the . little . s m : ) e

(Psychology Lesson 11) 

[Last Blog] 

              Goodbye. What makes us say goodbye? Well, I wrote Goodbye on purpose because this will be my last blog post for my “Introduction to Psychology” course.  The course itself has overall 16 lessons, but now I finished up to only 9 lessons due to limited times. These 11 blogs I have written are for the purpose of my “Writing Skill Workshop” class in order to improve my English writing skills, reflect on my analytical thinking, and clearly summarize what I have learned. In this last blog post, I will be writing reflection on the lesson I chose to skip to which the topic is Motivation and Emotion, and conclude everything I have learned from the course. Seeing the word “Motivation”, I believe that it is a well-chosen word to end these blog posts because the power of motivation can drive the beginning of many hopeful dreams and goals.

                Going back to the word “Goodbye”, we say goodbye because we have motivation to do so. There are two types of motivation including internal and external. Internal may states as being hungry, thirsty, or in pain, while external can be the sight of food or a pretty person, or a stimulus that indicates danger. Motivation, itself, is the urge to move to one goal. Its main components are needs, drives, and incentives. These three components are combined to create the motivation. Needs is the states of cellular or bodily deficiency that compel or drive our body to seek out what it needs. The most commonplace example for needs is the need of living thing for food. Without food, living things like us, human, or animals will die, thus our body thrive to seek for food, leading to the next stage, Drives. Drives is the perceived states of tension that occur when our bodies are deficient in some need. This creates an urge to relieve the tension, leading to motivated behaviors. Another word for motivated behaviors is Incentives, external object or event that motivates our behavior. For instance, we need water, thirsty is our drive, and drinking is the motivated behavior. From my past experience, motivation is the main reason why I’m here, studying in Japan. My need was to pursue higher education, my drive was that I wish to study abroad and Japan is the country I have always longed to go, and my motivated behavior was I studied real hard and barely wasted a single moment I have back then. Eventually, I succeed my goal. However, this is just the beginning for achieving my new dream. Now, my dream is to be able to work in a film industry on the field related to either producing background music or visual effects. The motivated behavior is that now I’m seeking for experiences and connections as much as I could. Hopefully, one day, my dream will come true.

                In conclusion, the course “Introduction to Psychology” has answered many questions I was seeking for. Some parts of the course such as research methods in the second lesson was quite a disappointment because I wasn’t looking forward to learn about that in this course. However, it had taught me to widen my perspective on things and to open up to learn new things. “Who knows? It might turn out to be your new interest”, my mother told me. By learning the concepts and theories behind psychology, I have applied some knowledge onto myself. As a result, I came to understand myself more clearly, being able to adjust myself better to the life situation I’m facing. However, I haven’t finished the course yet, but I plan to continue even after this last blog post.

                For anyone, who has visited my Tumblr blog and get to read some of my posts, feel free to share your thoughts with me. I would be more than happy to see your responds. Thank You  : )

(Psychology Lesson 10) 

               After the lesson on Learning ended, the website linked me to next lesson with the topic on Memory. However, the lecturer has mentioned in the Memory introduction part about the psychological study of “Language and Thought”. I, as a person who is presently directly facing foreign language every day, am more interested in this topic. Hence, I skipped the lecture on Memory to Language and Thought. And this is what I’m going to discuss about in this blog post.

                Have you ever been in a situation where all the surrounding people are talking in a language that you do not understand, and that it makes you feel isolated? This is the question that the lecturer has started off as an introduction to this topic. Well, my answer is “Yes, very much! Like every day! Just feel like I’m on another planet…” Since I just moved to Japan for only three months, my Japanese is a new born baby. Due to the fact that most Japanese people don’t speak English, whenever I’m with a whole bunch of Japanese people, I just feel like an alien. Thus, this question hit me hard.

