Topical Blog Week #1 (due Thursday)

I'm not sure what posts I liked the best, they were all pretty detailed some more so than others. Reading these posts hasn't changed my idea of what sensation and perception, because from other psychology classes I have taken gave me a decent idea of sensation and perception is, but I know I have so much more to learn about sensation and perception. I'm not sure if there are any specific topics that interested me but I know there will be something interesting I will learn this semester.

The posts that appealed to me most were the ones on selective attention. These posts caught my attention because I can relate to the topic. I was diagnosed with AD/HD when I was about 6 years old, so that was something that I dealt with growing up and I still deal with now. I am interested to see a different approach to viewing the phenomena that is associated with AD/HD. I think it will be very enlightening and help me understand something better that I deal with on a day to day basis. I don't think any of the posts changed my view of what sensation and perception is, as I don't feel like I have a great grasp on the subject period. I am looking forward to this class and I know that I will learn a lot of interesting things about sensation and perception. A topic that I want to learn more about is selective attention. I am just interested in the whole are of sensation and perception in general, so I am looking forward to this class.

Taking this a class of yours before, it doesn’t surprise me on how much detail some people put into their blog posts. After reading some of the blogs on each of the links I noticed the same pattern as before. Many of the students enjoy expressing their opinions on topics they research. It’s like students become mini experts on the topics they research. I found this happening to me in behavior modification when I would rant and use terminology I had no clue existed until I read and explored the material. After reading the articles, I think I’m most excited to learn how our senses impact our decisions and thinking all together. I find it amazing that by just touching or smelling something we are able to decipher what that thing might be. I want to learn the science behind all of this, so that’s what I’m looking forward to most about this class. From reading the blogs, its sounds like there will be a lot of interesting information in the book that we will cover and I’m sure I’ll find a lot of great articles for the topical blogs from websites I explore. Also, as with the last class, I’m excited to learn all the terminology that comes along with learning this new material. I find myself still using behavioral terms from behavior modification. From the posts I’ve read so far, it seems there’s a lot of terminology that comes with this material and many of the students were using new terms in their blogs (some more than others). I’m pretty excited to learn more about sensations and perception so it should be a pretty fun class.

I enjoyed reading most posts because a lot of these topics are knew ideas that I hadn't heard of before. In particular I liked woolfs blog about synesthesia. This is where people mix up their senses. I liked this post because it was something that I had never heard of before, was a very interesting topic, and I had never thought about it happening. The blogs that I enjoy reading the most are blogs that explain concpets well and give real life examples. This helps me understand the topic easily and then relate it to my real life.

I really didn't have a very good understanding of what this class was going to be like, but reading other peoples blogs is giving me a better understanding of what kinds of topics will be covered in the class. I think that sensation and perception is intended to show how what happens in the actual world and how our brain perceives it.

Topics that sound interesting to me include synesthesia and selective attention. Selective attention is interesting to me because it happens to everyone and you can see it happen infront of you. I would like to know more about this topic to be better able to control its effects on myself and other people.

I enjoyed the posts and blogs about selective attention. In a way it made me think and gave me new ideas about the topic. Also I find this topic interesting, and it is a topic that I would enjoy learning about. The blogs that were done about selective attention were for the most part easy to understand. I also enjoyed that they related to real life experiences that I have been through.

When I registered for the class it was mainly because this class fit with my schedule and it fulfilled a requirement, so coming into it I didn’t really know what to expect with the topic sensation and perception. All I really knew was the tid bits that were discussed in other classes and what the description on the course was. After reading the blogs and posts I have come more familiar with what we will be learning about, so in that aspect yes my ideas about sensation and perception have been changed.

After reading the posts and blogs selective attention is a topic that really hit home for me, and it is a topic that I am interested in. It strikes an interest because I believe it’s not only something that affects me but also affects others. I would like to learn more about why we pay attention to certain things and not others. I also believe selective attention is something we deal with on an everyday basis.

The comments that I liked the best were the ones that went over and beyond what was expected out of them, and I assume that this is because they were intensely interested in the topic; and it shows.

