Hero of 2010

Mystery of Memory

Science about memory is only century old. It is a small amount of time to answer to all questions, so some of them still have left unanswered, the main knowledge are only theories, and answer to the basic questions about the memory.

Today psychologist already know that short term memory keep information for only few minutes, while long-term can save any amount of information forever. Also there are different kinds of long-term memories: procedural memory – help people remember how to do various things and declarative memory which help to remember and recognize things. Also there is an “eidetic” or also known as photographic memory, when snapshot of the any event is connected with smell and color. From biological point of view the main explanation, how memory work. Brain has about 100 billion nerves cells, and every time then the new information is needed to store, a new connection between cell is made. Also scientists have found that different kind of information stores in various regions of the brain.

To sum up, there are a lot of discoveries made about memory, but scientists still have not unsolved a lot of mysteries about memory.

Richard Wiseman

Every psychologist most knows such psychologist as Watson, Skinner, Pavlov.  All they lived and worked in last century, and had made a big effort in the psychology.  But and today we have professors who are making a new important discoveries in fields of psychology. One of them is Richard Wiseman, professor of the University of Hertfordshire.

As it already been said, Richard Wiseman is the professor of the University of Hertfordshire in UK, and has gained an international reputation for research into quirky areas of psychology, including deception, humor, luck and the paranormal. He was written a three bestselling books (The Luck Factor, Quirkology, 59 Seconds), has been rewarded with Britain's first Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology, and his research were been featured on over 150 television programmers. But why he has chosen so strange fields of psychology? The answer is simple; his origin wasn’t a psychology, in the beginning he was a magician, and was a pretty good one. He then obtained a first class honours degree in Psychology from University College London and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Edinburgh. A side from previous achievements he has also a recipient of The CSICOP Public Education In Science Award in 2000 and the Joseph Lister Award For Social Science in 2002. In 2004 he was awarded a NESTA DreamTime Fellowship for his innovative work in science communication, and in 2005 served as President of the General Section of The British Association for the Advancement of Science. He even helped to create a mind-reading device for IPhone.  Now he has his own website, where you can find a lot of information of his research, one of them involved 350,000 people from 70 countries.

To sum up, psychology is still a very perspective science, with a lot unsearched fields. Richard’s Wiseman’s experiment are very good examples and there is still a lot of researchers who discovers every day something new.           

Self-assessment

ESP Vocabulary test – here I faced two main problems. First, there were a lot of new words, which were very hard to memorize or to find synonyms. Second issues, big part of definitions firstly were learned in ESP class and only then in Psychology lecture.

Writing summaries –I had my first experience in writing summaries. In school I wrote few times a descriptive summary, but it wasn’t a serious work. This term I was absorbed with this task. For me was always interesting to shorten and recombine text, and in same to left it logically correct.

Online Exercises - Every time, then we were doing this exercises, I personally was making one or two mistakes in each sort of tests.  They weren’t so complicated, just sometimes I was inattentive: I was reading too fast and didn’t understand question correctly, or was too hurry in tipping an answer.

Moodle test – here I had the most unpleasant experience.  On a bright side, they helped me to learn main point of the module. On the other hand some questions confused me. Example on module 24 the is a question: “The difficulty with trial and error is that some problems are so complicated that it would take a long time to try out every possibility; thus, trial and error is not a(an) _______________ strategy “. The correct answer is (if you haven’t done this module, skip this part) effective. It is logically correct, but apart from this, there are a lot of other possibilities: good, suitable, correct and others. But test doesn’t take it as a correct answer.

Online Listening class – I always prefer listening tasks. In first term I didn’t feel that I having problems with it. Almost every time there was two types of exercises after listening: true and false, and synonyms. First wasn’t taking a lot of time, and the second one was a problem only I didn’t know  definition of the word.

Traditional Listening in Cassettes – I hardly can see any difference from online listening class, maybe except only one, after listening we had opened questions. But as in a previous point of self-assessment, tasks weren’t difficult.

Power Point Presentation – one of the most interesting, and at that same time difficult task. It took a lot of time, to find, analyze information, make a Slide Show, prepare a text for presentation and rehearse a presentation. Also it was a very pleasant work, I could express myself through it.

Speaking Impromptus – I have problems with speaking, especially then there are more than 3 speakers. It is very stressful for me, and so I begin forgetting word, my ideas mix up. It the main field where I need to work a lot.

Short Talks – As I said earlier, I have problem with speaking, but with short talks it is easier. I have already prepared a text with a plan, main ideas. And if I calm down, I can speak very well, but it doesn’t happen often, so I need a very tough training.

P.S. It is my first experience in self-assessment and I hope I didn’t fail.

  

Dream Psychology

Researchers have been interested in dreams for the last century. Even now they carry out tests connected with dreams, trying to find an answer in such question why do we need dreams, how they affect us. Here are some latest experiments.

Robert’s Stickgold experiment was concentrated on what effect has daily routine has on the dreams. Before the sleep a volunteer was playing a Tetris and Alpine Racer. When the participant was awaked during the sleep, she told that she was seeing falling Tetris objects. It proved a connection between our daily life and dreams. Another researcher has proved another theory: if before going to sleep we try not to think about a person, there is a big chance to see him in dream. And the last experiment, which was accrued in University of Chicago had proved a theory that dreams help to remember a new material.

To sum up, these experiments helped to answer a few question about dream, but there still another’s ones which being unanswered    

Psychology of Internet

Main points

1.       1. Internet is boundless source of information, with infinite opportunities. It can help you do your homework, find information to your short talk.

2.       2. Social Networks. Upload your photo, shortly write about yourself, and you can begin finding new friends from all around the world.  For some people is easier to communicate with people looking at the picture or photo on the computer instead in actual face. They used it to escape from negative evaluation and stress of interpersonal relationship, resulting in loos of control of time spent on Internet.

3.       3. In last ten years online games, also known as MMORPG has become very popular. The main problems are that they take a lot time from players. Result from survey: non-MMORPG players spent average from 2 to 5 hours a week, while MMORPG players spent from 15 to 30 hours a week. But MMORPG also has its own pluses, for example it can improve leadership and communication skills. One of my friends is leader of 8 real players in MMORPG known as Lineage 2.

Queue Psychology

Today one of the world’s problems is queues and waiting in lines takes a lot of nerves and time. Sociologists, psychologists and economists all over the world are trying to solve this problem.

One of the oldest solutions is multi-server queues, but it is fairness, because some lines move faster than another. The researcher Jacob Hornik has discovered that perception of waiting period was one third longer than real waiting time. So, the main problem is how to make perception time queues shorter. Some businesses have come out with interesting solutions. In 1950s high-rise hotel had problems with lines for elevator. After some time administrators found a simple solution to put a large mirrors next to elevator doors, so now people were too busy smartening up. One airline discovered that people must every time wait seven minutes for the luggage, while other passengers with no luggage leave airport earlier. To solve this problem, airlines begin parking airplanes at the other end of terminal, so passengers need to make their way through a seven minute distance.

To sum up, problem of queues still exist and scientists are still trying to find better solutions.      

My Future Profession

In eleven form I have diceded that my future profession will be a psychologist. I can't explain why i choose this kind of profession, it just was like a magnet, calling me. I'm not interested in money or luxury, I just very curious what people thing, and about motives of their actions.  
Now, while I'm studying it here, in Mykolo Romerio University, it seems like a very  subject and I'm hoping that it will remain the same.