Monday, February 20, 2012

AP PSA Announcement

My favorite PSA was done by Tyler, Corry and Nick. I enjoyed their video because besides being entertaining, it was informative and incorporated outside sources such as a movie clip to display their information. The clip clearly explained programs to enhance the years during adolescence and old age. They were charismatic and traveled to different places around Ashwaubenon to show real places that provide learning programs to grow. I more clearly understood the concrete opperational stage after watching thier PSA. I could understand their voices in the video and they kept their information light and to the point.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Challenging Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development



Jean Piaget is known for his psychological work with cognitive development throughout the years of a person's life. Today in class Mrs. VanStraten (Mrs. Wollersheim's mother, I apologize for the spelling) came to class and gave us a kindergarden lesson with shapes. We used Piaget's concepts of schemas, assimilaion, and accomodation to sort and find similarities between various sizes and colors of shapes. We knew that round shapes were considered circles. (schema) We then went on to assimilate that squares can still be squares dispite size differences and further accomodated that squares and rectangles both share four sides, but rectangles have two longer sides than squares do thus showing the difference between shapes.

The lesson was very interesting because I realized the way that Mrs. Van Straten taught us shapes must have been very similar to the way I learned to differenciate a circle from a square. To test Piaget's stages of cognitive development I put his theories to the test on the two children I baby-sit. Maxx is a five-year-old pre-kindergarden student and Maddy is an eight-year-old in second grade. According to Piaget, Maxx would fall into the preoperational stage while Maddy would be in the concrete opperational stage. To test Piaget's theories I asked Maxx and Maddy at different times to identify the shapes and colors of the rectangles, squares, triangles and circles. Maxx knew the difference between the colors and shapes but did not take much more interest in them. When Maddy came home from school I asked her to identify the shapes as well and she knew them all easily. When I asked the kids to pick up the shapes, Maxx started picking up all of the shapes with no particular order or method while Maddy sorted each of the shapes by shape, size, and color. I found that Maddy took a logical approach in sorting the shapes in a sequence that made sense to her while Maxx did not come up with a system to put the shapes together. I believe that Piaget's development stages conicide with the ages of each developmental group. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw33CBsEmR4&feature=related explains Piaget's theories by going through each cognitive stage. Maxx's preoperational stage portrays his lack of concrete logic and egocentrism while Maddy being in the concrete operational stage is able to understand chage and can think logically think through math proplems and sequences.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Ice Cube Addiction



       This week pretending to have a drug addiction (with ice cubes) was more difficult than I thought. Putting ice cubes in some drinks were more socially acceptable than others.( i.e. water versus tea) I believe this relates to social situations as well. People who have drug addictions tend to hang around other people with drug addictions because exposing your addiction isn't as socially unacceptable to people who also have the addiction. It was not only hard hiding the addiction, it was also hard keeping the addiction. Not being able to access ice from school made pre-planning necessary. I believe people with addictions also come to stress when their drugs are not on hand. I was able to lie to my parents when I recieved wierd looks for putting ice in my milk and tea. They noticed I was acting differently and my mom even yelled at me for taking a water bottle to school. (She didn't know it was filled with ice.) I have a cold and my mom attributed the germs to the water bottle I brought to school and told me that I shouldn't bring it again. My parents did not assume I was on drugs because I did not have obvious signs of an addiction. Ice cubes are relatively simple and do not cause nearly the amount of effects drugs can cause. I liked the experiment because it was interesting how people would hide their bracelets and how people shared and traded ice cubes like street drugs. Drugs can be categorized as depressants, stimulants, and hallucigens. I believe ice cubes would fall under the stimulant category if given one because they make drinks cold and coldness sends a wake-up call to the brain. True drug addictions can cause permanant brain damage as well as depression, anxiety, and death. After learning the effects of drugs on the brain, I believe that if I would have any addiction, ice cubes would be the best bet.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Neurotransmitters Treating Violence?

     This week I came to terms with the complex messinging system of the body: the nervous system. The nervous system is split between the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system. (The peripheral divides down into sub-groups) but the main focus of this blog is to address neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are special chemical messages that travel accross the synapse to binding receptor sites to pass along messages to various body parts and the brain. There are many different types of neurotransmitters that affect different hormones and feelings ie. Serotonin. I stumbled accross the article http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/you-illuminated/201201/treating-violence-new-antidotes which talks about different drugs used to target neurotransmitters like GABA (an inhibitory neurotransmitter) to reduce the physical acts of violence on aggressive psyciatric patients.
   This article explains how drugs like Haldol and lithium have been around for a few decades and have been used to help lessen agressive patients but serious side effects such as loss in cognation have resulted. Now scientists are discovering which neurotransmitters to target with newly formed drugs to produce the same result in aggression, but provide a safer method to do it. We know that the neurotransmitter serotonin affects a person's mood and an undersupply can lead to depression and aggression. A medication called Zomig is used to lessen the effects of migranes. Zomig was also part of a study to see if it would be an acceptable drug to use in lessening feelings of aggression. By specifically targeting Serotonin 1B receptors, Zomig acts as an agonist and allows more Serotonin to be released causing positive feelings to arise. Zomig still needs clinical tests done to see any and all possible side effects but it can be a positive step forward in treating aggression. Psychology is universal and has many applications in medicine.