go on and do something magical. Does Robert Yereks regret his decision not to allow Eleanor to work with him?

4 URL: This website gave some insight on her education and how she came bout the visual cliff. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx
This website gave more background information on her life, and what type of education she received.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_J._Gibson
This website gave me more background information on her early life, and through adulthood.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Eleanor-J-Gibson
This website gave more information about her publications.
http://www.feministvoices.com/eleanor-j-gibson

Terminology: Eleanor Gibson, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, visual cliff, perceptual psychology, women’s sphere, depths perception, Richard Walk, Clark Hull, Kurt Koffa, Robert Yerkes

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

My topic is Leta Hollingworth. She fits into chapter fifteen because she was mentioned in the subject of women in psychology. The book stated that she was unable to work and be married at the same time, a career set-back for many women. I was interested in learning more about her because the book did not say much and I wanted to learn more about women's growth in psychology.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

I would like to discuss the following three aspects:
1) Leta Hollingworth's biography/personal life
2) Leta Hollingworth's study of women's intelligence
3) Leta Hollingworth's study of profoundly gifted children

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Leta Stetter Hollingworth was born in 1886 in Nebraska. She was the eldest of three girls and was raised by her grandparents until the age of twelve. Then, she lived with her "wandering" father. Three years later, she began studying literature and writing at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Then, she married a man named Harry Hollingworth and was unable to get a teaching job because of her marriage. She attempted to solely care for her home, but she soon became bored. Later in her life Leta studied profoundly gifted children, which was probably an interest stemmed from her own struggles of being a gifted woman. Anyways, she returned to school and earned a master's degree in education. Then, she studied educational psychology under Thorndike, who was a supporter of the variability hypothesis.

The variability hypothesis was the suggestion that males had a wider range of intelligence than women. Based on this theory more males were on both ends of the spectrum of intelligence, but in a society that favors males, many easily focused on the statement that males were more intelligent than females. Hollingworth disagreed with this idea that males were innately more intelligent than females. She believed and tested her theory that societal roles had an effect on the intellectual differences between men and women. Hollingworth also did her dissertation under Thorndike. She tested the assumed correlation between "mental incapacity" and menstruation. She found no relationship, impressed Throndike and was offered a teaching position at Colombia Teachers College.

In her new teaching position, she began studying gifted children. She was originally studying children with mental disabilities by using intelligence tests. Using the same idea, she began testing students on the other end of the spectrum, students who scored exceptionally high on intelligence tests. She is most well-known for her work with gifted children. She coined the word, "gifted," wrote the first textbook on the subject, taught the first class for gifted children, and counselor of the gifted. The latter is what was most interesting, her focus on the emotional aspect of being a child, female, and/or person who is profoundly gifted. Problems she helped children address included interacting with other children, developing leadership qualities, and not defying authority. Many of Leta Hollingworth's ideas and practices are still used today to help gifted students in education.

4) Finally, 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://www.intelltheory.com/lhollingworth.shtml

This article was helpful in giving a brief summary of Leta Hollingworth's work.

http://www.feministvoices.com/leta-hollingworth/

This article was most helpful in providing a biography of Leta Hollingworth.

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/highly-and-profoundly-gifted/leta-hollingworth-birthmother-pg

This article provided the most information for my post and was very detailed in describing Leta Hollingworth's contribution to how we understand and accommodate PG children today.

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.

Leta Hollingworth
Profoundly gifted (PG)

1) For this assignment, I chose to do some more research on the social psychologist, Leon Festinger. This chapter talked about psychology researchers who had a major influence on the development of the field. Leon Festinger was a student under the famous social psychologist, Kurt Lewin, and made major contributions to the field of social psychology through his research. I’m interested in Festinger and his contributions because he developed the cognitive dissonance theory, and he has connections to the University of Iowa.
2) For this topic, there are three aspects that I would like to talk about. I would like to give a general summary of Festinger and how he became interested in the field of psychology, his major contributions and how they influenced social psychology, and the development of his cognitive dissonance theory.
3) Leon Festinger grew up in New York in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, and also attended undergraduate school at the City College of New York. While studying in New York, he was introduced to the ideas of Kurt Lewin and decided to apply to graduate school at the University of Iowa where Lewin was teaching. This is what initially prompted his interest in psychology, but he was not initially interested in social psychology. After receiving his Ph.D. Festinger worked for a few years a research associate at Iowa and also at the University of Rochester. After WWII, Festinger ended up at MIT where he made a turning point in his area of research. This is when he started gaining an interest in social psychology and social communication and pressures in groups. He also worked at the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota and eventually moved on to Stanford and then back to his home state of New York where he ended his career. During this time, he conducted research that eventually lead to his discoveries of cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. These two theories were by far his most significant contributions to psychology, and he received many distinguished awards for them. However, he was also known for his influence on research design, and for changing his emphasis of research to the visual system.
Cognitive dissonance is the production of discomfort from a certain situation, and our attempt to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. This may be achieved by altering one's attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. Festinger believed this occurs because we want to be consistent in our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Being inconsistent is what causes cognitive dissonance, or discomfort, which is attempted to be reduced. A lot of research has been done on this theory over the years and can be applied to many different situations. For example, dissonance can be applied to smoking. There are two thoughts that are inconsistent with smoking, “I am smoking” and “Research shows that smoking will me”. These thoughts create dissonance which the person doesn't like and attempts to reduce. This reduction can be achieved by different ways but here are some examples: the person stops smoking, the person questions the validity of the evidence, or the person might say that everyone dies sometime. These are things that a person who smokes but they know is bad for them might say in order to make them feel better about the action. This example is ironic in the fact that Festinger himself was a heavy smoker and made comments towards the end of his life that were thought to be perfect examples of attempting to reduce dissonance.
While Festinger was often criticized for his use of deception in many of his experiments, his is still highly regarded as a social psychologist. He produced many publications and is considered to be the fifth most cited psychologist. His contributions not only impacted the development of research and the field of social psychology during his time, but still have a lasting impact today.
4) Sources:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
I chose this site because it had excellent information on the cognitive dissonance theory and what it is. It gave good examples and did a great job of explaining how the theory worked in a way that was very easy to understand. There was also a short video provided that demonstrated the theory. I used this source to get a better understanding of cognitive dissonance and contributed greatly to this assignment.
http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/leon-festinger.html
This source gave a brief overview of Festinger’s life and his major contributions. This was an excellent source that I used to get a general idea of Festinger and what he accomplished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Festinger
This was an excellent source that had quite a bit of good information. The reliability of this source is sometimes questionable, but the information appeared to agree with what I found on the other two sources. This site gave be a better understanding of Festinger’s life and accomplishments.

