Based on your topic from week #13 and #14, and based on your research sources, I would like you to synthesize your findings and write an informative stand-alone post about your topic.
By stand-alone I mean something your family can read and understand without having to go back to your sources to get additional information or information needed to clarify what you are talking about. Keep in mind that you are completing a college course and you know a great deal about the topic so you need to take ownership of the material and write with an authority (or command) of the topic.
List one question you still have about this topic. "One question I still have about this topic is...."
Make sure to use the terms and concepts we have covered in class so far as well as those you learned from your research.
At the bottom of your post provide links or reference for the three sources.
List the terms and concepts you used in this post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
I think one of the most amazing things about the visual system is the way it is able to uses attention processes to narrow down the vast amount of stimuli it is being bombarded with. Selective attention is a tool that often is used in order to restrict processing to a smaller set of stimuli. It is clear that any mechanism with a capability to ignore distracting, irrelevant elements and focus on the target would be favored by natural selection. Imagine being unable to find food do to an inefficient visual search such as a serial self-terminating search in which you had to search from item to item in order to find sustenance. One might hypothesize that in that amount of time one of two things might happen: either you would be eaten by a predator in the wild or a competitor in the same ecological niche would beat you to that source of nutrition. Obliviously this is a farfetched scenario for humans today in a world with numerous grocery stores but attention is still very vital to the way we function and studying errors that occur in attention provides insight into the process.
Our visual system is tuned in such a way that we show preference for certain stimuli that the brain receives. Studies using fMRI technology have found what I find to be very interesting cases of preferential attention. The fusiform face area is an area called the fusiform gyrus in the human brain and it has been found to show a unique preference for faces. Researchers have found that this particular area in the brain becomes particularly active when facial stimuli are presented. The prestigious journal Nature published a neurological study on this phenomena in 2004 by a group of researchers from Stanford University. The study found activation in this area of the brain when detection/recognition and was not activated in within-group categorization of other novel stimuli (http://www.tsolab.org/nrjclub/040602/kanwisher04.pdf). However, the brain is a complex structure and some evidence suggests that the fusiform face area in the extra-striate cortex is not the only part of the brain involved in recognition of facial stimuli. This is supported by research conducted by psychologists from Penn State University who found definite prosopagnosia symptoms despite apparent normal activation of the fusiform face area (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0D-4GYH9V6-1&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1727883174&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c1a470d3eb05210217fca1e0e3cee2d7&searchtype=a). This is important because prosopagnosia is associated with an inability to recognize faces. Research of this nature seems to suggests that although the fusiform face area is involved with attending to faces it is not the whole story on how we perceive facial stimuli. Prosopagnosia is a prime example of how fragile the way we perceive and attend to the natural world can be. Knowing the importance of attending to facial information one with a functional ability to recognize faces can only imagine how debilitating this disorder might be. An extreme and peculiar example of this is Dr. P who was a famous patient of neurologist Oliver Sacks. Dr. P lacked an ability to recognize faces and even mistakenly mistook his own wife for a hat (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat- Oliver Sacks pg. 8-22).
Disorders of the visual attention system not only add to our overall understanding of the visual system but make us grateful that these occurrences are fairly rare. Another interesting example of a visual problem that affects the way we see the world is called visual-field defect. This occurs when part of the visual field has abnormal vision or loss of it entirely. If for example the primary visual cortex is injured on the left side then the contralateral eye will be blind. Visual-field defect can result in two very interesting symptoms called neglect and extinction. Neglect is an inability to attend to information in the part of the visual field that is opposite of the area of damage. Extinction is the inability to perceive something on one side or the other of the area in which they are focusing. (S and P book). Perhaps even more interesting is a disorder called simultagnosia. Simultagnosia is an inability to perceive multiple objects simultaneously and happens in result of Balint syndrome. Individuals with Balint syndrome seemingly only attend to one object at a time. Research at Princeton University which compared normal subjects to a Balint Syndrome patient found a noticeable difference in the way they attended to stimuli. The researchers found binding failures occurred in the Balint syndrome patient when multiple items were present which makes sense because of their physical problem with attending to multiple items. However, when there was only one object and attention was not required the patient with Balint syndrome showed no difficulty(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692340/pdf/9770223.pdf). This provides evidence for the importance of attention in complex situations where binding of multiple stimuli together is required and also suggests that there are situations where the stimuli the visual system receives can be processed in parallel.
