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Hello everyone, I hope that you had a great weekend. Today’s episode is on Social psychology and Cultural Dimensions. You can see more information on Sociocultural Psychology in my book. Available on amazon, Kobo and all other major retailers. (If you want to read or listen for FREE request it at your local library) In the introduction, I talk about my new business books, which I love! Then in the news update, I inform you about the bad side of homework and I talk myself into a great project! Below is a short version of today’s episode: Cultural dimensions can be explained simply as the cultural differences in its people’s values and norms. The original theory and set of 6 dimensions were created by Hofstede and we’ll look closer at his work in a moment. But putting this into context, these dimensions can be used to explain why; for instance; British act differently to Chinese people. So now we can start to look at the six dimensions: Hofstede: In 1965, he founded the personal research department at IBM Europe, and he undertook a massive study across 40 countries. He gave a questionnaire to over 117,00 employees which asked them about their behaviours and values. He completed his initial study in 1973 and found six dimensions; including dimensions found after later studies. These dimensions included: individualism versus collectivism (1980) which is where people in individualism cultures they focus on their needs and not the needs of the group. Whereas in collectivism cultures they focus on the need of the group and not themselves. Power distance index (1980) which is the extent to less powerful members of the group except and accept inequalities. This is very closely related to how societies understand and tolerate inequalities between members. High PDI scores mean that society is tolerant of inequalities. Low scorers mean that cultures are less tolerate and require an explanation. Critically thinking: As this study was done with a large sample size and it was a cross-cultural study. It gives us evidence that the study’s results can be used across all cultures and that the dimensions’ work for all cultures as well. However, to improve the creditability of the study even further another research method could be used to support the findings. Such as interviews or focus groups with different cultures so their response to questions on values can be compared in more depth. The six dimensions: Individualism versus collectivism- discussed in the case study above. Power Distance Index- spoken about in the study above. Uncertainty avoidance index- this is how tolerant a society is for ambiguity. In other words, tolerance for ambiguity means there’s an openness to change as well as less strict rules. For example the UK is more open to change, and it has less strict rules compared to China. As they don’t have freedom of speech. Masculinity vs. femininity- masculine societies focuses on achievement, competition and wealth. Whereas feminine societies focus on cooperation, relationships and quality of life. For example western cultures focus on their achievement, getting the most land; a type of resource and getting the most money. Whereas, African countries; collectivism cultures; focus on the cooperation of everyone and focus on what the group needs in terms of its quality of life as well. Long-term vs. short-term orientation- this is the connection to the past and attitude toward the future. Short-term orientation means that traditions are kept. Long-term orientation has more of a focus on the future. Chinese is a good example of this as they focus on their traditions. Especially in rural China whereas the UK is focusing on its uncertain future after Brexit. Indulgence vs. restraint- Indulgent cultures; like the western world; allow people to enjoy life and have fun. Restrained cultures; like in the east; have stricter control through strict social norms. Indulgent cultures tend to believe that they are in control of their lives; restrained cultures are more fatalistic.[1] Berry (1967) He used 120 people in each group, and he used the rice farming culture of the Temne people from Sierra Leone, the hunting, fishing Inuit people from Canada and urban and rural Scots as a reference group. Additionally, each group was divided in two further groups. The people who had and the people who hasn’t received an education in the western world. They brought themselves into a room and were given nine lines. For the first two trials, they were told to match the top line as closely as they could to the other eight lines on the sheet. The instructions were given by a local interrupter in their own language. These two trials were tests to see if the instructions were understood. For the other four trials, they were told that the other members of their culture said that a particular line was correct and then they were told to pick their own answer. For trial three the correct answer was given but for trials 4-6 the wrong answer was given. This was to test conformity. Results showed that the collectivism culture; the Temne people; shown the highest rate of conformity and the Inuit people shown the lowest. However, within the group themselves, there was no significant difference between them in the rate of conformity. Therefore, being exposed to western culture has little difference. Critically thinking: The study effectively uses a number of experimental groups to enable a cross-cultural comparison for their behaviour. Although, this study lacks temporal validity; how time affects the findings; as the world has become a lot more interconnected since this study was done. So, it’s very possible that the results would be different. Mainly because the Western influences are much strong now than compared to when the study was done. Summary: Cultural dimensions are cultural differences between social values and norms. Hofstede shows us the six dimensions he came up with. The six are: Individualism versus collectivism Power distance index Indulgence versus restraint Uncertainty avoidance index Masculine versus feminine cultures Short term versus long term orientation Berry (1967) found that collectivism cultures have a higher conformity rate than other cultures. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you want to know more about my psychology books, then please consider signing up for my newsletter to get your FREE book. Thank you for reading. Have a great week. Kind regards Connor. Source: Lee Parker (author), Darren Seath (author) Alexey Popov (author), Oxford IB Diploma Programme: Psychology Course Companion, 2nd edition, OUP Oxford, 2017 Alexey Popov, IB Psychology Study Guide: Oxford IB Diploma Programme, 2nd edition, OUP Oxford, 2018 [1] https://www.thinkib.net/psychology/page/22447/cultural-dimensions-

Hello, I hope that you've had a great week. Today’s post is on the forensic psychology of the fear of crime in preparation for my Forensic Psychology book that I plan to release along with other psychology books towards the end of February 2020. Fear of Crime: The fear of crime is very interesting from a psychological standpoint and as a citizen because the fear of crime as I’ll explain more in the book it’s very irrational because the fear isn’t needed as much as everyone thinks. In addition, crime and the fear of crime are very important in political contexts so governments can actively try to influence it as if the fear of crime drops then people think that the government is doing a good job so they are more likely to vote for them. Fear of crime comes from: · Mass media as they focus on serious crimes and this creates the sense that crime is worse than it is in the world as people can only see these horrific crimes and believe that these crimes happen more than it does. · Direct knowledge about crimes in the immediate community and beyond- this is from your own experiences of crime and if you know someone who has been affected by crime. · Aspects of our personality and social characteristics- this is were our own personality; like a fearful personality; and characteristics of ourselves. That makes us more fearful of crime. Bazzargan (1994) found the following was all associated with an increase in the fear of crime: · Feeling lonely · Poor education · The belief of untrustworthy neighbours · Lack of vigilance Fear-victimisation paradox (Clark, 2004) Interestingly Clark (2004) found something called the fear-victimisation paradox that states that there are no clear relationships between the rates of crimes and victimisation. Meaning that if crime is very high then it doesn’t mean that there are a high number of victims, so there is no or less of a reason to be fearful of crime. Here’s an example: Women are now fearful than men. (Stanko, 1995) However, men are actually most at risk of attack by a stranger. Crime phobia (Clark, 2004) These findings suggest that having a fear of crime isn’t a phobia. This makes sense as having a fear of crime isn’t irrational and being fearful of crime isn’t dysfunctional. Personally, I love forensic psychology and I love to learn and read about the relationship between fear, crime as well as the public. I hope that you've enjoyed this brief overview of the fear of crime and I will explore this in a lot more depth in my forensic psychology book so please sign up for my mailing list and receive a FREE eBook to know when it’s available on pre-order. Have a great week. Kind regards Connor.

