Psychology

Crash Course Psychology #12 is where I learn about legendary psychologist Albert Bandura and some basics of Social Cognitive Learning. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 12: Challenging Behaviourism At the time, Behaviourism was the dominant view of Psychology. That learning is through conditioning, association, rewards and punishments. Psychologist Albert Bandura challenged this view and focused on how learning can occur through observing and imitating another’s behaviour. Thus, proving that there’s another way, besides behaviourism, to learn. Bandura’s research moved 20th century experimental psychology from pure behaviourism in to what we now call Social Cognitive Learning. This added additional dimensions of social and cognitive aspects in to the learning process. Additionally, behaviourism’s approach had its limitations. While most, if not all animal species can learn through association, it’s learning is limited by its biology and natural tendencies. Learning through association is not learnt equally. For example, humans by nature are more taste averse, than sight or sound averse. Some animals, like birds, are sight oriented. This means that species can more easily learn associations that help them thrive or survive, and not all associations are learned equally. Learning beyond the Behaviourist’s way Learned associations get more complicated with humans, because what we learn doesn’t only influence our behaviour, it also shapes our attitudes. This is already one added layer to the human experience of learning. We refer to this as Cognition. Definition: our thoughts, perspectives, and expectations. This is an important factor in our learning process. This means that sometimes, we can think our way out of associations. Another important factor is our Social Context. As Albert Bandura figured out. A person’s social context like friends, family, culture, life stressors, etc can also contribute to associated reinforcements. Additionally, Humans are capable of Latent Learning, even unintentionally. Humans are constantly developing Cognitive Maps, or mental representations of our surroundings. Animals also exhibit both latent learning and cognitive maps. So learning is not just associating a response with a (positive or negative) consequence. There’s thinking happening too. This kind of thinking is a big part of Observational Learning. Observational Learning. Definition: Learning by observing others. This means that you don’t need direct experience to learn, you can simply observe. One way to do this is through Modelling. Definition: the process of observing and imitating a specific behaviour. Animals also exhibit observational learning. This may explain why social observation shapes behaviour, especially for those without higher level functioning, like in children. Using technology to maybe understand why Neuroimaging has shown us that even when someone else is undergoing a rewarding experience, our own reward neuron pathways light up. Many scientists believe this may be the work of a type of brain cell called Mirror Neurons. Definition: Neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. However, this neuroimaging technology and mirror neuron research is still very new and we still barely understand any of this. At the moment, if we combine these findings and Bandura’s work, it’s revealing that there is apparently a strong connection between observation, imitation, and learning. Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #12 Today, it’s almost common knowledge that humans can learn through observation and imitation. This is all thanks to legendary psychologist Albert Bandura. Until his experiments, this form of learning had not been studied in a scientific way yet. Even though Behaviourism proved one way to learn (conditioning, association, rewards, punishments), Social Cognitive Learning proved another way to learn (observation, imitation). This method of observational, social learning starts in our very early ages and our role models are powerful influences. Often times, these are our parental figures. Modelling is important in this context. This is important because either positive or negative modelling can prompt similar behaviour to those observing. Another factor to consider is that what we see, feel, and learn as children often carries over into adulthood. It is indeed important to be aware of what we are observing and recognise what we may be imitating as a result of it. Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #12 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #12. Also, do check out what else Psychology related I’ve learnt from my Psychology blog! Credits for Crash Course Psychology #12 Original Content & Media by Crash CourseContent Consumed and Paraphrased by Danniel IskandarParaphrase Proofread byParaphrase Reviewed by

Crash Course Psychology #11 is where I learn about behaviourism and the basics of how the brain learns. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 11: Ivan Pavlov Originally Pavlov aspired to be a Russian Orthodox priest, but instead he studied medical science and the digestive system for 20 years. Earning Russia’s first Nobel prize for expanding our understanding on how stomachs worked. However, he didn’t study human stomachs because procedures were cruel. He studied dog stomachs. Through these studies and observable behaviour of these dogs, he discovered a simple but important form of learning: Associative Learning. Before that, just for context, let’s define learning. For Psychologists, we can define learning as the process of acquiring, through experience, new and relatively enduring information or behaviours. This is not the only way to define and describe learning, but it’s the one we will use when discussing with the behaviourist paradigm. In the context of behaviourism, learning is acquiring survival behaviour through experience. Associative Learning Definition: When a subject (humans, animals, etc) links certain events, behaviours, or stimuli together in the process of conditioning. Associative learning is arguably the most elemental, basic form of learning a brain can do. Pavlov found that humans aren’t the only ones that learn. He found that animals can exhibit this Associative Learning. One example of this is Classical Conditioning. Classical Conditioning. Definition: A type of learning in which one learns to link two or more stimuli and anticipate events. (1) Before conditioning: A Unconditioned Stimulus naturally leads to an Unconditioned/Natural Response. Separately, there is also the Neutral Stimulus, which doesn’t lead to the Unconditioned/Natural Response. (2) During conditioning: You combine both the Unconditioned Stimulus + the Neutral Stimulus to achieve the Unconditioned/Natural Response, together repeatedly until the association between the 2 stimuli are made, in a stage called Acquisition. (3) After conditioning: The Neutral Stimulus has now become a Conditioned Stimulus, because it now causes the former Unconditioned/Natural Response to become a now Conditioned Response. We think Classical Conditioning could be an adaptive form of learning developed to help the subject survive environments. Additionally, methodologically, Classical Conditioning shows how a process like learning can be studied through direct observation of behaviour, without all the messy feelings and emotions. Along with Pavlov, B.F. Skinner and John B. Watson also preferred this and embraced Psychology as all about objective, observable behaviour. Another example of Associative Learning is Operant Conditioning. Operant Conditioning Definition: A type of learning in which behaviour is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. Basically, increasing behaviour with a good consequence (like a reward), and decreasing behaviour with a bad consequence (like a punishment). B.F. Skinner is famous for designing his ‘Skinner Box’, an operant chamber where he could observe a rat’s behaviour in a controlled environment. Here, he learned some interesting things. Positive Reinforcement. Definition: A positive reinforcer is a stimulus that, when presented after a response, strengthens the response. Operant Conditioning behaviour requires Shaping. Definition: A procedure in which the reinforcer guides a behaviour towards closer approximations of the desired behaviour. With each successful attempt towards the desired behaviour, you gain what are called Successive Approximations. You do this until the desired behaviour is fully achieved. This marks the end of Shaping, and one cycle of Operant Conditioning. In everyday life, we are all continuously reinforcing, shaping, and refining our behaviours to adapt to the world. Either intentionally or unintentionally. Both for positive reinforment, and negative reinforcement. Negative Reinforcement. Definition: A negative reinforcer is any stimulus that, when removed after a response, strengthens the response. Positive reinforcement is getting a reward after a desired behaviour. Negative reinforcement is removing an upsetting stimulus after a desired behaviour. It’s important to note that negative reinforcement is not the same as punishment. Punishment decreases a behaviour either positively (gaining something upsetting) or negatively (losing something important). While negative reinforcement removes the upsetting stimulus to increase behaviour. The many factors needed for Conditioning Conditioning is actually way more complex than it seems. There are additional layers beyond the surface. For example: Primary Reinforcers. Definition: An innately reinforcing stimulus, like one that satisfies a biological need. Conditioned Reinforcers. Definition: A stimulus that gains its reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer. Reinforcement Schedule. Definition: A pattern that defines how often a desired response will be reinforced. Extinction. Definition: When you don’t get enough continuous reinforcement, the progress towards a desired behaviour dies. Partial (Intermittent) Reinforcement. Definition: Reinforcing a response only part of the time. Results in slower acquisition, but greater resistance to extinction, compared to continuous reinforcement. Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #11 Behaviourism. Definition: A school of thought that saw Psychology as an empirically rigorous science, focused on observable behaviour and not unobservable internal mental processes. Pavlov’s work contributed to the foundation of the Behaviourist school of thought, viewing Psychology as a science with emphasis on proof. Today, we see Psychology as the science of behaviour and mental processes. Despite how we see Psychology today, Pavlov’s contributions were tremendous. His research ushered in more experimental rigour & behavioural research right up to present day. Learning, beyond the definition used to discuss the behaviourist paradigm, is what allows us to adapt to our environments and survive. It’s also worth noting that John B. Watson was in a time where toxic biogenetic determinism advanced by eugenics were growing. So his position of behaviourism can be seen as not only his idea of how people behaved, but also his rebuttal to his environment. Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #11 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made

Crash Course Psychology #10 is where I learn about Hypnosis and other altered states of consciousness. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 10: Hypnosis Hypnosis and its many variations have been around for centuries. The western version of it came about around the 18th century. This was by German physician Franz Mesmer when he tried to treat all medical problems by putting his patients in to trance like states. Here, he claimed to align their “internal magnetic forces”, which he called Animal Magnetism. Many of his patients did indeed feel better, but not because of his theory of Animal Magnetism. Instead, Mesmer unintentionally used the healing power of suggestion. Mesmer’s theory of Animal Magnetism has no scientific backing. Eventually, other physicians discredited Mesmer. Hypnosis A calm, trance like state during which you tend to have heightened concentration and focus, and in which you are typically more open to suggestion. In a previous episode, we loosely defined consciousness as our awareness of ourselves and our environment. Consciousness is at work both whenever we’re awake and asleep dreaming. So Hypnosis is a good example of an altered state of consciousness. You’re fully conscious in a clinical sense, but also not what you consider a normal waking state. Altered states of consciousness include hallucinations, and the effects of psychoactive drugs. Both of which, don’t need each other. Hypnosis has been observed in lots of studies that focused on empirical evidence and Hypnosis has been used effectively in treatments for many things. These include stress, anxiety, weight loss, and chronic pain. However, even though you are more open to suggestion when hypnotised, you do not lose control of your behaviour. This means that hypnosis can’t make you act against your will. Hypnosis is also not reliable to recall deeply buried memories. Our brains don’t store memories of literally every single thing that happens to us. We only permanently store some of them and even those tend to