                Unlike animals, who only communicate with each other by signal about immediate situations such as hungry, hurt, and ready to reproduce, early species of human (Homo Neanderthalensis) was able to develop their communication into protolanguage or pre-language in order to think and communicate more complex, abstract ideas. The fundamental knowledge on language development is that human can ‘understand’ language before we can ‘produce’ it because the Wernicke’s area (language comprehension) in the left hemisphere of human brain develops earlier than the Broca’s area (language production), also in the left hemisphere. Moreover, as the language has become more and more complex, our brain also grew bigger in size. Human at the age of 3 has the brain size equal to 80% of adult’s brain size. Now, what would happen if a child has limited exposure to language during the first 3 years of life? There was a case similar to this situation, whereas a mental disordered father caged and forbidden his child to talk. Until the child had turned 13, the mother ran away from the father and took the child with her. The tragic result is that the child looked physically like six years old. In addition, she had very limited language ability. She can only say things like “no more” or “stop it”. After their escape, the girl was put into an intensive speaking course for four months. However, interestingly, the outcome of her performance in the course is not so well because her language development is very low.

                Indeed, the story of the girl is very tragic. I truly feel sorry for her. However, her story has taught me some important aspect about the human brain and its early functioning. Under my own analysis, babies who experiences variety of languages within the first three years of their life may tend to have better language ability when they grow up. From my own experience, I have a friend who can fluently speak four languages. Her early life background is very interesting. She was a Korean, who spent almost her whole life in Japan but in a French language medium school. Imagining her talking to her family in Korean at home, learning everything in French at school, talking to her friends in English and Japanese, she surely would have higher language development than some people who have always been living in one’s own country and practice only their native language, like me. I was born in Thailand and have always been living there. Just until last three months that I have first moved here to Japan. Even though in Thailand I was in an international school, I only speak Thai with my friends because most of them are also Thai. Thus, my weakest point on English language is speaking skill. I’m capable of having a casual normal conversation with people, but when it comes to presentation and educated discussions, I usually have lots of problems in carrying them out. Fortunately, I like to watch movies, listen to music, and follow up the world’s trend in other languages, mainly in English and sometimes in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Hence, sometimes I can guess what the person is trying to express through these four languages. 

(Psychology Lesson 9) 

                  Why do babies tend to put everything in their mouth? But when we grow up, we don’t? Who was the first person in the history to tell us that we shouldn’t be putting random things into our mouth? The answer is no one has told the first person to be born on earth (maybe Adam) what to eat and what shouldn’t be eat. “Learning” tell us what is eatable. Like buying a new computer, the new born babies have a new brain that contains only little information about the world. Thus, they tend to learn their surroundings by putting things into their mouth. This is one example that describes the definition of learning. I have come up with this example in accordance to my understanding from the video. However, the video put learning in terms of ‘enduring changes in behavior that occur with experience’.

                The most fundamental study that proved the learning effects on living things are Classical Conditions, which it is basically the study of reflexes. Reflexes are unlearned, automatic responses that occur when particular stimuli are presented. Ivan Pavlov is the one who discovered classical conditions. Originally, his experiment was carried out for the purpose of studying the dog’s digestion. Every day he would walk into his laboratory, where his dog stayed, then put a little powder of meat on a dog’s tongue, and the dog would automatically salivated. As the main part of his experiment, Pavlov was collecting the saliva and analyzing it. However, one day, he walked into the laboratory without the meat powder, but he saw that his dog salivated as soon as it saw him. Pavlov wondered whether it is because of him that the dog salivated. Hence, he made another experiment. He tested by making a tone (sound) and followed by giving the dog a meat, and the dog salivated. After he repeated this process for several days, he tested for the result by making a tone without giving a meat, and successfully the dog salivated as what expected. As a result, Pavlov was, stated by the lecturer, “…able to come up with the conclusion that paring up neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus will result in conditioned respond when after conditioning”. To be honest, I was completely numbed by the lecturer’s statement on Pavlov’s conclusion. However, those words that are contained in the sentence are all psychological vocabularies that should be memorized. Anyway, putting it in my own words, I would say that by paring up and repeatedly galvanize the dog by giving it the main stimulus (meat) with the neutral stimulus (the sound) will cause the dog to ‘learn’ that these two things will always come together. Therefore, when the dog hear one of the stimulus (the sound), it thought that the meat will also be there, and as a reflexes, it salivated.  