Hello, I hope that you had a great weekend. Today's episode is on neurotransmitters. For me, this is where we start to get into ‘proper’ biology because this chapter and the next chapter which is on hormones are vital forces behind various behaviours. Let me explain… Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that are released into the synaptic gap; the space in between two neurons. Now I could go into the more complex dynamics of how a neuron work and how a neurotransmitter is used, and I could go into this at depth. However, the point of this book is to explain concepts simply so that’s what I’ll do. Therefore, transferring information in a neuron is partly chemical and electrical. The electrical part comes from the electrical impulse that moves the information through the neuron. When it gets to the end of the neuron where the synapse is a neurotransmitter gets released and then the neurotransmitter diffuses (moves) across the gap and then it gets absorbed by the other neuron. Or it can get reabsorbed into the neuron it was released from. This is called reuptake. Crockett et al (2010) Our first study looks at the effects of serotonin; a neurotransmitter responsible for our mood and sleep cycle; on good social behaviour. In this experiment, the researchers got 30 healthy volunteers and split them into two groups. The first group was given a dose of citalopram. Which is a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. (SSRI) This meant that the neuron that released the serotonin couldn’t reabsorb it. This, in turn, boosted its concentration in the synaptic gap and prolonged its effects. Then the second group was given a placebo; a chemical they thought was the SSRI, but it wasn’t. Afterwards, the two groups were given the ‘Trolley Problem’ this is a scenario where you are given the choice of interfering or doing nothing to stop a runaway trolley from killing five people. Although, the two groups were given two scenarios. In the first; the Impersonal Scenario; they could pull a lever, and this would put the trolley on another track, and this would kill one person. In the second; the personal scenario; the participant could actively choose to push a man off a bridge to save the five men. In both of these situations the choice is to kill one man to save five, but in the personal situation, the choice of killing is more direct and more emotionally aversive as an act. The results for the two groups shown no differences in the choices for the impersonal situation. Although in the personal situations the people that were given the citalopram were less likely to interfere and push the man off the bridge. In conclusion, citalopram reduces the acceptability of personal harm to people. This is in a sense promotes good social behaviour (prosocial behaviour) so increased levels of serotonin may cause people to be more opposed to the idea of inflicting harm to another. Overall, this study shows that neurotransmitters affect our behaviour as this can promote prosocial behaviour. Critically thinking: The study was well controlled as it has a group that was given a placebo, so it was clear if the experimental group; which was the group given the SSRI; was affected by the citalopram. As you can compare the effects of the SSRIs against the placebo group. On the other hand, the dose given to the participants was higher than in the bloodstream, but with there being over 100 different neurotransmitters in the body. How can we say that serotonin is the neurotransmitter responsible? Or could it be a mixture of several? Fisher, Aron and Brown (2005) In this experiment, they got 17 people who reported themselves as ‘intensely in love’ and did a brain scan on them in an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging- further information in the last chapter) and got them to do some tasks. Firstly, the participants got to look at a photo of a loved one for 30 seconds, then for 40 seconds they were required to count back from a number, for the next 30 seconds they got to look at an image of an emotionally neutral friend and for the last 20 seconds, they counted back again. They repeated this six times for a total of 720 seconds. The results showed that when looking at the photo of the loved one there was increased activity in the dopamine; a neurotransmitter involved in the feelings of romantic love; rich areas of the brain. More specifically in the Ventral Tegmental Area which is apart of the so-called dopaminergic pathway. This is a reward system for pleasure and motivation in the brain. In conclusion, the neurotransmitter dopamine is involved in the feelings of romantic love. So next time you go to kiss or hug your partner think of all that dopamine being released. Critically thinking: The study was effectively designed so that the counting back exercise allowed the brain’s activity to go back to ‘normal’ before the showing of each type of photo. Thus, this allowed the increase in brain activity to be clearly linked to the type of photo being shown. Nevertheless, how can we be sure that those dopamine-rich areas of the brain only release dopamine? Is it possible that they release smaller amounts of other neurotransmitters and it’s, in fact, the combination of this cocktail that creates the feelings of romantic love? What do you think? Conclusion: Overall, neurotransmitter can affect behaviour for many reasons. For instance: they can increase prosocial behaviour, or they can make us feel romantically in love with someone. Summary: A neurotransmitter is a chemical messenger released into the synaptic gap. Crockett et al (2010) shows that serotonin promotes prosocial behaviour. Fisher, Aron and Brown (2005) shows that dopamine does play a role in the feelings of love. Overall, neurotransmitters do have a number of effects on human behaviour. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to know more information about biological psychological then please heck out my book: Biological Psychology which you can get for FREE when you sign up for my mailing list. Have a great week everyone. Kind regards Connor.

Hello, everyone. I hope that you’re having a great week as we move towards the ‘most wonderful of the year’ once again. Today’s post is on the social psychology of close relationships. (This information or lecture notes I’m hoping to make into the 2nd edition of my Psychology of Human Relationship book in January or February 2020) Let’s get started then… Close relationships whether sexual or not are the centre of human existence and all humans have the fundamental need to affiliate. (Baurester and Leary, 1995) Furthermore, generally speaking, humans are preoccupied with this idea of forming close relationships. This I fully believe because I and many others will agree that even if you are introverted and want a lot of alone time. It is still good to have people to turn to and even in the company of others can be positive. Therefore, it is not surprising that having a lack of close relationships can have a number of downsides as it could lead to feelings of: · Depression · Ostracism · Alienation · Anger and aggression Overall, close relationships are necessary for survival. Interpersonal relationships: I discuss the formation of interpersonal relationships in my book Psychology of Human Relationships so I would strongly encourage you to check that out for more information, but there are a few factors that cause a relationship to form. Including: · Appearance and physical attractive · Proximity · Psychological factors · attitudes · Mutual liking Physical appearance: I bet you whenever you ask someone why they wanted to date or be in a relationship with someone. They said physical attractiveness; obviously not in those exact words; somewhere in their answers. On the other hand, being physically attractive can have other interesting benefits as well. For example: · More likely to get dates (Berscheid et al, 1971) · Get better marks at university (Mandy and Sigail, 1974) · More likely to be successful in job interviews (Diboye et al, 1977) The physical appearance stereotype; the stereotype that says that the more attractive you are the more intelligent you are; is associated with other social desirability characteristics. For example competence, people skills and more. Resulting in this stereotyping becoming self-fulfilling as this belief will influence the attractive person’s behaviour to become associated with other characteristics. (Please check out Sociocultural Psychology for more information) Although, being physically attractive isn’t always good as it does come with a few problems. Such as stalking. This can be a very traumatic time for the victim, especially as it progresses. Finally, when I learnt about this topic, I was very surprised to learn that in general people prefer average faces in terms of attractiveness (Halberstadi et al (2005) This I found surprising as I took a flawed common-sense approach that surely people would find attractive faces well more attractive. However, I guess that this makes sense as in a later part of the lecture we explored this sub-topic in a lot more depth and it all made sense. I hope you enjoyed today’s blog post. If you want to know more about the psychology of human relationships, then please consider signing up for my mailing list and you might be interested in my book Psychology of Human Relationships. Have a great week everyone! Kind regards Connor.

