Exploring Human Development

I actually enjoyed doing the go animate. It took a little while to figure out how to work it but once I did I couldn't stop goofing around with it. I did my animation on the parenting styles because I remember learning about them in parenting class. My parents are Authoritarian. My mom says yes within reason and my dad just agrees with her. I would like to have permissive parents so I could just do whatever I want but you can't have everything. I always thought it was interesting that girls are two years ahead on maturity than boys are. My brother is two years older than me and growing up we had the same maturity level; everyone thought we were twins. I learned that infants and children become attached to their parents and don't want to leave them. That's why kids cry when their parents leave them.

Nature, Nurture, and Human Diversity

Did anyone get the heritability website to work? I didn't see any of the graphs; it showed a box with an x in the corner. After reading three articles for the twin studies I learned that when one twin dies the other co-twin suffers more than normal siblings do. And what was interesting is that identical twins take a loss of a co-twin harder than fraternal twins. One article was about mistaken identities and twins getting mixed up at birth. Twins would be given to the wrong parents in the nursery and the hospitals would get sued for millions of dollars. This freaks me out because if I have twins I will be making sure the nurses give me the kids I gave birth to. I learned that separated twins share the same characteristics as if they never were separated. For example, two girls were separated at birth, one lived in England and one live in the United States. They haven't seen or known of each other for fifty years and fifty years later they somehow cross each others path. Both twins have the same hair style, wear the same clothes, husbands have the name. I also learned that each culture had different norms. For example personal space; in America we like our space but in Italy even men hug and kiss as a greeting.

Conscienceness and the Two Track Mind

I learned that when people dream they are in a state of sleep called REM sleep. During REM sleep they eyes jerk back and forth. When the eyes do that, it is a sign that the person is dreaming. I also learned that dreams are psychologically meaningless which is good to know so i don't get worried about my dreams. I found it interesting that our bodies have their own circadian rhythm. I agree witht the circadian rhythm because I have noticed it. On weekends when I finally have the chance to sleep in, I still wake up at 7 like I do everyday for school. There is a part in the dreaming section that asks can we learn a foreign language by hearing it played while we sleep? In the book it says no we can only associate a sound with a mild electric shock. I think that would be awsome if we could learn a language in our sleep but I don't see how it is possible. I'm not sure if I agree that hypnosis can be therapeutic. It says that a woman had suffered from open sores all over her body for over 20 years and after hypnosis she was cured. I think that was all in her head but thats just me. I want to know how it feels to be hypnotized but I also would be scared to because I wouldn't know what the person would tell me to do; I don't want to unknowingly embarrass myself!

The Brain and Behavior

I went on to the epsych website and I found it very useful and interesting. From this website I learned more about split brain patients like the one on the video. I learned that they split the corpus collosome, a part of the brain that transfers messages from the right to the left and vise versa. I learned that the left hemisphere is sometimes referred to as the dominant hemisphere due to its speaking function. I read a little story on epsych about color vision. It was sort of a cartoon; I actually found the story very funny and interesting. The one thing about this chapter that amazes me is the splitting of the brain into left and right. I never would of thought a procedure would have been possible, but with modern day technology anything is possible. If I ever am diagnosed with severe seizures at least now I know that the seizures can be fixed through surgery. This chapter makes me think about how complex our brains are. By just doing the driving activity now I know the basic functions of each part of the brain. I also realize that our brains are constantly working and I wonder how it gets the messages out so fast.