                Going deeper into the study, there are also other terms regarding the consequences of classical conditions. When presenting the conditioned stimulus (the sound) repeatedly without presenting the unconditioned stimulus (the meat), the dog will become less salivated each time until it no longer salivate. This is called Extinction, realizing that the meat does not come with the sound. However, if the experiment is pause for two weeks, then after two weeks, try making the sound again, the dog, in fact, will salivate. Here is called spontaneous recovery. Next, there is another experiment called “Little Albert” conducted by John B. Watson.  First, Watson let Little Albert play with the small rat. In the beginning, Little Albert liked the rat a lot. He wasn’t scare at the rat at all. Then, Watson intentionally made a loud bang sound that would make Little Albert get scare and cry. After he did it repeatedly while Little Albert was playing with the rat, Little Albert became fearful of the rat. The thing is it went beyond the previous experiment on the dog. Little Albert began to fear things that look similar to the little rat such as some furry animals like rabbit and cat. Here, the term is called Generalization. In consequence, there are some vague reports saying that Albert lived the rest of his life, confronting with phobias on furry things and small animals.

                In my opinion, an ethnical doing should be applied to Little Albert. One important thing that I have analyzed from this classical conditions study is that sometimes the things we hear and see in this world might actually not be what we perceive it as. How we think and perceive come from our “learning” experience throughout our whole life. From my own experience, since I was a kid, my parents forbidden me from watching any horror and ghost-related films or TV shows. Just until I was around the age of 13 that I got to watch the first ghost movie in my life. I was expecting myself to get scared, but it was a big disappointment because I just don’t really understand why it is scary at all. In contrast with my friend, who got to watch lots of horror films since she was very young, as a result, she would always flinch whenever she hears a scream coming out from the horror film or from her surroundings. She told me that whenever she watches ghost movies with her family, her sister would always scream a lot that made her flinch. I suppose this psychological fact can be the reason why parents should be well aware of their children’s environments for that something might give them an ever-lasting undesired-behavior or phobia.

(Psychology Lesson 8) 

                Why do adults like to drink alcohol and smoke so much? You know it is bad for your health and you still drink it. I used to say these phrases to my father a lot back then. Until three years ago, high school life had made me try alcohol. On my first drink, by thinking that alcohol is super delicious, I was very disappointed because the taste was really bad. Then, as I started to lose my consciousness, things gone wild and everything became fun. Now, I understand why people drink. However, I know the disadvantages of alcohol and try to restrain myself from it. Thus, I only drink for social life and entertainment. However, there are many people who are additive to it. Why is that so? There are many psychological facts related to drugs. And this is what I will be covering in the next paragraph.

                According to the lecture, desire to alter consciousness is the driver for human behavior on using drugs. We have been using drugs for over 50,000 years. There are two kinds of drugs: psychoactive drugs and psychotropic drugs. These drugs have the same descriptions stating that it is any drug that affect or change mood, cognition, or behavior. However, the difference is psychotropic drugs are drugs that are prescribed by a doctor for only the purpose of medication treatment. Then why do people use psychotropic drugs? Some variables that influence the risk of drug use or abuse are stressful environments, impoverished environments, co-existing mental health problems, hostile family environments, lack of alternative rewarding activities, drug-using peers and particular social environments, sex, homelessness, and culture. As we can see, there are many factors that might lead to drug abuse. Now, why do people who start using some kind of drugs, continue to use it and become addicted?  This is because they are using Drug Reinforcer, which is any drug that produces effects that cause or result in the person taking the drug again. Most drugs of abuse are termed positive reinforcers. The effects of reinforcing drug use also come from drug administration such as injecting, inhaling, and drinking. Basically, it works in a way that the faster the onset of a drugs action, the greater the reinforcing effects. The most wondering question I have had when I was a kid, why can’t people quit using drug? Does it give such heaven feeling? Aside from feeling happy and being high, drugs of abuse can cause physical dependence, in other words, a person who is physically dependent needs the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Moreover, withdrawal symptoms can be physically and psychologically painful and challenging. For instance, withdrawal from alcohol can actually result in death.