Hello, I hope that you had a great weekend. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about one of my absolute favourite topics. I know I say this a lot, but I just love psychology in all of its forms. Actually, in most of its forms, there are some areas of psychology I just hate. However, this is one of my favourites. It was the first psychology topic I actually learned when I started IB psychology and I hope that you're all going to love it as much as I do. So today's episode will be on localization and its the idea that certain areas of the brain are responsible for certain behavourial functions. For example, the frontal lobe is associated with higher-order thinking, judgment, and all of those quite intelligent functions. Whereas, the optical lobe, which is at the back of the brain, is associated with sight. I say associated with because we can't say definitively that one lobe of the brain is responsible for only that behaviour or only that certain behaviour. Because as you'll see in the later study that I'm going to tell you about, it's actually quite difficult to say that one area is responsible for it because you have this other thing called equipotentiality, which is the ability for one area of the brain to take over the function of another. So that's why we say associated because there's a strong link between the area of the brain and that function. But to essentially protect ourselves, we can't say that it's 100% certain. Now, localization can be split up into two areas. Strict localization, which is the idea that that certain behaviour is localised to that area of the brain only. Whereas weak localisation means that the behaviour isn’t strictly localised to one area so if one area of the brain fails another area can take over the function of that behaviour. I just find it really interesting, especially some other studies do definitely make you a lot more interesting. Broca (1865) Broca was a French physician who treated a man for gangrene fever called: Lebrogne. By the age of 30, Lebrogne had lost the ability to speak and communicate. However, all of his other functions were still in tac as when you tried to talk to him, he understood and tried to communicate back. Nevertheless, he could only say the word ‘Tan’ which he usually repeated twice. His condition was named: Broca’s aphasias- the loss of articulated speech. When ‘Tan’ died aged 50 a brain autopsy discovered a lesion in his frontal left hemisphere of the brain. If you wanted to be specific… it was in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus area. Now that’s a mouthful! After this discover Broca named the area of the brain after himself and concluded after studying another 25 patients that the Broca area was responsible for the forming of articulated speech. Overall, this study supports the idea of strict localisation because it shows that if the Broca area is damaged that the function of speech is impaired as well. Critical thinking: One aspect of the study that makes it good is that Broca studied another 25 people before drawing his conclusion. Meaning that he had a large sample size so his conclusion could be supported. However, Broca preserved Tan’s brain and 100 years later it was dissected, and the researchers found that the lesion wasn’t as neat nor confined to the Broca area as previously thought. So, it is possible that the Broca area isn’t responsible for speech? It is possible that another area of the brain that was affected by this lesion was, in fact, responsible for the forming of speech. Lashley (1929) On the other hand, not all functions of the brain are localised. One example that we’ll look at now is memory. In a typical experiment, he would train a rat to go through a maze to find a food pellet without an error. Following this, he would remove a part of the brain. These removed sections would range from 10% to 50%. The point of removing certain areas of the brain was that if memory was stored in one place then if you removed certain areas of the brain one at a time you would eventually find it. The results of his experiment didn’t support his theory that memory was localised. Therefore, he decided that it was because the amount of brain matter destroyed impacted memory and not the location. (known as the principle of mass action) and because one area of the brain could take over the function of another area of the brain. This is known of equipotentiality. Therefore, as Lashley couldn’t find an area of the brain responsible for memory. This doesn’t support the theory of localisation, and he proposed that memory is evenly spread out through the brain. His theory is generally accepted today but memory is known not to be as uniformly and evenly spread out as Lashley thought. Critically thinking: While Lashley did manage to prove that memory is not localised to one area of the brain. It begs the question and opens up the classic psychological debate of how far can we compare animals to humans as while we share a lot of our DNA with rats. As a result of physical differences and differences in our brain. Can this conclusion be accurately applied to humans? Conclusion: Personally, I think that we can agree that certain areas of the brain are localised to specific areas. While others are not. What do you think? Overall, localisation can affect behaviour because it demonstrates that certain areas of the brain are responsible for key behaviours that are important to humans. For example, the Broca area is responsible for articulated speech which is important for the survival of the species. The ability to communicate is one another. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode. Please sign up for my mailing list and receive a FREE book. Have a great week. Kind regards Connor.

Hello everyone, I would you’ve having a good week. Today’s post is related to abnormal and clinical psychology in the form of the biological explanations for Major Depression Disorder. This is an extract from my book: Abnormal Psychology Extract from Abnormal Psychology Chapter 2: Biological explanations Now, we’re starting to get to what I call proper psychology and my favourite parts of psychology because to this and the next two chapters are some of the most interesting pieces of psychology. As we start to explore the why and the reasons behind why Major Depressive Disorder develops. Firstly, we are starting with a biological basis for MDD. There are two theories for why MDD develops within the biological world. The first is called the serotonin hypothesis. This theory states that MDD is caused by an imbalance of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter associated with many functions in the body and it’s sometimes referred to as the happiness chemical. As it’s associated with happiness as well as well-being.[1] There are two pieces of evidence supporting this hypothesis: · Supported by: certain drugs known to decrease serotonin are known to have depressive side effects. · Drugs that increase serotonin levels can relieve depression symptoms. Like: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) However, a major criticism and a problem that I personally have with this theory is that once you take an SSRI the level of serotonin in your blood increases within an hour. However, depressive symptoms don’t decrease until a month later. Therefore, it begs the question: is it actually the increase in serotonin that cures your depression? Or does that increase start another bodily process and that process takes a month to finish and that process cures your depression? I know that it sounds strange or not thought out but if the serotonin hypothesis is true, then surely your depression could be cured within an hour of you taking the SSRI as within that hour the serotonin imbalance is gone or reduced? The neurogenesis hypothesis: On the other hand, modern research has been focusing on the Neurogenesis theory of depression. The theory states that depression is the result of a lack of neuron birth in the hippocampus (this is the part of the brain responsible for emotion) and in other places in the brain that is related to serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. In addition, cortisol appears to be the reason for this lack of neurogenesis. (the birth of neurons in the brain) Patients with MDD show a symptom called HPA-axis hyperactivity. This results in the over-secretion of cortisol. (too much cortisol is being released) This leads to reduced levels of serotonin as well as other neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine. This has been linked to depression. Demonstrating how complex the brain’s chemistry is, and why the treatment for depression remains problematic. As we will explore later. There are a few pieces of evidence that support this theory as well. · Depressed people tend to have smaller hippocampi that the rest of the general population. · Stress hormones are increased in MDD patients and this appears to stop neurogenesis in the hippocampus, as shown in rodents and other primates. · Finally, anti-depressants can increase neurogenesis in the hippocampus in rodents.