INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
What is psychology? How is it connected to biology? What’s the origin of the
word? Read the definitions and try to explain in your own words. Psycho- is a learned
borrowing from Greek meaning breath, soul, spirit, and mind. In Greek mythology
Psyche (soul or butterfly) was the human bride of Eros, the god of love. Before she is
allowed to marry Eros she is forced to undergo many difficult ordeals. Apuleius tells the
story of Eros and Psyche in his Metamorphoses. Psychology was considered a study of
the soul.
Psychology is 1) the science of the mind or of mental states and processes: the
science of human nature; 2) the science of human and animal behavior; 3) the sum of
the mental states and processes of the person or of a number of persons, especially as
determining action (e.g. the psychology of a soldier at the battle). Literally, the word
psychology means the science of the mind. Most contemporary psychologists would
define psychology as the science of the behavior of organisms. By behavior they mean
activities and processes that can be observed objectively — both the isolated reactions
of muscles, glands and other parts of the organisms and the organized, goal-directed
patterns of reaction that characterize the organism as a whole. Psychologists also
interpret behavior to include internal processes — thinking, emotional reactions and the
like — which one person cannot observe directly in another but which can be inferred
from observation of external behavior.
Behavior is determined by a complex of factors that are partly biological, partly
anthropological, partly sociological, and partly psychological. Therefore, psychology is
closely connected to both the biological and the social sciences. Psychologists study
basic functions such as learning, memory, language, thinking,
emotions, and motives. They investigate development through-out mental and physical
health care. They also treat people who are emotionally distressed. So, it is very
important for them to know all about social influences on individuals, the role of the
brain and the nervous system in such functions as memory, language, sleep, attention,
movement, perception, hunger, anger and joy.
Although psychology has been concerned primarily with the behavior of human
individuals and groups, it has also dealt with the study of animal behavior. Although
great care is always necessary in interpreting human behavior in the light of findings
from animal experiments, animal psychology has greatly contributed to study of human
beings.
1. What is physiology? How is it connected to psychology? Physiology is the study
of the parts and systems of the human body and how they work. You can’t learn about
the inner world of a person without having an idea about the human physiology.
Physiological psychology is concerned with the way the body functions and the
effect of its activity on behavior.
2. What is psychoanalysis? What do you know about it?
Read the definitions.
Psychoanalysis is 1) a systematic structure of theories concerning the relations of
conscious and unconscious psychological processes; 2) a technical procedure of
investigating unconscious mental processes and for treating psychoneuroses.
3. What four types of temperament do you know? In medieval physiology,
temperament is any of the four conditions of body and mind: the sanguine, phlegmatic,
choleric (or bilious), and melancholic, each of them attributed to an excess of one of the
four corresponding humors (body liquids). It is one’s customary frame of mind or
natural disposition, nature that is excitable, moody, capricious, volatile, etc.
Sanguine (from sangui- — blood), having the warm passionate, cheerful
temperament and the healthy, ruddy complexion of one in whom the blood is the
predominant humor of the four.
The person is usually heavy, cheerful, confident, red-faced, jolly, generous, selfindulgent optimistic and hopeful sort of person.
Melancholy — black bile in medieval physiology considered to be one of the four
humors to come from the spleen or kidney, and to cause gloominess, irritability or
depression. Melancholy is a gloomy, pessimistic, quiet and brooding person.
Choleric is having choler as the predominant humor, hence of bilious temperament.
In medieval times choler (bile) was considered one of the four humors of the body and
the source of anger and irritability. Choleric is a quick-tempered, excitable, aggressive
and energetic person, usually thin and wiry.
Phlegmatic — a slow, lethargic, apathetic, hard to rouse to action, sluggish, dull
kind of person. Phlegm is a fluid, clammy humor of the body which was believed to
cause sluggishness or dullness.
What is Gestalt psychology? The German word Gestalt means configuration or
pattern. Gestalt psychologists argue that an organism will see an object as a whole. This
is because the brain imposes patterns on the raw material of perception. The patterns
tend to make complete forms, and incomplete forms are completed by the organizing
activity of the brain. When problem solving it is argued that individuals receive
“insights” into the total situation: the total pattern suddenly becomes obvious. Gestalt
school of psychology that interprets phenomena as organized wholes rather than as
aggregates of distinct parts, maintaining that the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. The term Gestalt was coined by the philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels in 1890,
to denote experiences that require more than the basic sensory capacities to
comprehend. Gestalt psychologists suggest that the events in the brain bear a structural
correspondence to psychological events; indeed, it has been shown that steady electric
currents in the brain correspond to structured perceptual events. The Gestalt school has
made substantial contributions to the study of learning, recall, and the nature of
associations, as well as important contributions to personality and social psychology. In
therapy, the analyst encourages clients to release their emotions, and to recognize these
emotions for what they are. Intelligence, in psychology, the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly,
storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing,
and adjusting to new situations. Alfred Binet, the French psychologist, defined
intelligence as the totality of mental processes involved in adapting to the environment.
Although there remains a strong tendency to view intelligence as a purely intellectual or
cognitive function, considerable evidence suggests that intelligence has many facets.
Experimental psychology describes an approach to psychology that treats it as one of
the natural sciences, and therefore assumes that it is susceptible to the experimental
method.
Many experimental psychologists have gone further, and have assumed that
all methods of investigation other than experimentation are suspect. In particular,
experimental psychologists have been inclined to discount the case study and interview
methods as they have been used in clinical and developmental psychology. Wilhelm
Wundt was one of the first experimental psychologists and is credited with starting the
first psychology laboratory. Introspection, a process used by Wundt in his laboratory, is
a way of examining one’s own conscious experience through self-observation of one’s
thoughts, feelings and sensations. Structuralism, the name of Wundt’s approach to
experimental psychology is a system of thought that tried to analyze sensations and
subjective experience into its basic building blocks. Functionalism, another
psychological system of thought, focuses on how mental activity enables people to
function and survive. William James and other supporters of the functionalist movement
were opposed to structuralism because they left consciousness could not be broken
down into components as if it were a physical structure. A key area of debate in
psychology has been the extent to which our capacities are learnt versus the extent to
which they are innate (this issue is closely related to the more general nature-nurture
debate in biology). Behaviorism is a system of thought which holds that only strictly
observable phenomena are worthy of psychological study. John B. Watson is considered
to be the “father” of behaviorism. The behaviorism of B. F. Skinner viewed behavior as
being learnt through a process of conditioning — the association of stimuli with
responses. The influence of behaviorism took a blow with the work of the psycholinguist Noam Chomsky on language acquisition. Chomsky argued that the stimulus
available to an infant was simply not rich enough to allow language-learning through
Skinnerian conditioning, and that the human brain must have an innate capacity for, or
predisposition towards language learning. This idea that the brain has a specialized
Language Acquisition Device in many ways laid the foundation for the field now
known as cognitive psychology, which tends to view the mind in terms of more-or-less
specialized functions or processes. Humanistic psychology emerged in the 1950s in
reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It stresses a phenomenological view
of human experience and seeks to understand human beings and their behavior by
conducting qualitative research. Among sciences humanistic psychology focuses on
basic and applied science. Humanistic psychology is concerned with the subjective
experience of human beings and views using quantitative methods in the study of the
human mind and behavior as misguided and instead stresses qualitative research. It
emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It stresses a
phenomenological view of human experience and seeks to understand human beings,
rather than conventional statistical one. There is a branch of psychology which uses
methods to investigate the subjective experience of human beings; clinical psychology.
Clinical psychology is concerned with helping people who have mental disorders. It is
the practice of outpatient mental health treatment. Examples of clinical psychology
include psychotherapy, art therapy, and cognitive therapy. Prior to the 20th century,
there was little, if any, help available for sufferers of mental health problems. In the
early 20th century, Sigmund Freud developed a mental health treatment known as
psychoanalysis. In order to practise psychoanalysis, a great deal of training was required
of the practitioner. Consequently, the cost of psychoanalysis was also high. Unlike
clinical psychology, counseling psychology is generally a joint-venture of both
psychology departments and departments of education. Counseling psychologists focus
primarily on helping people overcome or better manage pathologies as well as transcend
perceived limitations. Developmental psychology is the study of human growth and
changes in behavior from conception to death. Jean Piaget was one of the most famous
and influential researchers in developmental psychology. The nature-nurture issue deals
with whether human growth results from interaction with others and with the physical
world (nurture) or if the key to development is heredity (nature). Jean Piaget, as well as
most developmental psychologists today, believed that changes in behavior result from
a combination of nurture and nature. Psychometric psychology is the psychological
specialty involved with developing, administering, and analyzing tests. James McKeen
Cattell, an assistant to Wundt, was the first sychologist to suggest the term “mental
test.” He began using tests to assess how humans used mental ability to solve problems
and survive. Psychiatry is the medical field specializing in mental health issues, thereby
overlapping with clinical psychology. Clinical and counseling psychologists often work
in cooperation with psychiatrists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and “lay”
counselors. Psychiatrists are often involved in providing psychopharmacological care
including antidepressant, anti-anxiety, antipsychotic and mood-stabilizing medication.
Services aimed at mental or behavioral problems are also often provided by traditional
healers and religious counselors. Applied psychology is a more general term, referring
to solving problems and answering questions that could help solve problems faced by
people and society. For example, researching how animals won’t eat novel foods after
getting ill, even if the food didn’t cause the illness, has helped explain why cancer
patients have difficulty eating after chemotherapy. To deal with the problems in
psychology you first have to know a certain professional vocabulary that would help
you in reading comprehension and expressions of your thoughts. The main purpose of
this book is to help you in this mission Psychology today. Human consciousness is in a
place of self-awareness and creating balance as it moves out of the dark ages back to
higher frequency of light and thought. To understand how the psyche works, one must
understand its nature based on duality, as it seeks to create balance in a world of
challenges. We live in a time of recognition that we have issues that we are trying to
heal and overcome which has held us back. We combine physical and metaphysical
healing to create a union of body, mind and soul. As a bi-polar experiment in time and
emotions, the souls have met challenges at every turn, presently facing their issues and
seeking help from professionals, books, healers, other.
1) What is psychology? How is it connected to biology?
2) What’s the origin of the word?
3) What is physiology? How is it connected to psychology?
4) Read the definition of psychology as a science and try to explain it in your own
words.
5) Who are the scientists connected with psychology in their research?
1) What is psychoanalysis? What do you know about it?
a) It is a systematic structure of theories concerning the relations of conscious and
unconscious psychological processes.
b) It is a technical procedure of investigating unconscious mental processes and for
treating psychoneuroses.
2) What four types of temperament do you know? Describe each type. Explain on what
basis they are differentiated.
3) What is Gestalt psychology? What does the German word Gestalt mean?
Study the questions.
1) The person given credit for starting psychology as a separate discipline is ... .
a) Wilhelm Wundt
c) John Watson
b) Sigmund Freud
d) William McDougall
2) The system which focuses on how mental activity enables people to function and
survive is called ... .
a) structuralism
c) behaviorism
b) functionalism
d) gestaltism
3) The area of psychology which would concern itself with studying the effects of aging
on various psychological processes is ... .
a) clinical psychology
c) developmental psychology
b) social psychology
d) psychometric psychology
14 Introduction to psychology
4) John B. Watson is associated with which psychological system?
a) structuralism
c) behaviorism
b) functionalism
d) gestaltism
5) The psychologist credited with developing one of the first useful tests to assess
human intelligence is ... .
a) Jean Piaget
c) Floyd Allport
b) Alfred Binet
d) James McKeen Cattell
6) A way of examining one’s own conscious experience through self-observation of
one’s thoughts, feelings and sensations is ... .
a) introspection
c) functionalism
b) structuralism
d) behaviorism
7) A system of thought that tried to analyze sensations and subjective experience into its
basic building blocks is ... .
a) introspection
c) functionalism
b) structuralism
d) behaviorism
THE HUMAN BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS
(A review of basic grammatical structures:
Past Tenses, question types)
Skim the text and answer the question: What parts of human brain do you know?
DETAIL QUESTIONS
1. Look at the diagram and answer the questions.
1) Which areas of the brain might a person use to compose music? To throw a ball?
To paint a picture?
2) If you feel cold and want to put on a sweater, which area of the brain is probably
active?
3) It has been observed that little boys and little girls play, speak, and act differently
from each other. Do you think these differences might be caused by differences in
the brain?
4) What part of the brain is called “the post office” and why?
5) How do we call the part of the brain that is responsible for thought and planning?
1) – What is the function of different parts of the brain?
2) – How are human brains different from animal brains?
3) – Why do some people seem to be more creative than other?
4) – What is difference between the left and right side of the brain?
5) – Are the happiest memories of most people’s lives from their childhood?
6) – Is it possible to have a memory of something that never happened?
7) – How can we improve our memories?
8) – Are teenagers’ brains different from adults’ brains?
9) – How do men and women communicate with each other?
10) – How does the brain influence a person’s ability with music?
11) - Can the brain cause people to get sick or become well?
The human brain – new discoveries
B.
C.
D.
E.
A. Parts of the brain. Most of us learn basic facts about the human
brain in our middle or high school biology classes. We study the
subcortex, the “old brain”, which is found in the brains of most
animals and is responsible for basic functions such as breathing,
eating, drinking, and sleeping. We learn about the neocortex, the
“new brain”, which is unique to humans and is where complex
brain activity takes place. We find that the cerebrum, which is
responsible for all active thought, is divided into two parts, or
hemispheres. The left hemisphere, generally, manages the right
side of the body; it is responsible for logical thinking. The right
hemisphere manages the left side of the body; this hemisphere
controls emotional, creative, and artistic functions.
And we learn that the corpus callosum is the “bridge” that connects the two
hemispheres. Memorizing the names for parts of the brain might not seem thrilling to
many students, but new discoveries in brain function are exciting. Recent research is
shedding light on creativity, memory, maturity, gender, and the relationship between
mind and body.
Left brain / Right brain: creativity. Psychologists agree that most of us have creative
ability that is greater than what we use in daily life. In other words, we can be more
creative than we realize! The problem is that we use mainly one hemisphere of our
brain – the left. From childhood, in school, we’re taught reading, writing, and
mathematics; we are exposed to very little music or art. Therefore, many of us might
not “exercise” our right hemisphere much, except through dreams, symbols, and
those wonderful insights in which we suddenly find the answer to a problem that has
been bothering us – and do so without the need for logic. Can we be taught to use
our right hemisphere more? Many experts believe so. Classes at some schools and
books claim to help people to “silence” the left hemisphere and give the right one a
chance to work.
Memory – true or false? In the 1980s in the United States, there were many cases of
adults who suddenly remembered, with the help of a psychologist, things that had
happened to them in childhood. These memories had been repressed – held back –
for many years. Some of these newly discovered memories have sent people to
prison. As people remember crimes (such as murder or rape) that they saw or
experienced as children, the police have re-opened and investigated old criminal
cases. In fact, over 700 cases have been filed that are based on these repressed
memories.
However, studies in the 1990s suggested that many of these might be false
memories. At a 1994 conference at Harvard Medical School, neuroscientists
discussed how memory is belived to work. It is known that small pieces of memory
(sound, sight, feeling, and so on) are kept in different parts of the brain; in the limbic
system, in the middle of the brain, pulls these pieces together into one complete
memory. But it’s certain that people can “remember” things that have never
happened. Most frightening is that there may be no structural difference in the brain
between a false memory and a true one.
F. The teen brain. Parents of teenagers have always known that there is something,
well, different about the teen years. Some parents claim that their teenage children
belong to a different species. Until recently, neuroscience did not support this belief.
The traditional belief was that by the age of 8 to 12 the brain was completely mature.
However, very recent studies provide evidence that the brain of teenager differs from
that of both children and adults. According to the National Institute of Mental
Health, maturation does not stop at age 10, but continues into the teen years and
beyond. In fact, scientists found that the corpus callosum continues growing into
your 20s. Because, it is believed, the corpus callosum is involved in self- awareness
and intelligence, the new studies imply that teens may not be as fully self- aware or
as intelligent as they will be later. Other researchers have found that teenagers are
not able (as adults are) to read emotions on people’s faces.
G. Differences in male and female brains. Watch a group of children as they play.
You’ll probably notice that the boys and girls play differently, speak differently, and
are interested in different things. When they grow into men and women, the
differences do not disappear. Many scientists are now studying the origins of these
gender differences. Some are searching for an explanation in the human brain. Some
of their findings are interesting. For example, they’ve found that more men than
women are left-handed; this reflects the dominance of the brain’s right hemisphere.
By contrast, more women listen equally with both ears while men listen mainly with
the right ear. Men are better at reading a map without having to rotate it. Women are
better at reading the emotions of people in photographs.
H. One place to look for an explanation of gender differences is in the hypothalamus,
just above the brain stem. This controls anger, thirst, hunger, and sexual desire. One
recent study shows that there is a region in the hypothalamus that is larger in
heterosexual men than it is in women and homosexual men. Another area of study is
the corpus callosum, thick group of nerves that allows the right and left hemispheres
of the brain to communicate with each other. The corpus callosum is larger in
women than in men. This might explain the mystery of “female intuition”, which is
supposed to give women greater ability to “read” and understand emotional clues.
I. Wired for music? It might seem logical to believe that our appreciation of music is
learned- that nurture, not nature, determines this. However, it is now clear that nature
also plays a role; recent studies indicate that the human brain is “wired” for music.
At the University of Toronto, Canada, psychologists have been studying infants age
6-9 months. Surprisingly, these babies smile when researchers play consonant
(pleasant) music, but they appear to hate dissonant music. As adults, most people can
remember only a few poems or pieces of prose but have the capacity to remember at
least dozens of musical tunes and to recognize hundreds more. Even more
interesting, perhaps, is the possibility that music might actually improve some forms
of intelligence. A 1999 study proves that music can help children do better at math –
not, oddly, other subjects, just math. It is probably not surprising that much of the
brain activity that involves music takes place in the temporal lobes. It may be more
surprising to learn that the corpus callosum might also be involved. Researchers at
Medical Center in Boston have discovered that the front part of the corpus callosum
is actually langer in musicians than in non-musicians.
J. The mystery of the mind-body relationship. There is more and more evidence every
day to prove that our minds and bodies are closely connected. Negative emotions,
such as loneliness, depression, and helplessness, are believed to cause a higher rate
of sickness and death. Similarly, it’s possible that positive thinking can help people
remain in good physical health or become well faster after an illness. Although
some doctors are doubtful about this, most accept the success of new therapies (e.g.,
relaxation and meditation) that help people with problems such as ulcers, high blood
pressure, insomnia (sleepleness), and migraine headaches.
1) - Different parts of the brain control different activities or parts of the body.
2) - Most people probably don’t use all their creative ability.
3) - Newly discovered memories from childhood are false memories.
4) - The human brain is mature by the age of twelve.
5) - There is no real difference between the brains of males and those of females.
6) - Music appears to be the result of education alone.
7) - Emotions may affect people’s physical health.
The mental edge
The brain is the key to peak performance, in sports and life. There is a new
emphasis in the sport world on training athletes’ minds as well as their muscles. Once
considered a form of psychic voodoo, sports psychology is rapidly becoming an
important part of nearly every serious athlete’s normal routine, right along with weight
lifting and nutrition. The new focus on the “mental game” is increasingly finding an
enthusiastic audience in business, medicine and the military as well. The implications go
far beyond sports, whether it’s an airline pilot musician, or surgeon, everyone’s goal is
achieving a peak performance.
The importance of controlling the power of the mind has long been part of folk
wisdom. Today, scientists are revealing that such age-old wisdom has biological basis.
Over the years people have found that certain psychological techniques seem to work.
Now we’re beginning to find out that there is a basic “brain reason why”.
Scientists are showing, for instance, that one crucial aspects of peak performance –
going into a state of intense concentration – is associated with profound changes in the
brain. In the University of Maryland they gave skilled marksmen tiny electrodes that
measure the brain’s electrical activity and monitored their minds as they shot at a target.