Terminology: Leon Festinger, Kurt Lewin, social psychology, cognitive dissonance theory, social comparison theory, dissonance, visual system.

This week I chose to focus on the content presented in Chapter 14: Psychology’s Researchers. More specifically, I wanted to learn more about personality psychology and its different theories. This topic was briefly mentioned in the chapter but as it was not the main focus, the author could not go into much detail. The information I did receive about the individual or idiographic approach to personality was enough to spark my interest, however, and I decided to look into it further. What I found was the personality psychology is a huge field of study! Thus, there is no way that I could ever cover all of its ideas in such a short amount of time. What I chose to focus on was the trait approach to personality which in and of itself features many different theories. So I decided to look into the contributions of three men: Gordon Allport, Hans Eysenck, and Lewis Goldberg. Although all three of these individuals had their own unique ideas about personality, the use of the trait in each model is similar.

Gordon Allport was briefly mentioned in this week’s reading and made heavy use of personality traits in his work. First, however, we must discuss his theory surrounding human motivation. Allport believed that many actions were indeed based on biological needs (similar to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy) but that there were a great many other actions motivated by our sense of self which he call propriate functioning. Thus, many of the decisions we make in our lives, the things we decide to say or do, are an expression of our self, a characteristic unique to us. He defined seven different functions which the self takes throughout life including sense of body, self-identity, and self-esteem all of which develop before the age of about four. We learn about our physical bodies, recognize that we are unique individuals different from those around us, and learn that we have value in the world. Between the ages of four and six then, Allport ascertained that the self develops self-extension and self-image. We begin to define ourselves not only by our own personal attributes but by those things around us (friends, family, activites) and cultivate the image we are portraying to others. Finally we learn to rationally cope with life’s struggles and by the age of twelve we enter into propriate striving whereby we set goals and start to make decisions about our own future. Throughout this entire process, as the self is evolving, Allport recognizes that each individual is also developing personal characteristics or traits. Although people may share certain traits, it does not mean that these traits are exactly the same. Two people can be scared of heights or tend to isolate themselves from others for very different reasons. Thus, these traits are indeed personal even if they can be generalized to a larger population. Furthermore, Allport described varying differences in the importance of our traits to our personality. The central traits, he said, are the core of our being. They are consistent over time and readily describe oneself. Most people have between five and ten of these central traits. Other traits which are less important and do not so obviously define an individual are considered secondary traits. Occasionally, we may see one cardinal trait take over the life of an individual, something which seems to motivate their every action. These cardinal traits can very good such as service to others or selflessness or very bad such as greed. Therefore, in Allport’s theory we can see the initial application of traits to a human personality.

Hans Eysenck developed a theory of personality based on three central traits: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. He thought that it was these three traits which could encompass the entire personality of an individual. In terms of extraversion, one lies somewhere on the scale from very introverted to very extraverted. Those low in extraversion (introverts) tend to be more reserved, introspective, serious, reliable, and rather distant except to close friends. On the other hand, those on the opposite end of the spectrum love to be around people, are optimistic, and often act impulsively. The second super trait defined by Eysenck was neuroticism in which a person ranged from stable to unstable. The stable person is calm and less reactive and worried whereas a neurotic or unstable person is more anxious, moody, and emotional. Initially, these were the only two traits described by Eysenck which he had discovered through research on patients with mental disorders. However, Eysenck did eventually develop a third trait which is known as psychoticism. A person high on this scale tends to keep to themselves, is aggressive, and lacks empathy. Although this theory was based on sound research, it is interesting to contrast it with the next theory developed by Lewis Goldberg.

The final trait theory to be discussed here is that which was developed by Lewis Goldberg. He came up with five traits, “The Big 5,” by which he thought every individual personality could be defined. The first two of these five traits are going to sound very familiar; they are extraversion and neuroticism. Again, Goldberg noted that the introvert is more reserved and independent as compared to the more sociable extravert and those high in neuroticism tended to be less calm, not as well adjusted to life, and more prone to anxiety and depression than someone low on the neuroticism scale. The third trait, openness, describes one’s general imagination and way of thinking. Those high on the scale or more creative, curious, and enthusiastic while those on the lower end tend to be more conservative and cautious in their adventures. Agreeableness is the fourth trait and is highly related to our interactions with others and their ideas. An agreeable person is more trusting, helpful, and sympathetic; a less agreeable person shows pessimism, suspicion, and impatience towards others and their ideas. Finally, we come to the fifth trait of conscientiousness which is highly associated with one’s ability to achieve. People on the higher side are organized, ambitious, and determined whereas those on the low side are careless, undependable, and lazy. Of course, there are many more words which can be used to describe each end of the spectrum for each of these five traits, and we all lie somewhere along that spectrum. Thus, we may have some characteristics from both sides. None of these traits is necessarily considered good or bad, normal or abnormal, they simply give a better picture of the individual.

Overall, I was really intrigued by the research I was able to discover this week. I think that each person is unique in a variety of ways and personality is just one of the ways to see this individuality. I like the model proposed by Allport in that it recognizes the drive produced by the self and that not all traits carry the same weight. At the same time, Eysenck has some valuable contributions in looking at a couple of traits by which everyone seems to carry to some degree. It seems that Goldberg was able to elaborate on this theory further and include some more aspects of personality to get a broader, yet still concise picture of personality. Although none of these theories can be completely accurate in describing a person in their entirety, I think that the general personality traits of a person can go a long way in getting to know them.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/allport.html
This website gave great information on the theories produced by Allport.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/personality-theories.html
There was elaboration on the trait theory on this website as well as information regarding Allport and Eysenck’s theories

http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Dispositions_Big_5.htm
This website was crucial to my understanding of the Big 5 and further information on the traits detailed in Eysenck’s work.