                The previous paragraph contains some basic information related to alcohol and other drugs. However, the video lecture actually covered almost all kinds of drugs including its symptoms, its treatment, and its biological, psychological, and physical effects. After watching this video, I have a take home message for people who are thinking on taking drugs: “better not try or your future will die”. As a teenager, I also have some friends who have experienced drug abuse before. I understand their feelings and their drive of taking drugs. Mainly, they believe that it can make life better by getting high, wild, and happy. Teenagers usually have lots of confidence, thinking that they can tolerate themselves from getting addicted to it. “You Only Live Once” This phrase actually drives teenagers to do many crazy things. To be honest, I’m also one of its victims. My proposed idea is that the in-depth lectures on this topic should be included in the course provided for high school students. Human is like a walking factory of chemicals. Our thoughts and opinions may completely alter after drugs chemical enter our body. Therefore, we definitely should not entrust our body to drugs.

(Psychology Lesson 7) 

                  Did you get a good sleep last night? I usually get this question from people in the morning after the night that I did not spend enough time on sleeping. My body responds to the lack of sleeping very obviously, in a way that my eyes’ sacks would turn quite swollen and dark. However, actually sleeping is my ever-lasting best friend. I never want to leave my bed in the morning, especially when I have a really sweet dream. Sometimes I unintentionally wake up in the middle of a good dream, which is indeed very upsetting. Most of the times I try to get back to sleep and continue my dream, but it never works. Well, admit it, I think everyone does that before, right? LoL Usually I can get back to sleep but the dream stories always change. This reflection will be about how dream, sleep, and consciousness are related. Still under the category of ‘consciousness’, I figured that as I get to higher lesson in this course of “Introduction to Psychology”, the contents of each lessons get broader, more detailed, and contains more information. It took about almost two hours to finish the video lecture of this topic on consciousness. Therefore, I decided to separate the contents into parts and spare it for the next and so on reflection.  

                First, why do we sleep? Basically, sleep restores energy to our body after a long day of neural activity or brain activity. Biologically saying, sleep aids in memory consolidation and learning. It is also important for neural growth. Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation can lead to many long-term physical problems such as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. In short-term, it will affect cognition thinking, for instance, making it harder to focus on our daily activity. The recommended hours of sleep are approximately 7 to 9 hours a day. Anyway, particularly there are four types of sleep disorder presented in the lecture including Sleep Apnea, Narcolepsy, Night terrors, and Insomnia. Sleep Apnea is pauses in breathing while sleeping or shallow breathing up to 30 times or more in an hour. Sleep Apnea is one of the major causes of excessive daytime sleeping. Next, Narcolepsy is the inability to regulate sleep and wake cycles. Its symptoms are an irresistible urge to fall asleep for several seconds to minutes throughout the day. Personally, I feel that this sleeping disorder is the most severe among all the four. Considering a person with narcolepsy doing a required concentration job such as driving, there is possibility that they will fall asleep and it would be very dangerous if that happen. Similar to the monster stimulation in the movie Monster University, I would say, Night terrors is waking from sleep in a terrified state. In other words, night terrors is having a bad dream, waking up, being terrified of it, and forgetting almost everything in the morning. It usually lasted for 10 to 20 minutes and occurs most often on children. Most of the times, people with this sleep disorder cannot remember that they experience the night terrors in the middle of their sleeps. Night terrors is also the reason behind sleep walking, which is engaging behaviors that they would do while they are awake even though they are asleep such as eating or getting dress. Insomnia, a commonly known sleep disorder, is having difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or both. Having insomnia, consequences stress, trauma, pressures, and may lead to anxiety and depression.

                Next, why do we dream? Sleep categorizes into two parts: REM and Non-REM. REM is abbreviated form Rapid Eye Movement. When we are in the REM states, our eyes move rapidly under our eyelids and that is actually the times where we have dreams. Non-REM has four stages. The sleeping steps starts off from shallow sleep, Non-REM stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, to stage 4, and going back in the reverse steps, to stage 3, stage 2, stage 1, and then REM. 25% of our sleep is spent in the REM condition and the rest in non-REM.  Aside from these stages, there is case where some people are consciously aware that they are sleeping and able to change the contents of their dream. This is called Lucid Dream. If you have watched the movie “Inception”, you may remember how Leonardo DiCaprio went into other people dreams and changed them. The concept of his stimulation is similar to lucid dream.

