Rose Gonzalez
ONE BRAIN OR TWO?
1. Two researchers (Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga), after dividing the human brain,
conducted auditory, tactile and visual experiments on split-brain patients in order to
determine whether or not the left and right hemisphere of the brain function as two
separate brains.
2. It was unethical to perform experiments on live humans until a beneficial opportunity
arose when it was found that some people with uncontrollable epilepsy could be cured
with surgically severing the corpus callosum. The researchers then performed all kinds of
tests on these patients. Using techniques that allowed a picture of an object, a word or
lights transmitted only to the visual area, the researchers were able to feed the images or
flashing lights to the right or the left visual field of the brain individually by pinpointing
an exact visual placement of the words or lights to the patients. Another experiment
included tactile stimulation in which a device was used that allowed the patients to reach
through and touch several items without being able to see them. This testing situation went
along with the visual experiment in which an object was presented to one side of the brain
and the patients’ hands had to feel for the same object through the tactile device. Testing
auditory abilities was harder since the sensations that come with sounds are sent to both
sides of the brain, even with split-brain patients. Nevertheless, the researchers found a way
to limit the response to one of the brain hemispheres by asking the patients to identify
objects in a bag by touch with speech.
3. After conducting some visual experiments, the researchers found that in order for the splitbrain patient to say they saw something; they had to have seen it with their left brain (even
though both halves were equally skilled in visual perception) because the center for speech
is located in the left hemisphere. For the tactile experiments, the researchers found that the
patients had no problem identifying an object they had in the left or right hands even if
they could not see the object. However, they could only verbally say it if the objects were
in their right hand. When it came to their left hands holding the object, they could only
prove they knew what it was in a nonverbal, gestural way.
4. A weakness could be the criticism by some people who believe the researchers were
actually wrong and that the brain functions as a single, integrated structure while some of
the strengths of the experiments include the new found knowledge of the human brain. We
now know that the two halves of the brain have multiple specialized skills and functions.
The left hemisphere specializes in math, speech, logic, writing and right hand touch while
the right hemisphere specializes in recognizing faces, artistic activities, symbolic
reasoning, perception, spatial relationships and left hand touch.
5. Since we have a better understanding of the specialized functioning of the brain, it is
easier for victims of strokes or head injuries to get treated more efficiently. Sperry and
Gazzaniga’s curiosity and determination to answer the popular question of whether or not
the brain may actually be two separate mental functions caused many other questions and
studies to emerge that resulted in new findings; such as the theory that one’s dominant
hemisphere can lead them towards a specific interest or profession.
6.
SEE AGGRESSION…DO AGGRESSION!
1. Albert Bandura and his associates, Dorothea Ross and Sheila Ross believed that
aggression could be observed and imitated through a process called behavioral modeling.
The experiment they performed involved children, some adults and a Bobo doll (an
inflatable toy designed to bounce back when knocked over). The purpose of this
experiment, that later became famously known as ‘the Bobo Doll Experiment’, was to
expose the children to the adult models who would either act in aggressive or
nonaggressive ways towards the dolls and see if the children would then imitate the
models’ behavior.
2. The researchers were able to enlist the help of 36 boys and 36 girls, ranging in age from 3
to 6 years to participate in the experiment. The children were divided several times into
groups with same-sex models and opposite-sex models then again into situations where
the models would or wouldn’t act aggressively towards the Bobo doll. The children, after
observing the adults, were then put in another room without the models to see how they’d
react to the dolls.
3. The children who were exposed to the aggressive actions of the models imitated the exact
violent behavior they observed. These findings from the experiment support Bandura’s
behaviorist theory in which aggression is learned through observation learning. The
experiment also proved that society’s views of aggression as a masculine-typed behavior
made the influence stronger for boys who observed male models act violent.
4. A weakness of this experiment is that it could be considered unethical; having possibly
made the children think that violence is permissible and later causing future
complications with aggression. A strength could be that it was a controlled experiment
(the genders of the children or models, the times the children observed the models, the
behavior of the models etc...) making the predictions the researchers made prior to the
experiment more accurate.
5. This experiment proved to be significant since it forced the U.S culture to open their
eyes and become more conscious with the subject of television violence. It also led to
more important experiments performed by Bandura. He later thought of a new theory that
included reinforcements as a key component to children’s behavior. By testing out this
theory using reinforcements and punishments, Bandura found that children imitated the
aggressive behavior more when the models were rewarded and significantly less when
the models were punished.