They found that just before an expert shooter pulls the trigger, the left side of the brain
gives off a burst of so-called alpha waves, which are characteristic of a relaxed, dreamlike state. Similar results have been found that in golfers as they putt, archers releasing an
arrow and basketball players shooting a free throw. This sudden change in brain waves
seems to reflect a dramatic change in the athlete’s mental state at the moment of peak
performance.
Neuroscientists have long known that each hemisphere, or side, of the human brain
specializes in certain activities. The left brain is better at language and analytical skills
and the right brain is more adept at spatial relation and pattern recognition. Research
suggest that during peak performance, the mind relaxes its analytical side and allows its
right side to control the body. The result is the dreamlike “flow” state that many athletes,
musicians and other people report experiencing when they are intensely engaged in an
activity.
The ability to enter a state of deep concentration at the right moment is a key part
of acquiring an athlete skill, even though people typically are not aware that they are
doing it. So important is this flow state to peak performance that athletes can actually
improve their performance by learning to control their brain waves. The archers who
learned to control the brain waves in their left hemisphere shot significantly better, while
those who trained their right hemisphere did far worse.
At the moment of peak performance, athletes, musicians and other performers
speak of being “in the zone”, a state of total attention to the task at hand. One way to help
reach this zone deep concentration is to select several “focus” words to repeat to oneself.
“Self-talk” - the running commentary that athletes carry on in their minds can have a
profound effect on the body. Negative thoughts can lead to anxiety or depression,
changing one’s breathing pattern and heart rate. Psychologists train athlete to think
positively by remanding themselves of their past successes.
Born together, grown up together but meant to be separated. Why?
The relationship between twins is usually very different from the one between
brothers and sisters. Twins even though they are two different people like any two people
if they are friends they usually can understand each other in a special way that no other
person can do. This happens because twins have something special in common that is
hard to define. It has in fact happened that two twins living in different parts of the world
and not knowing of each other end up anyways having a similar life.
However not all twins have this special bond, but for this special relationship to
develop it is necessary for the children to have grown up together and for them to have
shared many moments of their lives and through them acquired a good knowledge of
each other necessary to then be able to understand each other in that special way that no
other person ever will. Therefore being twins is more related to a relationship created
over a long period of time passed together from childhood on, and not only to the fact of
being born in this special way. The proof of this is that even two babies of the same age
adopted at the same time, although they are not genetically twins, they can experience the
same special relationship.
The bilingual brain
When Karl Kim immigrated to the United States from Korea
as a teenager ten years ago, he had a hard time learning English.
Now he speaks it fluently, and recently to see how our brains adapt
to a second language. Kim is a graduate student in the lab of Joy
Hirsch, a neuroscientist at Memorial Center in New York. He and
Hirsch have recently found evidence that children and adults don’t
use the same parts of the brain when learning a second language.
The researchers used an instrument called a functional magnetic resonance imager
to study the brains of two groups of bilingual people. One group consisted of those who
had learned a second language as children. The other consisted of people who, like Kim,
learned their second language later in life. When plced inside the MRI scanner, which
allowed Kim and Hirsch to see which parts of the brain were getting more blood and
were thus more active, people from both groups were asked to think about what they had
done the day before, first in one language and then the other. (They couldn’t speak out
loud, because any movement would disrupt the scanning.)
Kim and Hirsch looked specifically at two language centers in the brain – Broca’s
area in the left frontal part, which is believed to manage speech production, and
Wernicke’s area in the rear of the brain, thought to process the meaning of language.
Both groups of people, Kim and Hirsch found, used the same part of Wernicke’s area no
matter what language they were speaking. But their use of Broca’s area different.
People who learned a second language as children used the same region in Broca’s area
for both languages. But those who learned a second language later in life made use of a
distinct region in Broca’s area for their second language – near the one activated for their
native tongue.
How does Hirsch explain this difference? “When language is being hardwired
during development”, says Hirsch, “the brain may intertwine sounds and structures from
all languages into the same area. “But once that wiring is complete, the management of a
new language, with new sounds and structures, must be taken over by a different part of
the brain.
A second possibility is simply that we may acquire languages differently as
children than we do as adults. “If you watch mothers or family members teaching an
infant to speak”, says Hirsch, “it’s very tactile, it’s very auditory, it’s very visual. There
are a lot of different inputs. And that’s very different from sitting in a highschool class.”
Do you know your right brain from your left?
1. The human brain is divided into two sides, or hemispheres, called the right brain
and the left brain. The two hemispheres work together, but each one specializes in
certain ways of thinking. Back side has its own way of using information to help
us think, understand, and process information.
2. The left side of the brain controls language. It is more verbal and logical. It names
things and puts them into groups. It uses rules and likes ideas to be clear, logical,
and orderly. It is best at speech, reading, writing and math. You use this side of the
brain when you memorize spelling and grammar rules or when you do a math
problem.
3. The right side of the brain is more visual and creative. It specializes in using
information it receives from the senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.
This side of the brain likes to dream and experiment. It controls your appreciation
of music, color, and art. You use this side when you draw a picture or listen to
music.
4. Although we all use both sides of our brains, one side is usually stronger or
dominant. Some people are more “left-brained”, and others are more “rightbrained”. Our dominant side influences the kinds of jobs and hobbies we have.
Politicians, artists, architects, and musicians depend on their right brains.
Accountants, engineers, doctors, an lawyers usually rely on their left brains.
Left-handedness
Are you a leftie? If you are, you are one of millions in the world who prefer to use
their left hand. There would be millions more left-handed people if societies didn’t forcen
them to use their right hands. To understand left-handedness, it is necessary to look at the
brain. The brain is divided into two hemispheres. In most right-handers, left hemisphere
is the center of language and logical thinking, where they do their math problems and
memorize vocabulary. The right hemisphere controls how they understand broad, general
ideas, and how they respond to the five senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
The left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, and the right
hemisphere controls the left side. Both sides of the body receive the same information
from the brain because both hemispheres are connected.
However, in right-handed people, the left hemisphere is stronger. In left-handed
people, it is the right hemisphere that is stronger. Different handedness causes differences
people. Although the left hemisphere controls language in most right-handers, 40 per cent
of left-handers have the language center in right hemisphere. The other 60 per cent use
the left side of brain or both sides for language.
Lefties not only prefer using the left hand. They prefer using the left foot for
kicking a ball, because the whole body is “left-handed.
There is an increasing amount of research on handedness. For example, one
psychologist says that left-handers are more likely to have a good imagination. They also
enjoy swimming underwater more than right-handers.
Left-handedness can cause problems for people. Some left-handed children see
letters and words backwards. They read “d” for 6 and “was” for “saw”. Another problem
is stuttering. Some left-handed children start to stutter when they are forced to write with
their right hand. Queen Elizabeth II’s father, King George VI, had to change from left –
to right-handed writing when he was a child, and he stuttered all his life.
Anthropologists think that the earliest people were about 50% right-handed and
50% left-handed because ancient tools from before 8000 BC could be used with either
hand. But by 3500 BC, the tools, which were better designed, were for use with only one
hand. More than half of them were for right-handed people.
The first writing system, invented by the Phoenicians (3000-2000 BC) in the
Middle East, went from right to left. The Greeks began to write from left around the fifth
century BC because they increasingly believed that “right” was good and “left” was bad.
As time passed, there were more and more customs connecting “left” with “bad”. This
belief is still common in many countries today, and left-handed people suffer from it.
As the centuries passed and education spread to more levels of society, more and
more people became literate. As more children learned to write, more of them were
forced to write with their right hands. In the United States, some teachers finally started
permitting schoolchildren to write with their left hands in the 1930s.
In parts of Europe, left-handed children were still forced to write with their right
hands in the 1950s. Today in many countries, all children must write with their right hand
even though they prefer using their left hand.
Some famous people were left-handed. Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Michelangelo and
da Vinci (famous Italian artist), and Albert Einstein were left-handed. Alexander the
Great (356-323 BC) and Queen Victoria of England were also. So is Prince Charles.
Paul McCartney of the Beatles plays the guitar the opposite way from other
guitarists because he is left-handed. Marilyn Monroe, the famous American movie star,
was also left-handed.
Are you left-handed even though you write with your right hand? Take this test to
find out. Draw a circle with one hand and then with other. If you draw them clockwise
(the direction the hands of a clock go it) you are probably left-handed. If you draw them
counterclockwise (in the other direction), you are right-handed. The test does not always
work, and some people may draw one circle in one direction and the other circle in the
other direction. But don’t worry if you are left-handed. You are in good company.
1) – Most right-handers do calculus with the left hemisphere of the brain.
2) –When people look at a beautiful sunset, most of them use the right hemisphere of
the brain.
3) – The right hemisphere controls the right side of the body.
4) – Most people in the world use the left hemisphere for language.
5) – Left-handedness can cause children to see letters backward.
6) – It is easier to write from left to right.
7) – Left-handed people are more intelligent than right-handers.
8) – Some Eskimos are left-handed.
1) Many left-handers have to use their right hand.
2) For some people, the center of language is in the right hemisphere.
3) both sides of the body receive the same information.
4) Lefties prefer kicking with the left foot.
5) King George VI stuttered.
6) Anthropologists think more than 50% of people were right-handed by 3500 BC.
7) Paul McCartney plays the guitar differently.
What is intelligence?
Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.
Jean Piaget
The definition of intelligence has long been a matter of controversy. 1 individuals
differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively
to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning,
to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be
substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance
will vary on different occasions, in different domains, is judged by different criteria
Concepts of "intelligence" are attempt s to clarify and organize this complex set of
phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such
conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions and none commands
universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked
define intelligence, they gave two dozen somewhat different definitions.
Intelligence is a property of mind thai encompasses many related abilities, such as
t lie capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend
ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence. In
some cases, intelligence may include traits such as: creativity, personality, character,
knowledge, or wisdom. However, some psychologists prefer not to include these traits
in the definition of intelligence.
Intelligence comes from the Latin verb intellegere, which means to understand.
By this rationale, intelligence (as understanding) is arguably different from being smart
(able to adapt to one's environment), or being clever (able to creatively adapt)* By the
Latin definition, intelligence arguably has to do with a deeper understanding of the
relationships of all things around us; and with a capability for metaphysical
manipulation of such objects once such understanding is mastered.
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget would have described intelligence as the thinking
ability that helps a person solve problems and adapt to his or her environment. But this
definition does not include many other abilities and qualit ies that most of us would use
to describe intelligence. Intelligence could also mean the ability to do abstract thinking,
to carry out our plans, or to think logically; it also might mean everything that a person
has learned in his or her lifetime.
Before 1960, some people believed that, for the most part, intelligence was innate
or inborn. In other words, either you were born smart or you weren't and nothing could
change that. More recently, scientists have begun to look at how a person's environment
might influence the development of intelligence.
The other main issue in understanding intelligence is how to measure it. Two of
the main abilities that have been measured in IQ (intelligence quotient) tests are verbal
comprehension (understanding words) and the ability to think with and about numbers.
IQ tests also measure other parts of intelligence such as general thinking ability,
vocabulary, memory, and spatial ability. "Spatial ability" refers to the ability to figure
out things in space. For example, someone who is good with maps and directions
probably has a lot of spatial ability. However, other abilities often connected with
intelligence, such as creativity, artistic and musical talent, social skills, and regular
common sense, are often not included on standard 1Q tests.
Psychometric approach
Intelligence is everything, and at the same time, not hint; at all.
Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet (1857 1911) was the leading psychologist in France at the turn
of the century. He worked at the psychology laboratory at the Sorbonne, studied
hypnosis, abnormal behaviors, optical illusions, and thinking processes, but by far his
major concern was with individual differences. In particular, Binet was curious
about how people differed in their ability to solve problems.
Despite the variety of concepts of intelligence, the most influential approach to
understanding intelligence (i.e., with the most supporters and the most pub¬lished
research over the longest period of time) is based on psy¬chometric testing. The IQ test
was designed to measure success in school. Alfred Binet was asked to develop the first
IQ test in order to identify "dull" children - the children who needed additional or
remedial help in school. This is important because many people might not think that
school success is the only kind of intelligence, yet this is all that IQ tests measure.
designed the test with increasing levels of difficulty so that children of different
ages could pass different parts of the test. He tested many, many children, and then
decided on age norms for the questions he wrote. For example, a question that most sixyear-olds could answer but most five-year-olds could not answer was thought to show
the average mental perform¬ance of a six-year-old.
The product of Binet's test was a number showing a child's mental age (MA).
Mental age is changed to an IQ score by dividing the MA by the child's actual age and
multiplying the
Reading 7. What is intelligence? Psychometric approach 79
It nli h 100. Therefore, a 6-year-old who scored at a menial
"I (i would have an IQof 100 (6/6 x 100 - 100). This sys-\> in allows us to
compare the IQs of children of different ages. ,\ 11 year old with an MA of 3 has an
IQof 50, and a 10-year-old wll h an MA of 5 also has an IQ of 50. An average IQ is
consid-i H 11 I u he 100, with a standard devial ion of 15 points (thus, the i,Hire of
average IQs is from 85 to 115). Binet's original test was laiei modified by a researcher
from Stanford University in i ..Moulin. The result is the IQ test used today, called the
Slanford-Binet.
Because they were developed to predict future school suc¬cess, IQ tests compare
fairly well with actual school perform Knee. What else do they predict? If we think of
them as mea-ii res of intelligence, we might expect them to predict other things, such as
job performance, or life satisfaction. Each of t hese factors has been studied in relation
to IQ scores.
Researchers have found that the average IQ of people who have more prestigious
jobs (such as doctor or lawyer) is higher than the average IQof people in jobs with less
prestige (such as farmhand or factory worker). In addition, researchers found that
although there are high-IQ people in lower-prestige jobs, t here are no people with low
IQs in high-prestige jobs.
In many cases, IQ is not a good predict or of job performance. In professions with
intermediate status (such as electrician), IQ made a difference in job performance.
However, at the upper and lower ends, a person's IQ score did not show any
relation¬ship to success on the job.
Another question is whether high-IQ people are happier, healthier, or more
satisfied with their lives than people with lower IQs. Terman did a study of children
with very high IQs (140 or higher). He found that they generally develop a little faster.
In addition, they were seen as more competent and bet¬ter adjusted than children with
lower IQs.
However, there was a problem with his study. Terman did not choose his subjects
carefully enough. His group of high-IQ students contained too many children of
educated, wealthy and powerful parents. Therefore, these children had more
educa¬tional opportunities, higher social standing, and more money than many of
thelower-lQ children. All of these factors have been shown to correlate with high IQ.
Therefore, the success of these children may have been more influenced by their social
status than by their measured IQ.
1.
Look bark at the explanation of IQ scores. Then calculate
the IQs for these people and circle if they are high, low or
average.
1)
age 12 — mental age 8 IQ = high/low/average
2)
age 14 mental age 16 IQ
high/low/average
3)
age 10 mental age 16 IQ
high/low/average
2.
Read the passage and underline verb forms in Passive Voice
(Present Simple, Past Simple. Present Perfect, Past
Progressive and Passive Infinitive).
IQ tests were originally devised specifically to predicl edu¬cational achievement.
The inventors of the IQdid not believe they were measuring fixed intelligence. Despite
this, critics argue that intelligence tests have been used to support nativistic the¬ories in
which intelligence is viewed as a qualitatively unique faculty with a relatively fixed
quantity.
Intelligence, as measured by IQ and other aptitude tests, is widely used in
educational, business, and military settings be¬cause it is an effective predictor of
behavior. Intelligence is signi¬ficantly correlated with successful t raining and
performance out¬comes. In recent empirical research, it was found that IQ is highly
correlated with many important social outcomes. Individuals with low IQs are more
likely to be divorced, more likely to have a child out of marriage, more likely to be
incarcerated, and more likely to need long term welfare support. furthermore, high IQs
are associated with more years of education, higher status jobs, and higher income.
Howard Gardner's Theory of multiple intelligences is based on studies not only
on normal children and adults but also by studies of gifted individuals, of persons who
have suffered brain damage, of experts and virtuosos, and of individuals from diverse
cultures. Intelligence is broken down into at least eight different components: logical,
linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences.
Gardner's eight intelligences
Dr. Howard Gardner from Harvard University has identi¬fied the following
intelligences:
1.
Linguistic intelligence
People with this kind of intelligence understand and use lan¬guage easily. They
think logically and analytically. They enjoy reading and writing, memorizing
information, talking and building their vocabularies (they are great spellers). They may
also be excellent storytellers.
2.
Logical-mathematical intelligence
People with lots of logical intelligence are interested in pat¬terns, categories and
relationships. They are interested in arith¬metic problems, strategy games, experiments
and how things work. They often find unusual ways to solve problems, but they may not
be able to explain how they did it.
3.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
These people process knowledge through bodily sensations. They are often
athletic; they may be dancers or good at crafts such as sewing or woodworking. They
enjoy training their bo¬dies to do their physical best. Having to sit for a long time is
very uncomfortable for them.
4.
Visual-spatial intelligence
People with this type of intelligence think in images and pic¬tures. They have a
very good sense of direction and enjoy maps. They may be fascinated with mazes or
jigsaw puzzles, or spend free time drawing, building things or daydreaming. People
with strengths in this area have the most potential to be successful in new technological
fields such as computers.
5.
Musical-rhythmic intelligence
Those with this kind of intelligence often sing or drum to themselves. They are
usually quite aware of sounds that other people may miss. These people are often
careful listeners.
6.
Interpersonal intelligence
People who have a lot of interpersonal intelligence are oil en leaders. They are
good at communicating and seem to under¬stand others' feelings and motives.
7.
Intrapersonal intelligence
These people may be shy. They understand themselves much better than ol hers
may understand I hem. They are highly mot i vated to he true to their goals and do not
care very much about what ot her people think of them.
8.
Naturalist intelligence
People with a strong naturalist intelligence have an outstand¬ing knowledge of
things in the natural world, such as plants and animals. They also have the ability to see
how things fit into different natural categories. They like to fish, garden, cook and
carefully observe things.
Learning styles
1.
Drs. Marie Carbo, Rita Dunn and Kenneth Dunn have described the
following three styles of learning: auditory, visu¬al, tactile-kinesthetic.
2.
Auditory learners are logical, analytical thinkers. They are comfortable
with typical school tasks including analyzing sounds and numbers, following directions
in order, and just "doing the right thing." They are usually successful in school. Much of
what they learn is from listening to information that is presented to them in class.
3.
Visual learners learn best by seeing a visual representa¬tion of the material.
They are global thinkers. They like to see "the big picture" rather than the details. They
can learn to think logically, analytically and sequentially, but they must do this by
working backwards from the whole to the parts.
4.
Tactile-kinesthetic learners learn best when they can touch things or move
while they are learning. Like visual learners, they are also global thinkers.
How good is your memory?
Q.: What aspects of brain biology interest you?
I have become very interested in the importance of memory in our lives. Most
people know that the brain controls how the body works. The brain also controls what
the mind thinks, how we feel, how we process information, and how we perceive things.
I am interested in how people remem¬ber, what they remember, and how they use and
improve their memories.
Q.: What can you tell us about memory?
Memory plays an important role in learning and thinking. People have different
abilities to remember. Stress, fatigue, emotional problems, and illness can decrease the
ability to remember. General good health contributes to good memo¬ry. Practice also
improves memory. For example, the more math facts you learn, the easier math facts are
to learn. The same is true with music. The more songs you listen to and learn, the easier
it becomes. People gather and remember information in different ways. Some people
remember col¬ors or smells, or sounds. Other people find it easier to remember spoken
words while still others remember print¬ed words easily.
Q.: Are there different kinds of memory?
Yes. The two basic categories are long-term memory and short-term memory.
Long-term memory is the ability to remember events from the distant past. Long-term
memory is often the strongest and lasts throughout a person's life. One kind of longterm memory is called "screen memory." This means that many experiences get put
together in the mind as one memory. For example, in your memory you might have only
one "picture" of a childhood trip to the doctor's office. This one memory, however, is
probably a combination of many trips to the doctor. Short-term memory is the ability to
remember events in the recent past, for example the name of someone you met at a
party last night. Short-term memory is often challenged by stress, illness, and aging.