Terminology: Personality psychology, ideographic approach, Gordon Allport, central trait, secondary trait, cardinal trait, propriate functioning, Hans Eysenck, extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism, Lewis Goldberg, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic this week is sports psychology. It fits into the chapter because they listed off different types of psychology. In the text they wanted to show that maybe we should think of it as psychologies because there are so many different types. I am interested in sports psychology because I like sports and I think it is interesting that there are psychological things that you can do to improve your performance. I want to learn more about how it is used and what some of the techniques that the athletes use to improve their performance.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
Three aspects that I will talk about are what is sports psychology, how is it used today, and what are some techniques that they use.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Sports psychology is the study of how psychological factors can influence performance and how sports affect psychological performance. Many athletes use sports psychology. It can be used to help them to come out of a slump that they are in. Most athletes that use sports psychology are highly skilled athletes. If you think of sports and you think of some of the upsets that occur in sports you can see why sports psychology would be important. If you know that you are the favorite to win the championship game then you could apply some techniques that they use in sports psychology to try and make it so that you don’t experience an upset. Even after an upset happens sports psychologists can help the athlete to forget it and to move on to the next game. For professional athletes this is very important because of how many games they have in a season. Most professional teams play games once or more per week. As a professional it is important that if you lose a game you don’t let it affect you for long. If you lose focus because of a loss then you wouldn’t be a very good professional athlete. Sports psychology isn’t just used for athletes. Sports psychology is also a good tool for coaches to have and even for some parents. Sports psychology is a growing field still today. According to the APA website it is considered a hot job in psychology. I think that with the increased interest that people show towards sports the field will only get bigger.
With sports psychology being more of a new psychology there are many hot debates on the topic. For example sports psychology doesn’t really have its own specific licensing agency. Some professionals are licensed through the AASP and others have gone through other licensing agencies. This doesn’t mean that the ones that are licensed through the AASP are better than the others it is just implying that there needs to be one specific licensing agency that does sports psychology. Other psychologies have specific agencies that they have to go thorough and they think it should be the same for a sports psychologist. Also with licensing they have different standards. Some require some qualifications and others have different qualifications. They should standardize the field and make it one specific group. Another conflict in the field is what should a sports psychologist be classified under. Sports psychologists have a wide range of knowledge ranging from kinesiology to psychology. Some think that they should be classified under the kinesiology umbrella. Others think that they should be included in the exercise science umbrella. And others think that it should be considered a psychology. I think that it is hard to become a professional organization with so many questions. Sports psychology needs to address some of these concerns and to organize themselves into a professional organization. Once that professional organization is formed these questions can be addressed and then we will see where the future of sports psychology is headed.
There are many techniques used in sports psychology. Not all techniques work for every athlete. It is important to know your athlete or your team and use the techniques that will work best for them. I will give examples of the most widely used techniques. Some of the most used techniques are arousal regulation, goal setting, imagery, performance routines, and self-talk. Arousal regulation is finding the zone that the athlete competes the best in. For example some athletes need to be totally aroused and energetic. They should use some energizing techniques before games to get into the optimal arousal level. Other athletes need to be in a calm and relaxed state when competing. They should use relaxation techniques like progressive muscle relaxation before competition. Goal setting is setting goals that you achieve in a certain amount of time. This helps athletes to have a specific plan for how to achieve their goals. It is important to have a mix of short and long term goals that way the athlete stays interested in their goals. It is also important to set realistic goals. If they are too hard or too easy the athlete will lose focus. Imagery is recreating or creating an experience in one’s mind. It is used to help athletes to get over loses or to help them to visualize a win. It is also a helpful technique to help an athlete who is struggling to get over an injury or one who is in a slump. Performance routines are a routine that an athlete does before every game. It is important for each athlete to come up with their own routine. It will help the athlete to relax and get into that performance state that they perform best in. Performance routines are also used a lot in basketball. You see players have different free through routines. This is supposed to help them to relax before shooting the free through. Self-talk is how and what they athlete says to their self while they are playing. If an athlete can eliminate the negative thoughts while playing and they can think positively it can improve their performance. These are just a few of the techniques that sports psychologists use. There are many more and some work better with some athletes than others.
4) Finally, 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_psychology this site helped with the definition of sports psychology and with the techniques used.
http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2012/11/sport-psychology.aspx this site helped with where sports psychology is today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG7v4y_xwzQ this site helped with different techniques and where sports psychology is today.
- Sports psychology, APA, AASP, kinesiology, exercise science, arousal regulation, goal setting, imagery, performance routines, self-talk

1) after looking at the last two chapters I have decided to do my blog this week on Leon Festinger. he fits into this week as he was talked about in chapter 14. I would like to cover the life of festinger along with some of his accomplishments throughout his career.
2/3)festinger was born on May 8, 1919 in New York City, New York. he graduated from the boys high school in new York and he later went on to earn his bachelors of science from the city college of New York in 1939, and in 1942 he completed his doctorate degree in psychology at Iowa State university where he studied with the prominent social psychologist Kurt Lewin. Festinger then went on to teach at a number of different academic institutions including the University of Rochester, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University and the New School for Social Research. during his stint of life in psychology festinger came up with several different theories. the first of which was his theory of cognitive dissonance which was actually the indirect result of an earthquake. Festinger learned that Indian earthquake victims were terrified that a much bigger earthquake was coming, despite evidence to the contrary. Festinger believed that people bought these rumors because they served to justify fear that was already present. From this belief he developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. cognative dissonance is the state of discomfort a person experiences when he or she holds two conflicting beliefs on a certain topic. cognitive dissonance comes from within a person and typically happens due to the persons values or belief system. this is especially true when someone does a behavior that they know may harm themselves or others around them such as maybe smoking or cheating on a significant other. he went on to publish a research book called A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance which is considered to be his most lasting contribution to the field of psychology. he also came up with social comparison theory in his time in the field of psychology. he said that social comparison ins when someone evaluates their own ideas, beliefs, and values by comparing them to the ideas of others. to go along with that he further elaborated that people tend to seek companionship based on similar values. he noted that people seem to be very uncomfortable with differences between them and loved ones so they try to bridge the gap by either changing their beliefs of changing the other persons beliefs. In the book When Prophecy Fails, Festinger and colleagues shared their experiences of observing a small cult who believed the end of the world was going to happen on a set schedule. The book examines the reaction that occurs when people's beliefs are disproved by evidence. Festinger observed that when doomsday prophecies turn out to be incorrect that group members do not change their beliefs. Instead, people may point to their beliefs as the reason a prophecy failed. For example one group that believed the end of the world was coming argued that their prophecies about the end of the world had actually prevented the world from ending.