mutate over time. Only about 20% of us are thought to be highly hypnotisable. This simply means these people are just more open to suggestion. And they won’t do grave acts that go against their will. They’re more open to mellower suggestions like interpreting a stimuli differently. Or more receptive to thoughts and suggestions. How does Hypnosis work? So far we know that hypnosis can increase your suggestibility. However, experts still debate what exactly constitutes a hypnotic state and how to achieve it. Remember, just because we observe something, doesn’t mean we understand it. What something does and why it does it, is difficult to determine from observation alone. Here are a couple of theories explaining how Hypnosis works. One looks at hypnosis as a phenomenon of social influence. This means that hypnotised subjects may feel and act like “good hypnotic subjects” if they trust their hypnotist to direct them. Another theory suggests that hypnosis utilises dissociation, a special dual processing state of “split consciousness”. Dissociation is a sort of detachment from your surroundings. This ranges from mild spacing out, to a total loss of your sense of self. We all do some variation of this. Dissociation helps in some situations, like when it helps to not focus on our thoughts and feelings. An example of this is when hypnosis may help to ease pain by selectively not attend to that pain. Clinicians can do this by guiding patients into a relaxed, spaced out state, further guiding them with positive thoughts and suggestions. This is all voluntary by the participant. So in legitimate clinical hypnosis, clinicians ask people to dissociate, not make them dissociate. Drug Tolerance & Neuroadaptation Drugs are a common way to voluntarily enter an altered state of consciousness. There are the legal drugs, like coffee, alcohol, prescription drugs. Of course, some people develop problems, such as building tolerance to any substance, legal or illegal. Tolerance is the diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug’s effect. This is our brain chemistry adapting, in a process called neuroadaptation. Further continuing and this can lead to addiction. Psychoactive Drugs Psychoactive Drugs are chemical substances that alter your mood and perception. They go right to the brain’s synapses and mimic the functions of neurotransmitters. They also tap in to the user’s psychological component; the user’s expectations about that substance usage. However, if you expect to behave a certain way with a particular substance but was given a placebo and still behaved within expectation, that’s what’s called a Placebo Effect. However you consume psychoactive drugs, we will cover them in 3 general categories: Depressants Things like alcohol, tranquilizers, and opiates. They bring you to be more mellow, slow body functions, and suppress neural activity. (Alcohol): Historically, the world’s favourite depressant is alcohol. People drink alcohol to get parties going, but not because it stimulates them, but rather to get the effects of a disinhibitor. Disinhibitors impair your brain’s judgement areas, while reducing your self-awareness and self-control. Alcohol also disrupts memory formation. (Tranquilizers): Similar to alcohol, tranquilizers/barbiturates, all depress nervous system activity. This makes them applicable to ease anxiety or insomnia, but high doses can negatively impact memory and judgement. And really high doses, or bad interactions with other substances like alcohol, can kill you. (Opiates): Opiates, like the flower opium and it’s derivatives morphine and heroin, work similarly in depressing neural activity. It envelopes the brain in feeling no pain. However, if a brain keeps getting outside opiates, it will eventually stop producing it’s own natural pain killing neurotransmitters, endorphins. If this happens, withdrawal is extreme. Stimulants Opposite of depressants where they depress neural

Crash Course Psychology #9 is where I learn about sleeping and theories as to why we dream. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 9: What and Why we Sleep Sleep is just another state of consciousness. It is not the brain or body shutting down. Technically speaking, sleep is a periodic, natural, reversible and near total loss of consciousness. This makes it different from hibernating, being in a coma, or being under anaesthesia. We spend around 1/3 of our lives asleep and we know it’s vital for health and survival, but Science still haven’t concretely concluded why we sleep. Here are what Science thinks so far; How we Sleep While we don’t know the exact reasons why we sleep, we know a lot of how we sleep. We use the Electroencephalograph, or (EEG) machine that measures the brain’s electrical activity. It was in the early 1950’s that grad student Eugene Aserinsky used this machine on his son. There he discovered that the brain doesn’t just “power down” during sleep, as many scientists thought. Instead, he discovered the sleep stage that we now call REM. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) is a recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. It’s an interesting, not yet fully understood, period of sleep where the brain is full of activity despite it and the body being asleep. Sleep specialists use technology similar to the EEG and have shown that we experience 4 distinct stages of sleep, each defined by unique brainwave patterns. The 4 stages are; Rapid Eye Movement (REM), NREM-1, NREM-2, NREM-3. The cycle goes like this; The Sleep Cycle 0) During the day, your endocrine system keeps you awake by releasing “awake” hormones like cortisol by the Adrenal Glands. 0.5) Arrival of the night, your endocrine system releases “sleepy” hormones like melatonin by the Pineal gland. Your brain gets relaxed but still awake, a level of activity measured by EEGs as Alpha Waves. This is that feeling of sleepiness and slowed breath just before falling asleep. 1) The moment you fall asleep is clearly evident on an EEG reading because those Alpha Waves immediately transition in to waves that look obviously different. This is the irregular non-Rapid Eye Movement stage one (NREM-1) waves. It’s in this first stage that we may experience Hypnagogic Sensations, which are those weird moments of falling in your bed. 2) As you further relax, you move to NREM-2 stage sleep. This is where your brain shows bursts of rapid brain wave activity, called Sleep Spindles. Here, you’re definitely asleep. 3) Then comes NREM-3 stage sleep, indicated by the slow rolling Delta Waves. It is up to this point, in these first three stages, that you can have brief and fragmentary dreams. 