Many of us have, or have had, grandparents who remember events from their childhood
with great accuracy, but are unable to remember what happe¬ned yesterday. Most
people can only remember seven items in sequence. This is why telephone numbers, for
example, are typically seven digits long.
Reading 1 How good is your memory?
Are all memories accurate?
No, not all memories are correct, but they all tell us some-I liing about the person
who is doing the remembering. The memory may tell us what the rememberer likes or
dislikes, what he or she wishes, and it may also tell us about his or her fears. The study
of memory may also provide informa¬tion about the health or illness of a person. Tit is
is a very exciting frontier in biological science. There is still a lot for us to learn.
<).: Why is it easier for people to remember some things and more difficult for
them to remember other things?
That's a good question. It's easier to remember things that have emotional
meaning to you. It's also easier to remember information that you practice and use a lot.
Repetition rein¬forces memory; the more you repeat something, the better you
remember it. Some people have very visual memories. That is, they remember things
they see. In fact, it is often easier to remember information that comes to us through
more one of our five senses.
BUILDING VOCABULARY
Find definitions to the following:
a)
Long-term memory
b)
Episodic memory
c)
Sensory memory
d)
Human information processing
e)
Short-term memory
f)
Learning
1)
What our minds do in response to information we get from the world
around us. This information includes data from the five senses, including language that
we hear or read.
2)
The conscious repetition of information for retention pur¬poses.
3)
... comprises more-detailed knowledge of particular events that we have
experienced.
4)
Also known as working memory, it stores and processes information
selected from sensory memory.
5)
A type of memory that keeps a relatively permanent record of information.
6)
Lasting only for a second or less, this memory holds infor¬mation from the
world in its original form.
4.
How many collocations can you make with the verb to remember or the
noun memory? What can people remember? Skim the text for answers.
Retrospective and prospective memories
Consider the everyday tasks of looking up a telephone num¬ber and remembering
it before dialing or trying to recall the name of someone to whom you have just been
introduced at a party. These are tests of retrospective memory, which is tradi¬tionally
investigated in the laboratory by presenting informa¬tion that subjects are subsequently
required to recognize or recall when prompted by the experimenter. In general, the
elimpaired on such tasks in comparison' derly arc- significantly with the young.
Subjects in prospective memory tasks are required to exef, cute a planned action
at some point in the future. This corr6§ sponds to everyday activities such as
remembering to remove a cake from the oven or to take medicine every 4 hours. To
per¬form such tasks successfully, subjects must, when the time arrives, a) remember
that something has to be done, b) remem¬ber what has to be done, c) perform the task,
and d) remember later that it has been performed, so that it is not repeated.
Recent evidence suggests that the elderly are considerable less impaired on
prospective memory tasks than on retrospect I ive memory tasks in comparison with the
young. A differential effect ol aging is regarded as important in providing support for
the recent suggestion that retrospective and prospective me¬mories are qualitatively
distinct aspects of memory.
1)
The elderly are ... impaired on such tasks in the comparison
with the young.
a)
essentially c) sufficiently
b)
deeply
d) significantly
2)
Subjects in prospective memory tasks are required to ... a
planned action at some point in the future.
a)
perform
c) fulfill
b)
execute
d) implement
3)
This ... to everyday activities such as remembering to remove a cake from the oven or to take medicine every 4 hours.
a)
relates
c) conforms
b)
corresponds d) correlates
4)
Recent evidence suggests that the elderly are considerably
less ... on prospective memory tasks.
a)
damaged c) spoiled
b)
impaired d) weakened
5)
A differential effect of aging is ... as important in providing
support for the recent suggestion that retrospective and
prospective memories are qualitatively distinct aspects of
memory.
a)
considered c) believed
b)
regarded
d) esteemed
translate this passage into English.
8.
Translate the following into Russian.
Memory principles:
1)
Short-term memory is limited to seven plus or minus two chunks of
information.
2)
Short-term memory is volatile, and users will often forget in the presence
of distractions.
3)
A schema is a mental model that makes it easier for users to recall an item.
Schemas can serve as the basis for "chunks" because they provide a meaningful method
for grouping information.
4)
Well-developed schemata make it easier to remember items that fit within a
schema Thus, experts with well-developed schemata outperform novices.
A memory for all seasonings
Memory is one of the most important functions of the mind. Without our
memories, we would have no identity. The follow¬ing article is about a mnemonist, a
person with an extraordinary power to remember. The title includes a pun, a form of
humor based on a play on words. The usual phrase to describe something constant and
dependable is for all seasons. Here the phrase is changed to for all seasonings
Seasonings is another word for spices, such as salt, pepper, and curry. What hint does
this give you about t he mnemonist? Early in | he art icle you will find out.
One evening two years ago, Peter Poison, a member of the psychology
department at the University of Colorado took his son and daughter to dinner at
Bananas, a fashionable restaurant in Boulder. When the waiter took their orders, Poison
noticed that the young man didn't write anything down. He just listened, made small
talk, told them that his name was John Conrad, and left. Poison didn't think this was
exceptional: there were, after all, only three of them at the table. Yet he found himself
watching Conrad closely when he returned to take the orders at a nearby table of eight.
Again the waiter listened, chatted, and wrote nothing down. When he brought Poison
and his children their dinners, the professor couldn't resist introducing himself and
telling Conrad that he'd been observing him.
The young man was pleased. He wanted customers to notice that, unlike other
waiters, he didn't use a pen and paper. Sometimes, when they did notice, they left him
quite a large tip. He had once handled a table of nineteen complete dinner orders
without a single error. At Bananas, a party of nineteen (a bill of roughly $200) would
normally leave the waiter a $35 tip. They had left Conrad $85.
Poison was impressed enough to ask the waiter whether he would like to come to
the university's psychology lab and let them run some tests on him. Anders Ericsson, a
young Swedish psychologist recently involved in memory research, would be joining
the university faculty soon, and Poison thought that he-would be interested in exploring
memory methods with the waiter. Conrad said he would be glad to cooperate. He was
always on the lookout for ways to increase his income, and Poison told him he would
receive $5 an hour to be a guinea pig.
Conrad, of course, was not the first
person with an extraor¬dinary memory to attract attention from researchers. Alexander
R. Luria, the distinguished Soviet psychologist, studied a Rus sian newspaper reporter
named Shereshevskii for many years and wrote about him in the Mind of a Mnemonist
(1968). Luria says that Shereshevskii was able to hear a series of fifty words spoken
once and recite them back in perfect order fifteen years later. Another famous example
of extraordinary memory, the con¬ductor Arturo Toscanini, was known to have
memorized every note for every instrument in 250 symphonies and 100 operas
For decades the common belief among psychologists was that memory was a
fixed quantity; an exceptional memory, or a poor one, was something with which a
person was born.
This point of view has come under attack in recent years; expert memory is no
longer universally considered the exclusive gift of the genius, or the abnormal. "People
with astonishing memory for pictures, musical scores, chess positions, business
transactions, dramatic scripts, or faces are by no means unique," wrote Cornell
psychologist Ulric Neisser in Memory Observed (1981). "They may not even be very
rare." Some university researchers, including Poison and Ericsson, go a step further than
Neisser. They believe that there are no physiological differences at all between the
memory of a Shereshevskii or a Toscanini and that of the average person. The only real
difference, they believe, is that Toscanini trained his memory, exercised it regularly, and
wanted to Improve it.
Like many people with his capacity to remember, Toscanini may also have used
memory tricks called mnemonics. Shere¬shevskii, for example, employed a technique
known as loci. As soon as he heard a series of words, he mentally "distributed" them
along Corky Street in Moscow. If one of the words was "orange," he might visualize a
man stepping on an orange at a precise location on the familiar street. Later, in order to
retrieve "orange," he would take an imaginary walk down Gorky Street and see the
image from which it could easily be recalled. Did'the waiter at Bananas have such a
system? What was his secret?
John Conrad would be the subject of Anders Ericsson's second in-depth study of
the machinations of memory. As a research associate at Carnegie University in
Pittsburgh, Ericsson had spent the previous three years working with William Chase on
an extensive study of Steve Faloon, an undergraduate whose memory and intellectual
skills were considered average. When Ericsson and Chase began testing Faloon, he
could remember no more than seven random digits after hearing them spoken once.
According to generally accepted research, almost everyone is capable of storing five to
nine random digits in short-term memory. After twenty months of working with Chase
and Ericsson, Faloon could memorize and retrieve eighty digits.
"The important thing about our testing Faloon is that researchers usually study
experts," Chase says. "We studied a novice and watched him grow into an expert.
Initially, we were just running tests to see whet her his digit span could he expanded, for
lour days he could not go beyond seven digits. On the fifth day he discovered his
mnemonic system and then began to improve rapidly."
Faloon's intellectual abilities didn't change, the researchers say, nor did the
storage capacity of his short-term memory. Chase and Ericsson believe that short-term
memory is a more or less fixed quantity. It reaches saturation quickly, and to overcome
its limitations one must learn to link new data with material that is permanently stored
in long-term memory. Once the associations have been made, the short-term memory is
free to absorb new information. Shereshevskii transferred material from short-term to
long-term memory by placing words along Gorky Street in Moscow. Faloon's hobby
was long distance running, and he discovered that he could break down a spoken list of
eighty digits into units of three or four and associate most of these with running times.
To Faloon, a series like 4, 0, 1, 2 would translate as four min¬utes, one and twotenths seconds, or "near a four-minute mile"; 2, 1, 4, 7 would be encoded as two hours
fourteen minutes seven seconds, or "an excellent marathon time." When running didn't
provide the link to his long-term memory, ages and dates did; 1, 9, 4, 4 is not relevant to
running, but it is "near the end of World War II."
Chase and Ericsson see individual differences in memory performance as
resulting from previous experience and mental training. "In sum," they write, "adult
memory performance can be adequately described by a single model of memory."
Not every student of psychology agrees with Chase and Ericsson, of course. "I'm
very suspicious of saying that everyone has the same kind of memory," says Matthew
Erdely, a psychologist at Brooklyn College. "In my research," he says, "I find that
people have very different memory levels. They can all improve, but some levels
remain high and some remain low. There are dra¬matic individual differences."
It is unlikely that there will be any agreement among psy¬chologists on the
conclusions that they have thus far drawn IIIMII their research. The debate about
exceptional memory will . niiiinue. But in the meantime it is interesting to look deeper
min the mind of a contemporary mnemonist.
Ericsson and Poison, both of whom have tested Conrad over IIH past two years,
believe that; there is nothing intellectually outstanding about him. When they began
testing Conrad's me¬nu u v, his digit scan was normal: about seven numbers. His
gra¬in, in college were average.
Conrad himself says that he is unexceptional mentally, but he has compared his
earliest memories with others' and has found that he can recall things that many people
can't. His first distinct memory is of lying on his back and raising his legs so t hat his
mother could change his diapers. As a high school stu¬dent he didn't take notes in class
- he says he preferred watch¬ing the girls take notes — and he has never made a list in
his life. "By never writing down a list of things to do, and letting it l hink for me," he
says, "I've forced my memory to improve."
Conrad docs believe that his powers of observation, includ¬ing his ability to
listen, are keener than most people's. Memory, he says, is just one part of the whole
process of observation. "I'm not extraordinary, but sometimes people make me feel that
way. I watch them and realize how many of them have disorganized minds and
memories and that makes me feel unusual. A good memory is nothing more than an
organized one."
One of the first things Conrad observed at Bananas was that I he head waiter, his
boss, was "a very unpleasant woman." He dis¬liked being her subordinate, and he
wanted her job. The only way he could get it was by being a superior waiter. He stayed
up nights trying to figure out how to do this; the idea of memorizing orders eventually
came to him. Within a year he was the head waiter.
"One of the most interesting things we've found," says Ericsson, "is that just
trying to memorize things does not insure that your memory will improve. It's the active
decision to get better and the number of hours you push yourself to improve that make
the difference. Motivation is much more important than innate ability."
Conrad began his memory training by trying to memorize the orders for a table of
two, and then progressed to memorizing larger orders. He starts by associating the
entree with the cus¬tomer's face. He might see a large, heavy-set man and hear "I'd like
a big Boulder Steak." Sometimes, Peter Poison says, "John thinks a person looks like a l
in key and that customer orders a turkey sandwich. Then it's easy."
In memorizing how long meat should be cooked, the differ¬ent salad dressings,
and starches, Conrad relies on patterns of repetition and variation. "John breaks things
up into chunks of four," Ericsson says. "If he hears 'rare, rare, medium, well-done,' he
instantly sees a pattern in their relationship. Sometimes he makes a mental graph. An
easy progression ~ fare, medium-rare, medium, well-done would lake the shape ol
asteadily ascending line on his graph. A more difficult order medium, well-done, rare,
medium would resemble a mountain range."
The simplest part of Conrad's system is his encoding of salad dressings. He uses
letters: B for blue cheese; H for the house dressing; O for oil and vinegar; F for French;
T for Thousand Island. A series of orders, always arranged according to entree, might
spell a word, like B-O-O-T, or a near-word, like B-O-O-F, or make a phonetic pattern:
F-O-F-O. As Ericsson says, Conrad remembers orders, regardless of their size, in
chunks of four. This is similar to the way Faloon stores digits, and it seems to support
Chase and Ericsson's contention that short-term mem¬ory is limited and that people are
most comfortable working with small units of information.
One of the most intriguing things about Conrad is (he num¬ber of ways he can
associate material. Another is the speed with which he is able to call it up from memory.
Ericsson and Poison have also tested him with animals, units of time, flowers, and
metals. At first, his recall was slow and uncertain. But with re¬latively little practice, he
could retrieve these "orders" almost as quickly as he could food.
"The difference between someone like John, who has a trained memory, and the
average person," says Ericsson, "is that he can encode material in his memory fast and
effortlessly. It's similar to the way you can understand English when you hear it spoken.
In our tests the same way you can learn to play tennis in the lab, he just gets better and
faster." "What John Conrad has," says Poison, "is not unlike an athletic skill. With two
or three hundred hours of practice, you can develop these skills in the same way you can
learn to play tennis."
1. Based on what you have just read, choose the best way of finishing each
statement.
1)
The psychology professor discovered John Conrad's incredible ability to memorize ....
a)
in school c) in a restaurant
b)
on a test
2)
Conrad agreed to let professor study his memory because ....
a)
Conrad was interested in psychology
b)
Conrad wanted to increase his income
c)
Conrad needed to improve his memory
3)
The famous Russian mnemonist Shereshevskii used a memory trick called loci to remember objects by ....
a)
associating them with events in Russian history
b)
imaging them placed along the street in Moscow
c)
picturing each one in his mind in a different color
4)
The memory trick used by Steve Faloon was the association
of certain numbers with ....
a)
running times
c) both of the above
b)
important dates d) none of the above
5)
Conrad has been ....
a)
a gifted student c) an average student
b)
a below-average student
6)
Part of Conrad's motivation for developing memory tricks to
aid him as a waiter was ....
a)
his desire to get his boss's job
b)
his great admiration for the head waiter
c)
his fear of not finding any work
Decline in memory
Decline in memory performance appears to be one of the characteristic sequels of
aging. Early research on memory changes with age. The concensus of describing how
memory changes with age. The consensus of decades of research is that although there
may be age differences in short-term memory capacity. There are reliable age
differences in sensory memory and in long-term memory. Documentation on these
differences has resulted in a shirt in emphasis from determining how memory changes
with age to determine why memory changes. One approach to identify the basis for age
differences in memory performance is to determine why memory performance differs
within age groups.
The behavior genetic paradigm has proven to be a powerful method of exploring
individual differences. Behavior genetic methods can determine the relative influence
on memory of genetic factors, shared environment factors and non-shared environment
factors. Memory aging is characteristic of all mammalian species implying a biological
basis to decline in memory with age. Appling methods of behavior genetics to the
investigation of individual differences in memory will further our understanding of Age
differences in memory.
1.
Decline in memory performance …. To be one of the characteristic
sequels of aging
A) occurs
B) happens
C) appears
D) seems
2.
Memory aging is a .. of all mammalian cpecies.
A) property
B) sample
C) peculiarity
D) characteristics
The … of decades of research is that there are reliable age differences
in sensory memory
A) Conclusion
B) Consensus
C) Consequence
D) result
4.
The behavior genetics paradigm has proven to be a .. for exploring
individual differences
A) strong tool
B) basis
C) powerful method
D) argument
3.
5.
Early research on memory and anging .. on describing how memory
changes with age
A) focused
B) concentrated
C) worked
D) spotted
Chapter 4
STRESS
(Modal verbs and related structures)
Reading 1
We all have stress sometimes. For some people, it happens before having to speak
in public. For other people, it might be before a first date. What causes stress for you
may not be stressful for someone else. Sometimes stress is helpful — it can encourage
you to meet a deadline or get things done. But long-term stress can increase t lie risk of
diseases like depression, heart disease and a variety of other problems. A stress-related
illness called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops after an event like war,
physical or sexual assault, or a natural disaster. If you have chronic stress, the best way
to deal with it is to take care of the underlying problem.
Skim the text to find the answer to the question: Is there any relation between
stress and illness? Can you find the proof in the text?
DETAIL QUESTIONS
Read the text. Answer the following questions.
1)
What is stress caused by?
2)
How can you cope with stress?
3)
What are stressors? Find a definition in the text.
4)
How is the name of Sigmund Freud connected with stress?
5)
What life events can be considered stressful?
Introduction to stress
The belief that stress increases the risk of illness has become apart of the
commonsense knowledge of today's culture. Although there is some basis for this
assumption, a little reflec¬tion reveals thai there are many ambiguities and
inconsisten¬cies in the relationship between stress and illness. All of us know some
friends or family members who became ill alter experiencing some psychologically
distressing event, yet we also know ot hers who seem to tolerate high levels of stress wit
h-out becoming ill. Why is it that some persons seem resistant to illness in the face of
stress, whereas ol hers become ill with rela¬tively low levels of stress? Indeed, the more
thought we give to questions about stress and illness, the less clear the relationship
between the two is likely to be. Do all persons experience simi¬lar levels of stress when
faced with the same events, or are there differences in how various persons react to
presumably stressful events?
Although stress is typically thought of as a reaction to nega¬tive events, pleasant
or positive events may also lead to stress. A promotion and raise in pay at work may be
quite desirable. However, the adjustments to the new job and changes in lifestyle the
increased salary allows may be stressful. Is st rcss an environmental event, such as
marriage or job pressures, or may stress be better defined by how an individual reacts to
events? Some psychological reactions to life events, such as anxiety and depression,
often include physical symptoms such as tension headache and sleep disorders. If a
person is anxious about the security of his or her job and develops tension headaches,
should this be considered as evidence for an association between stress and illness or is
it merely a reflection of the fact that increased arousal is a common feature of anxiety
and this arousal may include increased muscle tension?
A great deal of psychological research has been devoted to studying the stressillness relationship, and the results of the investigations have varied depending upon the
answers given to questions such as the ones just noted. This chapter examines the
evidence accumulated to date regarding the relationship between stress and physical
illness, with emphasis on the per¬sonality factors suggested to be important in
determining whether or not a person is likely to experience illness in reac-tion to stress.
Particular attention is given to the personality dimension of hardiness. Persons high in
hardiness believe that life has purpose, feel a sense of control over events, and view
change as an opportunity for personal growth. Hardiness has been proposed as one of
the major personality resources that may reduce the probability of illness in response to
stress.
According to psychologists, different life events can be rated according to the
amount of stress they are likely to cause. Any event — negative or positive — that
causes a significant change in your everyday life may be stressful. An important
influence on people's ability to cope with stressful situations is the degree of control
they feel they can exercise over the situation. Both animals and humans have been
found to cope better with pain¬ful or threatening stimuli when they feel that they can
exercise some degree of control rather than being passive and helpless victims. Such a
sense of control can help minimize the negative consequences of stress, both
psychological and physical. In one well-known experiment, a researcher administered
electric shocks to pairs of rats. In each pair, one of the two animals was given a degree
of control over the situation; it could reach through a hole in the cage and press a panel
that would turn off the shock both for itself and for its partner. Thus, the two rats
received exactly the same number of shocks, but one was pas¬sive and helpless, and the
other was in control. After a continu¬ous 21-hour session, the animals were examined
for ulcers. Those rats who could exert control had much less vdceration than their
helpless partners.