4)http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/leon-festinger.htm
on this site I found information about his life.

http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/leon-festinger.html
on this site I found more information on the life of festinger and some information about his contributions to psychology

http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/244/Leon-Festinger.html
on this site I found information on festinger and his carrer along with cognitive dissonance and social comparison theories.

The topic that I have chose to talk about for this essay is the growth and diversity of psychology. This topic comes from chapter 15, and is a big part of the chapter. The reason this topic fits into the chapter, is because chapter 15 talks about psychology in the 21st century. This whole book so far has talked about what events have led us to where we are today with psychology, and this topic specifically talks about the gains we have made in accepting the competence of women and minority practitioners of psychology. I am interested in this topic because I am a firm believer in equal rights. I believe everyone is created equal, and there shouldn't be any sort of discrimination placed on people that are a different race or sex. So, to me, this topic is interesting, because it allows me to see the gains we have made towards getting rid of discrimination here in the united states.
In this essay, I am going to focus on three aspects of the growth and diversity of psychology. The first aspect that I am going to talk about is how the field of psychology has grown since it became a science. Then I will talk about what kind of gains women have made in the field of psychology to be accepted as competent in their practices. Lastly I will talk about what kinds of gains minorities have made to show their competence, and be accepted in the field of psychology.
Psychology has made tremendous gains in the number of people that practice it since it became a science 120 years ago. Initially the APA had only 31 members to it. By the turn of the 20th century, that number had jumped up to 125 members, and by the end of World War I, it was at about 375 members. Numbers continued to rise with each passing year. By the end of World War II the APA had about 5,000 members, and it was still rising at that point. In 1990 membership to the APA had hit the 70,000 mark, and now in the 21st century, membership has passed 100,000. People joining the APA is not the only thing that has expanded though. People in this field are no longer just called psychologists, but rather have some sort of subcategory associated with their name as well. These are things like developmental psych, clinical psych, forensic psych, child psych, etc. Psychology keeps branching off into many different subcategories, and is expanding further every year. In addition to this, and maybe most importantly, the type of people that practice in this field is expanding also. It use to be that the only type of people that were competent in psychology were white males, and anybody else wasn't taken seriously. Now with the passing years, psychologists are more likely than ever to be female, and not white.
For over 100 years, women have been struggling at getting accepted as being competent in the field of psychology. Women like Christine Ladd-Franklin, or Mary Calkins were either unable to get academic positions, or they had to teach at all women's colleges. Things got even worse in the 1920s when men even began teaching at the women's colleges, and left many women out of jobs. Another way that women were discriminated, is that they weren't involved in clubs like the Society of experimental Psychologists. The club still exists today, and even though women are making significant advancements, there is still only a fraction of women in the club, compared to the amount of men. There are about 200 people in the society, and only 30 of them are women. With that being said, drastic changes have been made since psychology became a science. Today, women undergraduate majors outnumber men by about 2:1. Also, about three quarters of the graduate students in psychology are women, and majority of doctorates in psychology are awarded to women as well. Women have made tremendous gains in this field, and are expected to continue to thrive.
The last way that psychology has made big gains in diversity is by the acceptance of minorities in the field. In 1991, only 25 years ago, only 14 percent of all bachelor degrees, 11 percent of master degrees, and 9 percent of doctoral degrees went to minorities. Of these about half went to African Americans, a quarter to Hispanics, and the remainder went to Asian American and Native American students. People tended to question whether minorities were smart enough to be good at practicing psychology, and also just didn't want them treating and diagnosing patients that could really use their help. Tremendous gains have been made in this area though. Committees have been set up by the APA to get rid of any racial biases, and to promote that we are all created equal, and any person is just as capable as the next to be competent in the field of psychology.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2010/april-10/changes-in-psychological-science-perspectives-from-textbook-authors.html

This website talked about some of the main changes that have happened to psychology since it became a science.

https://books.google.com/books?id=A3qiCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244&dq=Discrimination+towards+women+practicing+psychology&source=bl&ots=9Kx_qjPsKl&sig=MsiLspMapbgovvvaGiSyEfthQtY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj386TL6s_JAhXBnoMKHecaBVkQ6AEIQDAF#v=onepage&q=Discrimination%20towards%20women%20practicing%20psychology&f=false

This cite talked about some of the women in psychology that faced discrimination, so I was able to include that in the essay as well as some of the ways they got better accepted.

http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/associations.aspx

This site provided me with some of the minorities that have been discriminated against in the past, and some of the things they are doing to get better accepted in this field.

Terms: discrimination, minorities, Growth and diversity of psychology, Mary Calkins, Christine Ladd-Franklin

