Topics in the News?
What I would like you to do is to start applying what we are learning in class to real world matters. Some might ask, "What good is learning psychology if we can't apply it to real world matters?" So that is what we are going to do with this topical blog assignment.
What I would like you to do is to either go to NPR (http://www.npr.org/ ), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ ) or any news site listed at the bottom of this page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ listed in their news sources) and read, watch, or listen to something that is interesting to you and relates to what we have been learning in the class.
Please respond the blog by BRIEFLY telling us in essay format:
What your topic is and what the piece you chose was. Why you picked it (what made it interesting for you) and what did you expect to see. What did you find most interesting about the piece
Next discuss IN DETAIL how it relates to the class using terms, terminology, and concepts that we have learned so far in class. Include definitions.
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
For this “Topics in the News” I found an article called “Dental hearing aid gets approved in Europe” from the BBC. It caught my attention because of the term “dental hearing aid”. After reading the title I expected a hearing aid that was implanted somehow onto the teeth of the patient and somehow transmits sound to the ear. According to the article the device “SoundBite” is placed on the upper molar of the patient and uses an approach called bone conduction. Most conventional hearing aids work by air conduction where the hearing aid amplifies or increases the volume of the sound traveling by air. However, air conduction causes problems by amplifying all sounds in the air not just those they want to attend to.
This article relates to Ch. 9 Hearing: Physiology and Psychoacoustics. The SoundBite will instead work using a network of microphones placed behind the impaired ear to cancel out the noise and send the sound vibrations through the teeth and bones to the cochlea. The COCHLEA is a structure in the inner ear where sound pressure is translated into neural signals for sound perception. This device would bypass the OUTER EAR (external sound-gathering portion) and MIDDLE EAR (conveys & amplifies vibrations) to allow for more direct sound perception in the INNER EAR (translation to neural signals). I found the concept of bone conduction extremely interesting and did not know that they have previously surgically implanted devices that use bone conduction for hearing. The SoundBite will be the first non-surgical device to use the concept.
TERMS: air conduction, bone conduction, cochlea, outer ear, middle ear, inner ear
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12759295
I found pretty interesting article about hearing loss that is according to the topics that we talk in class now. In England, one in five people have hearing problems.
The article is about deafness which is difficulty in hearing noise. There are different levels of it( mild 25 to 40 decibel loss find lip-reading useful. while people with severe hearing problems 70-95 decibles struggle ti follow speech). People who cant hear they usually try to understand the other person in noisy situaion from lip reading.
Usually people start having serious problems with hearing after age of 4o and higher. In U.K. about 9 mln people suffer from some sort of hearing problems. More women than men are more likely to become deaf.
We talked about hte physiology of ear and function. The pressure waves that form sound hit the ear drum in the ear canal and then they are transmitted to chamber (middle ear) to the sensory inner in inner ear. The cochlea is responsible to convert the ibration of sound into electric signal that the brain can read and recognize the sound.
There are many causes of hearing loss. One of them coluld be damage of any part of the hearing system.
Fifty per cent of hearing problem is due to exciessive exposure to noise. Loud music, MP3, Ipod etc are a big problem in today's world.
Terms: middle ear, sensory inner, chamber, cochlea, ear canal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/deafness1.shtml
The article I chose is about a condition called tinnitus. Tinnitus is the perception of sound when there isn’t any actual external sound. The cause of this condition is not known, but it affects people throughout the world. This article is about two men who have the condition, Andrew Goodwin and Conrad Jarvis. Both started experiencing sounds (that weren’t there) later in their lives. Goodwin started hearing a piercing noise around the age of 31. Depending on his stress level, the noise would change. Goodwin said that when he’s stressed, it sounds like wind is rushing through the trees. He also said that after a long day, it sounds like whispering voices. Jarvis’ condition started by him hearing a crackling noise only in his left ear. It eventually led to a high-pitched sound. The cause for Jarvis’ tinnitus may have been caused by his constant exposure to loud music because he’s a DJ. The ear is very sensitive and a lot of exposure to situations with large decibels can cause damage by killing hair cells. Wikipedia explains that studies have shown that as hair cells are lost, different neurons are activated, which may activate auditory parts of the brain and give a perception of sound. Tinnitus can also cause deafness, which happened to Goodwin. Both Goodwin and Jarvis have to wear hearing aids. Another possible treatment is relaxation techniques because, like Goodwin, higher levels of stress increase the levels of tinnitus.