Although attention is helpful to the way we perceive the world, even normal attention is not perfect either and can have is own pitfalls which can result in some interesting illusions. Examples of these are change blindness which is when an individual does not notice the change between two different visual scenes because the overall meaning doesn’t change significantly. We looked at an interesting example of this in class where the researchers of a psychology experiment in the middle of giving the participants the informed consent without the participants even noticing (S and P book). Sometimes the way we selectively attend to what we think are important stimuli actually prevents us from noticing that five-hundred pound gorilla walking across the room. The only questions remaining are if selective attention occurs in other animals, if it is indeed subject to evolutionary selective pressure, and finally how many gorillas have I missed in my life while attending to something else?
Terms: visual system, seraial self terminating search, stimuli, fusiform face area, attention, selective attention, prosopagnosia, Balint Syndrome, simultagnosia, Change blindness,
Over the past two weeks I have researched my topic of “selective attention” which is basically what we like to pay attention to. What our brain and visual system is intrigued by. For example a blue ball or a cat walking down the street and so forth. Little things that catch are attention among hundred of other things that can be going on all around us at the same given time, but we choose to pay attention to one certain thing and that is what we perceive and remember at the time if we were asked to recall what was going on around us. My blog from week 14 is missing somehow, but from what I can recall from it and week 13s blog on this topic is that there are several types of attention besides just selective attention. Selective exposure shows that people are only open to messages they want to receive. Selective attention shows that people hear only what they want to hear. Selective comprehension or perception shows that people will perceive things the way they want to see them. Selective distortion shows how people change messages to match their self-concept or twist them to match their perception of reality. Selective retention shows that people remember only what they want to remember. Everything else is filtered or blocked out. We are all capable of doing this. The fact is we see things not the way they are, but the way we are. However, the answer for seeing reality; that is, seeing the truth as it really is, is by our being ruthlessly honest with ourselves.
Furthermore, there are several example of selective attention which can be found on youtube and all over the internet such as the gorilla video which you can access at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo. There are also disorders such as ADHD which can affect one’s selective attention. “The issue of why people pay attention, how much they do and to what is often more referred to as selective attention. In any busy scene, be it a classroom or a freeway, it’s virtually impossible to note everything at once. What a person pays attention to in these circumstances is what they select to pay attention to, though it may be noted that selection is not necessarily conscious. Selected attention can then be viewed as the process by which people find something upon which to concentrate, and the level of concentration they can continue to exert as distractions arise. Degree of selective attention may vary depending on people, and some people have low attentional levels, particularly if they have certain learning disorders. Conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can make it challenging for students to stay appropriately focused and any distractions may make a student lose focus. It’s hard for the ADHD child to remain in touch with a single thing, though at times they can also exhibit hyper focus. In a slightly different fashion, those with forms of autism can have focus difficulties too, though principally the difficulty has to do with selection. Autism is sometimes described as receiving “all channels” on the radio station, where the person is possibly paying attention to nearly everything. Trying to filter out most of the channels to pay attention to one thing is often the challenge of those with disorders on the autism spectrum; in other words, they can’t tune in to a single channel and are flooded with too many choices. There are many other potential conditions that may inhibit selective attention. Poor sleep makes people easier to distract, and shift workers in particular can have this problem. Any form of brain injury can also reduce attention level, too.”
One question I still have about this topic is why are visual system is wired differently in everyone, and what makes each person look at a certain object, sound, etc…
Key Terms: Selective attention, selective distortion, attention, visual system
What I found the most interesting over the last few weeks was music perception. Music has always been a part of my life and will always be in the world in many ways. A person can interpret many different sounds through an orchestra including sounds from a flute, drums, violin, and other instruments. There are different tones produced which are sounds in reference to pitch, frequency, etc. These are all different aspects of music that can be put together to make harmony, which is the different parallel melodic sounds that creat a distinct hum in our ears. Octaves are another part of music which are the same notes in higher or lower parts of the scale.
Speech can have a melody as well. We listened to an audio in class of a person speaking a sentence and repeating that sentence over and over again. After a few moments, that sentence seemed to have a certain rhythm and quaility of music. The pattern of repetition creates a rhythm in many things in life. A heart has a beat that can be determined as rhythm as well as walking, running, and many other things in every day life.
Different people can react to these rhythms, harmonies, and meldoies in a certain way as well. Physically, people may react by clapping, stomping their feet, humming aloud, bobbing their heads, and many other things. Emotionally, however, perceptions may differ as well. Some songs may bring about different memories for people which can also draw out laughter, crying, smiles, anger, hurt, or other feelings and emotions. Music may stimulate the mind and thought of some people as well, or even lull them to sleep. These things can vary culturally as well.