The ability to control painful stimuli often benefits humans, too For example, the
loud music coming from your stereo is probably not stressful; in fact, it's quite
enjoyable. But the same music coming from the place next door can be terribly irritating
and stressful. Merely knowing that one can control a noise makes it less bothersome.
That's one reason why your blaring stereo does not bother you — you know you can
always turn it off.
2.
Paraphrase the following sentences avoiding might where
possible.
1) Monolingual children perhaps might be introduced to a new language
gradually.
I) Souk- families perhaps might start with the second language w hen the first one
is firmly established.
|) To learn a new language you might label objects in your home, such as door,
table, shelf.
1) Special English learning support programs for non-English speaking children
at schoolage might be attended.
!) The more opportunities your child has to practise a language t he faster this
language might be learnt.
6) For instance, when you go to the shops or on a walk, when tra¬velling in
thecar or brushing teeth, you might use the family language to tell certain stories or
speak about certain topics.
1) The child might learn how adults communicate while listen¬ing to
communication between same language speakers.
K) The voice is generally louder than normal at this level, but shouting or raising
the voice might have the effect of reduc¬ing the social distance to a personal distance.
!)) In rats, certain stressors, such as painful tail-pulling, might consistently lead to
the same sorts of stress reactions.
3. Translate the following into English.
History of stress research
The suggestion thai personality may be an important deter-Winer of physical
symptoms that develop as a person attempts in cope with life events has exerted a
significant force on psy-i liological and psychiatric thinking during the twentieth cen111 ry. Sigmund Freud was trained as a physician, and his experi¬ence treating patients
suffering from physical disorders with little or no apparent physical cause played a
major role in the development of psychoanalytic theory. Freud's experiences with these
patients led him to the conclusion that persons who fended to deal with threatening
psychological material by repressing emotional reactions or denying the presence of
emo-tional disturbance were at risk for the development of physical symptoms.
Repressed psychological distress, particularly dist ress related to sexuality, appeared in
the form of physical symptoms through the defense mechanism of Conversion.
According to Freud, conversion operates by converting psy¬chological distress
into a physical symptom, and the symptom provides a clue to the nature of the
psychological conflict. For example, a person might become blind after witnessing
atrau¬matic event such as a serious accident in which his or her loved ones died. By
becoming blind, the person indirectly expresses the distress the accident caused, as if he
or she were saying, "I cannot bear to see if I must see people die." At the same time, the
blindness allows the person to avoid psychological distress about death, as the focus of
attention shifts away from feelings about the accident and the loss of loved ones to
feelings about levels of gastric acid secretion in reaction to psychological con¬flicts
regarding dependence upon others. Diabetes was also sug¬gested to be related to
frustrated wishes for dependence, but it is now recognized that psychological
difficulties may be a consequ¬ence rather than a cause of diabetes. The relationship
between hypertension and anger is probably the best supported of the psychosomatic
hypotheses. High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease, and hostility and
anger can be related to the development of heart disease. On balance, it appears that the
relationship between personality and illness is not specific or direct as early
psychomatic theory suggested.
As the search for specific personality factors related to specific diseases declined,
attention turned toward a more generalized conception of stress as a precusors of
illness. Current conceptualzations of conversion disorders do not emphasize the
converting of psychological conflict into physical symptoms, but instead stress the fact
that the physical symptoms allow a person to escape a stessful situation without having
to acknowledge resposibility for doing so Research into the stress –illness
relationshiphas been complicated by several factors, including such basic issues as how
stress should be defined and now illness should be measured.
Stress and illness
In many stressful situations, thre body’s responses can improve our performance we become more energetic, more alert, better able to take effective action. But when
stress is encountered continually, the body’s reactio are more likely to be harmful than
helpful to us. As will be seen later in this unit, the continual speeding up of bodily
reactions and the production of srtess-related hormonrs seem to make people more
susceptible to herart disease. And stress reactions can reduce the disease-fighting
effectivennes of the body’s immune system, there by increasing susceptibility to
illnesses ranging from colds to cancer. Other diseases that can result at least in part from
stress include arthritis, asthma, migraine headaches, and ulcers. Workers who
experience the greatest degree of job pressures have been found to be especially likely
to suffer from a large number of illnesses. Moreover, many studies have shown that
people who have experienced major changes in their lives are at unusually high risk for
a variety of illnesses.
Many sorts of events can be stressors, including diseasters such as hurricanes or
tornadoes, major life evennts such as divorce or the loss of a job, and daily hassles such
ashaving to wait in line at the supermarket when you need to be somewhere else in ten
minutes. What all these events in common is that they interfere with or threaten our
accustomed way of life.
The Canadian physiologist Hans Seyle has proposed influential researcher and
writer on stress. Seyle has proposed that both humans and other animals react to any
stressor in three stages. This physical changes were identifiwd by Seyle as the General
Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), three-stage process representing the attempts of the body
to cope with the demands of adjusting to change. In the alarm stage of the GAS the
body mobilizes its resources to combat the stressor. The outer layer, or cortex, of the
adrenal glands enlargeband become hyperactive, the thymus and lymph nodes shrink,
and bleeding ulcers may appear in the stomach and upper intestines. If the stressor
continues to assault the body and the organism survives, the body enters the second , or
resistance, stage of the GAS. During resistance physiological reactions stabilize as the
body attempts to adapt to the stressor. The resistance stage is in many ways the opposite
of the alarm stage. The adrenal cortex shrinks and lymph nodesreturn to normal size.
However, the organism is also more sensitive to stressors as physiological arousal
remains high. If this high level of arousal continues, bodily resourses are eventually
depleted and the exhaustion stage of the GAS is entered. The organism becomes
fatigued and less able to deal with stressors. However, the exhaustion phase is entered
only when stressors are unremitting , uncontrollable, and/or extremely intense.
As an example of stress –induced illness, take the case of stomach ulcers, small
lesions in the stomach wall that afflict one out of twenty people at some point in their
lives. Ulcers are in common disorder among people who work in occupation that make
heavy psychological demands, from assembly-line workers to air-traffic controllers. In
many cases, stress is the culprit . Stress leads to inscreased secretion of hydroshloric
acid in the stomach. Hydroshloric acid normally helps to break down foods during
digestion, but in excess amounts it can eat away at the stomach lining , producing
ulcers.
Stress may also contribute to disease in less direrct ways, by influencing moods
and behavior. People under stress may become anxious or depressed and as a result
may eat too much or too litlle, have sleep difficulties, smoke or drinf more, or fail to
exercise. This behavioral changrs, may in turn, be harmful to their health. In addiction,
people are more likely to pay attention to certain bodily sensations, such as aches and
pains, when they are under stress and to decide that they are “sick”. If the person were
not under stress, the same bodily sensations might not be percieved as symptoms and
the person might continue to feel “well”. Some researchers have suggested that
assuming the role of a “sick person” is one way in which certain people try to cope
with stress. Instead of dealing with the stressful situation directly, these people fall sick.
After all, it is often more acceptible in our society to be sick and to seek medical help
than it is to admit that one cannot cope with the stresses of life.
Как справиться со стрессом
(Продолжение)
7. Не взваливайте на себя добровольно дополнительную ответственность
или работу ради карьеры. Тщательно обдумайте, сможете ли вы сделать это, не
сокращая времени .
8. Куда бы вы ни направлялись, поставьте перед собой задачу увидеть там
или по-пути что-нибудь красивое-цветы , закаки или рассвет, интересное задание,
необычные автомобили и т.п.
9. В следующий раз, когда будете беседовать с кем-нибудь на вечеринке или
на собрании, не говорите слишком много. Спокойно посидите и послушайте
собеседник, задавая вопросы или комментуруя рассказ только для поддержания
разговора.
10. Если человек делает что0то медленнее, чем смогли бы вы, не
вмешивайтесь.
11. Перед тем как ставить перед собой новую задачу, подумайте,
действительно ли это вам нужно, и если да, то следует ли сделать это немедленно
и не может ли кто-нибудь заменит вас.
12. Каждый день немного времени хобби – чтению, работу в саду,
коллекционированию. И не старайтесь стать лучшим садовником или запойным
читателем, а также не превращайте хобби в источник заработка- просто получайте
от него удовольствие.
Questionnaire
1.
You always carry an expensive, brown briefcase. You are on the bus, and
the man who is sitting next to you keeps looking at your briefcase. Finally, he says that
your briefcase is the one that vhe lost on the bus last week. You:
a)
Get nervous
b)
Get angry and tell him the briefcase is yours
c)
Don’t listen to him and continue reading
d)
Tell him that may be his briefcase is in the lost and found
2.
You are alone in an elevator that has stopped between floors. You:
a)
Begin to shout for help
b)
Feel very nervous and frightened
c)
Ring the alarm and calmly wait for help
d)
Read the newspaper you have in your briefcase.
3.
You are going on vacation with your family on Saturday. On Friday
morning, an executive who is very important asks you start work on a new project right
away. She says that you can go on vacation next month. You:
a)
Laugh nervously
b)
Feel anxious, but finally agree
c)
Politely refuse and tell why
d)
Suggest that you can start the project after your trip
4.
You have a friend who wants to borrow some money. He always pays it
back, but it takes a long time. Today he needs thirty dollars, but you want to use this
money to buy a birthday present for another friend.You:
a)
Get really upset and tell him to find the money some place else
b)
Lend him the money and disappoint your other friend
c)
Explain why you can’t lend him money
d)
Offer to help him learn to use his money more carefully
5.
You are returning from a trip abroad. You have brouhgt eight Swiss
watches with you. The customs officer who is checking your baggage has just told you
that the limit is two watches. You:
a)
Begin to get upset
b)
Say that you are very,very sorry
c)
Calmly admit that you have brought in two many watches
d)
Smile and tell him that you didn’t know that the limit was two watches
Count one point a or b answer you did not circle and one point for every c or d
answer you did circle. Then find your score un thr chart
16-20- you handle stress better than most people .You stay calm in situations that
make other people very nervous.
11-15-you are person who sometimes feels stress, but not very often
6-10- Situations that cause stress are frequent in you life. You should try to relax a
little!
0-5-You feel stressed out too often!You should learn how to calm down from
people who know to handle stress.
How can I deal with Stress?
Although you can’t always control the thing that are stressing you out , you can
control how you freact to them. The way you feel about things result from the way
you think about things. If you change how you think, you can change the way you feel.
Try some of this tips to cope with your stress:
Make a list of the things that are causing your stress. Think about your friends,
family, school and other activities. Acceot that you can’t cotrol everything on your
list .
Take control of what you can. For example , if you’re working too many hours
and you don’t have time to study enough, you may need to cut back your work hours.
Give yourself a break . Remember that you can’t make everyone in your life
happy all the time. And its okay to make mistakes now and then.
Don’t commit yourself to things you can’t do or don’t want to do.
Ir you are already too busy, don’t promise to decorate for the school dance. If
you’re tired and don’t want to go out, tell your friends you’ll go another night.
Find someone to talk to. Talking to your friends or family can help because it
gives you a chance to express your feelings. However, problems in your social life or
family can be the hardest to talk about. If you feel like you can’t talk to your family or a
friend, talk to someone outside the situaton. This could be your priest or minister , a
school counselor or your family doctor.
Chocolate: a world favorite
Chocolate, one of the most popular foods in the world, has I history as rich as its
flavor. Chocolate comes from the beans of the cacao tree, a plant that has grown in the
Americas for at least 4,000 years. As long ago as the twelfth century, Inian families
drank chocolate at marriages and other ceremonies. However the chocolate was not
known in Europe until 1528, when the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes brought it to
Spain.
Drinking chocolate soon became popular in Spain and quickly spread to the rest
of Europe. Three hundred years later, a scientist in Holland learned how to make
chocolate into candy. As the years
passed, people in countries such as
Belgium,Swizerland, and England began to make many kinds of chocolate candy.
Today the making of chocolate is a multibillion dollar industry.
There are many reasons why chocolate is so popular. People like its rich, delicious
flavor. Some people think that chocolate is even better when combined with other
ingredients, such as fruit and nuts. Also, candy makers can make chocolate into
decorative shapes, from flowers and hearts to animals, and even to huge statues that
weigh as much as 220 pounds(100 kilos)
In addition, eating chocolate has helpfyl physical effects. The sugar and fat in
chocolate give people quick energy. This is why mountain climbers often carry
chocolate with them. For tis same reason, people like to have a candy bar when they’re
feeling tired.
Eating chocolate has mental effects, too, Many peope crave chocolate in times of
stress or emotional upset. Some psychologists explain that people associate chocolate
with the happy times of their childhoods. The taste of chocolate reminds them of the
food and comfort they received from their mothers. However, physical scientist have
developed another explanation. They say that one ingredient of chocolate, Phenyl
ethymaline, seems to lower stress.
There is no doubt that chocolate, wiyh its unique physical and psychological
effects and its unmatched flavor, is one of the world’s favourite foods.
1)
Where did chocolate come from ?
2)
Who brought chocolateto Europe?
3)
What effect does chocolate chocolate have on the hum an body?
How important is leisure?
How important is leisure time? How important is time to relax and to collect
yourself ? Many doctors believe that learning to relax in order to relieve day-to-day
tension could one day save your life. In our fast-paced world, it is almost impossible to
avoid building p tension from stress. All of us confront stress daily; anything that places
an extra demand on us causes stress. We encounter stress on job, and we face it at
home.
The body responds to stress by “mobilizing itsdefenses”. Blood pressure rises and
muscles get ready to act. If you tension relieved, it can start numerous reactions, both
physical and psychological. Yet, we can learn to cope with stress effectively and to
avoid its consequences. How? By relaxing in the face of the stress. The effects of stress
depend not on what happens to us, but on the way we react. In times of stress, taking a
few moments to sit quietly and relax can make anyone feel better.
What do you do in your free time? Do you exercise a lot? Are you typical of
people from your culture?
Как справиться со стрессом?
(Окончание)
13. На работе, если ваш начальник не возражает, ежедневно каждые 2 часа
устраиваете себе 5-10-минутный перерыв.
14. Ежедневно ищите повод сделать кому-нибудь комплимент (сотрудникам,
членам семьи, друзьям).
15. Если вам не нужны для работы часы, оставляйте их дома.
16. В следующий раз, когда будете играть с детьми, сознательно проиграйте
им.
Гордитесь тем,как здорово вы сумели скрыть то, что сделали это намеренно.
Помните, что действие стресса гораздо больше зависит от вашей реакции на
происходящее, чем от самого события. Зачастую нет нужды тратить все силы на
изменение ситуации, но можно изменить свою реакцию.
Perception
Perception ie the process by which organisms interpret and organize sensation to
produce a meaningful experience of the world. Sensation refers to the immediate resukt
of stimulation of sensory receptors in the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin. Perception
involves further processing of sensory input. In practice, sensation and perception are
almost impossible to separate, dtcouse they are parrt of one process.
Our sense organ translate physical energy from the environment into electrial
impulses processed by the brain. For example, light, in the form of electromagnetic
radiation, causes receptor cells in our eyes to activate and send signals to the brain. But
we do not understand these signals as pure energy. The pr ocess of perception allowsus
to interpret them as objects, events, people and situations.
Without the ability to organize and interpret sensations, life would seem like a
meaningless jumble of colors, shapes, and sounds. A person without any perceptual
ability would not be able to recognize faces, understand language, or avoid threats. Such
a person woould not survive for long.
Organizing raw sensory stivuli into meaningful experiences involves cognition, a
set of mental activities that includes thinking, knowing, fnd remembering. Knowledge
and experience are extremely important for reception, because they help us make sense
of the input to our sensory systems.
Depth perception is the ability to see the world in three dimensions and to
perceive distance. Although this ability may seem simple, depth perception is
remarkable when you coneider that images projected on each retina are twodimensional. From these flat images, we construct a vivid three-dimensional world. To
percieve depth, we depend on two main sources of information:binocular disparity and
monocular cues.
The perception of motion is complex phenomenon. We are almost alwys in
motion. How does our brain know which movement on the retina is due to our own
motion and which is due to motion in the world? One explanation of motion
perception involves a form of unconscious inference. That is, when we walk around or
move our head a particular way, we unconsciously expect that images of stationary
objects will move on our retina. We discount such movemet on the retina as due to our
own bodily motion and percive the objects as statsionary.
In contrast, when we are moving and the image of an object does not move on our
retina, we percive that object as moving. Consider what happens as a person moves in
front of you and you track that person’s motion with your eyes. You move your head
and your eyes to follow the person’s movement, with the result that the image of the
person does not move on your retina. The fact that the person’s image stays in roughly
the same part of the retina leads you to percive the person as moving.
Perceptioin and perciver-distortion illusions
To the biologist, the life of animals (including that of humans) consists of seeking
stimulation and respondding appropriately. A reflex occurs before an individual knows
what struck him, what made him lift a foot or drop an object. It is biologically correct to
be alarmed before one knows the reason. It is only after the immediate and automatic
respone that the cerebral cortex is involved and consious perseption begins. Perseption
comes between simple sensation and complex cognitional bexavior. By the time people
are able to talk about it, perseption has become so automatic that they hardly realize that
seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, is an interpreation. Each act of perceptin
is a hypothesis based on prior experince: the world is made up of things people expect
to see, hear, or smell, and any new sensory event is persived in realtion to what they
alredy know. People percive tress, not brown,upright masses and blotches of green
against a background of blue, gray, and white. Once one has learned to understand
speech, it is all but impossible to hear words as sibillants and diphthongs, sounds of
lower and higher frequencies. In other words, recognizing a thing entails knowing its
total shape our pattern. This is usually called by its German name, Gestalt. As well as
perception of the external environment, there is perception of oneself. Information about
one’s position in space, for example, comes from vision, from vestibular receptors, and
from somatic receptors in the skin and deep tissues. This information is collected in the
vestibular nuclei and passed on to the thalamus. From there it is realyed to the central
gyri and the parietal region of the cortex, where it becomes conscious perception.
Some illusions are realted to perciver characteristics such as brain function. When
an observer is confronted with a visual assortment of dots, for example the brain may
appear to group the dots that “belong together.” These groupins made on the basis of
such things as observed similarity (e.g., sred versus black dots), proximity, common
direction of movement, perceptual set (the way one is expecting to see things grouped),
and extrapolation (one’s estimate of what will happen based on an extension of what is
now happening). Time-induced error is an example of Gestalt illusion that ossurs over
brief time intervals. Two images of the same line, for example, will appearto differ in
length if they are flashed quickly one after the other. Closure (another Gestalt term) is
the illusion of seeing an incomplete stimulus as though it were whole. Thus, one
unconsciously tends to complete (close) a traingle or a square with a gap in one of its
sides. In watching movies, closure ossurs to fill the intervals between what are really
rapidly projected still pictures, giving the illusion of uninterrupted motion. The “figure
and ground” illusion is commonly experienced when one gazes at tye illustration of a
vase the outline of which is created by two profiles (see ambiguous figure seen as either
vase or two profailes). At any moment one will be able to see either the vase (in the
centre area) as “figure” or the profiles on each side (in which case the faces are seen as
“ground”). The fluctuations of figure and ground may occur even when one fails
deliberately toi shift attention, appearing without conscious effort. Seeing one aspect
apparently excludes seeing the other.
In a related experience, linear persrective creates the illusion that parallel lines, or
contors converge as they recede from the viewer. Ir it were not for these converging
lines, a figure in the distant backdround might appear smaller than woud an identical
figure in the foreground.Visual illusions b include a variety of contrast color
phenomena. A succesive contrast occurs when, after one has stared at a red surface, a
green surface looks much brighter. As one enters Iin a dark room from bright sunshine
,the room at first seems quite dark by contrast. F simulteniuos contrast occurs when an
area of brightnnes is seen against a less intense or a more intense background. If a grey
patch of paper is placed on a black background, it looks whiter thgan it did before; if
placed on a white background, in looks darker.
