Medicating Kids with ADHD [5 Point Blog #13]

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2012/01/01/panic-time-were-running-out-of-adhd-drugs

I have always been on the borderline about medicating kids with mental disorders, especially ADHD. I feel strongly that way too many kids are being treated for ADHD. There are a lot of factors that go into my opinion, though. I'm not saying that ADHD does not exist; I do believe that some kids do have things like ADHD and bipolar, and they should be treated so their childhood can be happy and healthy.

 HOWEVER, I feel that a lot of times, kids are just being kids. If a child is bouncing off the walls, let them outside and let them play. If they are throwing constant tantrums and you just give in all the time, then they are just acting that way because they know it works. I feel like a lot of times, parents jump to medication way too soon. They need to try a different parenting technique, try therapy, try EVERYTHING they can. I feel so strongly that medication should be a last resort. Especially because a lot of this medication can be so dangerous in the long run.

I found a video on TED.com where a guy named Sir Ken Robinson talks about how schools are squashing creativity. About 15 minutes into the video, he tells a very interesting story about a woman who is now a super famous choreographer; however, when she was a young girl, her teacher told her mom that she may have a learning disability because she never stopped moving. It ties into Sir Robinson's speech because the woman figures out that she is a kinesthetic learner, and that type of learning is relatively frowned upon in public schools. 

The point is, this woman didn't have a disability; rather, she had an amazing talent, and if the doctor had put her on medication, she might never have discovered it. If a child truly has a disorder, then they have every right to medication and a normal life. But I strongly believe that there are MANY circumstances where the child just needs to be put in a different environment, or find a different outlet for their energy, or the parents just need to try a new technique, or maybe the child just needs therapy. But medication, whether it's a mental disorder or a physical problem, should ALWAYS be the last resort.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

My Personality [Blog #12]

The results for each of the personality tests that I took are as follows:

big 5 personality 1:
extraversion: 45%
agreeableness: 8%
conscientiousness: 38%
emotional stability: 72%
openness: 45%

big 5 personality 2:
extraversion: 64%
agreeableness [cooperation]: 20%
conscientiousness [dutifulness]: 45%
emotional stability: 73%
openness: 35%

Both of my extraversion scores were kind of in the middle, and my score for agreeableness is quite low for both [which surprises me, but also does not surprise me]. I'm on the lower side of being in the middle region for conscientiousness. I am very emotionally stable, and averagely open to new situations. The tests are pretty reliable; I got very similar scores for both. It was easy to tell which questions were testing whether I was lying, probably because I knew they were going to be there. I didn't lie on any of them, because I didn't really feel threatened by a score I wouldn't like, or one that one effect me negatively. I do feel that I answered the same question differently once or twice simply because the wording made me think differently and therefore answer differently.

MMPI:
ESTP
Extroverted (E) 62.86% Introverted (I) 37.14%
Sensing (S) 55.26% Intuitive (N) 44.74%
Thinking (T) 79.17% Feeling (F) 20.83%
Perceiving (P) 69.23% Judging (J) 30.77%

These letters don't surprise me at all. I sort of thought that my 'judging' score would be higher than my 'perceiving' score, though, because if I'm going to be honest with myself, I am typically a sort of judgmental person.

What is Intelligence? [Blog #11]

Today my five-year-old sister was trying (and failing) to rap at the dinner table. She said something like Yo yo giggity yo, Hope Kathryn is in da house yall and she's eating her din-din-dinner. And at first, my father responded with Don't quit your day job, kid. And as she went on, I think he was starting to get annoyed because her vocabulary was steadily declining, and vocabulary is something we strongly reinforce in our house. When she said Daddy, I wanna be a rapper when I grow up, he had a sort of please-just-shoot-me-now look on his face. Then my seven-year-old sister joined in with the rap about dinner, and my dad said something like The vocabulary you are using does not make you sound intelligent at all, so knock it off. When he said that, I immediately thought of that ridiculous intelligence test we took in class that had to do with 'black vocabulary' and the other one that basically had to do with drugs. And I thought about how when I was reading the first one with the 'black vocabulary' I could hear people saying the words in my head, and it was hard to listen to those voices because they just sounded so unintelligent to me. But after the test I thought to myself that anyone who knows half these words is definitely smarter than I am.

Term One Reflection [Blog #10]

In the beginning of this class, I was SO excited. I love love love psychology, and I was so eager to learn more  about it. In the beginning of class I read ahead every single day, took notes multiple times a day, I highlighted every important concept in the book. Then as the term went on, I became less excited for class and just kind of lost interest in reading the text. I think it was probably because when you do something every day, it's not really exciting anymore.

In term two I think I should definitely get back into reading every night and taking notes all of the time. I am actually going to start studying for the AP exam this weekend because the longer I study, the easier it will be to recall the information, and I don't want to have any unnecessary struggle during the test.

Studying! [Blog #9]

The last section of Chapter Eight discusses effective ways to improve memory, specifically when studying. It suggests that when you study, you space out your studying so that you keep coming back to it. It also says that you should connect the information to your own life or something else that you remember easily. It says you should allow one thought to trigger another, and use mnemonic devices. It helps to study before sleeping because that's when you encode and process and store all the information learned throughout the day. It also helps to sleep more and to test yourself.

I found a website (linked below) that gives tips on how to study effectively. The key concepts are:
1) Manage your time. In other words, don't cram.
2)Take notes in class and then REWRITE THEM at home. (this works pretty well)
3)Study from hardest subject to easiest.
4)Read the text out loud and read it more than once.
5)Do your homework. If you recall the information outside of class, you're more likely to remember it later.

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/howtostudy.html

False Memory [Blog #8]

When we talked about false memories in class, it got me thinking...how many of my memories never actually happened? I know that sometimes I remember doing things I never did, like filling out a worksheet or loading the dishwasher. But at what point does I thought I did that worksheet turn into I thought I married that man or an elaborate story that never actually happened to me?

 I wondered why memory was so malleable and why we all had these false memories. In the article linked below, I found information about the steps that you go through in order to make a false memory. Some researchers did a really interesting experiment to see if they could create false memories in the people partaking in the experiment. What intrigued me the most was how incredibly easy it was to create a false memory. It makes me wonder if I have more false memories than I thought...

http://www.unisci.com/stories/20012/0613011.htm

Classical Conditioning in The Office [Blog #7]

Sometimes it's kind of hard for me to label things correctly when talking about classical conditioning. I get the concept; that part is really simple. But naming the stimuli and responses is kind of tricky for me. I found a good example of classical conditioning from an episode of The Office where Jim conditions Dwight to want an Altoid when a certain sound comes from Jim's computer. It's a pretty funny video. Anyway, I typed the experiment below in a way that made the most sense to me.

http://www.spike.com/video-clips/0jnov0/the-office-the-jim-trains-dwight

Bad Breath = Desire for Altoid

Sound from Jim's Computer + Bad Breath = Desire for Altoid

Sound from Jim's Computer = Desire for Altoid