Terms: sound, pitch, decibel, hair cells, neurons, perception
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12698862
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus
Tinnitus interested me so much that I did some more reading on the topic and came up with some legit information.
Tinnitus is identified more frequently in white individuals, and the prevalence of tinnitus in the U.S. is almost twice as frequent in the South as in the Northeast.
Tinnitus can arise in any of the four sections of the hearing system: the outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear, and the brain. Some tinnitus or "head noise" is normal. A number of techniques and treatments may be of help, depending on the cause.
•Some of the most common include a sound of crickets or roaring, buzzing, hissing, whistling, and high-pitched ringing.
•Other types of tinnitus include a clicking or pulsatile tinnitus (the noise accompanies your heartbeat).
•The most common type of tinnitus is known as subjective tinnitus, meaning that you hear a sound but it cannot be heard by others.
•A much more uncommon sort is called objective tinnitus, meaning your doctor may sometimes actually hear a sound when he or she is carefully listening for it.
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/tinnitus/article_em.htm
Then I figured I could do some research on our generation and the loud music we tend to listen to.
http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/rock_music.html
I was looking around on these websites and finally found something about sound that interested me. In this article, they were talking about the different sounds in the environment and what they mean. Obviously, study of sound has been around for quite some time. But this article stated that they are trying to figure out how sounds can be used to measure ecosystem health. They called it "soundscape ecology." They pointed out that insects like ants and other bugs take up the high frequencies, which are the number of times per second that a pattern of pressure change repeats, and the elephants and larger animals take up the lower frequencies. Therefore, this sound when broken down represents the environment's health as a whole, because it represents the health of the creatures and plants within the environment. Sound is more important than we think in our everyday lives.
The article also stated that we may not be able to hear many of the sounds that actually occur in the environment. For example, ants make a high pitch squeaking sound that we would only be able to hear if we were down in the mound with them. This is how they communicate and warn each other of danger.
The environment is made up of all different kinds of sound waves. There are different amplitudes, intensities, frequencies, and pitches as well. Amplitude is the increase or decrease of a sound pressure wave or of a head movement whereas intensity is the amount of sound energy falling on a unit area (such as a square centimeter). I described frequency above, but the pitch is the psychological aspect of sound related to the fundamental frequency. Ants would have a high pitch and high frequency sound, whereas elephants would have a low pitch and frequency. A hertz (Hz) is a unit of measure for frequency. One hertz is equal to one cycle per second. A decibel, however, is a unit of measure for the physical intensity of sound. They define the difference between two sounds as the ratio between two sounds pressures. Humans can hear frequencies that range from about 20 to 20,000 Hz across a wide range of intensities.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/26/134425597/scientists-tune-in-to-the-voices-of-the-landscape
Terms: amplitude, intensity, frequency, hertz, pitch, decibel
The topic I chose to do my topical blog on is about premature deliveries which interested me because I was a premature baby.
A simple test can help reliably determine whether signs of an imminent premature delivery are likely to result in a false alarm, research suggests. Less than half of women showing these signs actually go on to give birth soon after, and they often have to undergo what turn out to be unnecessary tests. UK researchers found a test that looks for a protein called fetal fibronectin (fFN) could solve the problem. fFN is the protein that helps attach the foetal sac, in which the foetus develops, to the uterus. Previous research has shown that when fFN is found to be leaking at a certain stage of pregnancy, a premature birth is more likely. A test to detect fFN levels is relatively cheap and easy to perform - but it is not commonly used in all maternity units. It is done at the same time as a vaginal examination, which is routinely carried out when a woman is admitted with abdominal pain in pregnancy. If the results show low levels of fFN, then the chance of a woman having a premature delivery imminently is low.