1. I decided to do farther research about Kenneth and Mamie Clark and the Doll Experiment. I wasn’t really shocked about the results mainly because I had heard about the study before. I did not however, know that it was used in the Brown vs. Board of Education case to show the falsehood in the "separate but equal" doctrine. I want to see if there is interesting that I can take away about the original study that I don’t already know. Who Clark and Kenneth were and what drove them to do the study and also how has the study affected present day? Are there any studies like the Doll Experiment that have been conducted presently and if so what the results were?
2. Clark and Mamie Kenneth both received their bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University. Kenneth and Mamie's were inspired to conduct the Doll Study by Mamie’s thesis "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children." They study was to show the effects of segregation on young African American children. Kenneth Clark was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Columbia and serve as President of the American Psychological Association. In 1946, the Clarks opened the Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem. He was the first African American to be fully tenured at the City College of New York. Clark also did research on the children of Harlem, this research that he had done showed that racism did not only have an effect on the children’s self-image but it had a large effect on education equality. He is one of the most influential psychologist in the 19th century. He fought for equality for all along with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and James Baldwin.
In the Clark and Mamie’s Doll Experiment, they took 16 African American students ranging from ages of six to nine. They were asked to choose between a black and a white doll. The dolls were exactly the same, except for their skin color. In the following order, the children were asked to answer statements like, “show me the doll that you like best or that you’d like to play with. Show me the doll that is the ‘nice’ doll. Show me the doll that looks ‘bad’. Give me the doll that looks like a white child. Give me the doll that looks like a colored child. Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child. Give me the doll that looks like you.” They found that eleven of the children said the black doll looked bad and ten students said the white doll looked nice. Ten of the students also preferred the white doll to the black doll.
They found that the majority of young black children said the white doll was the "good" one and when asked to color a picture of themselves, they made their skin noticeably lighter than their actual skin tone. Forty-four percent of the children said the white doll was the one that looked like them.
The results do not seem to differ from Kiri’s new experiment. Kiri Davis decided to make her own video and conduct her own doll experiment. Her results were that fifteen of the children preferred the white doll over the black doll. This problem has existed for a long time. Even looking at the black celebrities today, there hair is straight and skin is lighter. This issue is so bad that some people actually go to the extreme of bleaching their skin white in order to be more accepted into society. This is really sad because more than 50 years after this study was originally conducted the results are still the same, it’s almost as I nothing has change in the progression of race. Kids still see black as bad and white as good. But it is important to note that some kids are starting to have a better understanding of what is most impotant.
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqvJp2gXJI0
This was the video that Kiri made about her experiment. I picked it because it answered my question about what the result to the study are in today’s society.
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/New_doll_test_produces_ugly_results_2919.shtml
I also used this article because it talks about the Kiri Davis and original Doll studies. And it was interesting and very informational.
http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/kenneth_mamie_clark.html
This site was great to use because it provided biographical information on Kenneth and Mamie Clark.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/13/doll.study/
I also picked this CNN story because it show all the different thoughts and ideas that kids are having today about race issue.

Terms: Kenneth, Mamie Clark, Doll Experiment, Brown vs. Board of Education, "separate but equal", Harvard University, American Psychological Association, Child Development, Harlem, African American, City College, New York, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, Kiri Davis

I decided to do this week’s blog on personality psychology. I’ve always wondered why personality traits vary so much between individuals, so I wanted to do some research on it and see what some of the different theories were. I thought that I would do additional research on the two personality psychologists from the book, Gordon Allport and Henry Murray, as well as one who wasn’t mentioned in the book, Raymond Cattell.
Gordon Allport was born in Indiana in 1897. His father was a good doctor, and Allport and his siblings often assisted their father with his medical practice. His mother was a teacher, and she taught her children that education and a good work ethic are very important. In high school, Allport was a good writer and served as editor on his high school newspaper. After high school, he earned a full scholarship to Harvard, where his brother was attending. His brother earned a degree in psychology while Allport pursued economics and philosophy. He eventually changed to psychology and earned his doctorate. After graduating, he went to Europe and even met Sigmund Freud. He began teaching personality psychology at Harvard. He was also chosen as the president of the American Psychological Association in 1939. He also published many books. His theories had a strong emphasis on conscious motivations and thoughts. He was very interested in the development of personality. His major theory was called trait theory, which said that everyone has hundreds of traits that exist on one of three levels. These were cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits. A cardinal trait is a dominant trait and it forms a person’s identity, emotions, and behaviors. A central trait is a core trait, but not as dominant as a cardinal trait. They form a person’s personality and actions. Secondary traits are personal traits that are not often revealed. Allport also had theories about motives and drives as well as internal and external traits that motivate behavior.
Henry Murray was born in New York in 1893. He was depressed in childhood due to a poor relationship with his mother. He went to Harvard and majored in history, but he changed that and eventually got his medical degree as well as a degree in biology. He also ended up getting a degree in biochemistry. He met Carl Jung in 1925. This experience convinced Murray to study psychology. He eventually became director of the Harvard psychological clinic. During this time he developed the Thematic Apperception Test, which is what he is known for. This is a test that evaluates a person’s patterns of thought, attitudes and emotional responses to ambiguous stimuli. In this test, the person is shown a picture of people doing things. They are supposed to tell the examiner a story about the picture that includes the event shown in the picture, what happened before the event, and what the people in the picture are thinking or feeling. The examiner then takes this story and examines it to see what the person’s personality traits are. Murry also had a theory of needs. He believed that every human action is influenced by needs, which are mostly unconscious. He said that there are two types of needs: primary and secondary. Primary needs are biological, such as food and water. Secondary needs are psychological needs, such as achievement and dominance. He thought that all human behaviors were done to fulfil these needs.
Raymond Cattell was born in England and had an interest in science from early life. He was the first person in his family to go to college and he got his degree in chemistry. After experiencing World War I, Cattell found an interest in using science to solve human problems. That was when he decided to get his psychology degree. He taught psychology at many universities and also worked at one with Edward Thorndike. Cattell came up with a method of multivariate analysis which allowed researchers to view individuals as a whole and study aspects of human behavior that couldn’t be done in a lab. He also came up with factor analysis, which allowed him to identify 16 different components of personality. This is what he is most known for. Factor analysis is taking a large group of variables within a smaller number of factors that reflect what the variables have in common with each other. This is what he did with personality traits. He took a very large list of all of the personality traits, grouped the similar ones together, and then ended up with only 16 that were actually different.
http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/gordon-allport.html
This website had information about Gordon Allport.
http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Thematic-Apperception-Test.html
This website had information on the Thematic Apperceptions Test.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_Murray
This website had information about Henry Murray.
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesal/p/raymond-cattell.htm
This website had information about Raymond Cattell.
Personality psychology, Gordon Allport, Harvard, Sigmund Freud, American Psychological Association, motivation, personality development, trait theory, cardinal traits, central traits, secondary traits, motive, drive, Henry Murray, Carl Jung, Thematic Apperception Test, theory of needs, Raymond Cattell, Edward Thorndike, multivariate analysis, factor analysis

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
I have chosen to learn more about linguistic universals because I find them fascinating and we covered it in this chapter.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
What it is, how the theory was developed, and how Chomsky was a part of it.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