4) The most important stage of sleep, full REM sleep. Most known for when your eyes move like crazy while you are asleep and this is where your vivid dreams happen. During this time, the motor cortex sends signals, but the brainstem blocks them, leaving your body essentially paralyzed except for the eyes. Finally, this whole sleep cycle repeats itself every 90 minutes or so. Sleep Deprivation Lack of sleep causes a myriad of problems, making it a killer blow to your health, mental ability, and mood. It’s a predictor for depression. It can cause weight gain because it disrupts hunger arousing and suppressing hormones. It causes immune system suppression and slows reaction time. Sleep Disorders Dreams Not known for certain, but we have some ideas: Why do we dream? Also not known for certain, but we have some ideas: The are other theories. One argues that dreams are part of our cognitive development, suggesting that dreams draw from our knowledge and understanding of the world, mimicking reality. Another theory, the neural activity model, focuses on the way REM sleep triggers neural activity, positing that dreams are merely accidental side-effects. Oneirology: The study of dreams. It’s a mix of neuroscience and psychology. Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #9 For now, scientists continue to debate the function of dreams. However, one thing we know for certain is that REM sleep is vital for us, both biologically and psychologically. Imperative to our health! Questions after Crash Course Psychology #9 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #9. Also, do check out what else Psychology related I’ve learnt from my Psychology blog! Credits for Crash Course Psychology #9 Original Content & Media by Crash CourseContent Consumed and Paraphrased by Danniel IskandarParaphrase Proofread byParaphrase Reviewed by

Crash Course Psychology #8 is where I learn a little bit about consciousness and selective attention. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 8: What is Consciousness? (At least, covered in Crash Course Psychology #8) It is difficult to describe, at least if you want to describe it sufficiently or appropriately. So for the purpose of learning and discussion, the episode chose to loosely define consciousness as our awareness of ourselves and our environment. This is what allows us to take in information from the world and organise it simultaneously. Other Interpretations American Psychologist William James interpreted consciousness as this continuously moving, shifting, and unbroken stream. Hence where the term “stream of consciousness” came from. Others interpret consciousness as the brain’s flashlight that highlights one thing and then moves on to the next thing. What they have in common, and the point is, is that the conscious experience is forever shifting. One moment it’s on this blog you’re reading, the next moment, it’s on something else. Beyond that moment to moment shifting, consciousness allows us to think big like contemplate life, plan our futures, consider what ifs, and reflect on the past. We experience consciousness so much, yet we know very little of it. States of Consciousness While we life, we go back and forth between various states of consciousness. They are waking, sleeping, and various altered states like dreaming, or physiologically sparked like a drug induced hallucination where you’re tripping, or triggered psychologically. This episode we’re looking at what it means to be awake. Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuroimaging For centuries, scientists learned everything they could about the brain through observation only. Even though a lot was learnt, it was limited. It was the only thing they could do given their technology at the time. With today’s technology, we can see not only the structures, but even the activity inside a living brain! We can see the electrical, metabolic, and magnetic signatures of a brain on a screen for interpretation. Cognitive Neuroscience This is the study of how brain activity is linked with our mental processes. This includes thinking, perception, memory, and language. Important note: Cognitive Neuroscience is one of many integrative disciplines that derive from psychology and neuroscience. All of which reflect a variety of approaches. Most importantly, all of these are relatively new sciences, only scratching the surface of a very complex set of topics. Like other kinds of neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience uses neuroimaging technologies to consider links between specific brain states and conscious experiences. There are multiple ways to scan a brain, here are some of them; Important reminder: Correlation does not equal causation. Knowing where activity is happening while performing specific mental functions can be useful to know, but it does not tell us the whole story. Since we know function is often localised in the brain and how everything psychological is simultaneously biological, it is reasonable to think that our thoughts and emotions could (at least partially) be displayed with the brain activity shown on screen. Additionally, some of this technology is very new. Plus, there isn’t a consensus on how to interpret neuroimaging findings. Dual Processing Dual Processing is the principle that information is simultaneously processed on separate conscious and non-conscious tracks. We have collected a fair amount of evidence to posit that consciousness isn’t singular. Rather, it’s two layers, and both have their own processes and functioning. This is one of the dual process models of consciousness, the idea that our conscious mind thinks explicitly, while our automatic mind simultaneously processes information in the background. All of this weighs down on how we behave. Attention According to some estimates, our senses collect around 11 million bits of information every second (how do these estimates know?). Despite this, we only consciously register around 40 at a time. How do we focus in light of this? With Selective Attention! Selective Attention It’s how we focus our conscious awareness on a particular stimulus or group of stimuli. In turn, this tunes out the rest. However, our automatic mind secretly registers that rest. Still, while we focus on something, most of the other stimuli fade away. The classic auditory example of selective attention is the cocktail party effect. Because in a party where many conversations overlap, you can still focus on the one you’re in. At the same time, when someone nearby mentions something of interest, your attention picks it up. Selective Attention is useful, but it can be dangerous as well. With every action of selective attention, you concurrently activate your Selective InAttention. You can miss even the most obvious things when your full attention is elsewhere. We call this Inattentional Blindness. Magicians understand and use this same concept for their magic tricks, but they call it Misdirection. Magicians also prey on our Change Blindness, which is the psychological phenomenon in which we fail to notice changes in our environment. This means we don’t notice what was different a moment ago versus what is there now. This can be both fun, but also dangerous. Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #8 In actuality, we are far less aware of what’s going on around us than we think we are. What’s more, this is just for when we’re awake. Imagine our awareness levels and what we fail to notice when we’re in all the other states of consciousness. Watch Crash Course Psychology #8 to see cool examples! Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #8 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #8. Also, do check out what

