In this documentary we get to discover the differences between our conscious and unconscious brain. This video provides us with useful information on how and why our brains act in the way they do using multiple tests to prove each point. Our brains are made of parts, like a car, and they all are needed in order to function properly. The video names the parts and the functions of each throughout the video. They use a magician’s tricks throughout the documentary to show how our brains suppress what is not in our “spotlight” attention proving that our brain can only focus on one thing at a time. If we compare this to our textbook, it says that this is called selective attention. The marshmallow test, showed in the video, helps us understand how …show more content…
It is so interesting to watch our brains in action. The watch trick where the magician pressed the watch into multiple peoples’ skin to make them feel as if their watch was still there was probably my favorite part. They compared it to how when we stare at a light or even the sun there is an after image of the bright light. When the magician does this he is creating an illusion through a diversion. How intelligent was the person who came up with the thought of using that concept in magic? As I was watching the marshmallow test being done on the children, I started wondering what I would do if I did the test without knowing anything prior. I think they should do a test on adolescents, but instead of using marshmallows use money or something that pertains to an older audience. Researchers from past studies have claimed that people who resisted the temptation have less financial issues and an overall better life. I think it would be interesting to have a group of scientists construct a test on adults and then compare it to how their life already is to determine if that theory could be proven otherwise. In the documentary, it explains how our perception is based mostly off of our memory, but some is based off of our senses. I think our senses create our memory. For instance, when we get a certain smell that brings us back to our childhood. Our memory is made up of our senses. I think it is crazy how it is proven that we are more likely to fall for someone who is similar to us. Usually you hear the saying “opposites attract”, so it is strange to see that perspective. Facial expressions play a huge part in how we appear to others. We judge people before we even know them, so when we see others facial expressions does that make us assume how they are based off the way we interpret their faces? Our brains know more than we do, however, they can be tricked. There
All throughout life we encounter situations where an acute sense of attention and focus is essential to achieve a goal and overcome obstacles. One such instance was Walter Mischel’s Marshmallow Test, introduced in 1986. His experiment prompted young children into situations that strained their ability to use focus and attention to achieve a goal. In this case, the goal was to be able to wait 15 minutes to be able to eat two marshmallow, instead of just eating the single marshmallow in front of you. Mischel claimed that children who were able to display a “delay of gratification” showed vastly higher SAT scores later in life compared to the children who decided to eat the first marshmallow outright. However, Sarah Kliff brings up the argument
A video is put on, and in the beginning of this video your told to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball. By the time the scene is over, most of the people watching the video have a number in their head. What these people missed was the gorilla walking through as they were so focused on counting the number of passes between the white team. Would you have noticed the gorilla? According to Cathy Davidson this is called attention blindness. As said by Davidson, "Attention blindness is the key to everything we do as individuals, from how we work in groups to what we value in our classrooms, at work, and in ourselves (Davidson, 2011, pg.4)." Davidson served as the vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University helping to create the Program in Science and Information Studies and the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also holds highly distinguished chairs in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke and has written a dozen different books. By the end of the introduction Davidson poses five different questions to the general population. Davidson's questions include, "Where do our patterns of attention come from? How can what we know about attention help us change how we teach and learn? How can the science of attention alter our ideas about how we test and what we measure? How can we work better with others with different skills and expertise in order to see what we're missing in a complicated and interdependent world? How does attention change as we age, and how can understanding the science of attention actually help us along the way? (Davidson, 2011, p.19-20)." Although Davidson hits many good points in Now You See It, overall the book isn't valid. She doesn't exactly provide answers ...
Elizabeth Loftus is what we know of today as an expert in cognitive psychology. While going through school Elizabeth was very interested by the fact that human memories could change so quickly. Knowing that they could change quickly she wondered if we could make them change in anyway. This is what sparked her theory. To prove this theory, in 1974 she decided to test it out by asking multiple participates to watch a video of an accident. Directly after the video she asked them how fast they believed the c...
The marshmallow test is to see how kids might do in the further. The person that found the marshmallow test had studied it for 40 and more years. He wanted to know when kids learn self control which was also called will power. The kids were 4 to 6 years old when they did this so if they had will power if they did not eat the marshmallow if they would get one more and then it keeps going until they can not handle it and eat the marshmallow. Not a lot of kids did not eat the marshmallow but most did. After 14 to 15 years they went to find those kids.