One good thing about reading these topics is that they are from my peers, as compared to an experienced expert writing a textbook. A textbook author may try to simplify and generalize the material explained, but reading my peer's posts is much more personal; given that we have many more similarities.

The posts really haven't changed my idea of what sensation and perception is. My personal construct of these cognitive processes is that sensation is all input received from sensory organs (skin, chemoreceptors, taste buds, etc.) and perception is the concentration of the consciousness on certain stimuli; having attention as the "filter" for choosing what is important on focusing on and what is not.

A lot of these posts were about specific sensations; how touch works, for example. These were each very interesting, but what really garnered my interest was the post about the interaction between all of the senses. Through learning about the senses, most students get a reductionist perspective on sensation; that these are each individual pieces that make up a whole. However, an error of most students is that they don't think about how sensation works on a whole; which the sum is greater than the individual parts. This includes the interactions between the individual senses, and how communication between their respective areas of the brain make up a "multidimensional" concept of what you perceive.

I liked the Week #13 posts because they were students looking deeper into a subject that interested them and putting in the time to do their own research and coming up with findings/articles and sites that related to their interest. I always enjoyed doing these in other classes because everyone has different interests and everyone can bring something new or different up for discussion. Sticking to just a textbook or what an instructor tells you to research can get really boring after a while.

When I was going through Week #15, I saw a lot of posts about how music and rhythm can have a really big effect on people and what they are doing or their mood. Sadly, I’m not surprised by this at all. I notice this a lot when I work out or when I am at work. The fast the rhythm, the fast I move and got my work done or the faster I would run.

Not yet, but I also haven’t read the chapters for myself yet so I don’t know if there is something else mentioned that will interest me.

After reading all the blog responses, I liked the comments from the week 15 link. The first thing I noticed was how in depth and long their responses were. The more information that was present caught my attention much more and gave me a greater chance to comprehend the material. The second blog on the week 15 link was my favorite. This person started directly with the topic presented as selective attention. They gave a definition as well as listing characteristics of its meaning to help clarify the topic. Another thing I thought was very beneficial in the post was giving examples which produce a more vivid and clear idea of what we see. I also like this topic for the interest in what selective attention is as a concept and how I was able to gather more knowledge on a topic of interest to myself. I believe most of the posts do help change my idea of sensation and perception. There was a lot of information that helped explain why and how we visual see certain things and stimuli. Some students blogged about music, which was also very interesting to hear and learn about because, I always listen to music when I type papers, or any typing, such as right now! It connected with me right away. I was able to stop and think for a bit about sensation and perception through music when I had never given it the slightest thought before. One particular word stuck out that appealed to me which I know almost nothing about. I would like to learn more about synesthesia. There were a few posts that gave me a little background on the term and what it actually is, but I would really like to find out more information on this particular topic.

So somehow I didn’t get this one posted on the site and it just came to my attention when grades were posted this week. Here is my topical blog for that week. Sorry it’s way late.
I thought the blog post by kmarie was very interesting. This individual posted about why there are sometimes cultural differences in tasting of food. She related it to the genetic ability to taste PTC. It was discovered that there is an actual gene that allows one to either taste or not to taste PTC. We did an exercise in high school where we determined if each of us could taste PTC. Kmarie concluded that cultural differences in taste may be something that we have developed to help us survive in our environment.
I liked this post because I think it is interesting that different people taste different things. Taste is something that in theory should be held constant, but it is not, different people have different concepts of taste and it is interesting that this development may be due to evolution. This has broadened my view of sensation and perception. I never really thought taste was something that one could really study and find interesting, but it is. I think it would be interesting to learn more about this.

I enjoyed the posts that had personal ideas related and connected to the original topic. I believe that these posts were more interesting because they weren't just delivering facts from the book. They were giving more information based on the material learned in the book. They also give more insight into what that specific person believes the author was trying to say. It is awesome to get to understand through your peers and listing what you yourself got out of the chapter. The posts that are longer tend to have more detail that make it easy to understand the posts.