Psychological Practicum BS (Psy) 4-A PDF

Psychological Practicum BS (Psy) 4-A Continuity of perception  The law of continuation asserts that the human eye follows lines, curves, or a sequence of shapes in order to determine a relationship between design elements.  The continuation can carry through both positive and negative spac...

Psychological Practicum BS (Psy) 4-A Continuity of perception  The law of continuation asserts that the human eye follows lines, curves, or a sequence of shapes in order to determine a relationship between design elements.  The continuation can carry through both positive and negative spaces in designs. Positive space is the space in a design that is made up of the subject – the image we insert. Negative space is the rest of the space around and in between that object’s edges. When we view a design layout, our eyes tend to draw a line that connects different elements.  Find three different colors of pencil or pen or highlighter. This will help us understand continuation, and you may probably recognize it right away as something that has struck you several times before.  Using one pen, let’s draw a vertical, broken line – as straight as you can, no ruler needed. Now, let’s take a different color of pen and put a broken wavy line horizontally across it. Then, taking our third color of pen and keeping our eye on the point where they intersect, let’s put a third line, broken (or dotted), across it.  Look away for a moment; then, look back at your sketch. Do you see how, for all three lines, you follow them as they run through the point where they meet? What you don’t see are six segments (three smaller lines of two colors) meeting in the middle. We can immediately see that the items lying on any of these lines are connected.  Remember that the human eye is accustomed to marking out pathways and following them. Thankfully, there are traffic laws to keep us right on the road, but our eyes and brains tend to like following lines and routes. Continuity of memory  In the history of discourse on the subject of the self and personal identity, conflicting viewpoints have arisen. Some suggest that the self is simply the mind which thinks; others posit that the self is identifiable with one’s body; still others claim that to even conjure an idea of the self is an impossibility.  In his Essay, Locke suggests that the self is “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” and continues to define personal identity simply as “the sameness of a rational being”  Given this assertion, any change in the self reflects a change in personal identity, and any change in personal identity therefore implies that the self has changed.  Locke goes on to suggest that one’s personal identity extends only so far as ones consciousness. He offers the argument that because in order to be a self, one must be a thinking thing, and that because “consciousness always accompanies thinking” (Locke), the self with which one personally identifies extends and persists only so far as ones consciousness. The consciousness Locke refers to can be equated with memory.  Regarding memory and identity Locke more explicitly stated, if one can remember some experience, one in fact had that experience.  It is by this reasoning that Locke arrives at the most controversial portion of his theory which suggests that the converse of the previous argument is true: if one cannot remember some experience, then one did not have that experience.  Memory is therefore, according to Locke, a necessary condition of personal identity. Referring to states of interrupted consciousness or forgetfulness, Locke claims that, “in all these cases, our consciousness being interrupted, and we losing sight of our past selves, doubts are raised whether we are the same thinking thing” (Locke).  An abridged version of Locke’s memory theory of personal identity would therefore conclude that memory is both a necessary and sufficient condition of self, and, therein, personal identity. Memory changes and testimony  The formulation of new memories is sometimes called construction, and the process of bringing up old memories is called reconstruction. Yet as we retrieve our memories, we also tend to alter and modify them. A memory pulled from long-term storage into short-term memory is flexible.  New events can be added and we can change what we think we remember about past events, resulting in inaccuracies and distortions. People may not intend to distort facts, but it can happen in the process of retrieving old memories and combining them with new memories Suggestibility  When someone witnesses a crime, that person’s memory of the details of the crime is very important in catching the suspect. Because memory is so fragile, witnesses can be easily (and often accidentally) misled due to the problem of suggestibility.  Suggestibility describes the effects of misinformation from external sources that leads to the creation of false memories. Eyewitness Misidentification  Even though memory and the process of reconstruction can be fragile, police officers, prosecutors, and the courts often rely on eyewitness identification and testimony in the prosecution of criminals. However, faulty eyewitness identification and testimony can lead to wrongful convictions  How does this happen? In 1984, Jennifer Thompson, then a 22-year-old college student in North Carolina, was brutally raped at knifepoint. As she was being raped, she tried to memorize every detail of her rapist’s face and physical characteristics, vowing that if she survived, she would help get him convicted.  