Crash Course Psychology #7 is where I learn all about our sense of Perception and how it’s easily influenced. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 7: Perception Previously, we’ve defined perception as the top-down way our brains organise and interpret outside stimuli and put it into context. Our minds are constantly receiving so much of that outside stimuli, especially through the eyes, and the mind has to make quick work of it. Also, our minds do all the work of perceiving, while our eyes and other senses are only feeding it raw data from those those outside stimuli. It’s important raw data, but it’s not what we actually see. What we see happens in the mind. Our senses mean little without our brain’s ability to organise and translate all that data into meaningful perceptions. Perceptual Set What heavily influences our perception, sometimes causing bias, are a myriad of things. Examples include our expectations, experiences, moods, and cultural norms. Things like context, cues received, familiarity, emotions, motivations, all can affect our perception, causing different interpretations to the same stimuli. All these fall under our Perceptual Set, the psychological factors that determine how you perceive your environment. Perceptual Set theory teaches us that what we believe makes us see what we want to see. Most of the time our perceptual set reaches reasonable conclusions, but sometimes they can mislead or even harm us. It’s the basis for many optical illusions. Form Perception Our mind has many ways to perceive all that outside stimuli into something coherent. Below are some of the ways our brain tries to do that. Figure-Ground Relationship The organisation of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground). We essentially organise what we see into two main parts: the canvas and the main focus on that canvas. This applies to non visual fields too, such as listening on a particular sound becomes the figure, while all the other noise becomes the ground. Now that the mind has distinguished the two, it has to perceive something meaningful from them. Rules of Grouping Another way our minds shuffle all the stimuli it receives. It follows rules of grouping, like organising things by; Depth Perception Depth Perception is the ability to see objects in three dimensions although images that strike the retina are two-dimensional. So even though our eyes receive light waves that get focused into 2D images for our retina, our depth perception allows us to see in 3D somehow. Depth Perception helps us estimates an object’s distance and full shape. It is at least partially innate, since babies have it too. We’re able to perceive depth using both binocular and monocular visual cues; Binocular cues Depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes. Basically we need both eyes to catch these depth cues. Monocular cues Depth cues, available to either eye alone. Helps to determine the scale and distance of an object. The cues are; Motion Perception We use motion perception to infer speed and direction of a moving object. Our brain gauges motion based partly on the idea that objects that look like they are shrinking are retreating, while objects that look like they are enlarging are approaching. This helps generally, but out brains can easily be tricked. For instance, large objects appear to move much more slowly than small ones going at the same speed. Perceptual Constancy In addition to organising what we see based on things by form, depth, and motion, our perception of the world also needs consistency. We call this constancy in Psychology. Perceptual Constancy is what allows us to continue to recognise an object regardless of viewing distance, viewing angle, the object’s motion or illumination. Even changes to its colour, size, shape, and brightness, depending on the conditions, we can still recognise the object. Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #7 In the end, your perception is about how you understand the world and your place in it, both physically and psychologically. Your sensory organs (eyes, nose, etc) pull in raw data from the world when in contact with stimuli. That raw data gets disassembled into bits of information and then reassembled in your brain to form your own model of the world. Your brain constructs your perceptions. Watch Crash Course Psychology #7 to see cool demonstrations of all the above! Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #7 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #7. Also, do check out what else Psychology related I’ve learnt from my Psychology blog! Credits for Crash Course Psychology #7 Original Content & Media by Crash CourseContent Consumed and Paraphrased by Danniel IskandarParaphrase Proofread byParaphrase Reviewed by