When it comes to drug intervention, the researchers conducted an audit to determine whether use of the test made any significant difference. Initially they analyzed 22 cases of women admitted to hospital showing signs of being about to go into premature labor. Of these, 17 did not give birth during their hospital stay, which averaged just more than eight days. Most received steroid drugs to improve their baby's lung function, or tocolytic drugs to halt labor contractions. The situation changed significantly after staff began to use the fFN test. It proved to be 98.6% accurate in identifying women who, despite showing signs of premature delivery, did not go into labor for at least another two weeks. As a result just seven women out of 78 who showed signs of being about to go into labor, but who registered low levels of fFN, required hospital treatment - for pain management. Lead researcher Dr Anna David said: "Threatened pre-term labor often causes much anxiety for pregnant women.”Doctors are working hard to uncover the causes of pre-term birth and to develop preventive treatments. "In the meantime, the fetal fibronectin test has been found to be very accurate at predicting those women who will not imminently deliver. “Women with a negative test can be reassured that they do not need inpatient care. "They can therefore avoid leaving their families for observation in a hospital, though a few may need admission for pain relief.”More importantly, unnecessary drug interventions can be prevented, which could translate into significant cost savings to the NHS." Dr. David said the study also suggested that use of the fFN test could reduce unnecessary transfer of pregnant women to hard-pressed specialist neonatal units. Ms. Maggie Blott, an obstetrician at King's College Hospital, in London, agreed that widespread use of the test could ensure that women were not given drugs or moved to specialist centres unnecessarily. She said: "A lot of women present with possible pre-term labor, but only time will tell for certain whether they will actually give birth early."This test is easy to use and can give results quickly."
In relation to the book this somewhat relates to childrens ability to hear and see because when born early babies cannot see and their hearing is probably not very good because their bodies in general are not fully developed. premature babies need touch and warmth and the voice of their mother to help them nurture and grow to become healthy. Even though we have no covered touch yet in the book, this is the best chapter that relates to premature births. Touch is used to refer to the sensations caused by mechanical displacements of the skin.
Key Terms: Touch, hearing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8399087.stm
For week 11 topic I found an article over learning words. The article is about scientists who think they have discovered a gene that is linked to language and the development of speech. This will help explain the development of dyslexia and other speech disorders amoung children. This could also prove that these disorders are due to genetics and not because of education. This gene is linked to the brains ability to store speech sounds for a slow window of time. The article states, "The gene directs chemicals in brain cells that help infants store and translate speech sounds they hear into meaningful language." If there is an abnormality with this gene it would make it a lot more challenging for a child trying to translate speech sounds into meaningful words. I thought this was very interesting because its an other aspect of genetics that we did not know before. The thing I found most interesting in this article is that it could help us with speech disorders and make learning languages for children easier.
This article relates to the vocal tract which is the airway above the larynx used for the production of speech. This helps with ariculation( the act or manner of producing a speech sound using the vocal tract) or words and phrases. When you are trying to teach an infant to talk, you always articulate every word so they learn the proper pronunciation. If parents knew if their child had an abnormal language gene from the beginning they could adapt and would be better able to teach their children.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-12403925
vocal tract, articulation
After reading the chapter I now often think differently about things I hear. The article I read talks about studying the sounds of animals. The purpose of this is to try to understand how sounds can be used to tell about the ecosystem. The scientist calls the sounds of the animals “voices”. How does listening to forest elephants tie into the chapter? Obviously, a science like this would be almost completely relying on the human system of hearing. One of the points that the scientist points out is that a soundscape can be something that humans simply do not hear. He says it can be a “fairly small scale”. I believe what he is talking about here is Obviously louder sounds such as elephants are caused by greater vibrations. On the other hand, the sounds that we often miss such as ants are caused by very little vibration. The amplitude and intensity is very great when talking about elephant noises while when talking about ant noises the amplitude and intensity is very little. A science like this would very obviously involve complex tones. Timbre is another part of the chapter that plays a huge rule in this type of science. Listeners have to be able to tell the difference between two sounds. The scientist even talk about high and low pitch sounds. I thought it was very interesting when they were talking about how noise affects animals. I believe this is something we too often ignore. The scientist goes on to tell how land management people do not take into consideration sound that animals will hear. This gets interesting when he points out that sounds from the outside world in National Parks can affect the eco system. Overall, I thought this article was a lot more interesting than it would have been had I not read this chapter. It really got me thinking about all the different sounds. My outer, middle, and inner ear were all at work while I listened to the article being read. It is pretty cool how listening instead of reading changed the way I was taking in the article. When I first read it, it was not nearly as interesting as when I listened to it because they had all the animal sounds in the background. When listening to the video my hair cells were a lot more active compared to when I read the article. Going back to whether or not humans hear very low sounds is directly related to the threshold tuning curve. I would be willing to bet that scientist who are working on this project have some type of background in psychoacoustics.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/26/134425597/scientists-tune-in-to-the-voices-of-the-landscape
In our most recent chapter we were talking about music, so i found an article dealing with music. Rebecca Black is a up and coming artist who came out with a song called "Friday". This song has been universally panned as one of the worse songs in history. One has to ask themselves what causes a song to be bad? Is it the notes, the chords, the instruments? I think in this case it doesnt have anything to do with any of those. It is considered bad because of our perceptions, we see this song as a cookie cutter pop song and that idea causes people to label is as a bad song. Even though this song has been labeled bad by media critics, but that hasnt stopped it from racking up over 69 million views. So the question is how bad can something really be if over 69 million people have watched it?