[2] Supporting studies: Caspi et al (2003): The 5-HTT gene is responsible or the production of serotonin. A longitudinal study of 1,037 children from New Zealand. Divided into three groups: people with two short alleles of the 5-HTT gene, one long and short alleles, two long alleles. They were assessed from the age of 3 to 25. A life history calendar was used to assess stressful life events. Subjects were assessed for depression with an interview and information from someone who knew them well. Results showed that there were no differences in the number of stressful life events. People with two short alleles managed life events with more depressive symptoms. Critically thinking: The study effective looks at the genetic argument for the serotonin hypothesis. Nonetheless, this study does have ethical concerns. For example, the distress that knowing that you’re genetically more likely to develop depression. Therefore, the costs and benefits of research must always be calculated before research is done. Kendler et al (2006): Over 42,000 twins were recruited for the study across a 60-year age span for the purpose of generational comparison. They used a computer-assisted telephone interview that was conducted using DSM-4 criteria for MDD. Informed consent was got before the interview. Trained interviewers were used with a lot of medical training to collect data. The aim was to reach both pairs within a month. Results showed prior studies got similar results. Heritability of depression is 38% on average. Didn’t differ very much across the generations. No evidence was found that the shared environment was a factor in developing depression. In conclusion, major depression is moderately inherited. Critically thinking: The study is highly reliability as a number of studies have supported its findings that depression is about 37% inherited. However, this study is open to population fallacy; were your sample does actually represent the general population; because most of the population aren’t twins. Summary: The serotonin hypothesis states the depression is caused by a serotonin imbalance in the brain. The neurogenesis theory states that depression is caused by a lack of neuron birth in the brain. Capsi et al (2003) shows that there is a clear genetic basis for depression. Kendler et al (2006) shows that depression is moderately inherited. I hope that you found today’s blog post interesting and if you want to find out about the causes and treatment of depression. Please check out my Abnormal Psychology book. Available in eBook, paperback, large print and audiobook format. Please sign up for my newsletter to receive a FREE book. Have a great week everyone! [1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/kc/serotonin-facts-232248 [2] https://www.thinkib.net/psychology/page/22460/biological-approach-to-depression

Hello everyone, today’s podcast episode/ blog post will be on the biological psychology and neuroplasticity. Now we're going to be moving away from cognitive psychology and onto biological psychology. So biological psychology focuses on how biology like evolution, our brains and our genetics can impact our behaviour. I do like biological psychology simply because it is quite factual and it, and it's supported by a lot of hard science. For some people, this is the stronger and more of a proper area of psychology. This I disagree with, as I think all areas of psychology are that need and are important because they're supported by facts. The biological psychology is important and it will star in these next few episodes. We’re going to start with one of my favourite areas of biological psychology. Which is neuroplasticity. This, I honestly find fascinating because I love the idea that our brains can change because of the environment. I think it's brilliant because I believe it's just so clever that our brains can change just like that, simply because of what we need. Let’s move onto the theory first. Well, I've mentioned neuroplasticity quite a few times now on the podcast, but what the hell is it? Neuroplasticity is the ability for our brains to change/remap itself in sponsor of environmental demands. So now I've got two great examples here for you. I'm completely going to butcher this name, so I apologize. Merzenich (1984). The researchers got eight adult owl monkeys, and then he placed electrodes into their brains, and then he stimulated each digit on the finger and then what he did was he mapped these areas of the brain just so he knew what areas differed in terms of their sizes. Furthermore, the researchers cut off the 3rd digit of the monkey’s hand. I think unethical, but this was the 80s. If you do psychology, you know what I mean. Anyway this was before the ethical guidelines came out, it was the wild west in psychology and you could do whatever you want to participants. Interesting. But dangerous times, if you were a participant. Um, if you were a researcher, it was a much more fun time. You could do whatever you want. It wasn't right, but sadly, some important information did come from that time. But as an ethical episode might be something that you think might be sensitive in the future. Anyway, but after he like chopped off the third digit, after 62 days, the researchers decided to remap the monkey’s brain just to see if there were any changes in the monkey’s brain and what happened was that the brain areas that controlled the first and the fifth digit. The size of those brain areas that did not change. However, the size of the brain areas that controlled the 2nd and 4th digit increased because the brain area that controls the third digit wasn't being used, and the second and fourth grew into this used space where the 3rd digit used to be located. In conclusion, it takes 62 days for the brain of an adult owl money to remap itself. This supports the idea of neuroplasticity because this effectively demonstrates how a brain has the ability to remap and change itself as a result of the environmental demand, because as demonstrated in this stud- because the cut off finger (the environmental demand) caused the brian to remap itself. This supports the idea of neuroplasticity because this effectively demonstrates how a brain has the ability to remap and change itself as a result of the environmental demand, because as demonstrated in this stud- because the cut off finger (the environmental demand) caused the brain to remap itself. Critical thinking: This is an effective study as it did effectively measured how the brain can remap itself because of environmental demands. However, there are ethical concerns because was it right to use these monkeys that were, that are living things and cut off their fingers, which would have put them through pain? Is it right to experiment upon them? I don't know. But then I have no doubt. I don't think the ethical guidelines were out, I don't think were out in 1984. Even now, you probably would have to prove that this is a good use of animals. So I don't know, it does raise ethical questions like, is this wrong? However, I might actually do a podcast episode on ethics in psychology. Now another research study that I do like, this is actually one of my favourites is a Draganski (2004), and this research is human-based. And this I do find this quite fascinating. Draganski (2004) So the whole point of this research study was that to see if the brain can change according to environmental demands and then the researchers got the volunteers and split them into two groups: the jugglers and non-jugglers, and it’s important to note that in terms of juggling everyone’s brains would have been the same or similar as no one had any experience of juggling. At the beginning they all had a brain scan then jugglers practised a basic juggling routine for three months before another brain scan. Before everyone has another brain scan, including the non-jugglers. Then the jugglers didn’t practice juggling for three months. The results showed that for the first brain scan there were no changes in the brains between the jugglers or non-jugglers. For the second brain scan, the jugglers showed increased grey matter; which is the neurons in the brain; in certain areas of the brain. For the 3rd brain scan, the grey matter decreased for the jugglers but not as much as shown in the 1st scan. Therefore, this led the researchers to conclude that as you learn a basic skill you brain matter increases. However, if you fail to learn that skill, then your brain shrinks back. Though, not as much as before though. This study I find quite impressive because it does demonstrate with quite so-real results that the brain does constantly change. Critically thinking: The study is good, as I've mentioned because it does produce very hard to refute evidence for neuroplasticity. However, something that could be better is that the scenario is not very ecologically valid, so it's debatable if the brain does change as much based on these results for a more useful skill. Like learning how to drive because personally, I believe that the brain obviously does. However, because this study look to a more, not invalid, but less everyday example, we don't know based on these finding, so we could infer that that learning to drive causes changes in the brain but we can't say with a hundred per cent certainty. So that's something to think about in the future. Conclusion: So bringing everything together, neuroplasticity is the ability for the brain via map itself. Merzenich (1984) showed us that it took 62 days for an adult owl monkey’s brain to remap itself. Draganski (2004) showed us how the brain can remap itself and grow in respond to an environmental demand, but then the brain areas shrink back if you don't practice the new skill. And that brings us to the end of the episode. So I hope that you've enjoyed the show and have a good week. Here’s the link to the Facebook page that I mentioned in the News Section: The Truth About Mental Health Please sign up for my newsletter and receive a FREE book. Have a great week everyone.