Crash Course Psychology #6 is where I learn about Homunculus. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 6: Homunculus In psychology, this refers to a particular sensory map of the human body, depicting the proportions in which how much we sense with them. Big hands because we touch the world primarily with hands, big mouth because of all the sensory receptors in our tongues and lips, etc. However, it’s important to note that the depiction isn’t a perfect representation of brain functions. Rather, it’s a general conceptual tool to help us better understand the relationship between our brains and our senses. Hearing Sounds moves in waves. These waves vibrate through a medium, like air. Of course different from the waves of electromagnetic radiation or light, but similarities include that the waves also can vary in shape. Short waves have high frequency and pitch, while long waves have a low frequency and pitch. Wave amplitude (height) determine their loudness, typically measured using decibles. Like how our eyes can transform light into neural messages, the same is done with sound waves with our ears! And since we have 2 of them, this helps gives us directional stereophonic hearing, which is that 3D type of hearing we couldn’t experience with just 1 ear. The hearing journey starts with sound waves entering through the outer ear. Then it gets funnelled through the ear canal into the middle ear where they cause your eardrum to vibrate. From here, the sound vibrations are amplified by our ossicle bones which comprise of the stirrup, the hammer, and the anvil. Doing so helps those very vibrations to travel to the inner ear. This is where those vibrations bump into our cochlea, causing the surrounding liquids to move, bending some of our tiny cochlear hair cells. This motion triggers neighbouring nerve cells, much like how it does with our eyes, to transform the input into electrical impulses. Except instead of light energy that our eyes got, this time its physical energy that our ears got. Those electrical impulses travel up our auditory nerves into our auditory cortex, where the brain perceives the sounds we sensed. Tasting Our taste buds have taste receptor cells that read food molecules and report back to the brain. Our tongues can detect 5 distinct tastes; sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. These tastes are not restricted to certain regions of our tongue. Sensory Interaction One sense can influence the other. For example, removing your sense of smell when biting into cold bacon makes you experience a mouthful of salt instead of bacon. It’s important for this to be moderated, as a severe case of this malfunctioning can cause unusual experiences. An example of that would be… Synesthesia The production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body. In easier words, a rare neurological condition where 2 or more senses get wrapped together. This is involuntary and is experienced without planning in a durable and consistent way. It’s important to note that Synesthesia has no perfectly agreed upon definition, it has multiple valid definitions worth looking into. Either way, we don’t know why this happens, and there are multiple theories as to why; All proving how we still haven’t fully understood the brain just yet. Smelling Unlike our sight and hearing that detect waves, our smell and taste are chemical senses. We identify smells because airborne molecules from that source travel up our noses and reach our receptor cells. They then send information to our brain’s olfactory bulb, and then travels to our primary smell cortex and parts of the limbic system responsible for emotion and memory. Unlike our 5 (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami) different taste receptors or our 2 (rods & cones) types of retinal receptors, we don’t have specific smell receptors. Instead, our odour receptors come in different combinations that when distinct combinations get activated, we identify the smells we get. However, it’s important to note that how we feel about a smell, and our perception of it, is often tangled up in our experiences with that scent. Our brains are great at storing and recognising old scents by their associations. Our sense circuitry connecting to our brain’s limbic system partly explains this. It’s right next to our Amygdala (involved in memory consolidation and emotion), & our Hippocampus (central to learning and memory). This explains why scents can strongly evoke feelings and memories. Touching Touch is extremely important, especially in our early developmental years. Arguably, the most ‘important’ sense. The lack of it can lead to higher risk of emotional, behavioural, and social problems growing up. Our sense of touch is a combination of 4 distinct skin sensations; Pressure, Warmth, Cold, Pain. Other skin sensations (wetness, itching, etc) are just variations of these basic 4 sensations. What’s more, different parts of your body feel different amounts of sensitivity to each of these 4 sensations. Our sense of touch works together with sensors in our bones, joints, and tendons to provide our personal kinesthesis: the way our body senses its own movement and positioning. We use our kinesthetic sense whenever we make physical movement. This sense allows us to detect changes in the position of our body without relying on our other senses, which is why we can still know how to move around even with our eyes, nose, and ears closed. The partner sense to our kinesthesis sense is our vestibular sense; which monitors our head’s position and our balance. Earlier we described the cochlea in our inner ear. We have our pretzel shaped semicircular canals next to that. We also

Crash Course Psychology #5 is where I learn some of the science behind human vision. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 5: Sensing vs Perceiving Prosopagnosia A neurological disorder that impairs a person’s ability to perceive or recognise faces, also known as face blindness. The sense of vision is intact, the problem is the perception, at least when it comes to recognising faces. Prosopagnosia is a great example of how sensing and perceiving are connected, but different. Sensation The bottom-up process by which our senses (vision, hearing, etc) receive and relay outside stimuli. Perception The top-down way our brains organise and interpret that information and put it into context. Sensory Thresholds We are constantly bombarded with stimuli, but we can only be aware of what our senses can pick up. For example, we can see what we can see, but we cannot see ultraviolet light (even though they are there!). There’s a lot to sense and every animal has different limitations, allowing us all to sense different things. We also have our… Absolute Threshold of Sensation The minimum stimulation needed to register a particular stimulus 50% of the time. Why do our brains do that? Psychologists don’t know yet. Detecting stimuli isn’t just about the stimuli’s strength alone, it’s also about your psychological state. Things like your alertness and expectations in that moment. This has to do with… Signal Detection Theory A model for predicting how and when a person will detect weak stimuli, partly based on context. Conversely, there is… Sensory Adaptation This is where your senses will adjust if you are constantly experiencing stimulation. Difference Threshold This is referring to our ability to detect the difference between two stimuli. The point in which one can tell the difference is the difference threshold. Part of what helps to explain this is Weber’s Law, where our perception