6. Personal experience-My mother babysits a bright 3 year old named Melanie who my
family has known since she was about 4 months. Melanie and I are really close and we
treat each other like sisters. Once I get home from school, she usually comes to my room
and watches Dora while I do my homework. This one time I got into an argument with
my brother when she was around and she sadly witnessed it all. She saw how angry I got
and how I took my anger out by screaming into my pillow. Ever since then, whenever she
gets punished and gets mad about it, she screams into the couch pillows in the living
room. This proves that she learned to imitate my displacement of aggression.
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!
1. Elizabeth Loftus believed that memory can in fact be distorted by other information from
and after an event. Loftus’s research was performed by four main different experiments
that involved participants watching films and answering questions about what they saw.
Her research later became significant for court cases and situations when people had to
remember traumatizing or important events.
2. The first experiment consisted of showing a small group of people a clip of a car accident
that happened when a driver ran through a stop sign into oncoming traffic. The group was
then divided in half with the first group being asked how fast the car was going when it
ran the stop sign and the second was asked how fast the car was going when it turned
right. The last question asked both groups if they saw a stop sign in the car accident and
the results were significantly different. The second experiment involved a delayed
memory test in which the participants saw a clip of a class being disrupted by 8 antiwar
demonstrators. In this experiment, the participants were asked if the demonstrators were
male but the actual number of demonstrators that were in the clip was altered in the
question (to 12 for group 1 and 4 for group 2). The groups were then asked about a week
later how many demonstrators there were in the film and each group had different
answers ranging from 6 to 8. The third experiment tried to alter the participants’ memory
of a clip by inserting false presuppositions of objects that were never in the film to begin
with. The fourth experiment was quite similar to the third but instead with simply
mentioning the object to alter the person’s memory when asked the same question in the
near future.
3. The first experiment showed that in the first group, 53% of people said they saw a stop
sign while in the second group only 35% of the participants confirmed they saw one. The
second experiment proved how questions could be worded so they change the way one
remembers basic characteristics of an event. The third and fourth experiment explained
how one’s memory can be altered just by mentioning an object or situation that was never
there or never happened, making the person believe otherwise.
4. Some weaknesses to Loftus’s research are how memory is not reliable, making the results
for the research unreliable and that some people do not count for these types of theories
since they might have issues with their hippocampus. A strength however could be that
her research helps law enforcements bring justice to people falsely accused of crimes.
5. The significance of Loftus’s research is that it demonstrated how an eyewitness’s
memory of an event can be manipulated by the mere wording of a question making their
testimony and memory not as reliable as people would like to think. This significant
finding saved some innocent people who were accused of horrible crimes and helped
understand some other court cases better. More importantly, Loftus’s research proved
that one’s memory can never be completely relied upon because it will almost always be
reconstructed whether they strongly believe something happened a certain way or
experienced a traumatic event.
6. When I was 4, my family decided it was time to move to another town. I remember
feeling really upset because my best friend lived right next door to me. On my last day in
town, we spent the day baking cookies together and when it was time for me to leave, it
started to pour. However, when I bring that day up now, my mother says that it was
cloudy but it never actually rained. Maybe I thought it did because of how gloomy I felt.
HOW MORAL ARE YOU?
1. Lawrence Kohlberg, one of the most influential figures in the history of research of
the formation of morality, believed that a child must reach certain stages of
intellectual ability in order to understand and develop morality. He also believed that
these stages are universal and always occur in the same order despite any individual
environment, experience, or culture. The moral stages were as follows; the child…
1) Fears punishment by another
2) Is manipulated by rewards from another
3) Tries to live up to expectations to avoid disapproval by others
4) Recognizes and respects law and order without questioning social order
5) Develops community disrespect while continuing to obey law
6) Reaches self condemnation
2. Kohlberg’s theory of the formation of morality was experimented by giving children
of various ages 10 hypothetical moral dilemmas to prove the children’s moral
judgments progressed predictably by age (stage).
3. Findings
4. A weakness of the study was that it was experimented on mostly boys, which makes
Kohlberg’s theory (that everyone goes through these stages) not as reliable. Another
complication was that
A strength of the experiment however..