http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/stopthepresses/392183/rebecca-blacks-not-to-blame-meet-the-man-who-wrote-friday/
For this assignment, I decided to read an article that is over a rare genetic hearing disorder called Usher Syndrome. I chose to read this article because I had never heard of this disorder before and I wanted to learn more about it. According to the article, Usher syndrome affects hearing, balance, and eyesight. There are different types of Usher Syndrome, all of which are a different severity level. Type 1 Usher Syndrome is the most severe and most common. Someone with type 1 Usher syndrome will be born deaf, and will need to learn sign language to communicate. They will also have problems with balance and will develop (sitting standing etc) at a slower pace than their peers. They will also begin having severe visual problems by the age of 10 and will most likely, eventually become blind. Type 2 Usher syndrome is a little less severe. This individual will experience hardly any problems with balance. They will be born with a slight hearing deficiency, but will be able to wear hearing aids. Also visual impairment will not be an issue until adulthood. Type 3 is the most uncommon of all Usher syndrome. It affects everyone at different speeds and at different times in their life. However by their 40's those with type 3 will be completely blind and deaf.
One thing that I found interesting while reading this article is that this is a genetic condition which is inherited in a autosomal recessive fashion. This means that both of the child's parents must have one gene for this syndrome and the child must inherit the gene from both parents in order to get the condition.
This article relates to what we are covering in class because it discusses hearing and hearing loss. The article also mentions that there have been several genes that could be related to the Usher syndrome. "These normally help the retina in the eye and the cochlea in the inner ear to work properly. In children with the condition, one or more of these genes is faulty." As we have learned in class, the retina is responsible for what we see and then transferring that information to the brain to be interpreted. The cochlea, as we just learned in previous chapters, is located in the structure of the inner ear and houses the organ of corti.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/ushers1.shtml
The article I found deals with the new product SpeechEasy, which looks like a hearing aid except it alters the sounds coming into it by changing the pitch and producing a slight time delay. Together this produces a “choral effect” which occurs when an individual’s stutter is eliminated or reduced when they sing or speak the same time as others. The article found that according to the National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders, stuttering happens developmentally when children are learning speech skills. Neurogenic stuttering occurs because of a brain injury and psychogenic stuttering occurs with emotional trauma.
I chose to discuss this article because it surprised me to learn that stuttering can be reduced or eliminated through the help of a hearing aid looking device. I always thought the only way to combat stuttering was through speech therapy, however having this device be an option is a great idea for those who suffer from stuttering. When I first saw the title, how a new device is helping people who stutter be heard, I initially thought the device was a microphone that allowed the individuals stuttering speech become clearer. After reading the article, I understood why the device was a hearing device. The hearing device made a great deal of sense because in the chapter we learned that infants learn speech by being sensitive to the arrangement of the sounds they were hearing. Therefore by changing the way individuals hear SpeechEasy is working to combat stuttering.
Terms: pitch,choral effect, stuttering
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/health/medical_breakthroughs/how-a-new-device-is-helping-people-who-stutter-be-heard
In the article I read, “Colorless Food? We Branch”. It talks about the worries that people have about using artificial color on our heath. There have been many reports pointing to chemicals as amplifying the effects of ADHD within children and further many argue that there is really no point to artificial coloring. However the article argues that there is no prove of these negative health effects, and that the impact of bans on food coloring would be more negative than positive.
It would make our world a lot less colorful/interesting without artificial food coloring, the article challenges the appeal of Jello or pudding, even pickles without coloring. It cites a report which found that people described not tasting the same favors without color. They find the food blander and not as “fun” to eat. They did not taste as strongly the cheese in cheetos without coloring for example. I think that is interesting. How our sight impacts our sensation of taste. A doctor for the Institute of Food Technologists states that color is needed for enjoyment of food. “Color creates a psychological expectation for a certain flavor that is often impossible to dislodge”.
This to me is like Gestalt psychology. To create the whole sensation of taste, people are arguing that sight is necessity or major component, where others do not see why we would add color at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/weekinreview/03harris.html?_r=1
My topic is on tactile receptors. I chose a piece on adaptations and behaviors that focuses on tactile sense or tactile receptors.