                In conclusion, I believe that sleep is not just a comfort but it is a necessity that should be highly taking in consideration. Techniques for healthy sleeping behavior are as followed. Right before bedtime, we shouldn’t be exercising within 2 hours of bedtime nor having a big meal, caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol, and we should turn off TV, cell phone, or any gadgets before bed. Going to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning is good.

                Personally, I really like this reflection because it has eased my curiosity on the reason behind dream, sleeping walking, and especially lucid dream. About two years ago, after I finished the movie “Inception”, I searched about lucid dream and gain a lot of interest in it. I have attempted to practice engaging lucid dream, but most instructions provided on the internet are not clear enough to make it possible. Nonetheless, I’m planning to study further on this topic.

(Psychology Lesson 6)                  

                Have you ever wonder why sometimes we tend to ponder about something else when we should actually be working, or sometimes we aware that we are sleeping in our dream. The reasons behind these are related to the study of consciousness. This is what I will be focusing about in this blog post.

                There are two different dimensions of consciousness including wakefulness and awareness. As the name itself states, wakefulness means how awake are we or are we asleep. And awareness means how much alert or aware are we to both our external surroundings and our internal world. Wakefulness and awareness are the two main variables of consciousness. For example, when we are very concentrating on something, doing things such as learning mathematics, at the time both our wakefulness and awareness are high, meaning that we are being fully conscious. On the other hand, a person in coma neither aware nor awake, and thus can be stated as no consciousness. Within the range of zero consciousness to full consciousness, there are four kinds of domains regarding the attention we give.

                  First is the Selective Attention, which is the human ability to pay attention to our environment while ignoring aspects of our environment. For example, when we are listening to the news in the television while our friend starts talking to us, we can’t focus our attention equally on the two demands. Hence, we cannot fully absorb the information coming from either one. The next domain is the cocktail party effect. A good example of this effect is when we are having a conversation with our friends, and then unintentionally we hear people from the other side of the room talking about our favorite singer, drawing our attention to them even though it is only a background audio. This is because the favorite singer is an important stimulus to us. The third domain is Change Blindness, referring to the moment when one does not notice that something changes due to illusions. Most magicians use this method to fool their audiences. The last and the most attractive one for me is Inattentional Blindness. In this domain, the lecturer posted a link to a Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo), which it lets the viewers experience the stimulation on this topic. The video is a scene at which there are people wearing black and white shirts, doing the catch-throw balls at each other while switching positions, making it a little bit confusing. At the beginning of the video, instruction is given to the viewers as followed: “Count the number of the times white shirt people has thrown the balls”. I counted 15 times and got it correct. However, getting the answer correct is not the real purpose of this video. In fact, at the end of the video, it says “did you notice the black gorilla walking in and banging its chest?” At that moment, I was very confused, like “What!???” Then it repeated the video once again and emphasized the viewers to find the black gorilla. Now, I came to understand what Inattentional Blindness is. The black gorilla was actually very easily noticeable but because I was focusing too much on counting the numbers of times white shirt people has thrown the ball, I didn’t notice at all that there was a gorilla.

                       In conclusion, I think the most important thing I have learned from this lecture is that if we selectively pay attention to one thing, our ability to pay attention to other things decreases. Understanding this psychology fact, I will try to apply the similar stimulation to my learning methods. For instance, when doing assignments on my computer, I will try to give more attention to my work, in case, it may stop me from time-consuming internet surfing. To be honest, I don’t think I can make it because even now as I’m writing this blog assignment, I’m also checking for updated news on my favorite celebrities. Hehe ; ) But I will try though. lol

(Psychology Lesson 5) 