In studies of visual verticality, experimenters investigated the conditions thst
determine perception of the “upright”. A tilted chair that could be mechanically
conrolled by the subject was placed in a slanted room containing visual indicators of
verticals and horizontals. When varoius persons were asked to sit in the chair and
aligned themselves with the true vertical determined by gravity , while others
experienced the illusion of verticality by aligning themselves with the visual directions
they saw the slanted room. Closing the eyes made true alignment easier.
Staring at a single bright spot in an otherwise darkened room creates the illusion
thet the stationary light is moving. One theory to account for this is that the impression
is caused by minute eye movements of the observer. The so-called phi phenomenon is
an illusion of movement that arises when stationary objects, light bulbs for example,
are placed side by side and illuminated rapidly one after another. The effect is
frequently used on the theatre marquees to give the impression of moving lights.
There is a well-known apparent difference in the size of the moon when it is at
the horizon and when it is fully risen. The horizon moon ,though it is actually farther
away from the observer, looks much larger than it does when it is high in the sky and
closer. The explanation s have attributed the moon illusion tj the fact that the fully risen
moon cannot be readily compared to the terrain, as it can at the horizon; to atmospheric
haze, which alters the impression of distance and size; to the change in the angle of
elevation of the observer’s eyes; and to the idea that the moon’s increase in altitude
creates an expectation of decrease in size. The moon illusion remains a paradox since,
although the retinal images of the high moon and the horizon moon are about the same
the percieved size differs grossly.
In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring ,
interpreting , selecting and orginizing sensory information. It is a task for more complex
than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s when it was proclaimed that building
perceiveng machines would take about a decade, but, needles to say, that is still very
far from It is a task for more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s when
it was proclaimed that building perceiveng machines would take about a decade, but,
needles to say, that is still very far from reality. The word perception comes from
latinmeaning receivung collecting, action of taking possesion , apprehension with the
mind of senses. Methods of study perception range from essentially biological or
psychological approaches through the philosophy of mind and in
empricis
epistemology such as that of David Hume, John Locke, affirmatin of perceiption as the
basis of all scinse of knowledge.
There are two basic theories of perception: Passive Perception and Active
Perception. The passive perception is adressed in this article and could be surmased as
the following sequence of events: surrounding- input-processing –output. Although
still supported by main stream philosophers, psychologists and neurogolists, this thepry
is nowadays mlosing momentum. The theory of active perception has emerged from
extensive research of sensory illusions. This theory is increasingly gaining experimental
support and could be surmised as dynamic relationship between “description” (in the
brain) – senses – surrounding.
The different kinds of stress.
Srtess management can be complicated and confusing because there are different
types of stress – acute stress, episodic acute stess, and cronic stress – each with its own
characteristics, symptoms, duration, and treatment approaches. Let’s look at each one.
Acute stress is the most common form of stress. It comes from demands and
pressures of the recent past and anticipated demands and pressures of the near future.
Acute stress is thrilling and exciting in small doses, but too much is exhausting. A fast
run down a challenging ski slope, for example, is exhilarating early in the day. That
same ski run late in the day is taxing and waering. Skiing beyond your limits can lead to
falls and broken bones. By the same token, overdoing on short-term stress can lead to
psychological disrtess, tension headaches, upset stomach, and other symptoms.
Fortunately, acute stress symptoms are recognized by most people. It’s a landry list of
what has gone awry in their lives: the auto accident that crumpled the car fender, the
loss of an important contract, a deadline they’re rushing to meet, their child’s occasional
problems at school, and so on. Because it is short-term, acute stress doesn’t have
enough time to do the extensive damage associated with long-term stress. The most
common symptoms are:
 emotional distress – some combination of anger or irritability, anxiety, and
depression, the three stress emotions;
 muscular problems including tension headache, back pain, jaw pain, and the
muscular tensions that lead to pulled muscles and tendon and ligament problems;
 stomach, gut and bowel problems such as heartburn, acid stomach, flatulence,
diarrhea, constipation, and irratable bowel syndrome;
 transiet over arousal leads to elevation in blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, sweaty
palms, heart palpitation, dizziness, migraine headaches, cold hands or feet, shortness of
breath, and chest pain. Acute stress can crop up in anyone’s life, and it is highly
treatable and manageable.
Illusions.
Illusions is a misrepresentation of a “real” sensory stimulus – that is, an
interpretation that contradicts objective “reality” as defined by general agreement. For
example, a child who perceives tree branches at night as if they are hobgoblins may be
said to be having an illusion. An illusion is distinguished from a hallucination, an
experience that seems to originate without an external source of stimulation. Neither
experience is necessarily a sign of psychiatric distrubance; and both are regularly and
consistenly reported by virtually everyone.
The nature of illiusions. Illusions, then, are special perceptual experience in which
information arising from “real” external stimuli leads to an incorrect perception, or false
impression, of the object or event from which the stimulation comes. Some of these
false impressions may arise from factors beyond an individual’s control (such as the
characteristic bahavior of light waves that makes a pencil in glass of water seem bent),
from inadequate information (as under conditions of poor illumination), or from the
functional and structual characteristics of the sensory apparaturs (e.g., distortions in the
shape of the lens in the eye). Such visual illusions are experienced by every sighted
person. Another group of illusions results from misinterpretations one makes of
seemingly abequate sensory cues. In such illusions, sensory impressions seem to
contradict the “facts of reality” or fail to report their “trie” character.
In these instances the perceiver seems to be making an error in processing sensory
information. The error appears to arise within the central nervous system (brain and
spinal cord); this may result from competing sensory information, psychlogicalor
previous expectation (mental set). The driver who sees his own headlights reflected in
the window of a store, for example, may experience the illusion that another vehicle is
coming toward him even though he knows there is no road there.
Visual illusions. An optical illusion. Square. A is exactly the same shade of grey as
Square B. Numerous optical illusions are produced by the refraction (bending) of light
as it passes through one substance to another in which the speed of light is significantly
different. A ray og light passing from one transparent medium (air) to another (water) is
bent as it emerges. Thus, the pencil standing in water seems broken at the surface where
the air and water meet; in the same way, a partially submerged log in the water of a
swamp gives the illusion of being bent. Rainbows also result from refraction. As the
sun’s rays pass through rain, the droplets separate (refract) the white light into its
component colors. As rays of white light from any source pass through a prism, they are
refracted to give the appearance of a spectrum of color as in the rainbow of a summer
morning. Another illusion that depends on atmospheric conditions is the mirage, in
which, for example, the vision of a pool of water is created by light passing the layers of
hot air above the heated surface of a highway. In effect, cooler layers of air refract the
sun’s rays at different angles than do less dense strata of heated air, giving the
appearance of water where there is none; nearby objects may even appear to be reflected
in it. Under unusual conditions, more elaborate mirages may appear as cities, forests,
“unidentified flying objects”, oases, and even as the images of ships in a nearby body of
water plying the sky of a desert.
Tactual illusions. The skin contains numerous “sport” that respond selectively to
either cold or warmth, but generally not to both. It can happen, however, that a very
warm stimulus is produce a sensation of cold when placed on a spot that responds to
cold. Thus, when a warm stimulus is perceived as cold, the illusion is called that of
“paradoxical cold”. “Paradoxical heat,” a less frequent experience, results from
stimulating warm and cold spots simultaneously. It appears to be a fusion of warm and
paradoxical cold effects, producing a strange, somewhat unpleasant sensation of haet
that seems to be attended by uneasiness resembling that of pain.” The sensation is
sometimes called “psychological heat.” Sudden temperature contrasts can play tricks on
the senses. If hot water is run over one hand, and cold water over the other long enough
for both to adjust to the temperatures and both are then plunged into lukewarm water,
the resulting sensation will be that the cold hand will feel arm and the hot, cold. It
would seem that in plunging the cold- adapted hand, nerve cells for perceiving cold
were suddenly inhibited and those for perceiving hot were stimulated, while in the hotadapted hand the reverse took place. A single pencil may be felt as if it were two when
it is held between crossed fingers in such a way that the skin is stimultaneously
stimulated at two would usually require two separte objects to produce such a
sensation.
Illusions of psychiatric significance.
Illusions called pseudo hallucinations occur at times when feeling of anxiety or
fear are projected on external objects, as when a child perceives threatening faces or
monsters in shadows at night or sees hodgoblins in trees. A soldier tense with
apprehension may, in his fear, perceive inanimate objects as an attacking enemy or one
of his own comrades as the foe. In literature, thr character Don Quixote perseived other
people as machines, or as teddy bears, or as devils. The déjà vu phonomenon is a feeling
that a past episode is repeating itself in the present; there ia a fusion of past and present
to create an illusion that one is reliving an experience and that he therefore knows its
outcome. It might be called a “hallucination” of familiarity; some theorists interpret the
experience as being based on reactivation of old memories. Emotions, compelling
associations, or strong expectations frequently cause illusional misperceptionsin
everyday life. The hostile listener hears someone say “wire” and thinks he is being
called a “liar”; the self- consciously obese girl misinterprete the word “fate” as
“weight”. There is also the mistaken identification of strangers as friends in the street.
Hallucination. Hypnosis and trance states. Hallucination is the experience of
perceiving objects or events that do not have an external source. For example, a person
may hear name called by a voice that no one else seems to hear. A hallucination is
distinguished from an illusion, which is a misinterpretation of an actual stimulus.
Traditional psyhiatric sources define hallucinations as “perceptions without
corresponding stimuli from without”, or as the “apparent perception of an external
object when no such object is present”. A histirical survey of the subject of
hallucinations clearly reflects the development of scientific thought in psychiatry,
psycholog y, and neurobiology. By 1838 the significant relactionship between the
content of dreams and of hallucinations had been pointed out. In the 1840s the
occurrence of hallucinations under a wide variety of conditions (including
psychological and physical stress) as well as their genesis through the effects of drugs
had been described.
The mystic achieves hallucinations by gaining control of his own dissociative
mechanisms; perhaps this is a from of self- hypnosis. Such indivioduals can accomplish
an astonishing withdrawal from the enviroment by prolonged intense concentration
(e.g., by gazing at some object). The hallucinations may be of the type in which the
person perceives his “inner self” to leave his body to view himself (autoscopic
hallucination) or to be transported to new surroundings. Alternatively, the hallucinations
may take the from of unique visual imagery; for example, the yantra is a visual
hallucination of a colored, geometrical image that appears at a level of trance of the sort
experienced by practitioners of Yoga. The recurrence of certain designs and patterns in
human hallucinatory experience is probably related to structural aspecrc of the visual
system. Ordinary experimental hypnotic and posthypnotic suggestions of hallucinations
are well known. The hypnotic subject (who can be described as a person in a controlled
dissociative state) may on occasion also experience spontaneous hallucinations in the
absence of specific suggestions. Prolonged monotony or fixation of attention may lead
to diminished responsiveness to the environment with a general effect similar that of
absolute reductions of stimulation or of hypnotic trance. Under these conditions such
dissociative phenomena as “highway hypnosis” among drivers of motor vehicles may
occur. Similar phenomena that occur among aviators have been called fascination or
fixation. During prolonged, monotonous flight, pilots may experience visual, auditory
and bodily (kinesthetic) hallucinations; for example, one may suddenly feel that his
planeis in a spin or a dive or that it is upside down, even though it is flying level. A
kinesthetic hallucination such as this can be so vivid that the pilot will attempt
“corrective” maneuvering of the aircraft, with potentially tragic results.
Suggestion is the name given to the psychological process by which one person
may guide the thoughts, feeling or behavior of another. For nineteenth century writers
on psychology such as William James the words suggest and suggestion were used in
senses very close to those which they have in common speech; one idea was said to
suggest another when it brought that other idea mind. Early scientific studies of
hypnosis scientists such as Clark Hull led tk the extension of the meaning of these
words in a special and technical sense. Modern scientific study of hypnosis, which has
followed the pattern of Hull’s work, separates two essential factors: “trance” and
suggestion. The state of mind induced by “trance” is said to come about via the process
of a hypnotic induction; essentially instructions and suggestion that an individual will
enter a hypnotic state. Once a subject has entered hypnosis, suggestion are given which
can produce the effects sought by the hypnotist. Commonly used suggrstion on mesures
of “suggestibility” or “susceptibility” include suggestion that one’s arm is getting
lighter and floating up in the air, of the suggestion that ba fly is buzzing around your
head. The “classic ” response to an accepted suggestion that one’s arm is beginning to
float in the air is that the subject perceives the intended effect as happenning
involuntarily.
Suggestion, however, cfn also have an effect in the absence of hypnosis. This socalled “waking suggestion” are given in precisely the same way as “Hypnotic
suggestion” and can produce strong strong changes in perceptual experince.
Experiments on suggestions, in the absence of hypnosis, were were conducted by early
researches such as Hull. More recently, researhers have conducted experiments
investigating such non-hypnotic-suggestibility and found a strong correlation between
people’s responses to suggestion both in- and outside hypnosis. In addiction to the kinds
of suggestion typically delivered by reseachers I interested in hypnisis there are other
forms of suggestibility hipnotic suggestibility, and interrogative pressure is applied.
Color in my life.
Colors are one of the most exciting experiences in life. I love them and resonate
with them just as I do with the emotions. Is it any wonder that the two are so intimate?
Color directly affects the emotions. Color both reflects the current state of your
emotions, as well as being something that you can use to improve or change your
emotions. The color that you choose to wear either reflects your current state of being or
it reflects the color that you need.
People who wear black frequently are reflecting the somber feeling of no color. No
color, no emotions. Imagine dramatically feeling the effect of the countryside full of
women dressed in black as I did recently in Greece. Heavy….. This is depression, not
real sadness. Read on depression for more information about the difference. Colors have
certain wavelengths, which can be felt and experienced. They affect you even if you
don’t know it!
The colors that you wear affect you much more than they affect the people around
you. Of course they also affect anyone who comes in contact with you, but you are the
one saturated with the color all day! I pick and refuse items from my environment
totally based on its color. I sometimes chose the clothes I wear based on the color I need
for the day. So you can consciously use color to give yourself a certain vibration, which
will help you feel better.
Color, sound and emotions are all vibrations. Emotions are literally energy in
motion, which means that they are meant to move and flow. This is reason feeling your
real feeling is the fastest way to get your energy in motion. And as most of you know,
flowing energy is exactly what creates health in the cells of your body. So the fastest
way to create good health is to feel your real feelings. The fastest way to create disease
is to inhibit your emotions.
If you could see your emotions, you would see colors. Your emotions are what
give color to your life. You need all the colors to be healthy and balanced. Any colors
that are missing reflect a problem in your system. Any color that you reject indicates
emotions that you are rejecting. The emotions that you are rejecting indicate the parts of
yourself that you cannot accept and love. It will also help you know the difference
between “defensive feelings” (obsessive thoughts) vs. real feelings, which are energy in
motions.
Notice the colors that you do not like and you will be aware of the emotions that
you are avoiding. For example, if red makes you uncomfortable or if you don’t like it,
you are avoiding the emotions that red elicits. Red is the color of action. It is an “I am”
feeling. “I exist, I am present, I physical, I am strong.” It is no accident that red is used
in the military and in the “Red Light” district I town! Red stirs us. People are quite
judgmental about red because it scares them. “People who wear red just want to be
noticed” is a judgment I frequently hear. Red is a strong vibration, which takes self –
confidence to hold in your cells. Red is extremely important for good physical health.
We all need a healthy dose of red to be vibrant. Please know that it is not wrong if you
do not like a certain color, it simply provides information for you to explore.
Neither is there any color that is bad nor good. Each of us needs different colors at
different times to balance ourselves. Each day and each moment is a different color.
This is the reason it is so important to flow. There IS NO ONE ANSWER. Each
moment is a different reality and if we want to be healthy and happy, we must learn to
flow with each moment anew!
Feeling your real feelings is also the fastest way open yourself up to a
transcendental state. I prefer to think of it as the natural, free- flowing state. In this state
colors are always brighter and clearer than in a mundane, emotionless state.
Color is everywhere. It is in your skin around you and in all sound. Scriabin, a
wonderful Russian composer, saw the color that is in sound. I first heard of this
phenomenon in a graduate psychology class taught by a musician. If you let yourself
feel the sound, you will begin to feel the colors that are in each and every sound. This is
the reason Isadora Duncan, Mother of Modern Dance, could dance the music exactly the
way the composer felt it when he wrote it. She felt the emotions on the colors in the
music through her solar plexus and let her body freely express what she experienced.
Awesome! These kinds of experiences are what you have to look forward to as you
increase your feeling states.
There are different systems of colors, just as there are different systems of
practically everything else. I know three different systems and there are others. I suggest
you see which person or system attracts you. You can study with someone who uses
color or read about different systems. I use sound and color in my personal and
professional work. But the most important thing is developing your own sensitivity to
color. Your experience of color is what is important not someone else’s.
My most recent color trip was at the Philadelphia Flower Show courtesy of the
write tulips from Holland. I had always known white had all of the colors in it, but I had
never seen or felt them. White was white. When I turned and saw a field of beautiful,
white tulips standing up straight against bright green grass, I suddenly experienced
brilliant colors radiating off the perfectly pristine white tulips. Awesome! Now I
experience the colors in white.
Let yourself sense color more and notice how it affects you. Use your intuitions to
experiment with different color with different people on different days – notice how you
feel. Notice how others react to you. Notice when you feel equal and close to others.
The more consciously you tune in to color, the more your awareness will expand.
What’s your favorite color?
Color is all in your mind. It doesn’t exist. When your eye receives light, it sends
messages to your mind. And your mind translates these messages into colors, which
vary according to the wavelengths of light.
You are all aware of the strange tricks your mind can play on you. It’s not
surprising that, when it translates your eyes’ message into colors, it often adds other
messages. Colors become linked with memories, associations, emotions and natural
body reactions. Green begins to mean trees and leaves, red subconsciously reminds you
fire. Perhaps this is why over the centuries and throughout the world, colors have been
given special significance and magical properties. Very color in the visible spectrum has
a superstition associated with it. The great abstract artists of the past century studied the
symbolism and psychological effect of colors. And recently scientists have begun to
discover that colors can deeply influence our lives. Here are some of the meanings that
old wives and contemporary science have attributed to basic colors.
RED is the color of life. Red is usually associated with passion. If red is your
favorite color, your heart rules your life. In China, red is a lucky color for brides.
Scientists believe that red stimulates the nervous system. Don’t paint your walls red- it
could drive you crazy. It has also been found that red light can help you solve
mathematical problems.
YELLOW is the color of the sun. Yellow is a joyful color, and in some parts of the
world it is associated with fertility because of yellow harvests. Yellow is also a musical
color. It is like a high note or a sharp pain in the eye, just as a high pitched musical note
can hurt your ear.
GREEN is the color of trees and leaves. Green is always thought of as a
harmonious color, because it symbolizes growth in nature. It is a peaceful color,
blackboards have been replaced by green boards because green light wave lengths do
not cause strain to the eyes. And as an experiment, a black “suicide Bridge” was
repainted in bright green. As a result, the number of suicides decreased by a third.
BLUE is the color of the sky. Blue is a spiritual color, and is normally associated
with the mind. If this is your favorite color, you are either very spiritual or very
intellectual – or both. Blue light is cold. It can make you shiver and may dull your
emotions. Perhaps it is no coincidence that scientists believe that blue light time seems
to pass quicker for you – because you’re daydreaming?
BLACK and WHITE, this are not really colors, but to most people black
symbolizes death and evil, while white means innocence and good. But in many oriental
cultures, black is good both for widows and for the devil. It’s all in your mind!
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
(Infinitives, gerunds, Modals and other verb forms)
Reading 1
Skim the reading to find the answer to the question: What is the difference between
phobias and manias?
DETAIL QUESTIONS.
1)
What is the subject of abnormal psychology study?
2)
What does the suffix –phobia mean?
3)
What is its origin?
4)
What phobias are mentioned in the text?
5)
Do you know the meaning of the word mania?
6)
How can you remember the symptoms of mania?
If you want to know more about phobias and manias, go to Extension activities and
brainteasers and check the Phobias List.
