Blog Post #11

I am a very shy person at first, but once you get to know me I'm a lot more open I think that is a bit of a negative trait because I have a hard time working with people out of my group of friends and just meeting new people in general. I am nice to most people except those who really really annoy me and you really have to push to annoy me, unless you are one of my siblings. But yeah I am pretty nice and that is a positive trait because well, if you are nice to people hopefully they will be nice to you...though that is only occasionally the case now. Another positive trait is that I am rather intelligent, you now good grades and all the things that correlate with that and that is positive because I want to go to college and get good grades and succeed. I am very lazy and tend to procrastinate on almost everything and this is negative because I only put the minimal effort into projects and such usually and I could receive better grades if I would be a little less lazy and spend more time on projects and papers and other school and not school related things. Another positive thing is that when writing things like short stories and things I can be rather creative which is good because I want to major in Creative Writing and become an Author.

I am pretty sure I have a rather low level of optimism about certain things. For some things, like grades for certain tests or assignments, I can get rather optimistic about the odds, but usually I project pessimism so that I do not let myself down. But about things like relationships with people I am totally and completely pessimistic. I always feel like people don't like me. I think the reason why I am so pessimistic is mainly because I feel as if I have low expectations for myself for certain things, I won't be so disappointed when it turns out I'm right. Howver if I am wrong and someting good happens I am usually more thrilled. But I am sure that the pessimism also holds me back because I am a little less adventurous for certain thing for fear that I am going to fail or get rejected.

I think that when I am with my friends, I can be rather outgoing, but when I am around other classmates, I am way less outgoing and more quiet and shy because I feel rather uncomfortable being outgoing around people who don't even know me. When it comes to very very important projects, I usually procrastinate less and focus on my paper or project becasue I know it is worth a lot of points and that if I slack off it will really effect my grades, which are important to me.

Sometimes when I get mad at something, such as a video game battle that I can't win, I will either kick something or throw the controller, but I have to be really mad.

Blog Post #10

For the chapter 9 one thing that I learned about was overconfidence. The level of overconfidence a person has can affect some of the decisions they make. I am often overconfident about my Calculus homework and tests, because I have received no less than a 90% on all of my work so now, as pigheaded as it sound, don't really expect a grade lower than a 90% because I've been doing so well so far. Also I am overconfident about my reading abilities. I usually finsih books pretty quickly so I always think that it won't take me more than a couple days to finish a book unless its something like Pride & Prejudice or Wuthering Heights wihich both took me about two weeks to finish.

Creativity is the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable. I think that depending on what the subject is I can be creative. When it comes to writing fictional stories I often am good at coming up with ideas because i enjoy writing fiction immensly. And I need to be able to think creatively in theis field because i want to be employed as an author. The more creative I can be the more likely my future books, articles, or whatever will be published.

The most interesting think I learned about Intelligence in Chapter 10 was the little bit about stereotype threat, where, when performing a task such as testing, black people would test more poorly when given a test by whites and females would score higher when there were no male test takers. This shows that when you are in around people that make you inferior or just uncomfortable, that it can somewhat inhibit your ability to take a test, which is already a grueling enough task.

Blog Post #9

Memory is very important in defining who we are because, without it, how would we know who we are? We wouldn't be able to know our favorite music or learn any subject becasue we couldn't remember even the simplest facts like 2+2=4. We wouldn't be able to play sports let alone create them and artwork and music would most likely be nonexistant as well. We wouldn't remember what substances we are allergic to and frankly we wouldn't be able to tell whether foods and such are toxic to our bodies. Clive Wearing almost isn't a person, without memory you lack what is needeh to be yourself. He couldn't remember who his wife is or what he did the day before or who his friends are. I would probably just try and work on his memory if I was in his wife's shoes, and study things about the memory to see if I could at least somewhat revive his memory. This makes me very greatful for my memory ability because not remembering the people I care about most wouldn't be pleasant for me. Though if I was in his shoes I wouldn't know any better.

Truthfully I have never really thought about how memory works before this chapter. I always remeber things differently than my friends, and sometimes I have a hard time remeber what it was exactly that I was discussing with a person a couple hours ago. I guess I kind of still trust my memories for certain things though I probably can't trust my short term because I tend to have a terrible short term memory and short term memory is limited not only in duration but also in capacity, typically storying about secen bits of information. Both children and adults have short-term recall for roughly as many words as they can speak in 2 seconds.

One interesting concept is the retrieval of memory. It is important because if we just stored the memories they wouldn't be useful to us, we need a way to retrieve the stored memories so that these memories can be used. Well I suppose I apply retrieval of memory to my everyday life through remembering information fabout a certain subject for quizzes and tests, reading books, remembering my favorite music and such as well as what annoys my friends or not and who is my friend.

Classical Conditioning is a type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. Pavlov's Experiments are the most recognizable example for classical conditioning. A dog's automatically respond to food by salivating. They learn a conditioned response if you repeatedly ring a bell or set off some sort of sound to let them know that their food is ready. This causes them to salivate when they hear the sound. Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. An example is the Skinner box. There is a bar or key that an animal presses or pecks to release a reward of food or water, and a device that records these responses. The difference between operant and classical conditioning is that in classical an organism learns associations between events it doesn't control and with operant an organism learns associations between its behavior and resulting events. For me I can apply it to my little sister Maggie. I often have to teach her things such as to stay away from sharp objects and potty training her or teaching her to say please and thank you.

Positive reinforcement: increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli. A positive reinforcer is any stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. Example: When I receive a hug from one of my friends or a person that I like.
Negative reinforcement: increasing behaviors by stopping or reducing negative stimuli. A negative reinforce is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. Example: I get up in the morning so I can stop the very annoying beeping coming from my alarm clock because even when I hit snooze the beeping comes back ater a while.
Punishment: An event that decreases the behavior that it follows. Example: I put Maggie, my sister, in time-outs when she misbehaves. Most of the time she stops misbehaving for a while.

One interesting thing I learned about was anitsocial effects. It makes me feel a little differently about the televisions shows I let my 3 year old sister watch. She is already rather violent little girl and that was probably caused by not only the television but the boyishly roughish way my brother played with her when she was younger.