During the first half of the 20th century, linguists who theorized about the human ability to speak did so from the behaviourist perspective that prevailed at that time. They therefore held that language learning, like any other kind of learning, could be explained by a succession of trials, errors, and rewards for success. In other words, children learned their mother tongue by simple imitation, listening to and repeating what adults said. This view became radically questioned, however, by the American linguist Noam Chomsky. For Chomsky, acquiring language cannot be reduced to simply developing an inventory of responses to stimuli, because every sentence that anyone produces can be a totally new combination of words. When we speak, we combine a finite number of elements—the words of our language—to create an infinite number of larger structures—sentences. In Chomsky’s view, the reason that children so easily master the complex operations of language is that they have innate knowledge of certain principles that guide them in developing the grammar of their language. In other words, Chomsky’s theory is that language learning is facilitated by a predisposition that our brains have for certain structures of language. For Chomsky’s theory to hold true, all of the languages in the world must share certain structural properties. And indeed, Chomsky and other generative linguists like him have shown that the 5000 to 6000 languages in the world, despite their very different grammars, do share a set of syntactic rules and principles. These linguists believe that this “universal grammar” is innate and is embedded somewhere in the neuronal circuitry of the human brain. And that would be why children can select, from all the sentences that come to their minds, only those that conform to a “deep structure” encoded in the brain’s circuits.

Linguistic universals is a pattern that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. For example, all languages have nouns and verbs, or If a language is spoken, it has consonants and vowels.
Linguists distinguish between two kinds of universals: absolute (opposite: statistical, often called tendencies) and implicational (opposite non-implicational). Absolute universals apply to every known language and are quite few in number; an example is All languages have pronouns. An implicational universal applies to languages with a particular feature that is always accompanied by another feature, such as If a language has trial grammatical number, it also has dual grammatical number, while non-implicational universals just state the existence (or non-existence) of one particular feature.

4) Finally, 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal I used this for a general definition.
http://psychologydictionary.org/language-universal/ I used this for a more in depth explanation of the subject.
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_rouge06.html I used this for the information on Chomsky and what his theory was.

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is a quick overview of the 56 divisions in psychology, and what they are.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
The three aspects I will talk about in this blog are to start off the list of the 56 divisions, next a highlight on ones that caught my eye, and finally what I think after going over all these divisions.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

1. Society for General Psychology
2. Society for the Teaching of Psychology
3. Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science
5. Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
6. Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology
7. Developmental Psychology
8. Society for Personality and Social Psychology
9. Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI)
10. Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (why can’t this be called Art Psychology?)
12. Society of Clinical Psychology
13. Society of Consulting Psychology
14. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
15. Educational Psychology (is this not the same as teaching psychology?)
16. School Psychology (Educational Psychology?)
17. Society of Counseling Psychology
18. Psychologists in Public Service
19. Society for Military Psychology
20. Adult Development and Aging
21. Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology
22. Rehabilitation Psychology
23. Society for Consumer Psychology
24. Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology
25. Behavior Analysis
26. Society for the History of Psychology
27. Society for Community Research and Action: Division of Community Psychology
28. Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse
29. Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy
30. Society of Psychological Hypnosis
31. State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Association Affairs
32. Society for Humanistic Psychology
33. Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities/Autism Spectrum Disorders
34. Society for Environmental, Population and Conservation Psychology
35. Society for the Psychology of Women
36. Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality
37. Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice
38. Society for Health Psychology
39. Psychoanalysis
40. Society for Clinical Neuropsychology
41. American Psychology-Law Society
42. Psychologists in Independent Practice (seriously?)
43. Society for Couple and Family Psychology
44. Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues
45. Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race
46. Society for Media Psychology and Technology
47. Society for Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology
48. Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology Division
49. Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy
50. Society of Addiction Psychology
51. Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity
52. International Psychology
53. Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology
54. Society of Pediatric Psychology
55. American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy
56. Trauma Psychology
After you get to the end of this list, you may be thinking “but that was 54, not 56, what happened to 4 and 11?” the truth, no clue… not really worth my time figuring out, my guess they are no longer practiced and have been dissolved… or there is a conspiracy theory.
Anyway, so there were six different psychologies that interested me that I’d never heard of, so in order ill briefly describe those
#5 “Quantitative and Qualitative Methods- is concerned with promoting high standards in both research and practical application of program evaluation, measurement, statistics, assessment and qualitative methods”. When I first read the title of this I thought it was a math thing and was wondering what exactly it had to do with psychology, but after more research, this is the kind of psychology that is advancing our field. They have the empirical backing to all their research, and therefore are reliable.
#9 “Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) - welcomes psychologists and allied social scientists who share a common concern with research on psychological aspects of important social issues and social subjects to bring theory and practice into focus on human problems of the group, the community, and the nation, and the increasingly important problems that have no national boundaries”. Basically they provide research into Social Issues and have some influence on public policy, they encourage public education and social activism, and even though they are associated with the APA, their mission extends globally.
#31 “State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Association Affairs main goal is to provide you and your psychological associations with useful resources, services and benefits as well as being your voice for psychological association issues within APA”. Basically this division is what I would call “psychology corporate” they make sure all research is ethical and tries to hold high psychology standards in the USA and surrounding areas.
#44 “Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues focuses on the diversity of human sexual orientations by supporting research, promoting relevant education, and affecting professional and public policy.” It has “task forces on accreditation, bisexuality, professional standards, public policy, youth, families, ethnic/racial issues and science”. This division actually interests me in the issues it takes on and champions. “SPSLGBTI respects the diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming people and recognizes that multiple dimensions of diversity including but not limited to, ability, age, citizenship, class, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, race and religion, affect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming individuals and issues”. I honestly would take a class on this if there was one offered.
And finally #48 “Peace Psychology Division works to promote peace in the world at large and within nations, communities and families. It encourages psychological and multidisciplinary research, education and training on issues concerning peace, nonviolent conflict resolution, reconciliation and the causes, consequences and prevention of violence and destructive conflict”. It is somewhat nice to know that this society is out there trying for basically world peace. This is another psychology class I wish I had access to when I was filling my class load, but sadly most college’s choose to focus on what goes wrong, instead of what could happen if something went right. Though being a part of this group would be kind of taxing, knowing humans as well as we do, knowing that we will always wage war for resources and monetary gain.
Lastly there is a lot of overlap with some of these divisions of psychology. They could be consolidated in my opinion. With all the 54 (still wondering what happened to #4 and #11) divisions of psychology there are still some interesting gaps, like Deaf Culture Psychology, Blind Psychology, and others along those lines. I honestly think this list needs a major revision and overhaul.