                What makes twins differ from one another? Obviously, the environmental differences each twins have experienced affect the twins’ development. There are two main factors regarding the development psychology: nature and nurture. Basically, nature is “what we’re born with”; meaning that it all comes from our genetics transferred by our parents. Nurture, on the other hand, is the external factor or surrounding environment and experiences in life. These two shaped up each one of us and make us who we are throughout human development stages. There are overall six stages, ranging from prenatal (age<0), infancy (0-2), Childhood (2-12), adolescence (12-18), adulthood (18-60), lastly to late adulthood (age>60). Within these stages, there are five domains that changes over time as we age. First is neurological and brain, changing our neuron structures and brain. Second is the sensory development. As the sensory develop, human five senses alter. This may explain the reason behind why one’s sightseeing becomes less well-functioning as one ages. Third, the cognitive development is the ability to think, solve problems, learn, and remember things. In details, whatever actions or moves we make, our brain recognize, transfer information, store, analyze, and retrieve. For instance, when we see a dog coming toward us, our eyes perceive and send the information to our brain. Next, the prescribed processes will be carried out, analyzing the information and finding a connection with the stored information. Then as the information is retrieved, it will tell our body to act appropriately to the situation regarding the past experiences stored in our memory. Next, the physical motor, as the name itself states, surrounding factors (nurture) and ages (nature) alter our physical movement and body control over times. Last is the social and emotion, this category is very vulnerable in the first state of human after birth, in another term, infancy stage. In this lecture, the contents mainly focused on this body function of social and emotion. Evidence states that infancy with enough amounts of attachment from their parents, are more likely to become socially optimistic when they grow up. Attachment, in the previous term, includes hug and kiss from their parents. On the other hand, infant who lacks attachment tend to have problems in future friendships and love relationship. Moreover, it may also cause crucial behavior and mental thinking.

                In my opinion, attachment and emotional contact are just as significant as nutrition and health care for infants and young children. Just last year, I learned about this topic in my high school values class. However, this lecture digs deep into the reason behind for such theory. So far, this is the first lecture that actually meets my expectation for this course. Not only education but necessary knowledge for women and human morality are also being taught in the lecture. 

(Psychology Lesson 4)                

The second lecture taught mainly on Mathematical knowledge in Psychology, the third lecture talked about Biology in Psychology, and in this fourth lecture, Physics took most parts of the lecture. Last year, I took Physics as my AP exam subject. Hence, I already knew most of the contents in this lecture, excepted for biology parts. In the physics senses, I have learned about sound and light wave. How amplitude, frequency, and wavelength of sound and light being transfer into human, and then, biologically, go through human organs into the brain. In my opinion, this lecture is unique and more attractive compared to the other previous lectures. Not because of the topic but the lecturer held a what-they-called ‘Senselympic Game’. They made it seems like an Olympic hosting show with competitions and advertisements, while in those sections, they made all the contents knowledgeable, and in a way, humorous.

After the topic about human brain in the previous lecture, comes the topic about ‘Senses and Perception’. As a general knowledge, we all know that humans have five senses including sight, hear, taste, touch, and smell. These senses are information from the surrounding environment that allow human and animal to take in, adapt, and respond to the constantly changing world. Certainly, these senses would be useless without these five human organs: eyes, ears, tongue, skin, and nose. In the lecture, there were senses competitions among the co-workers of Udacity. For instance, ‘Average Weight Difference Threshold’ is the first one to be held. Each competitor will get to hold two cups of water, one with 100g and another with 105g of water. They will have to differentiate the weight differences between the two. In the first round, the differences were 5g. Then, the differences will decrease by one on the next round and so on until it becomes 1g difference. The result was that only one person was able to complete all five rounds. Another example is the hearing competition, where the competitors will have to listen to the high frequency sounds; one, who can hear the highest frequency, is the winner. Similar to the touch sensory competition, only one person was able to hear up to 20,000 sound frequencies. Since the range of sound frequencies that human can hear is 20Hz-20,000Hz, only some people who take good care of their ears will be able to hear up to 20,000Hz.

The analytical conclusion is that every human being has different sensing abilities, allowing us to uniquely collect information (sensation) and interpret through our brain function (perception and thought) in different way. Thus we respond to the environment differently. Human perspective on the world mainly depends on how our sense organs sense it and how our brains perceive it, we do not perceive the world as it is.

(Psychology Lesson 3)

Biology is the main part to the studies of psychology. This is the strong point I got from the 3^rd lecture in “Introduction to Psychology”. Throughout this lecture, I have learned the reasons behind lots of things. However, the information is over-flowing. In high school, I have taken only one course relating to biology. Thus, all the information in this lecture is very new to me. Unlike the last lecture which was about statistics, I almost give up halfway while watching this week lecture.