of the stimulus change isn’t as much as the actual stimulus change. Vision How it works is a series of long but lightning quick sequence of events. Light bounces off of everything and into your eyes. The eyes then take in all that varied energy and converts that into neural messages that our brains processes and organises into what you see. How we do the eyes transform light waves into meaningful information? Let’s start with the light itself. Lightwaves What we humans see is only but a fraction of the entirety of the electromagnetic radiation. Light has many characteristics that determine how we sense it, but for now, we’ll understand light as travelling as waves. The waves’ wavelength and frequency determine their hue, while their amplitude determine their intensity. These light waves hit our lens which then focuses the light rays into specific images. Those specific images are then projected onto the retina, which contains all the receptor cells that begin sensing that visual information. Our retinas don’t receive a full image. It’s more like a bunch of pixel points of light energy that those aforementioned receptor cells then translate into neural impulses which then travel to the brain. Rods & Cones That’s what those aforementioned receptor cells are called. The rods detect gray scale and are used in our peripheral vision. The cones detect fine detail and color, and function only in well lit conditions. Theories as to why Humans are good at this Human eyes’s difference threshold for colours is exceptional. There is still ongoing research as to why it’s so good or how exactly our colour vision works. So far 2 theories help explain some of what we know. Visual Cortex When rods and cones get stimulated, they activate the bipolar cells behind them, which then activate the neighbouring ganglion cells. The long axon tails of these ganglion cells braid together to form the ropy optic nerve which carries the neural impulses from the eyeball to the brain. All this visual information goes through a series of complex levels, from those optic nerves to the thalamus and then the brain’s visual cortex. This visual cortex sits at the back of the brain, in the occipital lobe. Just like in the previous post, the right cortex processes input from the left eye, and vice versa. Feature Detectors This visual cortex has specialised nerve cells called Feature Detectors that respond to specific features like shapes, angles, and movements. Since different nerve cells respond to different specific features, this means that different parts of your visual cortex are responsible for identifying different aspects of things. For example, the brain’s object perception occurs in a different place from its face perception. Also, some cells in a region may respond to just one type of stimulus, such as posture, movement, or facial expression. All this while other clusters of cells weave all of that separate information together. What’s more, this analysis is all done instantly in order to assess a situation. This is called… Parallell Processing The ability to process and analyse many separate aspects of the situation at once. In the example of visual processing, this means that the brain works simultaneously on making sense of form, depth, motion, and colour. Questions after Crash Course Psychology #5 Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #5 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #5. Also, do check out what else Psychology related I’ve learnt from my Psychology blog! Credits for Crash Course Psychology #5 Original Content & Media by Crash CourseContent Consumed and Paraphrased by Danniel IskandarParaphrase Proofread byParaphrase Reviewed by

Crash Course Psychology #4 is introductory to the brain and how its localised parts are connected to the mind. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 4: How it started with phrenology, a cult pseudoscience It started in the early 1800’s by a German physician named Franz Joseph Gall, where he believed that a person’s personality was linked to their skull morphology. He would feel the bumps and ridges of one’s head to indicate aspects of their character. He’s the first known phrenologist. Phrenology is the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities. This became practice for decades and Gall became a celebrity, until phrenology became dismissed as a cult pseudoscience because those bumps and ridges on your head actually tell us nothing about the mind. However, despite that, Gall led to an important discovery. His lasting and correct proposition was that different parts of the brain control specific aspects of our behaviour. In the previous episode, it was emphasised that everything biological is also psychological. Well, on top of the neurotransmitters and hormones, a lot of it is also because localised parts of the brain have specific functions. This is the link between the brain and the mind, which leads to the question: How do our brains’ functions tie to the behaviour of the mind? Biology recap (Crash Course Psychology #4 & Crash Course Biology #26) The Central Nervous System (CNS) is the command centre, which makes your bodies big decisions. If tampered, can cause problems. There’s also the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), which has sensory neurons to collect data when activated by external stimuli, which is then reported back to the CNS. Both the CNS and PNS have sensor and motor neurons. This was only briefly talked about in this Psychology episode, and can be studied more comprehensively at The Nervous System – Crash Course Biology #26. Essentially, the CNS is responsible for analysing and interpreting all the data that your PNS collects and sends to the CNS. Once the CNS makes a decision based on the data provided by the PNS, it sends a signal back to the PNS to execute an order. This is done with motor neurons. These orders range from conscious muscle movement to the automatic functioning of organs. This was a quick reminder of how biologically rooted our psychology is. To further grasp how physical the roots of our minds are, let’s look at the Phineas Gage case study. The Phineas Gage case study In 1848, a metal rod pierced through the left cheek and out the top of Phineas Gage’s head. This obviously caused brain damage, but it was focused to a specific region. Due to his survival and staying almost the same afterwards, he gained recognition. I say “almost” because apparently Phineas’s personality had changed after the incident. Accounts claimed that he was soft spoken prior, but became surly and vulgar after. Yet, all his other abilities remained the same. His memories were intact, could walk the