Hello, everyone I that you’re having a good week. Today’s psychology blog post is on biological and cognitive psychology and we’re focusing on emotion. Firstly, what is emotion? This is a very hard construct to define but Buck (1998) defined emotion as involving feelings, associated with expressive behaviours and have peripheral physiology responses. In other words, emotion is the behaviour that allows you express yourself and it corresponds with a physical change in your body. Such as: a smile. Furthermore, psychologists tend to define emotion in terms of 3 important areas: · Cognition (mental processes) · Feelings (the feeling of the emotion) · Readiness for action (the physical change) Although, what comes first? Do you have the mental processes, the emotion then the physical change? Or do you have the physical change that causes the mental processes to happen. Followed by the feeling/ emotion? Nobody knows the answer to these questions. The James-Lange theory: Personally, I think this theory interesting not as a result of the theory itself but because this theory was developed by two different people on two different continents at the same time. It was developed by an American and a German as well as published in 1884. The theory states that emotion is the production of · Appropriate physiological responses · Appropriate behaviour · Brain receives sensory feedback from muscles to organs to produce emotion. In other words, the theory states that your body and mental processes react first then it’s your brain receiving feedback from your muscles that produce the feelings associated with the emotion. For example: if I was surprised, my body was tense up and be frightened first then as the muscles and organs tell my brain that I’ve done this action. My brain coverts it into the feeling of being surprised or shocked. Prediction: Although, if this theory was true then: · people who have increased or heightened autonomic responses should enhance emotion. · People with weaker responses should feel less emotion. However, even after 100 years this theory is still being debated. (Which I find funny) Some evidence for this theory and can be linked with embodied social cognition ( a topic featuring in next year’s social Psychology 2nd Edition) is that Botulinum toxin can lead to increasingly positive mood as it paralyses the frowning muscles (the physical change) then it produces the positive mood. Schachter and Singer’s theory: Another theory is by Schanter and Singer (1962) The following in an extract from my biological psychology, which you can get for FREE by signing up for my mailing list. In conclusion, emotion is the result of contextual cues and physical cues that are combined with cognitive labelling. In other words, emotion is the result of us labelling what’s happening in the situation we’re in and what our body is doing as well. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s blog post. Please sign up for my mailing list to receive more psychology news and your FREE book. Please leave a comment below. Have a great week everyone! Kind regards Connor.

Hello everyone, I hope that you had a great weekend. Today’s post is on cognitive psychology and the reliability of memory. This episode was going to be on how memory works and the models of memory that psychology has, however, models of memory is a really dry topic. It's not a boring topic, it's just very, it's got very dry information, so it's quite hard to make an interest because it's just repeating information. So if you want to know more about memory and how it works. I would recommend looking at my book, cognitive psychology. As instead of telling you models of memory I need to do the more interesting episode because, at the end of the day, I'm doing this to keep you guys interested in psychology. So reliability of memory is a very interesting topic, I find because I'm sure that we've all noticed at some time or another, the memory's not, isn't always a reliable because if you're out with a friend and something happens and then a few hours later, like your friend tells somebody else about what happened, for example, how you went shopping, or maybe you saw a car accident. You will probably notice that there were slight differences between your memory and what your friend is saying. For example, a personal example, I was out with a friend once, when I was like quite young and we were having sleepover at roughly 6 am his phone went off and then I looked around for the phone, so he could answer it. A few hours later open. He was telling the person who phoned him, what happened. He described me looking for the phone to give to him where I simply picked up the phone and passed it to him as me frantically looking around for the phone. So as you can see, there's a clear difference between what actually happened and the memory that this person had. The theory behind why or why memory isn't reliable I quite like; but I go into more detail in my book is that; is as a result of reconstructive theory because our memories can be reconstructed due to post-event information and each time we retell the memory, the memory itself is reconstructed or changes a little as well as other factors. However, it doesn't mean that all memories are reliable as demonstrated in our two studies today, for example, our first study, we'll look at how memory is not reliable. Loftus and Pickerel (1995) This was a simple short experiment. One of the reasons why I'm really interested in this topic is because I find it just brilliant, is that even though this experiment is really simple, it really does show how bad memory can be, and a lot of Elizabeth Lotus’s other work is also really in a formative on the subject. I would definitely look her up if you get a chance. So Loftus and Pickerel (1994) asked the friends and families of the participants for free childhood memories, and then they asked a key question like, have they ever been lost in a shopping mall before? and if the answer was yes, then they weren't accepted into the study. However, if they never were lost in a mall before then they were accepted into the study. And then what's happened was the researchers posted a memory questionnaire. On this questionnaire, it talks about the 3 childhood memories and the lost in the mall memory. They've asked to rate how confident they were about the memory and to write as much as they could about it. So the whole idea of this questionnaire was that if the memory wasn't unreliable then the person that should have immediately thought. Well, I've never been lost in the mall before, so this memory is false. The results showed that 25% of the people believed in the lost in the mall memory but rated it as their least confident memory. Therefore, this shows that false memories can be created and by extension, it does support the idea that memory isn't reliable. Critical thinking: However, there was a problem with this study. In fact, there's quite a few. For example, only 25% of people actually believed these false memories. I mean, in that, could this 25% be unique in some cases, or could it be generalized to the population? That memory is unreliable because of this small amount of people. If you looked at this data exclusively then you probably could not generalize this to the population because 25% is such a small amount of people that got affected by these false memories. So you could probably say that based on this data only a very small amount of the general population can actually be affected by false memories. This, we know by everyday life and other research to be false. However, it is something to think about. But another problem with this research is that, well, because the researchers decided to post, these questionnaires to the participant. It does pose the question about whether participants were honest about what they remembered or did they ask friends and family at home? Away from at the researcher's eyes about the answers. So in reality, the number of people affected by false memories could be a lot higher than 25% as participants could have said: Oh, mum and dad have I've really lost in the mall before? As they did it at home and not in a lab setting. Researchers can't check this. So it is possible that the findings could be a lot higher in that reality, but because it was done at home, we will never know. So if I was going to redo the experiment and then I'd make sure it was done in a lab setting, so I could only test what the participants remembered. And then our next study does support the idea that memory is reliable because generally it is as memory can be quite good sometimes. Yuille and Cutshall (1986) This was a really good experiment, I thought it was awesome because what happened was that there was a gun store robbery where the owner of a shop was shot twice and a killed and there were 21 witnesses to the murder. And the reason why the researchers decided on this crime to study was that there was a lot of physical evidence. I mean there was a lot of evidence to cooperate the witnesses stories, meaning that it was easy to tell if the witnesses’ memories were good or bad about what happened. Therefore, the researchers contacted the 21 witnesses four months after the crime was committed. And then 13 of them signed up for the study and then they've asked 3 questions. Half of them were asked: Did you see a yellow panel on the getaway car? When it was blue. And the other half were asked: Did you see a broken headlight on the getaway car? When it wasn’t. And they were asked were they afraid? The results showed that when they were asked to recall the event, they were 79 to 84% accurate when compared to old police reports. So when it came to their question about the colour of the car or the headlight condition, 10 out of the 13 were correct. When they were asked about being afraid. They said that they weren’t afraid but they rushed an adrenaline rush. Therefore, showing that memory can be reliable because as this study shows the witness's memories were very accurate. Critical thinking: This study is very high in ecological validity, meaning that you can apply the findings to everyday life. A problem with this study is that because this was a one-off event, meaning that you can't repeat the experiment, the findings so that it's unlikely that there would be data to support this specific example again because you can't reproduce it. And the problem with the last question, the participants said that they were experiencing an adrenaline rush. So I talk about this more in my cognitive psychology book. However, in a short, due to how we process memory and our emotions. There's a special memory mechanism called: flashbulb memories. Now these can be quite vivid and because of that we tend to remember them more. So the problem with this study is that memory could be quite unreliable. However, the only reason why, because you get these results is that you tapped into this special mechanism instead of the ‘normal’ memory. So now that we've looked at two different studies that I support memory let’s bring together. So we know that memory can be unreliable because of, reconstruction theory and Loftus and Pickrell (1995) shows us that memory can be unreliable because of false memories. Whereas: Yuille and Cutshall (1986) demonstrates that memory can be reliable because their findings. If you want to know more about cognitive psychology then please check out my book on Cognitive Psychology available on Amazon, Kobo and all major online book retailers. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode everyone. Please sign up for my newsletter to hear about news, promotions and other psychology-related news and you get a FREE book. Please follow me on Twitter @scifiwhiteley Have a great week!