                To begin with, the study of brain is the first gateway to learn and understand deeply about human’s behavior and action. At the beginning of the video, the contents covered mainly on the genetics and human evolution. From 2.5 million years ago until the present day, there are four types of human with different genes: Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and the modern human, or Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens, or us, has the biggest and most complex brain lope among all the human species as a result of us developing our brain in respond to our environment. In the present, aside from Homo sapiens, all other human species had already extinct for over 0.1 million years ago. The only other species that are similar to human is Pan Troglodytes, or chimps. Actually, chimps and human have genes that are 98% matched. Nonetheless, it is the 2% that make human very different from the chimps. Thus, the genes can describe the physical and mental differences between living things and among human beings. Next is the study about the brain and its function. Basically, brain function contains everything about us: our action, behavior, thoughts, dream, fondness, and everything. The brain function carries out through its electrical and chemical activities. Separating into two hemispheres, right and left brains have their unique functions. Each hemisphere contains four different lobes. The most important one is the frontal lobe which operates our memory, impulse control, attentions, and abstract thinking and creativity. This is the part that makes us most human. Then I get to learn about human nervous system and its functions. The five senses we get from our surrounding are send to the central nervous system and into the brain. Then the brain will assign the works to the peripheral nervous system, which consists of the somatic nervous system (controlling voluntary behavior) and the autonomic nervous system (controlling involuntary behavior). Next, the neurons, a specialized cells, its task is to receive and transfer information to and fro brain and with other neurons such as motor neurons (allowing us to take action). The action of potential released from the neurons can produce chemicals effects such as alternating hormones in our body.

 In conclusion, there are many other details, branching out from the main points I have written above. At the beginning of the video, I was very concentrated and I can remember most of the contents from there. Unfortunately, since I received too much information and new, weird biology-related vocabularies in a little time, I wasn’t able to focus much in the middle and the last part of this lecture. Everything became blurred when I was trying to retrieve what I’ve just learned. Eventually, I would say that “Introduction to Psychology” is not as easy as you may think. Science can best explain the theory behinds the psychology, but science is broad and requires times to learn and understand it.

For the organization on this course, I plan to study one lecture from the course per week. From what I have experienced from this course, every lecture contains different time period. Thus, it depends on how much times they provide for one lecture. For the reviewing, I’ve got lots of new vocabularies related to the subject each week. At the end of each lecture, I would note down interesting words in into my flashcard for more practices. The application for this lecture is indeed very tough for me. I started out some questions already, but most of them were marked as wrong. As a result, I’m planning to review the contents first then I’ll go back and finish the test later. For my expectation and goal for this lecture, I’ve written in my first and second reflections already. (http://thelittlesmile.tumblr.com/post/65688844599/writing-skills-workshop-1st-reflection) and (http://thelittlesmile.tumblr.com/post/66429263497/writing-skills-workshop-2nd-reflection)

(Psychology Lesson 2)

In this second lecture, the main topic is based on the research methods for psychologist. According to the lecture, the reason why we have to learn this is because conducting and consuming research is the fundamental knowledge necessary for the psychologist. First of all, there are two main research methods, correlational studies and experimental studies. One good example of correlational studies is to conduct a test on “whether a kid who likes to eat sugar, tend to weight more than a kid who doesn’t”.  Considered the outcome, the objective of conducting research is to find the relationship between one variable and another. In this case, “likes to eat sugar” is one variable and “tend to weight more” is another variable. In order to prove that this statement is true, the experimenters will have to conduct a correlation studies. In correlation studies, the research can be conducted by observing and recording the existing variable, find kids who like and dislike sugar and record their weight. In contrast, in the experimental studies, the first variable can be manipulated. For example, to test “whether caffeine effect human reaction time or not” can use an experimental studies. Rather than finding people who consume caffeine daily and recording their reaction time, the result would be more accurate if the experimenters are to assign caffeine coffee to experimental group of people and give a decaffeinate coffee to a different group of people. This process is called manipulating independent variable, which is giving caffeine. Another variable is the reaction time, and it is dependent variable.  In the end, the purpose of both research methods is to find the relationship between the two variables. If the relationship exists, then they can conclude whether it is positive or negative relationship.