same, etc. Phineas is a great, though extreme, example of how function is localised in the brain. How physical/biological factors can be reflected in psychological ways. However, there is very little data on how Phineas was actually like before the accident to confirm his personality change. The same goes for after the event. Yes, the majority of accounts were after the incident, but they were not a lot in amount. They were also months after the event. Moreover, they conflicted. Which means it’s entirely possible Phineas’ personality had never changed after the incident. Phineas is also a great example of how individual case studies are not exemplarily useful. Intro to psychology textbooks often paint the over simplified version of Phineas so that we get a clear picture that messing with the brain means messing with the mind. But it is of course, much more complicated than that. Since Phineas was a real person, he deserves the nuance as such. Context of the brain We may have heard that we only use 10% of our brain capacity, but that is actually a myth. Brain scans show that nearly every region of the brain lights up during even simple tasks like walking and talking. Not only that, but the brain itself requires 20% of all the body’s energy. So it would make little evolutionary sense to throw much energy away at something that’s only minimally active. As animals, some of capabilities are thanks to our brain structures. Less complex animals have simpler brains to do basic functioning and survival such as rest, breathe, eat. More complex animals like many mammals have brains that can do that and more, like feel, remember, reason, and predict. These brains aren’t entirely new brains, they are new brain systems built upon old brain systems. Those old brain systems, sometimes called the “old brain”, still performs for us now, even with the new brain systems around. As much as they did for our ancestors, too. Now we know how hard working our brains really are. Brain Structure (Old Brain) Here’s a look at our brain structures, starting with the “old brain”; Basically the old brain systems keep our body’s basic functions running smoothly. This is the stuff any animal might need. However, this is where it stops for reptiles. Brain Structure (The Limbic System) For higher functions! As mentioned previously, used by more complex animals to do extra things like feel, remember, reason, and predict. We call this the Limbic System. We can interpret this as the border region between the “old brain” and the “new brain”. Brain Structure (New Brain) Above the

Crash Course Psychology #3 is the first step looking into how everything psychological is biological. For context, Crash Course inspired me to learn the basics of psychology, so I’ve made it my mission to watch the entire Crash Course Psychology playlist and paraphrase each episode in my own words. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the Crash Course team, so many thanks to them! To showcase what I learnt, here is my personal paraphrase of episode 3: Introduction: Brain Chemicals We often discuss psychology as a process separate from our bodies. In actuality, our mental activities are spurred by our biological condition. Psychologists like to say, everything psychological is biological. One way to understand how your mind works is to look at how the chemistry of your body influences how you think, sense, and feel about the world around you. (For example, the brain releases chemicals in response to getting startled, and that influences your next course of acton). To do that, we look at the system with the smallest parts; the neurons (nerve cells). The brain alone has billions of neurons, and to understand why we do what we do, we first have to understand how these work. Neurons (Nerve cells) Neurons (nerve cells) are the building blocks that comprise our nervous systems. Made like other cells, but added with electrochemical stuff that lets them transmit messages to each other. We have several different types of neurons, but they all have the same basic parts; Neurons transmit signals either when stimulated by sensory input or triggered by neighbouring neurons. How they transmit signals The dendrites pick up the signal first, which is the listening. This activates the neuron’s action potential / firing impulse, that shoots an electrical charge down the axon’s terminal branches, which do the talking to the neighbouring neurons. The contact points between neurons are called synapses. Those bushy dendrites are covered in synapses, and they almost but don’t quite touch the neighbouring axon. That microscopic cleft is called the synaptic gap. When the action potential / firing impulse runs down the end of an axon, it activates the chemical messengers to jump that tiny synaptic gap and land on the receptor sites of the receiving neuron. We call these chemical messengers neurotransmitters. Though they slide right in to their intended receptors, they don’t stay bonded to the receiving neuron. After exciting or inhibiting the receiving neuron’s trigger, they immediately get reabsorbed by their original neuron, in a process called reuptake. So neurons communicate with neurotransmitters which enable us to pretty much do everything we do. We have over 100 different kinds of these neurotransmitters, some are excitatory and others are inhibitory. All of which are good reminders that everything psychological is also biological. Crash Course Psychology #3 terminology related to neurons and their definitions Endocrine System & Hormones So while the nervous and endocrine systems are similar in that they both produce chemicals destined to hit up certain receptors, they both however operate at very different speeds. The analogy is that the nervous system will send you a text, while the endocrine system sends you a letter by mail. However, faster isn’t always better, and your body will remember that letter longer than the text. Hormones linger, which help explain why it takes longer for the body to cool down after a moment of severe fright or anger. The endocrine system has a few important hormone brewing glands. Conclusion of Crash Course Psychology #3 Danniel’s thoughts on Crash Course Psychology #3 Enjoyed this learning of Psychology? Test your knowledge against these quick custom Kahoot! quizzes I’ve made based on the episode above: This is the easy mode and this is the hard mode for Crash Course Psychology #3. Also, do check out what else Psychology related I’ve learnt from my Psychology blog! Credits for Crash Course Psychology #3 Original Content & Media by Crash CourseContent Consumed and Paraphrased by Danniel IskandarParaphrase Proofread byParaphrase Reviewed by