Hello, everyone I hope that you’re having a good week. Today’s blog post is on the theories of sexual harassment that you in featured in my Forensic psychology in roughly January 2020. Sociocultural theory: This theory focuses on the social and political context that sexual harassment is created and occurs in and this theory states that sexual harassment results from the society’s sexism, inequity beliefs and attitudes. A positive is this theory is that it’s a logical synthesis of society’s inequity, patriarchy and dominance. A negative of the theory is that it’s too broad and it doesn’t go into detail. Organisational theory: This theory states that sexual harassment is caused by a wide variety of organisational- related issues. Such as: gender inequality and power, as well as sexual harassment is committed by peers or even subordinates to decrease the power difference. Additionally, the theory plays a vital role in the focus on decreasing sexual harassment in the workplace. An advantage of the theory is that it’s supported by empirical evidence and tested as well as it links organisational factors together. However, it doesn’t account for individual differences. Sex role spillover theory: This theory brings together situational and individual charactertics whilst stating that people bring their own beliefs into the workplace and this causes conflict. Ultimately leading to sexual harassment. A positive of the theory is that it is a more holistic approach. Although, the theory needs refinement and it focuses too much on men as women can sexually harassment as well. Biological theory: This is an extension of natural selection as men have a drive to reproduce as much as possible and there’s a difference between men and women’s reproduction strategies, so this leads to conflict. An advantage of the theory is that it unifies evolution and sexual offending. However, this theory is reductionist as it ignores cognitive and social factors that can play a role in sexual harassment. Four factor theory: (O’Hare and O’Donohue 1998) This theory believes that four factors must be overcome/ maintained to perform the behaviour. The four factors are: · Motivated to harass · Overcome internal inhibitions (mortality) · Overcome external inhibition (professionals) · Overcome victim’s resistance A positive of the theory is that it is holistic and explains sexual harassment in depth, but it’s not fully tested and factors 1 and 2 have not been researched. I hope that you found this interesting. If you want to know more information about psychology, please consider buy my books. Equally, you could join my mailing list and receive a FREE book. Have a good week everyone!

So today's episode is on thinking biases. Now, this topic of psychology, I absolutely love to be honest, because I find it amazing that as, as humans we think we are so essentially it god like, we are so clever when it comes to thinking because we can make split decisions. We can be really quick, we can make informed decisions. However, I don't know. I just thought, I find it amazing that there was so many simple biases. That make our thinking flawed and that's what we're going to explore in this episode, which I'm really looking forward to. So what are thinking biases, it is essentially something that makes our thinking flawed. Now, when I learned this topic originally in the IB, there were three biases that we learned but I have picked two, which are the most easiest to remember. I just wanted to focus on what was easiest and what was the most interesting, because the other bias that we're not going to look at is called the anchor bias, which, forgive me, but I've not looked at the anchor bias for ages however, if memory recalls it's that you anchor your thinking based on one bit of information, which if the information is flawed, then it leads to flawed thinking. So the two biases we’ll look at are the framing effect, which I love. I cannot stress enough how much I love the framing effect. Well, I think it's honestly amazing. Now, the framing effect simply states that depending on how you frame the information, it results in a certain thinking pattern. Tversky and Kahneman (1981) They used 307 us undergraduate students, which were voluteers and then the students were asked. We're given a scenario about the US being infected by a strange Asian virsus that was meant to be kill exactly 600 people and then these are people were splitting into two conditions. The positively framed group and then the negative group, and then within each of these groups, people were given information about programs to combat this outbreak. Programme A was that 200 people will be saved. Programme B was that there’s a one third chance that 600 people will be saved but a two third chance that 600 people will die. So what would you choose in that this form? Because personally, actually no. First of all, I'm going to give you a few seconds to think about it. So what would you choose? Programme A 200 people will be saved, or would you choose program B where there's a one third chance that 600 people will be saved them, or there's a two third chances that 600 people will die. Think about it for a moment. So that was for the positive framing the group. However, there was another group where the information was framed more negatively. So programme C was that 400 people will die. There's no doubt about it. These people are going to die. However, program D is that there's a one third chance nobody will die but there's a two third chance 600 people will died. So what would you choose? I'll give you a minute to think about it. So now that you've chosen both of your programs, I'm going to tell you the results. In the positively framed group people tended to choose the certain outcomes because 72% of people chose program A were 200 people will be saved. So as you can see, this positive conditions, when information is framing positively, people focus on certainties, like 200 people will be saved compared to uncertainty, were there’s a two third chance of people dying. However, if you notice all of these conditions are technically the same. Because in all of them, 200 people will be saved and 400 people will essentially die. However, if we moved to the negative condition where the information is framed negatively, 78% of people chose program D, which is where there's a one-third chance that nobody will die and 2/3 that 600 people will die. So as you can see in this condition, when information is framed negatively, people will tend to go for the uncertainty because there's a chance that everyone will live compared to the 400 people, that will definitely die. So as you can see in this study, the framing effect can be a thinking bias because as you can see, all of these scenarios, all of these programs are the same, and the framing effect leads to people not noticing this and people favoring one condition over the other. Now they have a lot of real world implications about this, which I find fascinating. So saying once you can even link this to persuasion, which I did a blog post on a few weeks ago and at university I'm going to mention the framing effect in my persuasion essay for my coursework. So in conclusion, the framing effect is a thinking bias because if the information is framed negatively then people favor uncertainty. However, when information is framed positively, people prefer certainty. A positive of this study is that because of its board implications potentially it does have high ecological validity, which is good as it can be applied to the real world. However, I said potentially because of this scenario, which is where the USA is affected by a strange Asian virus killing only 600 people, there's a problem, that I personally have this study- it is not ecologically valid because you would never find this in the real world. Where undergraduates who haven't got any degrees will be given such an important choice about which Health program to use. So to improve this study, I would definitely give them more ecologically valid scenario, which shouldn't be that hard to be honest, as this has such a wide range of real world implications. For example, investments. You could use because as college students, I imagine that most of them would be wanting to make quite a bit of money. So you could give them a list of a choices about a different investment opportunities. And you could essentially do the exact same experiment and give them different choices. For example, you could effectively say that there's a two third chance of the money being lost. However, there's a third chance that they could make a million that would be very ecologically valid because investment opportunities are used all over the place. That's just my opinion. We're going to move on to another favourite of mine called the peak end bias. I think it is just great because it is true. So the peak end bias is but it's actually called the peak end rule states that people only remember the most interesting part of an event. And at the end of an event, for example, you could be out at a restaurant and you can have the most amazing food. You can have great service. However, let's say that one of the other guests at the restaurant decided to pick a fight with you, and that was the most interesting part of the evening. That would be the peak. And let's say at the end of evening, your credit cards got declined constantly. So you've spent about half an hour trying to figure out a way how to pay for your meal. So that would be the end. So overall, later on, let's say like an hour or two later, somebody asks you how was your meal? You are really likely to say that the meal was awful because of those two things, without considering the great food and the great service. Kahneman (1994) The researchers got participants to place one hand in a painfully code of water. Whilst on the other hand they needed to show how much pain they were in. 1 finger indicated they were experiencing no pain then 5 fingers was extreme pain. There were two conditions, condition 1 was were they needed to place their hand in the painfully cold water was for 60 seconds but they also asked to do another condition, which is when they needed to put their hand in cold water for 60 seconds. However, they had to do it for another 30 seconds as well. But in this last 30 seconds so between 60 seconds and 90 seconds they opened a value which caused the water temperature to increase by one degree. And then at the subjects were told that they needed to do another trial, but then you could choose so they could choose condition 1, which was 60 seconds, or they are at 2nd condition. So logically speaking, it makes a lot more sense to go for condition one because you only experience pain for 60 seconds. So it makes sense. However, 80% of the subjects decided to do condition 2 because of the slight decrease of pain towards the end. So this study effectively shows how the peak end rule works in a research setting. It shows that decision making is flawed because if it wasn't, then the 80% should have chose condition one. Okay. So moving on to our critical thinking section section. This study is a very effective study because it does show that the peak end rule doesn’t cause a bias in thinking and it does have an impact on that behavior. However, though, as with all research, you cannot confirm that this was 100% the peak end rule because there could have been other factors involved and as always that could have led to the person choosing to do the second condition. That was nothing to do with do with the peak end rule and therefore if I was to do the study again then I would conducted semi structured interviews with the participants to try and clear up this matter because in these interviews you can ask them a questions and you could eliminate some possibilities. For example, they could have chosen the second condition because I don't know, something quite like trivial, for example, they could have just liked the warm water. Therefore, this would not have been down to the peak end rule. These interviews would have helped the researcher to eliminate some other possibilities for this. Okay, so now what have we looked at our studies and we've done all critical thinking- let’s bring everything into one cohesive whole. So we know that decision making is a flawed because we all have so many examples in everyday life, which is where we pick less logical answers. And then. We look at back and question why didn't we choose them? The reason why we didn't choose them was that because of these thinking biases. I've just shown you. But there are many more out there. So we looked at the framing effect and the framing effect demostrates that depending on how the inflammation is framed; either positively or negatively; it can influence our thinking to become bias. When information is framed positively people tend to go with the certain outcomes and when the information is framed negatively people to go for the uncertain outcomes. However, there's another bias called the peak end of rule were you only remember the most interesting part of an event and the end and because of this it causes a bias in your thinking. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you want to know more about cognitive psychology in our general then I recommend getting my book for more easy to understand psychology concepts. It's a cognitive psychology by Connor Whiteley. Have a great week everyone!