4) Finally, 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://www.apa.org/about/division/
This source was invaluable with its links to all the divisions and their websites. This blog would have been so much harder without it. So this was the most important link I

http://www.spssi.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&pageId=1963
This was useful for a more thorough overview of SPSSI, because at first I had no idea what they did.

http://www.apadivisions.org/division-44/index.aspx?_ga=1.11605751.2115325865.1449715823
I think this link I will keep around, as I found this group interesting and woulkd like to research them further.

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
Society for General Psychology, Society for the Teaching of Psychology, Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, Quantitative and Qualitative Methods, Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, Society of Clinical Psychology, Society of Consulting Psychology, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Educational Psychology, School Psychology, Society of Counseling Psychology, Psychologists in Public Service, Society for Military Psychology, Adult Development and Aging, Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology, Rehabilitation Psychology, Society for Consumer Psychology, Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Behavior Analysis, Society for the History of Psychology, Society for Community Research and Action: Division of Community Psychology, Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse, Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, Society of Psychological Hypnosis, State, Provincial and Territorial Psychological Association Affairs, Society for Humanistic Psychology, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities/Autism Spectrum Disorders, Society for Environmental, Population and Conservation Psychology, Society for the Psychology of Women, Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice, Society for Health Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Society for Clinical Neuropsychology, American Psychology-Law Society, Psychologists in Independent Practice, Society for Couple and Family Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity and Race, Society for Media Psychology and Technology, Society for Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology, Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence: Peace Psychology Division, Society of Group Psychology and Group Psychotherapy, Society of Addiction Psychology, Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity, International Psychology Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Society of Pediatric Psychology, American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy, Trauma Psychology

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

I am interested in Stanley Milgram and his experiments on obedience. In chapter 14, there is a segment about his experiments and how they fit into cognitive psychology. I am interested in him and his experiments because his findings are scary and can be applied to a lot of current issues, some of those connected to war, some of them are not but I find it fascinating that Milgram found out that we really are like sheep when it comes to obedience.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

I will talk about Milgram’s theories/experiments, the possible ethical problems with the experiments, and what Milgram hid about his experiments and how they are possibly skewed and over exaggerated.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Stanley Milgram was born in 1933 and was raised in New York. He got his Bachelors degree from Queens College in 1954, and received his PhD from Harvard. In 1962 he became a professor at Yale and went on to do his most famous research there. He published Obedience to Authority in 1975 which was very popular and won awards. Milgram was interested in the effects of authority because he was Jewish and wondered if the Nazis excuse of “I was just following orders,” was true or if they still had a choice regardless of being told to do cruel things to people. In order to do the experiments he had two people sit in different rooms. One was the teacher, who would say a list of words to the other person (the student) and see if they could repeat the list back to them. If the student got a word wrong, the teacher would have to shock them starting on the lowest switch and increasing the intensity of the shock every time going all the way up to a shock that was labeled with three x’s. The person would be observed and when they would want to quit, the observer would say things along the lines of, “No, its crucial to the experiment that we keep going.” A surprising amount of people went all the way to the end but despite them going to the end, the student never actually was hurt because they were an actor and the sounds of the person shouting and saying the words back was actually a recording and the “teachers” were told at the end of the experiment that they didn’t hurt anyone. The findings show us a lot about how people act under the pressure of authority.

Milgram’s experiments bring up some questions about if it was ethical or not. To todays standards, we would not be allowed to do this experiment because participants are not allowed to be deceived and they have to be aware of the consequences of the study. Since the participants were convinced that they were hurting someone, there could have been some long term consequences like emotional distress. Further research into Milgram’s documents show that some of the participants were not debriefed until months after the study was done. To be fair, Milgram did do some follow up’s to see if his experiments to see if there were long term effects and there were not, but this leads us to wonder what else could be wrong with the results if he lied about debriefing.

An author named Gina Perry went back through Milgram’s documents of the experiment to try to write a paper through the participants eyes. What she found was that there were a lot of issues with Milgram’s data. Some of the things that were wrong were that some of the things the supervisors said to the teachers were off the record, some of the participants were aware that the electric shock box was a hoax, and some of the participants were not debriefed until months after the experiment was concluded. Many psychologists will argue that despite the holes and changes in the experiment, the level of obedience still holds up.

Today, we would hope that the level of obedience has changed. Some people have been able to replicate the study but kept up with todays ethical standards and have still gotten the same level of obedience. We can see how influential this study was in the history of psychology. I think I have had a unit about this study in just about every psychology class I have had. Milgram’s experiments say a lot about our cognitive processes and it also contributed to social psychology. So why are we so obedient? Is it because we have been taught to be this way by learning in a school system that parallels the way a prison is run? Is it because we have been conditioned to expect an award if we obey? This experiments findings can be applied to some of our current events like corrupt government, corrupt corporations, ISIS, and wars. But the real question is, did we need to know how authority affected us if we are not doing anything to help how obedient we are? Why haven’t we done anything to help the level of obedience or are we raised to be obedient?

4) Finally, 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://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/milgram.htm

I used this website to learn about Milgram’s education, his theories, and what his experiments were. This contributed a big amount throughout my post.

https://explorable.com/milgram-experiment-ethics

I used this website to get a comparison of todays ethical standards and how Milgram’s experiments could be wrong and how they wouldn’t be able to be done in the same way in our day and age. I used this site second to most.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/

I used this site to find the issues with Milgram’s experiments. I used this site to also find some of the ethical problems with his experiments. I used this site the least but it was still helpful and interesting.

Terms: Stanley Milgram, Obedience Experiments, Obedience to Authority, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology.