These animals called yapoks and the star-nosed moles are two creatures that can be related to how touch is important in their everyday life. I thought it would be interesting to focus on animals and not human beings.
Tactile receptors are called mechanoreceptors. Mechanoreceptors are sensory receptors that are responsive to mechanical stimulation such as pressure, vibration, and movement. Tactile sense includes the obvious sense of contact with another object, but also incorporates a bird's ability to sense air flow over its wings and a fish's sensitivity to water movements. Some creatures, such as the yapok and the star-nosed mole, have a highly sensitive sense of touch through specialized organs that they use in situations where eyes are of no use.
These things are not pretty but I had never heard of them before. You can Google image either of the creatures and see what type of tactile or touch receptors they have.
The most interesting was the Star-nosed moles. The Star-nosed moles have a nose with 22 fingers on it? Thanks to its remarkably dexterous nostrils, the star-nosed mole is able to sense the world around it just using its sense of touch… both on the ground and under water.
TERMS: tactile receptors, mechanoreceptors
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/adaptations/Haptic_perception
For this chapter I wanted to study how we learn words. I can across a very interesing article titled "Should You Redshirt Your Child?". Of course being the sports fan that I am this article caught my attention right away. The article starts off with defining redshirt. Redshirt means keeping an athlete out of play for a year with the intent of building up his/her skills. This made me wonder, what does this have to do with learning words? The article is actually talking about redshirting kids from kindergardne. Interesting huh? The article talks about kids who barely make the "cut off" birthday date to start school that year. The lady writing the article argues that maybe if your child is close to that date you should consider starting him or her in school a year later. This will all tie into speech because we learn a lot of speech in kindergarden. The woman writing this article talks about how the 6 year old will have an advantage over all the 5 year olds because he will be able to speak better. This is where the chapter on music and speech comes into play. THe child who is a year older will be able to speak better because he or she has a year more of hearing sounds which make up works. The author of this article talks about communication skills thaty should be in place before starting a child in school. One of the attributes she says is neccisary is being able to effectivly communicate with other kids. We agian learned in this chapter that this comes for hearing it.
This article was a very intersting one to me. It really made me think about the importance of speech and how much of a role it plays in our everyday life. I believe a lot of people can learn a great deal of simple knowledge from reading this article. It is a very convincing one. If your child can have an adavntage in any way I believe it is important to capatalize on that. Speech is something that should be taken very seriously. I see absolutly no problem with giving childen extra time to properly working on speech outside of the classroom setting. Learing words does not take place in a classroom. Learing words takes place in whatever setting a child is in when he hears people talking. Speech takes place in the cerebal cortex.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-duke-estroff/redshirting-kindergarten_b_854961.html
Location of the origin of a sound is an important ability of humans in our everyday interactions with the landscape. We are able to detect tiny temporal differences between the stimulation of the two ears. If a sound originates on the right our right ear will hear it first then our left. Our brain measures this difference in time, it is known as the interaural time difference. Depending on the length of time between stimulation of the ears our brain is able to determine the angle and side of the origin of the sound. If there is no interaural time difference the sound is originating from directly in front of or behind the head. The interaural level difference is the difference in intensity of the sound stimulating each ear. The head absorbs much of the sound's intensity so the ear oposite the origin will receive much lower intensity sound stimulation. Although high frequency waves are absorbed more thoroughly and low frequency waves have a tendency to bend around the head, the book describes them much like ocean waves bending around a rock. These two auditory cues are the culmination of the efforts of the brain to measure minute differences in sound sensations in both ears to attempt to locate the source of a sound. This process involves both halves of the brain, ITDs seem to be detected by a part of the audio pathway beginning in the medial superior olives and ILDs correlate with the lateral superior olives. Studies of both owls and chickens have revealed another area very important in detecting ITDs. This area is called the nucleus laminaris. Researchers found that neurons in this area were specifically coded to match temporal information from the ears and detect ITDs. Each neuron seemed to be coded for a specific range of ITDs in microseconds. That is one millionth of a second. It is likely that the human structures in the lateral and medial superior olives are similar if not the same. ITDs are an important cue our brain uses for sound localization. However this system is limited. There is an area called the cone of confusion that extends at approximately 45 degrees from each ear. Sounds in this cone can be detected within the cone but it is very hard to tell where the sound comes from within the cone.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2213141
http://depts.washington.edu/rubelab/personnel/Shepherd.pdf