Hello, everyone. Today's post is very speacial becuase we'll be focusing on a topic in abnormal psychology; but i beieve that Autism is normal as you're born with it but that's a topic for another time; so we'll be interviewing Dr Sharon A. Mitchell on AUtism. Let's get started! 1. Hello Sharon, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Would you mine introducing yourself to us please? Hi Connor. Thanks for inviting me to your blog. I've been a special education teacher, counselor, school psychologist, school district consultant, autism consultant, university instructor and author. I'm now retired from all but the latter two. Mostly. Well, for now, anyway. Oh, and I also farm with my husband and son; our harvest this fall was interrupted by early snow, so we'll end up completing harvest before we begin seeding in spring. 2. So, I believe that autism and the term ASD is thrown around quite a lot without people knowing exactly what it is. Can you please explain what autism is? There is a good reason why you hear the term autism and ASD so often. According to the Centers for Disease Control, autism affects one in every fifty-nine children. In any school, likely every other classroom has an autistic student. And, that accounts for just those kids who are diagnosed. Many others are on waiting lists or might never receive a formal diagnosis. Autism is a neuro-biological condition, meaning that it has its basis in the brain. Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that there is a wide variation in how it can affect the individual and the degree to which the person is affected. It was once thought that about half of those with autism also had an intellectual disability, but now many think that only about a third of autistic people have an accompanying cognitive disability. There are a few hallmarks of autism. One is in the area of communication. Some autistic people are unable to use speech to get their wants and needs across. Others can seem highly verbal. This difference, along with the possible intellectual disability has led to the terms "high functioning" and "low functioning". But, these terms are misleading. If you think of functioning level only in terms of IQ, then you miss the variations. It could erroneously be assumed that if a person has intellectual ability in the average to above range, that they should get along just fine and do not require support. That is actually not true, or at least not consistently true, for an individual. Under some circumstances, that adult might manage their life just fine. But when under duress from sensory input, anxiety, etc., their ability to communicate might be severely reduced or non-existent and they may not handle their situation at all. During that moment, they will not be "high functioning". There might be an autistic person with a mild intellectual disability who has less anxiety and fewer sensory challenges who actually handles his day-to-day functioning better. Even autistic adults who have good vocabularies and are articulate can have communication difficulties. When we use language, we are often not straight-forward. Our actual words make up on part of the whole that is communication. Autistic individuals are usual concrete, black and white thinkers. Thus, they can miss nuances, facial expressions and body language. Sarcasm and innuendo can be difficult for them to pick up on. Other defining features of autism is repetitive motions or actions and intense fascinations with certain subjects. The latter can be a good thing, especially when this interest can be turned into an occupation. Repetitive actions can take almost any form. Common ones we thinks about are hand-flapping, rocking, spinning, etc., but can be idiosyncratic to the individual. And the motion they make can change over time and circumstance. For some, these repetitive actions can be soothing and help to reduce anxiety or being overwhelmed by sensory sensitivities. Although not part of the diagnostic criteria for an autism diagnosis, it is a rare autistic person who is not bothered to some degree by their sensory system. They might feel things much more intently than would a neurotypical person. Or, they could be under-aroused, requiring more sensory input before the sensation registers on them. 3. Now that we know what Autism is, can you please tell us how autism can impact a child’s or an adult’s life? Hmm. I think I might have covered some of this question above. The main areas that impact an autistic person's life likely have to do with the areas of communication and/or sensory sensitivities. The difficulties are more obvious in a person who is nonverbal. Especially in children, I have seen some of the unwanted behaviors go away when the child is given some type of communication system - a way to exert control, a way to say "no", a way to make their wants and needs known. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be if you had no way to communicate? While speech is the quickest and most efficient way to communicate, for some autistic kids (and adults), this is not easy. Some articulate, nonverbal autistic adults talk about understanding everything that is said to them, having the words in their mind, but are unable to get them out. Typing and various forms of technology have helped them explain a lot of what we now know about how it feels to be a nonverbal autistic. For those unable to type, pictures, word cards, sign language and various forms of facilitated communication help greatly. While their ability to hear might be intact, many autistic people have difficulties with auditory processing. They hear the words, but making sense of those words might be tricky. They might require more time to decipher the individual words, determine their meaning and relate them to what is already known. Auditory processing ability is reduced in noisy or crowded situations and when the person is anxious. Our speech moves at a rapid rate and the autistic student might be trying to process what he or she has heard, while the teacher or group moves on to other things. Some of the instruction will then be missed. Much of our social world revolves around communication. When a child has difficulty with communication, understanding and acquiring age-typical social skills and social relationships will be hard. Many autistic kids find it difficult to fit it and sadly, can be the brunt of bullies. Imagine sitting in a school classroom when your senses are greatly heightened. If you have auditory sensitivities, every scrape of a chair against the floor, every whisper, the scrape of the pencil across paper will assault. How difficult would it be to concentrate on your work when you need to consciously block out all the myriad of sounds in the room? What if your sense of smell was also overly keen? That perfume the teacher put on this morning might block out all other input in your mind. Then, it's lunch time and all the kids open their lunch kits. Again, your nose is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of aromas flooding the room. There will be some students in every classroom who have executive functioning skill challenges. These would be kids who have learning disabilities, attentional issues, fetal alcohol syndrome, autism and other diagnoses. Executive functioning skills are things that most of take for granted - things such as the ability to organize our belongings and our tasks, to plan what needs to be done, to prioritize, to hold in our minds more than one thing at a time as we multi-task and hold things in our short-term memory, to have a sense of time, etc. When these are weak areas for us, then managing at school or at a job can be challenging and frustrating for all concerned. But, while these are definite challenges for an autistic person, autism brings with it some positives as well, such as monotropism. Monotropism is the ability to focus intently on a select, narrow range of interests. Wonderful things can come out of this ability to hyperfocus, such as deep thinking, vast knowledge and intense experiences. But, this same monotropism can make it difficult for the individual to redirect their attention, to start and stop tasks that need to be done, but are less outside the area of interest. 