He would do the same thing like the first experiment. He would have the child sit down at a table and place a marshmallow in front of them. He would then tell them the offer that if they waited fifteen minutes, the child would get a second marshmallow but of he or she didn’t, they would not get the second marshmallow. But what was different about this experiment was that they would encounter with an adult about art supplies, one would be unreliable which they would never bring the art supplies, and the other would reliable meaning he would bring the art supplies. The earlier encounter had a huge influence on the children's willingness to wait for the second marshmallow. Only one out of fourteen children in the unreliable condition held out for the full fifteen minutes. They must have assumed that the second marshmallow, just like the art supplies was a lie. More than half of the children who had a reliable encounter made it through the whole fifteen
81 Exploring Psychology). Inattentional blindness just goes to show that humans are usually good at focusing, but only on one thing at a time. When you’re so focused on one thing, your mind is completely blind to other events that may be occurring. An example in the article of this is when you’re busy focusing on finding a seat in a movie theater, that you never notice your friends frantically waving their arms around trying to get your attention (Simons, Chabins). By not noticing your friends, you have fallen to the inattentional blindness focus of the experiment. Inattentional blindness is like a horse that has blinders on during a race, it is a sort of tunnel vision of an individual’s
For example how do things really work? One of the examples that were used was the drawing of the school bus, how is it that kids under the age ten can get this right? A child will see the bus heading to the left because they are familiar with buses, and they can picture the bus moving, as for the adults there is a scientific term “the illusion of knowledge” The human brain is wired to provide an answer to help us feel in control, even though the answer is incorrect we still seek a answer that will make us believe that we understand what is going on. For example some college students were asked to draw a basic bike; surprisingly most of the drawings were drawn incorrect. This shows how the brain was over confident and made the impression that it understood the simple concept of drawing a bike, this proves that the brain does not know how a bicycle may function but it can fool you and make you believe that you understood the concept of a
It may seem ridiculous that we make decisions based on thoughts that we do not even know we are having, but it is certainly true. This test has really opened my eyes to the fact that although I considered myself very open-minded, even I have a slight bias in some regards. The most important lesson from this is that awareness is the key, and these biases will forever be engrained in our subconscious if we do not take the time to face them. Although I found this a tough pill to swallow, I and the people I meet henceforth will benefit from the knowledge I have gained
In the world of psychology, researchers often base their works off of previous experiments that revolutionized their fields and dramatically changed the way of thinking during their time. One example of these revolutionary experiments is Walter Mischel’s 1966 Marshmallow Test, which provided information regarding self-control amongst children exposed to delay-of-gratification. During the late 1960’s when the field of social psychology was in a state of transition between methods of experimentation, the Marshmallow Test was one of the original tests that first used independent and dependent variables. These early experiments set the premise for later experiments to be performed after the definition of experimentation was changed. With this knowledge,
When I was in the military, an important part of my job was to listen to radio communications and be aware of any other communication going on in the office. At first, this task was stressful but with time and practice my auditory attention was responding more efficiently. At that time I did not know that some researchers use a similar task called Dichotic Listening Task to conduct research and support their theories. In 1958, Donald Broadbent, an experimental psychologist, used Dichotic Listening Task and the results of his experiment led him to create the filter model of attention. Essentially, the task consists of presenting different stimuli to each ear. First, the participant’s task is to focus his attention to one ear, called the attended
Initially, Landis’ experiment to discover whether all humans are prone to project the same facial expressions that coincide with such emotions as surprise, happiness, anger, and disgust after being exposed to different situations seemed pretty harmless. In order to test his experiment, Landis brought in some of his fellow graduate students into a laboratory and drew marks on their faces, so that their facial expressions could be made more visible when presented with different stimuli. At first, Landis’ subjects were presented with a variety of strange, but relatively mild tasks that they were asked to do that included smelling ammonia, watching pornography, and putting their hand into a bucket containing frogs. While completing the tasks, Landis would take pictures of the students to take note of their reactions. The controversy, though, existed in the last task that Landis’ had his subjects complete, which involved decapitating a live rat so that the facial expression for disgust could be recorded. Unsurprisingly, many resisted. However, after being told to do so many...
I agree with the concept of selective attention because I have seen the characteristics of selective attention in myself, as well as in others. Selective attention does affect a lot of people because it is very easy to lose sight of things when you are focused on getting something done. In Essentials of Psychology, the author discusses
Posner, M. I. (1994). Attention: the mechanisms of consciousness.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 91(16), 7398-7403.
This past July, I had the pleasure of having my brain mapped during a meditation while at an intensive workshop facilitated by my mentor, Dr. Joe Dispenza. You may remember him from the film “What the Bleep Do We Know.” Dr. Jeffrey Fannin and his team of experts from the Center for Cognitive Enhancement administered the mapping. One day prior, I...
The phenomenon of ‘Divided attention’ is the idea that an individual has the ability to divide their attention between two or more tasks (multi- tasking). Focused attention models such as Broadbent’s theory, Treisman’s theory and Deutsch and Deutsch model explains how all our inputs are focused on one task at a time, however it is clear from looking at everyday life that we are able to divide our attention, successfully being able to complete more than one task at the same time.