Introduction to mental disorders
Abnormal psychology is the scientific study of abnormal behavior in order to
describe, predict, explain, and change abnormal patterns of functioning. Abnormal
psychology in clinical psychology studies the nature of psychology, its causes and its
treatments. Of course, the definition of what constitutes abnormal has varied across time
and across cultures. Individuals also vary in what they regard as normal or abnormal
behavior. In general, abnormal psychology can be described as an area of psychology
that studies people who are consistently unable to adapt and function effectively in a
variety of conditions. The four main contributing factors to how well and individual is
able to adapt include their genetic makeup, physical condition, learning and reasoning,
and socialization.
The English suffixes –phobia, -phobic, -phobe (of Greek origin) occur in technical
usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, disabling fear as a mental
disorder (e.g., agoraphobia), in chemistry to describe chemical aversions (e.g.,
hydrophobic), and in biology to describe organisms that dislike certain conditions (e.g.,
acidophobia). In common usage they als form words that describe dislike or hatred of a
particular thing or subject.
Many people apply the suffix –phobia inappropriately to mild or irrational fears
with no serious substance; however earlier senses relate to psychiatry which studies
serious phobias disable a person’s life. For more information on the psychiatric side of
this, including how psychiatry groups phobias as agoraphobia, social phobia, or simple
phobia, sea phobia. Treatment for phobias may include desensitization ( graduated
exposure therapy) or flooding.
The following lists include words with ending in –phobia, and include fears that
have acquired names. In many cases people have coined these words as neologisms, and
only a few of them occur in the medical literature. In many cases the naming of phobias
has become a word game. Note too no things, substances, or even concepts exist which
someone, somewhere may not fear, sometimes irrationally so. A list of all possible
phobias wouls run into many thousands and it would require a whole book to include
them all, certainly more than an encyclopedia would be able to contain. So this article
just gives an idea of the kind of phobias which one may encounter, certainly not all.
Most of these terms tack the suffix –phobia onto a Greek word for the object of the fear
(some use a combination of a Latin root with the Greek suffix, which many classicists
consider linguistically impure) in some cases (particularly ically-oriented usages), a
word ending in –phobia may have an antonym ending in –phobia – thus: coprophobia,
Germanophobia/Germanophilia.
Mania is a medical condition characterized by several elevated mood. Mania is
most usually associated with bipolar disorder, where episodes of mania may cyclically
alternate with episodes of depression. (Note: not all mania can be classified as bipolar
disorder, as mania may result from other diseases or causes. However, bipolar disorder
is the “classic” manic disease. Hypomania is a less severe variant of mania, where there
is less loss of control.
Symptoms. Although “severely elevated mood” may sound pleasant, the
experience of mania is often quite unpleasant and sometimes disturbing if not
frightening for the person involved and may lead to impulsive behavior that may later
be regretted. It can also often be complicated by the sufferer’s lack of judgment and
insight regarding periods of execration of symptoms. Manic patients are frequently deny
anything is wrong with them. Because mania frequently encourages high energy and
decreased perception of need-deprived psychosis may appear, further complicating the
ability to think clearly. Racing thoughts and misperceptions lead to frustration and
decreased ability to communicate with others.
In addition to decreased need for sleep, other manic symptoms include irritability,
hyper sexuality, hyper-religiosity, hyperactivity, talkativeness, and grandiose ideas and
plans. In manic and less severe, hypo manic cases, the afflicted person may engage in
out of character behavior such as questionable business transactions, wasteful
expenditures of money, risky liaisons or highly vocal arguments uncharacteristic of
previous behaviors. These behaviors increase stress in personal relationships, problems
at work and increase the risk of altercations with law enforcement as well as being at
high risk of impulsively taking part in activities potentially harmful to self and others.
A mnemonic used to remember the symptoms of mania is DIG FAST:
D = Distractibility
I = Indiscretion (excessive pleasure activities)
G = Grandiosity
F = Flight of ideas
A – Activity increased
S = Sleep deficit
T = Talkativeness (pressure speech)
Mixed states. Mania can be experienced at the same time as depression, in a mixed
state. Dysphonic mania is primarily manic and a depressive mixed state is primarily
depressed. This has caused speculation amongst doctors that mania and depression are
two independent axes in bipolar spectrum, rather than opposites.
GRAMMAR CHECK
1.
Read the text and complete it using infinitives from the text below.
What are the phobias?
Phobias often begin in childhood and are irrational and disabling fears that produce
a compelling desire… the dreaded object or situation. A phobic person understands that
the fear is excessive and groundless. But the effort .. it only brings more anxiety.
Specific phobias are the most common – involving things such as school, dentists,
driving, water, balloons, snakes, high places and enclosed spaces (claustrophobia). The
fear is usually not of the object itself but of some dire outcome, such as falling from an
airplane.
Someone with agoraphobia suffers multiple fears that have three main themes: fear
of living home, of being alone and of being in a situation where one cannot suddenly . ..
or obtain help. When fear is at its peak, the agoraphobic may … to almost any length
… leaving home.
In social phobia, a person’s central fear is of being humiliated in public. People
with this kind of phobia may even … at eating in a restaurant. They avoid public
speaking, parties and public restrooms. Such situations and places may … blushing,
palpitations, sweating, tremors, stuttering, or faintness. As many as 25% of professional
performers struggle with severe, lifelong performance anxiety – a form of social phobia
is left untreated may … withdrawn, depressed, and socially incapacitated.
2.
Translate this paragraph into English.
Вот список 10 человеческих страхов (по результатам опроса 1000 человек
проведенного во Франции в 1990 году): змеи, головокружения, науки, крысы, осы,
подземелья (полземные парковки), огонь, кровь, темнота, толпа.
BUILDING VOCABULARY
3.
Read the passage and complete the charts using the words from the text.
Don’t forget to translate the words.
Episodic acute stress
There are those, however, who suffer acute frequently, whose lives are so
disordered that they are studies in chaos and crisis. They’re always in a rush, but always
late. If something can go wrong, it does. They take on too much, have too many irons in
the fire, and can’t organize the slew of self-inflicted demands and pressures clamoring
for their attention. They seem perpetually in the clutches of acute stress. It is common
for people with acute stress reactions to be over aroused, short-tempered, irritable,
anxious, and tense. Often, they describe themselves as having “a lot of nervous energy”.
Always in a hurry, they tend to be abrupt, and sometimes their irritability comes across
as hostility. Interpersonal relationships deteriorate rapidly when others respond with real
hostility. The work becomes a very stressful place for them.
Another form of episodic acute stress comes from ceaseless worry. “Worry warts”
see disaster around every corner and pessimistically forecast catastrophe in every
situation. The world is a dangerous, unrewarding, punitive place where something awful
is always about to happen. These “awfulizers” also tend to be over aroused and tense,
but are more anxious and depressed than angry and hostile. The symptoms of episodic
acute stress are the symptoms of extended over arousal: persistent tension headaches,
migraines, hypertension, chest pain, and heart disease. Treating episodic acute stress
requires intervention on a number of levels, generally requiring professional help, which
may take many months.
Often, lifestyle and personality issues are so ingrained and habitual with these
individuals that they see nothing wrong with the way they conduct their lives. They
blame their woes on other people and external events. Frequently, they see their
lifestyle, their patterns of interacting with others, and their ways of perceiving the world
as part and parcel of who and what they are. Sufferers can be fiercely resistant to
change. Only the promise of relief from pain and discomfort of their symptoms can
keep them in treatment and on track in their recovery program.
Adjective - Adverb
Adjective – Noun
frequent
irritable
perpetually
Hostility
Rapidly
personality
pessimistic
Awful
Fiercely
anxious
endless
Stress
finally
episodic
Mental disorders
Mental disorder is any illness with significant psychological or behavioral
manifestations and that is associated with either a painful or distressing symptom or
impairment in one or more important areas of functioning. Mental disorders, in
particular their consequences and their treatment, are of more concern and receive more
attention now than in the past.
Mental disorders have become a more prominent subject of attention for several
reasons. They have always been common, but, with the eradication or successful treatment of many of the serious physical illnesses that formerly afflicted humans, mental
illness has become a more noticeable cause of suffering and accounts for a higher
proportion of those disabled by disease.
Moreover, the public has come to expect the medical profession to help it obtain an
improved quality of life in its mental as well as physical functioning. And indeed, there
has been a proliferation of both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments in
psychiatry in this regard, many of which have proved effective. The transfer of many
psychiatric patients, some still showing conspicuous symptoms, from mental hospitals
into the community has also increased the public's awareness of the importance and
prevalence of mental illness.
There is no simple definition of mental disorder that is universally satisfactory.
This is partly because mental states or behavior that are viewed as abnormal or
pathological in one culture may be regarded as normal or acceptable in another, and in
any case it is difficult to draw a line clearly demarcating healthy from pathological
mental functioning. A narrow definition of mental illness would insist upon the
presence of organic disease of the brain, either structural or biochemical; however, this
condition does not pertain, as far as is known, to the majority of mental disorders.
An overly broad definition would define mental illness as simply being the lack or
absence of mental health — that is to say, a condition of mental well-being, balance,
and resilience in which the individual can successfully work and function and in which
he can both withstand and learn to cope with the conflicts and stresses encountered in
life. A more generally useful definition than either of the above is that a mental disorder
is an illness with significant psychological or behavioral manifestations that occurs in
an individual and that is associated either with a painful or distressing symptom, with
impairment in one or more important areas of functioning, or with both. The mental
disorder may be due to either a psychological, social, biochemical, or genetic
dysfunction or disturbance in the individual. A mental illness can have an effect on
every aspect of a person's life, including thinking, feeling, mood, and outlook and such
areas of external activity as family and marital life, sexual activity, work, recreation,
and management of material affairs.
Most mental disorders negatively affect how an individual feels about himself and
impair his capacity for participating in mutually rewarding relationships.
Psychopathology is the systematic study of the significant causes, processes, and
symptomatic manifestations of mental disorders. The meticulous study, observation,
and enquiry that characterize the discipline of psycho-pathology are in turn the basis for
the practice of psychiatry — i.e., the science and practice of treating mental disorders,
as well as dealing with their diagnosis and prevention.
Psychiatry and its related disciplines in turn embrace a wide spectrum of
techniques and approaches for treating mental illnesses. These include the use of
psychoactive drugs to correct biochemical imbalances in the brain or otherwise to
relieve depression, anxiety, and other painful emotional states. Another important group
of treatments are the psychotherapies, which seek to treat mental disorders by
psychological means and which involve verbal communication between the patient and
a trained person in the context of a therapeutic interpersonal relationship between them.
An important variant of this latter mode of treatment is behavioral therapy, which
concentrates on changing or modifying observable pathological behaviors by the use of
conditioning and other experimentally derived principles of learning.
While in Europe the mentally ill were shackled, some primitive societies treated
them using methods much resembling psychoanalysis, explains Levi-Strauss in the
July—August 1956 Courier article, where he draws parallels between shamanistic
rituals and modern psychotherapies.
Most of us regard psychoanalysis as a revolutionary discovery of 20th century
civilization and place it on the same footing as genetics or the theory of relativity.
Others, probably more conscious of the abuses of psychoanalysis than of the real lesson
it has to teach us, still look upon it as one of the absurdities of modern man. In both
cases, we overlook the fact that, psychoanalysis has simply rediscovered and expressed
in new terms an approach to mental illness which probably dates back to the earliest
days of mankind and which the so-called primitive peoples have always used, often
with a skill that amazes our foremost practitioners.
This cure (we have no reason to suppose it is not successful at least in certain
cases) is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is purely psychological; no drugs
are used nor is the body of the patient touched. The witch doctor simply recites or
chants, relying on speech alone to effect his cure. Secondly, two people must participate
in the treatment — doctor and patient — although, as we shall see in a moment, this
does not mean that other members of the community may not be present.
Of the two persons, the witch-doctor, whose powers are recognized by the whole
tribe, embodies social authority and order, while the other — the patient — suffers from
what we should call a psycho-physiological disorder, but which the Indians attribute to
an advantage gained by the spirit world over the human world. Since these two worlds
should normally be allied, and since the spirit world is of the same nature as the souls
possessed by the individual, the problem as the Indians see it, really stems from a
sociological disturbance caused by the ambition, ill-will or resentment of the spirits that
is by both psychological and social factors.
Several of the characteristics described are strangely reminiscent of
psychoanalytical treatment. Here too, illness is considered of psychological origin and
the treatment applied is exclusively psychological. Because of symptoms which he is
unable to control, or more simply because he is suffering from mental stress, the patient
feels cut off from the community and calls in the doctor whose authority is recognized
by the group, to help him regain his place in society. The treatment seeks to induce the
patient to describe events buried in his subconscious mind but which, despite the
passage of time, still govern his feelings and attitude to life.
What causes phobias?
Some specific phobias ... be explained by early traumatic events, such as the bite of
a dog, but the majority ... have no obvious cause. Most develop when an underlying fear
or conflict is transferred to something completely unrelated. Agoraphobia ... develop in
response to repeated panic attacks. Symptoms of social phobia ... develop early in
childhood, but the true cause is unknown.
Medical professionals indicate that aquaphobia ... manifest itself in a person
through their specific experiences or due to biological factors. Some people ... develop
the phobia as a reaction to a traumatic water experience — a near drowning or other
such event. Others ... have simply failed to have acquired experience in the water
through casual events like swimming or boating events due to cultural factors. Other
individuals ... suffer from an "instinctive reaction" to the water which arises separate
from any observable factors. They have a gut reaction that limits their fundamental
comfort level in any sort of casual water activities, such as swimming. Other sufferers ...
experience discomfort around the water without falling into any of the three categories:
traumatic water experience, cultural limitations, instinctive fear.
Many people ... mistakenly refer to aquaphobia as hydrophobia; hydrophobia is in
fact a symptom of later-stage rabies, and ... manifests itself in humans as difficulty in
swallowing, fear when presented with liquids to drink and an inability to quench one's
thirst. Hydro- is Greek and aqua- is Latin, both meaning "water." Most phobias have a
Greek prefix, but because the word hydrophobia was first used to describe late-stage
rabies, the term aquaphobia using a Latin prefix was used to prevent confusion.
Phobic disorder or neurosis
Phobias are neurotic States accompanied by intense dread of certain objects or
situations that would not normally have such an effect. This type of anxiety is
associated with a strong desire to avoid the dreaded object or situation. About six per
1,000 of the population suffer from a phobic disorder. There is a tendency for phobic
symptoms, whatever their nature, to persist for many years unless treated, and the
avoidance behavior they produce can seriously limit the affected individual's
movements and his social or occupational functioning. People can have phobias about
many different kinds of objects or situations, hut three main divisions of phobic
syndromes arc simple phobia, agoraphobia, and social phobia. Individuals with simple
phobias may intensely fear a specific object or situation, for «ample, cats or
thunderstorms; they have anxious thoughts upon anticipating contact with an object or
event, for instance, upon hearing the weather forecast, and they try to avoid the object,
as in staying indoors in order not to encounter a cat.
Typically, agoraphobic patients have an intense fear of being alone in or being
unable to escape from a public place or some other setting outside the home, such as a
crowded bus or a supermarket. A social phobia is present when the individual has
extreme anxiety in a social situation where he is tinder the scrutiny of others, such as
eating in a restaurant or speaking at a meeting. The treatment of phobic disorders is best
approached by the use of behavioral therapy; dynamic psychotherapy and anti-anxiety
drugs may be effective in some cases.
Phobia is an extreme, irrational fear of a specific object or situation. A phobia is
classified as a type of anxiety disorder, since anxiety is the chief symptom experienced
by the sufferer. Phobias are thought to be learned emotional responses. It is generally
held that phobias occur when fear produced by an original threatening situation is
transferred to other similar situations, with the original fear often repressed or forgotten.
An excessive, unreasoning fear of water, for example, may be based on a forgotten
childhood experience of almost drowning. The person accordingly tries to avoid that
situation in the future, a response that, while reducing anxiety in the short term, reinforces the person's association of the situation with the onset of anxiety Behavior
therapy is often successful in overcoming phobias. In such therapy, the phobic person is
gradually exposed to the anxiety-provoking object or situation in controlled manner
until he eventually ceases to feel anxiety, having realized that his fearful expectations of
the situation remain unfulfilled. In this way, the strong associative links between the
feared situation, the person's experience of anxiety, and his sub-, sequent avoidance of
that situation arc broken and are replaced by a less-maladaptive set of responses.
Psychotherapy may also be useful in the treatment of pho-I bias. Although
psychiatrists classify phobias as a single type of | anxiety disorder, hundreds of words
have been coined to specify the nature of the fear by prefixing phobia with the Greek
word for the object feared. Among the more common examples are acrophobia, fear of
high places; claustrophobia, fear of closed places; nyctophobia, fear of the dark;
ochlophobia, fear of crowds; xenophobia, fear of strangers; and zoophobia, fear of
animals. Agoraphobia, the fear of being in open or public places, is a particularly
crippling illness that may prevent its victims from even leaving home. School phobia
may afflict schoolchildren who are overly attached to a parent.
Anxiety is a feeling of dread, fear, or apprehension, often with no clear
justification. Anxiety is distinguished from true fear because the latter arises in response
to a clear and actual danger, such as one affecting a person's physical safety. Anxiety,
by contrast, arises in response to apparently innocuous situations or is the product of
subjective, internal emotional conflicts the causes of which may not be apparent to the
person himself. Some anxiety inevitably arises iu the course of daily life and is normal.
But persistent, intense, chronic, or recurring anxiety not justified in response to real-life
stresses is usually regarded as a sign of an emotional disorder. When such an anxiety is
unreasonably evoked by a specific situation or object, it is known as a phobia Л diffuse
or persistent anxiety associated with no particular cause or mental concern is called
general, or free-floating, anxiety. There are many causes (and psychiatric explanations)
for anxiety. Sigmund Freud viewed anxiety as the symptomatic expression of the inner
emotional conflict caused when a person suppresses from conscious awareness experiences, feelings, or impulses that are too threatening or disturbing to live with. Anxiety is
also viewed as arising from threats to an individual's ego or self-esteem, as in the case
of inadequate sexual or job performance. Behavioral psychologists view anxiety as an
unfortunate learned response to frightening events in real life; the anxiety produced
becomes attached to the surrounding circumstances associated with that event, so that
those circumstances come to trigger anxiety in the person independently of any
frightening event.
An anxiety disorder may develop where anxiety is insufficiently managed,
characterized by a continuing or periodic state of anxiety or diffuse fear that is not
restricted to definite situations or objects, and is generally classed as one of the psychoneuroses (neuroses). The tension is frequently expressed in the form of insomnia,
outbursts of irritability, agitation, palpitations of the heart, and fears of death or insanity.
Fatigue is often experienced as a result of excessive effort expended in managing the
distressing fear. Occasionally the anxiety is expressed in a more acute form and results
in physiological concomitants such as nausea, diarrhea, urinary frequency, suffocating
sensations, dilated pupils, perspiration, and rapid breathing. Similar symptoms occur in
several physiological disorders and in normal situations of stress or fear, but they may
be considered neurotic when they occur in the absence of any organic defect or
pathology and iu situations that most people handle with ease. Other types of anxietyrelated disorders include hypochondriasis, hysteria, obsessive-compulsive disorders,
phobias, and schizophrenia.
Witch-doctors and psychoanalysis
This was the experience of Dr. Stewart, an American psychologist who bas given
us an account of it in his book, Pygmies and Dream Giants. He has set off for the
interior of the Philippines to study the mental make-up of the extremely primitive
pygmy tribes called Negritos. His methods closely resembled those of psychoanalysts.
The witch-doctors not only allowed him to do as he wished, but immediately accepted
him as one of them; in fact, regarding themselves as specialists with a thorough
knowledge of the techniques employed, they insisted on helping him in his studies. Dr.
Stewart considers that in certain respects their psychotherapy is even ahead of ours.
As Dr. Stewart observes in this connection, this takes us beyond psychoanalysis to
one of its most recent developments, namely, group psychotherapy. One of its most
familiar forms is the psychodrama in which several members of the group impersonate
the characters in the patient's myth in order to assist him to see more clearly and thus
bring the tragedy to an end. This is possible only if the patient's myth itself is social in
character. Other individuals can play a part in it because it is their own myth too, or to
put it another way, because the critical situation in which individuals are liable to find
themselves in our society are broadly speaking, the same for all.