Lastly, music can also play a part in communication in different cultures and in different people. It can change people's moods and emotions as well as change physical aspects such as blood pressure or heartrate according to their different perceptions. If someone perceives a type of music relating to a previous bad memory, they may become angry which would cause a rise in heart rate. Perceptions can change due to age, gender, and other things. Perceptions can differ if a person has a mental illness as well. They may have more negative memories and may not be able to perceive things as happily or in the same way that people without these illness may.
http://www.philomel.com/pdf/frontiers.pdf
http://www.psychologicalscience.com/perception/2011/04/topical-blog-week-13-due-friday.html#comments
http://www.musicstudies.org/first%20issue/FULL/Associative_Structure_EROL%2886-96%29.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC400748/
One question I still have about music perception after my research is how differently children may percieve music in comparison to adults. Do they not pay much attention to different aspects of music? And since they probably don't have as many memories associated with music, does that affect perceptions of music as well? This would be an interesting topic to research even further.
Music has a crazy effect on my sleep. I have one CD that will put me to sleep and without it I will toss and turn for hours sometimes. I would say I am very dependent on it. You talk a lot about how it effects so many aspects of who and what we are and how we react. Awesome topical!
The one topic that I was the most interested in this semester would have to be music perception. This topic is one that is near to me as I really enjoy making music. First we need to look at some key terms that are associated with music. The first term is pitch, which is the psychological aspect of sound related mainly to frequency. Another important term when talking about music is octaves. Octaves are the interval between two sound frequencies having a ratio of 2:1. In music this allows musicians to have multiples of the same notes, such as low C, Middle C, and High C. Another important musical concept is chords. Chords are a combination of three or more musical notes with different pitches played simultaneously. Melody is another important concept when talking about music. Melody is the arrangement of notes or chords in succession. The final important term is tempo ort the perceived speed of the presentation of sounds. Now that we know some key information about music we can now move on to the benefits that music provides. Music provides benefits in school, with children that are involved in music having greater math and language skills, as well as higher SAT scores. Playing an instrument involves vision, hearing, touch, motor planning, emotion, and symbol interpretation, which all activate different parts of the brain. So, music is kind of like a workout for your brain. Another benefit to music is that it is often a key aspect of the early parent child connection. With music being such a powerful thing, I think that it is important to encourage children to take up music. With all the benefits of music and the relatively few negative things about music, I think that music should be a part of almost everyone’s life.
Terms
Pitch, Octave, Chord, Melody, Tempo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_psychology
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200009/music-the-mind
http://www.uni-graz.at/richard.parncutt/musicpsychology.html
http://www.winmentalhealth.com/music_psychology.php
The topic that I looked into for the last 2 posts was sensory integration disorder (SID) also known as sensory processing disorder. SID is a neurological disorder usually noticed in childhood. In a "normal" functioning brain we receive information from our senses and then use it to respond to our environment appropriately. This is called sensory integration. Jean Ayres, a occupational therapist and neuroscientist, explained SID as a neurological traffic jam. When a person has SID their brain is unable to process and interpret sensory information appropriately. SID can affect the normal 5 senses as well as the vestibular and proprioceptive senses. Some studies show as many as 1 in 6 children have SID while others show 1 in 20. SID can affect one sense or all of them.
People with SID respond to sensory information with the survival technique fright, flight or fight. People looking on see their reactions as extreme to the situation. SID can show up in several ways. The most common are hyper-sensitivity (over-sensitive) and hypo-sensitive (under-sensitive). Some other ways it may show itself are sensory modulation and sensory discrimination. SID is often associated with other disorders including pervasive developmental disorder, learning disabilities, and anxiety. Along with these disorders people often suffer from low self-esteem, disruptive disorders and other social issues. Because of this children often have trouble in school and being a part of a group.
SID is not currently listed as a disorder in medical texts. Because of this research is slow but it is believed that SID is caused by a mixture of both genetic and environmental factors. SID is still relatively unknown but it has been being treated since 1972. The STAR (sensory therapies and research) center is the leading treatment and research center for SID. The STAR center is currently trying to get SID added to the DSM so research will be easier to fund.
Treatment for SID has not been validated because the appropriate research has not been conducted. But occupational therapists use the information they have to treat their patients. The most common treatment is developing a sensory diet. Sensory diets are made specifically for each person and works to control the sensory input in their environments. Another treatment that is used is body brushing which uses a brush to go over the full body of a patient for up to 8 minutes to get them to respond appropriately to touch.
One question I still have about SID is the success rate of treatment.
http://www.brighttots.com/sensory_integration
http://www.sinetwork.org/about-sensory-processing-disorder.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1689216-2,00.html
Terms: Sensory integration disorder, sensory integration, vestibular and proprioceptive senses, hyper-sensitivity, hypo-sensitivity, sensory modulation, sensory discrimination, pervasive developmental disorder, sensory diet, body brushing