1) My topic is Gordon Allport and his theory of traits. This fits into the chapter we covered this week because it is a section that is in chapter 14. I am interested in this topic because traits are things that make each person unique compared to everyone else. Even though some people may be very similar they have certain traits that make them unique. I have always been interested in genetics and traits so looking at it from a psychological perspective rather than a genetic standpoint seems very interesting.
2) Three aspects in which I am going to discuss are what the trait theory is and the three categories of traits that Allport discusses, what genotypes and phenotypes are and how they play a part in the theory, and the strengths and criticisms of the theory.
3) Gordon Allport began this study in which he went through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries and selected about 18,000 personality describing words. He was then able to break that down into 4,500 personality describing adjectives. He then organized these words into a hierarchy of three levels; cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits. Cardinal traits are traits that dominate a person’s character and tend to define a person. An example would be Scrooge’s greed or the pope’s kindness. Even though these are the most powerful traits that a person has, a person’s personality is not dominated by a single trait. There are multiple traits that create a person’s personality, it just so happens that the cardinal traits stand out the most and is the first thing that people notice. Central traits are general characteristics. These would be ones such as friendliness, grouchiness, or laziness. These are the middle traits, they do not stand out right away but they are noticeable by the general public if someone encounters someone with these traits. These are the traits that are considered to be the basic building blocks that shape our behavior. The third and final traits are secondary traits. These are traits do not come out as often as the other two categories of traits. These seldom occur and thus seem uncharacteristic of a person’s behavior or personality. Most people do not recognize these behaviors and these traits are usually only known or recognized by people who are close with the individual such as family or friends. These traits however are not the only factor in determining how behavior occurs. Allport believed that internal and external forces played a part in how people exhibit behavior. These factors are called genotypes and phenotypes. Genotypes are internal factors that affect behavior. These relate to how a person retains information and how they use it to interact with the external world. So if two people experience the same stimulus they may retain that information different and thus view the world differently because of how they retained that information even though it was the exact same stimulus. Phenotypes are the external forces that play a factor in behavior. These relate to how people accept their surroundings and how others influence their behavior. Depending on the person, they may accept their surroundings negatively or positively and behave accordingly. When other influences their behavior, an example would be peer pressure. At one point you did not plan on behaving in a certain way but others begin to pressure and influence you and the result becomes you behaving in a certain way. Like all theories, this one comes with strengths and weaknesses. One of its strengths is that it is simple and easily applicable. Often we come across theories that are complicated and take time and precision to apple to situations but this theory is very strait forward and easy to understand. Another strength of this theory is that it is objective. This theory relies on hard data that personality theory does not have. Much psychoanalysis relies on personal interpretation which opens the door for bias and speculation. Even though it has its strengths, it also has its weaknesses. One of them is that it is not able to answer for why traits develop. This theory is more of a descriptive theory to classify a person’s traits and personality but it is unable to get to the root of how personality develops. Another weakness is it has a difficult time in describing change in personality. Since this theory does not explain how traits develop it is unable to explain how a bad trait can be improved.
4) http://traittheory.com/
this site helped explain the strengths and weaknesses of the trait theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Allport#Allport.27s_trait_theory
This site helped explain what genotypes and phenotypes are
https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/personality-16/trait-perspectives-on-personality-79/allport-s-cattell-s-and-eysenck-s-trait-theories-of-personality-310-12845/
This site helped explain the hierarchy of traits and what they are
5) Terms: Trait theory, genotypes, phenotypes, behavior, Gordon Allport, cardinal traits, central traits, secondary traits

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
This week I would like to talk about Eleanor Gibson and her virtual cliff apparatus. Gibson fits into the chapter because she was yet another who believed that research could be applied. I was interested in Gibson’s research because like most other research in the textbook it started with research done on rats. I found not just that they carried their research over to humans interesting but also the subject itself they were studying. Eleanor Gibson was interested in perception. This research came about from an external source, the interest started from the military and parachute jumpers which also ties into our chapter about how external sources can influence what is happening and takes place in psychology.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
For this assignment I would like to talk about who Eleanor Gibson was. I would then like to talk about what the experiment was in their research. Finally I would like to dive into what the “Virtual Cliff” was and the implications it has for today.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Eleanor Gibson was interested from the start in experimental psychology, in fact her first degree focused on that area. She would later go to Yale and earn a master's degree in the field. Though she was able to accomplish both, being a woman at the time was not easy. The field of psychology was still seen as more of place for men rather than women, but this was never something that Gibson let stand in her way. Though she had many times where people told her she was not welcome because she was a women she turned her sights on the end purpose and worked at Cornell without pay for a large amount of time.
While studying at Cornell University she paired with Richard Walk to begin research on perception. Walk and Gibson used rats, chicks, and other varieties of animals to conduct their research on. From their research they were able to discover that some if not most infant organisms were able to tell perception from a very young age. After doing any experiments with animals they were eventually done with infants as well.
The actual experiment was done on 36 different children each had their mothers with them to provide incentive for the child to crawl to something. The experiment was done on a glass surface, half of the surface with a checkered pattern underneath the other completely clear glass. There were a variety of results across the different species and infants that were tested, but in the end it was concluded that species learn from the time they can move to be afraid of heights.
There were many things that interested Gibson and Walker and they learned many things from doing their experimen. Many wonder how human children go from being uncoordinated and being accident prone to learning and their accidents slowly decrease and they gain coordination. They found through these experiments that children aren’t born with the knowledge of perception, but they do learn as they learn to move. They found that as infants (even infant goats) learn to walk/ move and crawl, they also learn that there are consequences when falling off or from places. They fall thus learning that if they do so pain will occur and they try and avoid the same thing from happening again.
4) Finally, 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://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/07-08/gibson.aspx
I used the American Psychological Association's page for information on how Eleanor Gibson got started in her career. I was also able to use this source for background information on what struggles Gibson faced because of her gender during that time period (This was one of my questions earlier in the week on my Monday Assignment).

http://study.com/academy/lesson/visual-cliff-experiment-lesson-quiz.html
I was able to use this source to see what the actual form of the experiment that Walker and Gibson did on infants.

https://stcmpsy.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gibson-and-walk-original-text.pdf
This article helped me see what the driving forces were behind some of the research and some of what was discovered after the research was completed. The article also held what the implications were for the future and how parents understand how their children learn.