We thus see how deceptive to think that the forgotten events which psychoanalysts
helps the patient to bring back to mind, are something private and personal. Even that
difference between psychoanalysis and shamanistic treatments, thus disappears.
"As in Paris and in Vienna," writes Dr. Stewart, "the Negrito therapists were
helping the patient to contact patterns and incidents from a long-forgotten past, painful
incidents buried deep in the early time-layers of the accumulated experience which
made up the personality."
Afraid to fly?
Have you ever flown? Did you fly to another country to study English? How do
you feel about flying?
People who have to fly all the time for business usually find it boring. People who
fly only once in a while are excited. However, some people feel only terror when they
board an airplane. They suffer from a phobia, an illogical fear.
If you are afraid of poisonous spiders, it is logical. If you are afraid of all spiders,
even harmless ones, this is a phobia because it is illogical. Some people have phobias
about heights, being shut up in a small area, or being in a large open area It is not
logical to be afraid of these things when there is no danger, but a phobia is not logical.
Fear of flying is another phobia "We always hear about a plane crash, but we don't
hear about the millions of flights every year that are safe. Riding in a car is thirty times
more dangerous than flying, but most of us are not afraid every time we get into a car. It
is not logical to be afraid of flying, but research shows that about 12 per cent of people
have this fear."
People with a phobia about flying are afraid for one or more reasons. They are
afraid of heights. They avoid high places, and if they are in a high-rise building, they
don't look out the windows. They might be afraid of being in an enclosed place like an
elevator or a tunnel on a highway. When they get on an airplane, they can't get out until
the end of the flight, and the flight might last several hours.
Maybe they are afraid of the crowds and all the noise and people rushing around at
an airport. This especially bothers older people.
Some people are afraid of the unknown. They don't understand the technology of
flying and can't believe that a huge airplane can stay up in the air.
Others are afraid of loss of control. They need to control every situation they are
in. When they drive a car, they have some chance of avoiding an accident. In a plane,
they have no control over anything. It terrifies them to give up control to the pilot and
the rest of the crew.
For some people, a fear of flying is not important because they don't really need to
fly. But what about someone who works for an international company? What about an
entertainer who has to sing in twenty different places in a month? These people have to
fly if they want to continue in their profession.
There is help for these people. There are special classes in which people learn how
to control their fear. They probably can't lose it, but they can learn to control it. Then
they can fly when they need to, even though they probably won't enjoy it.
The class visits an airport and learns how airplane traffic is controlled and how
planes are kept in safe condition. A pilot talks about flying through storms, the different
noises an airplane makes, and air safety in general.
The class learns to do relaxation exercises, and the people talk about their fear, the
class listens to tape recordings of a takeoff and landing, and later the people ride in a
plane on the ; ground around the airport. Finally they are ready to take a short flight.
The instructors of these classes say that between 80 and 90 per cent of the people
who take them are successful. They still have their phobia, but they learn to control their
fear.
Chronic stress
While acute stress can be thrilling and exciting, chronic stress is not. This is the
grinding stress that wears people away day after day, year after year. Chronic stress
destroys bodies, minds and lives. It wreaks havoc through long-term attrition. It's the
stress of poverty, of dysfunctional families, of being trapped in an unhappy marriage or
in a despised job or career. It's the stress that the never-ending "troubles" have brought
to the people of Northern Ireland, the tensions of the Middle East have brought to the
Arab and Jew, and the endless ethnic rivalries that have been brought to the people of
Eastern Europe. Chronic stress comes when a person never sees a way out of a
miserable situation. It's the stress of unrelenting demands and pressures for seemingly
interminable periods of time. With no hope, the individual gives up searching for
solutions.
Some chronic stresses stem from traumatic, early childhood experiences that
become internalized and remain forever painful and present. Some experiences
profoundly affect personality. A view of the world, or a belief system, is created that
causes unending stress for the individual (e.g., the world is a threatening place, people
will find out you are a pretender, you must be perfect at all times). When personality or
deep-seated convictions and beliefs must be reformulated, recovery requires active selfexamination, often with professional help. The worst aspect of chronic stress is that
people get used to it. They forget it's there. People are immediately aware of acute stress
because it is new; they ignore chronic stress because it is old, familiar, and sometimes,
almost comfortable. Chronic stress kills through suicide, violence, heart attack, stroke,
and, perhaps, even cancer. People wear down to a final, fatal breakdown. Because
physical and mental resources are depleted through long-term attrition, the symptoms of
chronic stress are difficult to treat and may require extended medical as well as
behavioral treatment and stress management.
Children's fears
1. Children's fears come and go, but most children experience similar types of fears
at approximately the same age. For toddlers, the worst fears are often associated with
separation and change. Toddlers want their own mommy, daddy, spoon, chair, and bed.
They are profoundly conservative little people. The most daring toddlers feel content if
they can hold onto what they already know. Yet, children's fears are a useful index of
their development. Fear of strangers appears to be a consequence of their first specific
attachment, and its ending is a sign that they have acquired a more inclusive schema of
faces and people in general. A child who is afraid of cats but not of rabbits evidently
can differentiate one small animal from another. Fear of a particular person implies
recognition of that person.
2. Just as children learn to fear things, they can learn what not to fear. As long as
fears do not become too intense, a child's natural impulse to explore and discover things
will be of help. I Parents can be of assistance, both in overcoming fears and in
preventing their development. They can prepare a child through play, stories, and happy
prognostications for dealing with new situations that might be overwhelming; give
prompt and unstinted comfort after a frightening experience or a bad dream; provide a
night-light if the child is afraid of the dark; and devise ways in which a child can he
gently and gradually — not abruptly — encouraged to take another look at feared
objects and situations. Avoidance of the feared object reinforces the fear, and the fear
becomes increasingly intense. Children's fears should be taken seriously, never ridiculed
or dismissed as silly or babyish. Often, if the caregiver can gel the child to explain
exactly what it is that is so frightening, the child can be reassured. The one thing not to
do is force children into confronting a feared situation before they are ready to do so.
3. Almost all children are afraid of something and. as with adults, these fears arc
often well-grounded. If we are in an open field during a thunderstorm, we probably
have good reason to lie afraid of lightning.
4. But occasionally fear of something gets out of control and becomes a phobia A
phobia is an irrational fear of something. A child may be afraid of the dark and hesitate
to go up the stairs alone at night. But when the child refuses to remain in a place where
there is no light, such as the movies or his or her bedroom, the fear is taking too great a
toll on the child's development.
5. There are many different ways thai phobias are treated in children. One of these
techniques, commonly referred to as contact desensitization, is a behavioral technique
designed to eliminate unnatural fears. The basic premise of the technique is that any fear
is learned, and that anything that is learned can l>e unlearned. If a child is overly
sensitive to something like water, for example, the gradual introduction of the feared
object coupled with a pleasant experience can help reduce the strength of the fear,
making it more manageable.
6. This exact technique was used in one study with fifty snake-avoidant children
ranging in age from three to nine years. To see which technique was most effective, the
fifty children were divided into five groups:
A Members of the "contact desensitization group" were told about snakes and how
to approach ihein, were encouraged by an adult to approach a snake, were given praise
when they tried, and watched one adult hold the snake.
B. The "contact desensitization without touch group" received all that group A did,
but no one touched the snake.
C. The "verbal input plus modelling group" received verbal input and modeling
(when the adult touched the snake).
D. The "verbal input only" received only verbal assurances from the adult.
E. Finally, one group of children received no treatment and, be nee, was called the
"no treatment group."
7. The researchers used something called the Behavior Avoidance Test to see if
there was a reduction in avoidance of the snake. I Icre, an adult reads a series of
instructions to each child, asking him or her to do things such as approach the snake, pet
it, pick it up, and hold it. The instructions go from little contact with the snake to
increasing contact. This way the researchers can see which group of children has the
most contact.
8. The results showed that 82 per cent of the children in the contact desensitization
group reduced their fear of snakes. Children in the other groups also reduced their fear,
but not as dramatically.
9. Fears are something we all have to live with. When they get out of hand, a
technique like the one we described here can be very useful in assisting a child through
a difficult experience.
1) Which of the following details l>cst supports the authors' point that children
can be helped to overcome fears?
a) Fear of strangers usually ends when a child develops a more inclusive schema
of faces and people.
b) Children should never be forced to confront a feared situation before they are
ready to do so
c) a child can sometimes be reassured after a caregiver has encouraged the child to
explain the fear.
d) Many of children's fears are well-grounded and reasonable.
2) In paragraph 1, the sentence "The most daring toddlers feel content if they can
hold onto what they already know" can best l>e described as having which of the
following effects on the reader?
a) It focuses the reader's attention on the wide variety of children's fears.
b) It informs the reader of a specific type of fear.
c) It helps the reader understand children's fears from an adult perspective.
d) It allows the reader to decide how best to handle children's fears.
3) Based on the information presented in this selection, a child can best be helped
to overcome a fear of riding an escalator by:
a) talking with an adult about why riding an escalator is frightening.
b) watching an adult ride an escalator, being encouraged to j try it, and being
praised if he or she does.
c) being allowed to avoid escalators until the fear has diminished naturally.
d) watching an adult ride an escalator and receiving verbal assurances from the
adult that it is safe.
4) Which of the following details from the passage is least relevant to the authors'
main topic?
a) Parents can help prevent the development of fears in their child.
b) Just as children learn to fear things, they can learn what not to fear.
c) A child's fears should be taken seriously; they should not be ridiculed.
d) In one study of children's fears, fifty children were divided into five groups.
5) Which three main topics would best help outline the information in this
selection?
A a) Universality of children's fears
b) Helping children overcome fears
c) Children's phobias and their treatment
B. a) Types of fears in children
b) Treatment of fears in children
c) Comparison of fears in children and adults
C. a) Normal fears experienced by toddlers
b) Normal fears experienced by older children
c) Phobias experienced by children
D. a) Children's fears of people
b) Children's fears of situations
c) Contact desensitization as a treatment for phobias
6) What is the meaning of the word index as it is used in paragraph 1 of this
selection?
a) an indicator or measurement of something
b) a list or catalog of information
c) an object used to point or indicate
d) a relation or ratio of one quantity to another
Shyness and blushing
Blushing is related to general anxiety, when people feel worried and nervous about
what is going to happen. Shy people blush because they are always worried about what
others think of them. They don't have any confidence in themselves.
Shy people are anxious about themselves all the time. They can't think about other
people's feelings very much because they are too worried about themselves and what
others are thinking about them. They think other people are more intelligent and | can do
everything better. They think other people are morel attractive and more popular. They
believe others have morel knowledge. How do you feel when you realize you just gave
J a stupid answer in class? Or how would you feel if you were ial the cafeteria, you
dropped your dishes, and everyone stared at you when they heard the loud crash? You
would feel embarrassed. When you are embarrassed, you want to sink through the floor
so no one can see you. If you are really unlucky, you also blush. Your face gets red as a
beet, and you can't do anything about it. It seems to stay red forever. People stare at you
even more, and you feel even more embarrassed. Why do people hhish? Not much
research has been done on it. Psychologists ay that people of all skin colors blush.
Women blush more than «en, and young people blush more than older people. Some
people blush only a few seconds, but the blush can appear and disappear for five or ten
minutes in other people. Usually only the face or upper part of the body blushes come
very shy if they have to deal with people from a different social class, or if they have to
work with more intelligent or more skilled people. Shy people get very anxious when
they don't know how to act in situations that other people think are just ordinary. They
feel inferior and want to get out of the situation.
Everything that shy people do with other people is difficult lor them. Two
researchers asked hundreds of men and women what made them most anxious. They
said going to a party with strangers was the worst. That was even worse than having to
#ve a speech or have an interview for a new job. They also felt unhappy when people
asked them personal questions in public «• when they talked to someone in a superior
position. Young people were anxious when they met the parents of a date. The first day
on a new job was also hard for shy people.
Shy people behave differently from more confident people. They don't want to
complain about bad service in a store or restaurant. They don't make suggestions or
volunteer to do things. They avoid social gatherings. They usually speak in a low voice.
Some shy people have physical reactions when they have to nee one of these
situations. Their hands get cold and moist or shaky, their mouth gets dry, they break out
in a cold sweat, and their heart beats faster. They might have butterflies in their
stomach, or feel nauseated.
There are three theories about why people are shy. One theory says that a person
inherits shyness from the parents, that is, fthe person is born with this personality
characteristic because the parents were shy Another theory is that shy people never
{learned how to act with other people because no one ever taught them social skills.
The third theory says that shy people learned to be shy when they were children
because their parents didn't encourage them to be more confident. The parents probably
comforted them and gave them extra attention when they acted shy, so the children
learned that being shy was a good way to get extra love and attention. Now researchers
say that apparently all three theories are true.
A study at Harvard University showed that even some infants acted shy when they
were faced with something new and strange. They became silent and their heartbeat
changed. Other infants were not afraid when faced with something unfamiliar, and their
heartbeat didn't change. They appeared to have more confidence. This seems to prove
that some of these infants inherited shyness; they didn't learn it.
These children were observed again when they were in kindergarten. None of the
non-shy children had become shy. A few of the shy ones were less shy; apparently their
parents had helped them learn to be more confident. Most of these children who had
become more confident were boys.
Shy people have exaggerated feelings about themselves. They are very concerned
about their outward behavior, their feelings of self-consciousness, and their physical
symptoms of shyness. They are so anxious about themselves that the feelings of others
don't touch them. They think everyone else is very self-confident. Obviously, no one is
completely self-confident about their babies.
Handwriting analysis
Ellen Shepherd is a handwriting analyst. The author asked her questions about this
interesting subject in an interview. In this report of the interview, PA stands for the
author's name and E.S- are Ms. Shepherd's initials.
P.A: I've heard about handwriting analysis, but I don't know much about it. Could
you explain what it is?
E.S-: It's a scientific system which analyzes someone's handwriting. The analysis
shows the person's personality and character — what kind of person this individual is.
The handwriting shows if the person is honest or dishonest, gets angry easily or stays
calm, has a good memory or forgets easily. We can tell when people's feelings have a
strong effect on their thinking, or if they usually think logically. We can tell if the
person has a lot of friends and likes to spend time with them, or if he likes lobe alone
most of the time. We can even tell when people are shy. They're so afraid of other
people that they spend most of their time alone when they'd really like to lie with others.
FA: That's amazing! But you've given a list of the oppositcs. Most people are
somewhere in the middle, or they act differently in different situations. For example,
someone might get very angry about something important but just a little angry about
something else. Can you tell about degrees of anger or laziness or other characteristics?
E.S.: Yes, we can. We can score this person from one to ten on how angry she gets.
We can also tell if she often feels angry inside even though she appears to be calm. We
can do the same thing for other feelings and characteristics. For example, we can tell to
what degree people work carefully, or if they're sometimes lazy and careless.
P.A: How do you do this analysis?
E.S.: First I have them write about two pages on unlined paper. Then I look at how
they make each stroke of the letters.
P.A: What's a stroke?
E.S.: In general, a stroke is the part of a letter that leaves or returns to the base line.
The cross on a t and the dot on an i are also strokes.
P.A: Do you mean you can look at the way I cross my t's and dot my i's and tell
what kind of person I am?
E.S. (laughing): Of course not. I have to analyze the whole two pages of writing. I
divide the parts of the letters into zones. Letters like f, h, and i go into the upper zone.
This zone shows people's imagination, ideas, and how they think about the future. All
letters have parts in the middle zone. This zone shows how people think and feel about
the present and reality, and their feelings about other people. Letters like f, g, and p go
into the lower zone. This zone shows how people feel about the past, if they're quick to
take action, and what their biological needs are. For example, food is very important to
some people. Others are not interested in food at all, as long as they have enough to eat.
P.A: It's hard for me to believe that you can get all that information about a person
just from handwriting.
E.S.: People talk about body language. The way you hold and move your body
shows a lot about what kind of person you are. For example, if you hold your head
down a lot, you're probably shy. The way you write is much more complicated than the
way you hold your body, so it gives a lot more information. Research shows this.
P.A: Is handwriting analysis something new?
E.S.: An American teacher, M. Bunker, invented this system in 1913, but even the
ancient Chinese, Greeks, and Romans noticed that personality showed in handwriting.
In the 1600s an Italian started to develop a system, and 200 years later the French were
working on one. Today in Europe, anyone who is studying to be a teacher or a
psychologist has to study handwriting analysis.
PA: Who uses handwriting analysis?
E.S.: Some companies use it when they hire people to work for them. They want to
know if they'll be good, honest workers. Police use it to try to understand criminals
better. Sometimes an individual wants an analysis to help decide what kind of job is
best for him or her. These are just a few examples.
P.A: There's something else I'm wondering about. When we go to school, we all
learn to write the same way.
E.S.: I know what you're thinking, but everyone writes differently. There is about
one chance in 68 trillion that two people will write exactly the same.
P.A: And there aren't even that many people in the world! So far we've talked
about European languages and our alphabet. What about analyzing Arabic or Japanese?
E.S.: I don't think anyone has developed a system for any other alphabets, but since
everybody writes differently, handwriting analysis should work for any alphabet.
P.A: This has been very interesting, and I've learned a lot. Thanks for explaining it
all to me.
E.S.: Thank you for interviewing me. If anything is unclear, just call me.
Headaches
Some little man is inside your head, pounding your brain with a hammer. Beside
him, a rock musician is playing a drum. Your head feels as if it is going to explode. You
have a headache and you think it will never go away.
Doctors say there are several kinds of headaches. Each kind begins in a different
place and needs a different treatment. One kind starts in the arteries in the head. The
arteries swell and send pain signals to the brain. Some of these headaches start with a
change in vision. The person sees wavy lines, black dots, or bright spots in front of the
eyes. This is a warning that a headache is coming. The headache occurs on only one
side of the head. The vision is blurred and the person may vomit from the pain. These
headaches, which are called migraine headaches, are more frequent in women than in
men. Sleep is the best cure for them.
Cluster headaches, which also start in the arteries, are called cluster headaches
because they come in clusters or groups for two or three months. Then there are no
more for several months or even years. A cluster headache lasts up to two hours and
then goes away. At the beginning of the headache, the eyes are red and watery. There is
a steady pain in the head.
When the pain finally goes away, the head is sore. Men have more cluster
headaches than women do The muscle headache, which starts in the muscles in the neck
or forehead, is caused by tension. A person works too hard, is nervous something, or has
problems at work, at school, or at home. The neck and head muscles become tense, and
the headache starts. A muscle headache usually starts in the morning and gets worse as
the hours pass. There is a steady pain, pressure, and a bursting feeling. Usually aspirin
doesn't help a muscle headache very much.
About 40 per cent of all headaches start in the head and neck muscles. Another 40
per cent start in the arteries.
How do doctors treat headaches? If a person has frequent headaches, the doctor
first has to decide what kind they are. Medicine can help, but there are other ways to
treat them. The doctor asks the patient to analyze his or her daily living patterns. A
change in diet or an increase in exercise might stop the headaches. If the patient realizes
that difficulties at home, at work, or at school are causing the tension, it might be
possible to make changes and decrease these problems. Psychological problems and
even medicine for another physical problem can cause headaches. The doctor has to
discuss and analyze all these patterns of the patient's life. A headache can also be a
signal of a more serious problem. Everyone has headaches from time to time. If they
continue over several days, or keep recurring, it is time to talk to a doctor. There is no
magic cure for headaches, but a doctor can help control most of them because of recent
research.
Sleep and dream
Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
С G.Jung
"Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole." Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, a famous British poet, wrote these words over a hundred years ago Most
people would agree with him. Sleep is very important to humans; the average person
spends 220,000 hours of a lifetime sleeping. Until about thirty years ago, no one knew
much about sleep. Then doctors and scientists began doing research in sleep
laboratories. They have learned a great deal by studying people as they sleep, but there
is still much that they don't understand.