In my point of view, I was quite surprised to learn that psychological studies actually require some math skills. As I’m a good friend with math, this lesson is easy for me because it has to do with graphing, data, and analysis in which all are related to logical thinking. At the end of this lesson, I was able to finish all the problem set and got all correct. However, I wish they would dig deeper into the psychology studies core in the next lesson.

My expectation for this course is to be able to understand more about the reason behind of human behavior and thought. I want to use this knowledge and apply it to the real world issues. By having knowledge about psychology, I believe that I would have better skills of socializing, dealing conflicts, and work cooperating with other people. Moreover, it will enable me to understand my own feelings, thoughts, and actions, thus, gaining more self-consciousness. Therefore, this course might be very beneficial for me if it meets my expectation.

(Psychology Lesson 1)

            It has been two years since I have posted the latest updates onto my tumblr blog. In those days, I never thought that this day would come. To be honest, studying abroad in Japan was an unreachable dream for me. Back then, I was only a normal averaged-grades student, who liked to laze around. I used to spend most of my times surfing through Tumblr and other internet blogging sites, and pondering about imaginary things. The truth is I really enjoyed my life in those days, escaping from the harsh reality to my own little fairy tales I have built on this blog. Somehow I started to realize that I cannot continue my life like this. I wanted to pursue my education abroad. I wanted to be better. I wanted to start living alone by myself. Thus, I made my decision to improve myself, pumping up my potential to learn and act out and forbidding myself from spending too much times on the nonsense things on internet. Well, here I am, sitting in my apartment and working on my assignment from a Japanese University. Now, after I have reached my goal, I began to wonder what the real purpose of coming here to Japan for me is. If someone were to ask me why I chose to study abroad in Japan, I would be able to answer clearly back in Thailand. ‘Of course, Japan is a must-go country. The weather is so good there. The foods are delicious. People are nice. And the language is so cute. Most importantly, the education is much better than Thailand. I’m definitely going there!’ However, now, as I really get to live here, things just don’t go the way I expected it to be. New language became the biggest obstacle in my life in Japan. My class schedules consume most of my times that I have zero chance to go anywhere outside of Shonandai. Everything is super expensive that I feel like I lose my wallet every time I pay for a one decent meal. Despite the fact that I’m financially broke, I rarely leave my apartment if not necessary. I came back to the point where I spend my leisure times looking up on Tumblr, my favorite place to go when I hate my reality. As I notice this behavior I have, I became curious for the reason behind this action. What made people spend their valuable times searching about useless things on the internet? Why is it so hard to stop scrolling down the web pages through those posts and pictures? Is my wish of coming to Japan considered as greedy or what is it? Back then, why did I have such potential even without knowing the true result of my wish? Instead why did I lose all my interests after I came here? Moreover, as I went back to read what I just wrote above, I found myself being a little exaggerated, which reminds me of how human likes to exaggerate things either it’s a good or bad stories. Why would we want to exaggerate things then? These are some questions I want to find out. In a broader scope, the results of human behaviors and actions varied depending on many factors. One thing I found interesting is how different people respond on things differently. I believe that all of these matters lie under the context of human studies or Psychology. This is the reason why I chose to take Introduction to Psychology course.

            In the first lesson, the lecture contains just an introduction to Psychology. Psychology studies are based on two things, practice (applying knowledge) and research (furthering knowledge). Being a psychologist can have varied definitions including helping people, conducting psych evaluations, business consultation, sex counseling, TV consultation, legal consultation, improving athletes performance, marketing consultation, research, testify as an expert witness, criminal profiling, and education.  Basically, Psychologist job is to know and understand the human mind. Their main tasks are to observe, study, and help them. According to the video, this course will based on only major psychology subfields, which, I believe, cover almost everything about psychology. These subfields include cognitive, behavioral, developmental, neurological, biological, personality, social, clinical, and forensic. For me, I’m looking forward to learn about forensic psychology since it has to do with analyzing crime cases such as murder case and criminal case.