After the police were contacted, a composite sketch was made of the suspect, and Jennifer was shown six photos. She chose two, one of which was of Ronald Cotton. After looking at the photos for 4–5 minutes, she said, “Yeah. This is the one,” and then she added, “I think this is the guy.”  After serving 11 years in prison, DNA evidence finally demonstrated that Ronald Cotton did not commit the rape, was innocent, and had served over a decade in prison for a crime he did not commit. The Misinformation Effect  Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has conducted extensive research on memory. She has studied false memories as well as recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Loftus also developed the misinformation effect paradigm, which holds that after exposure to incorrect information, a person may misremember the original event.  According to Loftus, an eyewitness’s memory of an event is very flexible due to the misinformation effect. To test this theory, Loftus and John Palmer (1974) asked 45 U.S. college students to estimate the speed of cars using different forms of questions (Figure 2). The participants were shown films of car accidents and were asked to play the role of the eyewitness and describe what happened. They were asked, “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted) each other?” The participants estimated the speed of the cars based on the verb used. Controversies over Repressed and Recovered Memories  Other researchers have described how whole events, not just words, can be falsely recalled, even when they did not happen. The idea that memories of traumatic events could be repressed has been a theme in the field of psychology, beginning with Sigmund Freud, and the controversy surrounding the idea continues today.  Recall of false autobiographical memories is called false memory syndrome. This syndrome has received a lot of publicity, particularly as it relates to memories of events that do not have independent witnesses—often the only witnesses to the abuse are the perpetrator and the victim  On one side of the debate are those who have recovered memories of childhood abuse years after it occurred. These researchers argue that some children’s experiences have been so traumatizing and distressing that they must lock those memories away in order to lead some semblance of a normal life. They believe that repressed memories can be locked away for decades and later recalled intact through hypnosis and guided imagery techniques  On the other side, Loftus has challenged the idea that individuals can repress memories of traumatic events from childhood, including sexual abuse, and then recover those memories years later through therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis, guided visualization, and age regression.  Loftus is not saying that childhood sexual abuse doesn’t happen, but she does question whether or not those memories are accurate, and she is skeptical of the questioning process used to access these memories, given that even the slightest suggestion from the therapist can lead to misinformation effects Rumor Transmission  Rumor may be defined as an unconfirmed message passed from one person to another in face-to-face interaction that refers to an object, person, or situation rather than to an idea or theory.  The American sociologist H. Taylor Buckner (1965) notes that whether a rumor is truthful or untruthful is unimportant in studying rumor transmission. The essential features of a rumor are that it is unconfirmed at the time of transmission, and that it is passed from one person to another.  In the rumor intensity formula -a theoretical proposition advanced by the American psychologists Gordon Willard Allport (1897-1967) and Leo Joseph Postman (1918- ) - the suggestion is made that the strength of a rumor depends on its importance multiplied by the difficulty of falsifying it.  In general, rumors seem to be propagated and governed by the same processes that underlie the phenomena of assimilation (i.e., the distortion of a memory via attempts to make it similar to other already-existing memories), sharpening (i.e., the exaggeration/magnification of certain prominent details in memory/perception), and leveling (i.e., the tendency to perceive/remember material as "good gestalts" where unimportant and incon gruous details disappear gradually over time).  he technique of serial reproduction - a procedure for studying memory in a social context - has been used, also, as a laboratory model of rumor transmission. This approach -developed, described, and popularized by the American psychologist Ernest N. Henderson (1869-1967) and the English psychologist Sir Frederic C. Bartlett (1886-1969) - involves a person reading a short story and then telling it from memory to a second person who, in turn, tells it from memory to a third person, etc., in a "round-robin" procedure that is similar to the child's game of "Gossip."  When this method is employed, the phenomena of leveling, sharpening, and assimilation typically are exhibited after about only eight separate transmissions.