Scientists study the body characteristics that change during sleep, such as body
temperature, brain waves, blood pressure, breathing, and heartbeat. They also study
rapid eye movement (REM). These scientists have learned that stretched out. Then,
within another half-hour, you reach REM sleep. This stage might last an hour and a half
and is the time when you dream. For the rest of the night, REM and NREM alternate.
Body movement during sleep occurs just before the REM stage. The average
person moves about 30 times during sleep each night. Sleep is a biological need, but
your brain never really sleeps. It is never actually blank. The things that were on your
mind during the day are still there at night. They appear as dreams, which people have
been discussing for centuries. At times people believed that dreams had magical powers
or that they could tell the future.
Sometimes dreams are terrifying, but they are usually a collection of scattered,
confused thoughts. If you dream about something that is worrying you, you may wake
up exhausted, sweating, and with a rapid heartbeat. It is possible that dreams have a
positive effect on our lives. It may be that during a dream the brain can concentrate on a
problem and look for different solutions.
Researchers say that normal people may have four or five REM periods of
dreaming a night. The first one may begin only a half-hour after falling asleep. Each
period of dreaming is a little longer, the last one lasting up to an hour. Dreams also
become more intense as the night continues. Nightmares usually occur toward dawn.
People dream in color, but many don't remember the colors. Certain people
control some of their dreams. They make sure they have a happy ending. Many people
talk in their sleep, but it is usually just confused half sentences. They might feel
embarrassed when someone tells them they were talking in their sleep, but they
probably didn't give away any secrets. Sleepwalking is most common among children.
They usually grow out of it when they are adolescents. Children don't remember that
they were walking in their sleep, and they don't usually wake up if the parent leads them
back to bed.
Some people have the habit of grinding their teeth while they sleep. They may
wake up with a sore jaw or a headache, and they can also damage their teeth.
Researchers don't know why people talk, walk, or grind their teeth while they are
asleep. There are lots of jokes about snoring, but it isn't really funny. People snore
because they have trouble breathing while they are asleep. Some snorers have a
condition called sleep apnea They stop breathing up to 30 or 40 times an hour because
the throat muscles relax too much and block the airway. Then they breathe in some air
and start snoring. This is a dangerous condition because if the brain is without oxygen
for 4 minutes, there will be permanent brain damage. Sleep apnea can also cause
irregular heartbeats, a general lack of energy, and high blood pressure.
Most people need from 7.5 to 8.5 hours of sleep a night, but this varies with
individuals. Babies sleep 18 hours, and old people need less sleep than younger people.
If someone continually sleeps longer than normal for no apparent reason, there may be ''
something physically or psychologically wrong.
You cannot save hours of sleep the way you save money in the bank. If you have
only 5 hours of sleep for three nights, you don't need to sleep extra 9 hours on the
weekend. And it doesn't do any good to sleep extra hour? ahead of time when you know
you will have to stay up late.
What should you do if you have trouble sleeping? Lots of people take sleeping
pills, but these are dangerous because they are habit-forming. If you take them for
several weeks, it is hard to stop taking them. Doctors say the best thing is ;o try to relax
and to avoid bad habits. If you always go to bed and get up at about the same time, this
sets a rhythm in your life. Caffeine keeps people awake, so don't drink caffeine drinks in
the evening. Smoking and alcohol can also keep you awake. You may have trouble
sleeping if you have a heavy meal just before you go to bed. Eat earlier in the evening.
You may also have trouble sleeping if you have a problem or something else on
your mind. This is when you need to relax. As you lie in bed, tense the muscles in your
feet and then relax them. Continue up the body, tensing and relaxing the muscles until
you reach the head. Start with the feet again if you are still tense. Then remember some
pleasant experience you had and relive it. If you are thinking about a problem or about
something exciting that is going to happen the next day, get up and write about it. That
will help take it off your mind. You can also get up and read or watch television. Be
sure to choose a book or show that is not too exciting, or you may get so interested that
you won't want to go to sleep even when you feel sleepy.
Sleep is important to humans. We spend a third of our lives sleeping, so we need
to understand everything we can about sleep. Sleep well! Sweet dreams!
The secrets of your dream
Many psychologists believe that dreams are a window into the subconscious.
They believe that dreams reveal people's anxieties and obsessions.
We all dream every night, although some people say they do not. This means that
they do not remember their dreams, not they haven't dreamed. The dream we have at
night when we are sleeping tell us about our lives when we are awake. One of the
commonest dreams is the dream of flying. Flying symbolizes breathing, or being alive,
so if you enjoy the flight, it means that you are well and happy. However, if there's a
problem with flight — for example, a plane crashes — that means you are worried
about the future. Another kind of dream which maybe symbolizes anxiety is the dream
of being chased. Sometimes people dream that someone is chasing them down a long
corridor. This normally means that they are in a difficult situation in their lives.
However, if in their dream there is light at the end of the corridor, it means they are
basically hopeful about the future.
Other common dream symbols are fire, climbing, and water. Fire is a strong force
in a dream, and so it symbolizes your physical and emotional strength. If you can put
out the fire, it means you have control of your emotions. Climbing is associated with
ambition. You want to be the best at something, pass a test, be the most popular person.
If tie climb is an easy one, it means you have to work hard to got what you want. If it is
a hard climb, it means you have to work hard to get what you want. All water is
associated with the (motions, and the sea symbolizes your relationship with your
mother. If you are calmly swimming it means you have a good relationship with your
mother.
We don't remember most of our dreams, but sometimes a particular dream stays
in minds: days, or maybe even weeks. Have you ever had a nightmare you can't forget?
Have you ever dreamt about the sane thing night after night?
We don't only dream at night — we also dream during the day. We daydream
when we are sitting on the bus, at our desks, or waiting for someone to arrive. When
have daydream, we make up stories about ourselves, imagine ourselves in a different
place or situation. We think about where we'd really like to be, and what we'd like to be
doing.
Do you dream about the future? Do you think about what you would like to be or
do where you're older? But most people's dreams for the future change as they get older.
Have your dreams always been the same, or have they changed?
The following are the actions and objects typical dream images. Have you ever
had dreams like these: climbing, crashing, driving, drowning, falling, flying, running
away, walking, corridor, darkness, flood, mountain, plane, room, and vehicle? Describe
your dreams using the following adjectives: frightening, strange, pleasant, unpleasant,
and anxious.
Many people believe that dream symbols have a meaning. A mountain means a
problem or difficulty. Falling is associated with fear, worry, and anxiety. It means that
you are afraid that you will fall. So falling off a mountain symbolizes a problem you do
not think you can solve.
Talk to yourself
Look who's talking to themselves: just about everyone.
So you talk to yourself. Does that make you crazy? Not at all. In fact, it may help
you stay sane. Talking to oneself is such a natural human activity that almost everyone
does it, according to this article.
There are many reasons why people talk to themselves: to clarify a thought,
release angry feelings, rehearse future conversations, and even scold themselves for past
mistakes. Alone in a room, some people say a prayer. Alone in a shower, some people
sing. Seated at an uncooperative computer, many have been known to swear, threaten,
or otherwise psychologically abuse their disobedient machine. But even if you do all of
the above, don't panic. You are not only sane; you are actually typical.
To support her claim that the average person is a "mumble mouth," the author of
this article cites evidence from many sources. For members of the silent minority —
those who don't talk to themselves and doubt that most other people do — the author
offers testimony from psychologists (the experts) and from ordinary people (whom the
skeptical reader might be more willing to believe).
Do you talk to yourself? Never? I'll bet you denied it aloud. Why not just admit
it? Almost everybody does it at one time or another. Psychologist Thomas Brinthaupt
admits he does, and is quite OK with it. That's one reason he is studying the topic.
"Talking to one's self is an experience we all share," he says. "It is tied to our everyday
functioning as adults." All but one of the 102 college students he surveyed at Tennessee
State University confess to having muttered aloud to themselves under some circumstances. Frequent places cited: in a car, alone in one's room, at work, in the shower.
Brinthaupt does it in his office — with the door closed, stuck behind a slow driver or
working on his computer.
Stress makes him babble. "I find I'm talking to myself more in the last two weeks,
maybe from sleep deprivation. We have a 2-week-old baby," he says. The computer age
is breeding a whole new generation of mumbles: "All of these thoughts run through my
head at the computer. And if things are not going right, I'll swear at it." In the car, his
musings are about "things I have to remember. And I might pray a little bit aloud. I'm
not really religious, but there is solitude, a time to talk to God a bit."
Psychologist Shirley Sanders talks to Aristotle instead via her computer.
"Sometimes I get blocked in my writing, and I think it through aloud." She even has
Aristotle programmed to respond — with helpful comments and reminders to take deep
breaths to alleviate frustration. And she is quite sure she is not bonkers. "We all talk to
ourselves. Some do it in their heads, some talk out loud. It's a matter of style and
preference, and both are appropriate," says Sanders.
Brinthaupt considers talking behavior part of a continuum, from talking internally
to talking aloud. So does psychologist Alan Entin, "Talking to yourself is just thinking
aloud. It's a way of problem-solving, of answering your own questions, arguing with
yourself, seeing different points of view. So don't worry about being crazy."
"We readily use private speech as kids," Brinthaupt says. "As we mature, the
habit doesn't disappear but goes underground, and resurfaces from time to time."
Among the "normals" he cites, who talk easily aloud:
• thinkers. People who like to think about things, contemplate mysteries, solve
problems and puzzles. And people who are concentrating intensely, as a way Ь keep
themselves on task.
• athletes. Many athletes feel themselves up out loud before and during the fray of
competition.
• perfectionists, people who lecture themselves when they miss the mark.
• those with low self-esteem, "hey berate themselves: "You dummy! How could
you have forgotten the keys!"
A common reason for us all to self-talk is to rehearse something, asking a boss for
a raise, tor example. Others review aloud something that has just happened to do better
next time. It's something like a replay, "Why did I say that? In the future, I'll put it this
way." We also "self-regulate" by talking aloud, give ourselves commands, directives,
tell ourselves what to do next.
Contrary to what most think, talking aloud is a way of preserving our mental
health. We bunt forth spontaneously; if we didn't have that outlet, we'd be in trouble.
So feel free, mumble mouth.
Thinking aloud
Think-aloud protocols are self-reported verbal records ... thoughts that pass ..
subjects' minds while performing cognitive tasks. Self-report methodologies using
think-aloud protocols have been an important means ... researchers to investigate the
cognitive processing strategies... adults during problem-solving, decision-making, and
judgment tasks. For example young and old chess players think while choosing the best
move. It is reported that older chess players are engaged ... more systematic, less
redundant searches than their younger, similarly skilled counterparts. Although age and
experience were confounded ... their study, psychologists relied ... results ... thinkingaloud protocols and process tracing analysis to infer that experts, compared ... novices,
made a financial decision ... a hypothetical young couple more quickly,... fewer~ steps,
and... a more goal-directed problems. While using a think-aloud technique ... older
adults to examine their thought processes while solving ill-structured problems three
age-related styles were identified: a "youthful" style involving intense data gathering,
learning, and bottom-up processing; a "mature" style incorporating data gathering and
organization ... bottom-up and top-down processing; and an "old" style characterized ...
little attention ... data and top-down processing.
Although early studies ... decision-making performance ... younger adults
supported the validity and reliability ... think-aloud protocols, more recent studies
document the specific impact ... thinking aloud ... decision-making performance.
Thinking aloud also affects accuracy and response time ... simple addition and gambling
choice tasks. Thinking aloud may alter choices ... creating memory differenced that
influence subsequent decision-making outcomes. Because the completeness of subjects'
verbalizations depends ... conscious processing ... information ... local attention, it was
suggested that college-age subjects ... heavy cognitive loads may limit their
verbalizations.
Lean to lighter up and live longer
Who is more stressed out - the Asian teenager or the American teenager?
Surprise! The American teen wins this contest, hands down. According to a recent
study, almost three quarters of American high school juniors said they felt stress at least
once a week, some almost daily. Fewer than half of Japanese and Taiwanese eleventh
graders reported feeling stress that often.
The phenomenon of stress is just one example of the constant interaction between
mind and body. And the influence of one upon the other can be either positive or
negative. What can the mind do to the body? Studies have proved that watching funny
movies can reduce pain aid promote healing.
The mind and body work together to produce stress, which is a bodily response to
a stimulus, a response that disturbs the body's normal physiological balance. Stress is
not always bad. For example, a stress reaction can sometimes save a person's life by
releasing hormones that enable a person to react quickly and with greater energy in a
dangerous situation. In everyday situations, too, stress can provide that extra push
needed to do something difficult. But too much stress often injures both the mind and
the body. How can stress be kept under control? "Learn to lighten up and live longer"
has several good suggestions. "Translating blushes, belches and other body language"
also deals with ways to control the physical responses to stress.
If you often feel angry and overwhelmed, like the stress in your life is spinning
out of control, then you may be hurting your heart.
And if you don't want to break your own heart, you need to learn to take charge of
the areas of your life you can — and recognize that there are many things beyond your
control.
So says Dr. Robert S. Eliot, author of a new book From Stress to Strength: How
to Lighten Your Load and Save Your Life. He's a director of the Institute of Stress
Medicine and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska
Eliot says there are people in this world whom he calls "hot reactors." For these
people, stress may cause dramatic and rapid j increases in their blood pressure. "Your
brain writes prescriptions for your body," says Eliot. "There are people who write
prescriptions like they are fighting saber-toothed tigers 20 to 30 times a day. They are
hot reactors. Those people are walking time bombs because they can look cool as 'a
cucumber on the surface and are as hot as chili peppers underneath."
Hostile people activate their fight-or-flight response more intensely and more
frequently during the course of everyday life than other people. They respond to petty
annoyances like supermarket lines, traffic jams and children who don't clean up their
rooms as though it were a threat to life and limb.
Studies show that hostility is bad for health. In patients who have heart disease
the emotion of anger can cause the heart function to deteriorate.
Eliot says researchers have found that stressed people have higher cholesterol
levels, among other things. "We've done years of work in showing that excess alarm or
stress chemicals like adrenaline can literally rupture heart muscle fibers. When that I
happens it happens very quickly, within five minutes. It creates many short circuits, and
that causes crazy heart rhythm. It beats like a bag of worms instead of a pump. And
when that happens, we can't live."
Eliot, 64, suffered a heart attack at age 44. He attributes some of the cause to
stress. For years he was a "hot reactor." On the outside, he was cool, calm and collected
but on the inside stress was killing him. He's now doing very well.
The main predictors of destructive levels of stress are the FUD factors — fear,
uncertainty and doubt — together with perceived lack of control, he says. People who
are unassertive or people pleasers also often get angry. They say yes all the time when
they really want to say. All of the sudden they get mad and they resent the system. For
many people, the root of their stress is anger, and the trick is to find out where the anger
is coming from. "Does the anger come from a feeling that everything must be perfect?"
Eliot asks. "That's very common in professional women. They feel they have to be all
things to all people and do it all perfectly. They think, I should, I must, I have to." Good
enough is never good enough. Perfectionists cannot delegate. They get angry that they
have to carry it all, and they blow their tops. Then they fee guilty and they reset the
whole cycle. Others are angry because they have no compass in life. "kid they give tie
same emphasis to a traffic jam that they give «family argument," he says, "if you own
anger for more than five minutes — f you stew or your own juice with no safety valve
— you hare to find our where it's coming from. What happens is that the hotter people
get physiologically with mental stress, the mere likely they are to blow apart with some
cardiovascular problem."
One step to calming down is recognizing you have this tendency. Learn to be less
hostile by changing some of your attitudes and negative thinking.
Eliot recommends taking charge of your life. "If there is one word that should be
substituted for stress, it's control. Instead of the FUD factors, what you want is the
NICE factors — new, interesting, challenging experiences." 'You have to decide what
parts of your life you can control," he says. "Stop where you are on your trail and say,
'I'm going to get my compass out and find out what I need'"
He suggests that people write down the six things in their lives that they feel are
the most important things they'd like to achieve. Ben Franklin did it at age 32. He wrote
down things like being a better father, being a better husband, being financially
independent, being stimulated intellectually and remaining temperate — he wasn't good
at that.
Eliot says you can first make a list of 12 things, then cut it down to six and set
your priorities. Don't give yourself impossibleе things, but things that will affect your
identity, control and , self-esteem. Put them on a note card and take it with you and j
look at it when you need to Since we can't create a 26-hour day we have to decide what
things we are going. Keep in mind I that over time these priorities are going to change.
The kids I grow up, the dog dies and you change your priorities.
If you're having a hard time setting priorities, imagine your-I self as 65 or 70
years old, and looking back and say to yourself, > what would I really feel good about?
Eliot says the other key to f controlling stress is to realize that there are other parts of
your life over which you can have little or no control — like the economy and
politicians. You have to realize that sometimes with things like traffic jams, deadlines
and unpleasant bosses, you | can't fight. You can't flee. You have to learn how to flow.
Physiognomy
Physiognomy is the study of the systematic correspondence of psychological
characterizes to facial features or body structure. Because most efforts to specify such
relationships have been discredited, physiognomy sometimes connotes pseudo-science
or charlatanry. Physiognomy was regarded by those who cultivated it both as a mode of
discriminating character by the outward appearance and as a method of divination from
form and feature.
Physiognomy is of great antiquity, and in ancient and medieval times it had an
extensive literature. In as much as genetic flaws are sometimes revealed by physical
characteristics (e.g., the characteristic appearance of Down syndrome, with up-slanted
eyes and broad, flat face), some elements of physiognomy evolved in physiology and
biochemistry. In its second aspect — i.e., divination from form and feature — it was
related to astrology and other forms of divination, and this aspect of the subject bulked
large in the fanciful literature of the Middle Ages.
There is evidence in the earliest classical literature, including Homer and
Hippocrates, that physiognomy formed part of the most ancient practical philosophy.
The earliest-known systematic treatise on physiognomy is attributed to Aristotle. In it he
devoted six chapters to the consideration of the method of study, the general signs of
character, the particular appearances characteristic of the dispositions, of strength and
weakness, of genius and stupidity, and so on. Then he examined the characters derived
from the different features, and from color, hair, body, limbs, gait, and voice. While
discussing noses, for example, he says that those with thick, bulbous ends belong to persons who are insensitive, swinish; sharp-tipped noses belong to the irascible, those
easily provoked, like dogs; rounded, large, obtuse noses to the magnanimous, the lionlike; slender, hooked noses to the eagle-like; and so on. Among the Latin classical
authors Juvenal and Pliny the Elder refer to the practice of physiognomy, and numerous
allusions occur in the works of the Christian scholars, especially Clement of Alexandria.
While the earlier classical physiognomy was chiefly descriptive, the later
medieval studies particularly developed the predictive and astrological side, their
treatises often digressing into prophetic folklore and magic. Along with the medical
science of the period, Arabian writers such as the alchemist ar-Razi and Averroes also
contributed to the literature of physiognomy. The medicine of systematic
correspondence that evolved in China after the period of the Warring States is still
associated with traditional Chinese science and has some bearing on the doctrine of yinyang. Physiognomy also is treated (in some cases extensively) by such scholars as
Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, John Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas.
The development of a more accurate anatomy in the 17th century seems to have
dampened the scientific interest in physiognomy. In the 18th and 19th centuries
physiognomy was proposed as a means of detecting criminal tendencies, but each system was examined and discarded as fallacious, and by the 20th century physiognomy —
as it was known in earlier times — was largely regarded as a historical subject.
Fortune-telling is the forecasting of future events or the delineation of character
by methods not ordinarily considered to have a rational basis. Evidence indicates that
forms of fortune-telling were practiced in ancient China, Egypt, and Babylonia as long
ago as 4000 ВС. Prophetic dreams and oracular utterances played an important part in
ancient religion and medicine. Predictive methods of fortune-telling include astrology
(interpretation of the movements of heavenly bodies as influences on earthly events),
numerology, and the utilization of objects such as playing cards, tea leaves, crystal
balls, dice, fire, water, and scattered salt. Fortune-telling as a process of character
analysis can take such forms as graphology (study of handwriting), physiognomy study
of facial characteristics), ; phrenology (study of contours on the skull), and palmistry
(study of lines or the palm of the hand).