4. Would you mine telling us please, what drawn you to Autism as a career and how you got into this career? As a teen, I volunteered with some autistic kids. The way their mind worked interested me and I enjoyed my time with them. At university, my first degree was in Psychology. My next degree was in the field of education - a B.Ed. in Exceptional Children. I was drawn to kids who learned differently and found them much more interesting. Then I spent a number of years as a special education teacher, working with kids who had learning disabilities and behavioral challenges. Returning to university, I got a Master's of Arts in Educational Leadership; my thesis focused on autism. I worked as a school psychologist, then as a school district consultant. I was seconded travel my province (I'm Canadian) as autism consultant, giving presentations and doing consults in schools. Along the way I returned to school for a PhD in Psychology Management, again focusing on autism. I retired from education (for one very nice week), then began a job as regional autism consultant. I did that for the next half dozen years before retiring again. Mostly. I still teach three university classes as year, as I've done for the past fifteen years or so. These are undergrad and grad classes in education, all on inclusion and kids who learn differently. While a consultant, I heard over and over from parents and teachers that they want to learn more about autism, but don't have time to wade through textbooks, nor pour over internet sites, weeding out what pertained to their situation. That's where the idea of some of my books was born. Rather than the learning being arduous, what if you could read a story, an enjoyable one, that would still give autism information? What if you learned about autism from being inside a character's mind? What if you could watch strategies being tried at home and at school? So, "Autism Goes to School" was born, the first book in the series. I was very lucky; since there is so much interest in autism these days, it has won awards and been on the Amazon bestseller lists. 5. I noticed that you have a lot of a very interesting autism books, would you mine telling my readers a bit more about them please? I have a series of five novels (so far), each depicting a child or young adult who is autistic and the people who support them. Although it was my intention to just write the one book, readers suggested the topics for the other novels (and for the ones not yet written). The novels are: · Autism Goes to School · Autism Runs Away · Autism Belongs · Autism Talks and Talks · Autism Grows Up Then, again at the suggestion of readers, there are now two nonfiction books in the series: · Autism Questions Parents Ask · Autism Questions Teachers Ask These latter two are not meant to be read cover to cover (although you can, of course). If time is precious, just flip to the Table of Contents and find the chapters that most pertain to your situation. If you'd like a synopsis of each book, here you go: Autism Goes to School A single dad. A boy with autism. A dedicated teacher. Can they become the family they need? Ben didn't know he'd fathered a child until he took custody of his five-year-old son. New to being a dad and new to autism, well those first days weren't pretty. Autism Runs Away What started as a fun chase game now has deadly possibilities. Six year old Ethan has been kicked out of one school for his tantrums and for blindly fleeing when he gets overwhelmed. Now, enrolled in a new school, his mom clings to her phone, waiting for the call to come get him, that they can't handle an autistic child. Return to Madson School as the students and staff welcome Ethan into their midst. Autism Belongs Manny isn't like other kids. He doesn't talk. He doesn't go to school. His parents frantically try to re-arrange their world to Manny's liking because when he gets upset - well, the aggression was getting worse. Is trapped in a tiny apartment with mounting frustrations all there is for Manny? Is he doomed to isolation and silence or could it be that there is a place where he belongs? Autism Talks and Talks Karen is bright, vivacious and highly verbal. Too verbal. She remains on the fringe, looking at other adolescents having fun together and wondering if she could ever be a part of the group. Karen has Asperger's Syndrome. Who best to help her but an autistic chef. What?! Yep! Meet Jeff. His special talents and view of the world are just what Karen needs. And, Jeff learns that he is just what one particular woman needs as well. Autism Grows Up At twenty-one, Suzie has withdrawn from a world she finds alien and confusing. Ability is not the problem, nor is interest - many things fascinate her. But, she has Asperger's Syndrome and high anxiety. To her, the world is a harsh, scary place where she does not fit. She spends much of her day sleeping and most of her nights on the computer. Her mother, Amanda, wishes Suzie would get a job, go to school or at least help out around the house. Suzie feels that her time is amply filled with the compelling world lurking within her computer. She is most content when alone in the basement with her computer. Staring at her monitor, the rest of the world falls away and she feels at home. Amanda meets this gentleman. Jack gently persists and Amanda glimpses what her life if only things were different. Then, when an intruder breaks into the house, Amanda has no one but Suzie to rely on. Autism Questions Parents Ask Your child has an autism diagnosis. How can you help? First, do no harm. Well, that’s a no-brainer for parents, right? When your child receives an autism diagnosis, the research begins. You want to learn all that you can and find the best ways to help him. You will receive advice from specialists that makes sense to you - it fits with your life philosophy and with what you know of your child. You will receive advice that does not sit so well with you, the needs of your family and what you feel are the needs of your child. Trust your instincts. You know your child the best and no one has his well-being at heart as much as you. Whether or not you feel prepared right now, you as the paper will be your child's primary therapist. You spend the most time with him and have the biggest impact on his life. This book is for you. It's written by a parent who is also a special ed teacher, counselor, school psychologist, district consultant and autism consultant. The language won't require that you sit with a dictionary in your other hand but when you do find something that makes you want to research further, links and provided to help you with your search. Helping your autistic child be the best he can be is doable. It's within your reach and this is the book to guide you. Autism Questions Teachers Ask One in every 59 children has an autism diagnosis. Once thought rare, now every teacher will have an autistic child in their classroom. Maybe not last year, but this coming year.... Our rooms are full of diverse learners. Sadly, most university programs don't prepare teachers for this reality. With all those bright little faces gazing at you, the needs can seem overwhelming. How can you be everything to each one? This book is for you. It will calm those panicky feelings. You can do this. By learning about autism and the characteristics that affect being in a classroom, you can tailor strategies that will help that learner, you and the other kids who are in your care. You cannot turn your room upside down for one kid but you can use strategies that are doable and will help many of the learners. Dr. Sharon Mitchell gets it. She's been a teacher, counselor, school psychologist, district consultant and autism consultant for decades. She has presented to thousands at conferences and workshops on ways to successfully include kids who learn differently. She teaches university classes to wanna-be-teachers and to school administrators on inclusion strategies and students who learn differently. 6. Finally, where can people find you and your books? For the readers of your blog, I have created a special link where they can download a gift copy of Autism Goes to School. If they’re interested in reading the book, they’ll have the choice to download it in mobi format (for Kindles and the free Kindle reading app), as an epub (for all other e-readers and reading apps) or as a PDF. Here’s the link: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/gxy5w8udif. If you prefer to read paperback books, then you can purchase any of these books on Amazon or on Ingram-Spark. If you read e-books, they are available: · Amazon · Kobo · Google Play · Barnes & Noble · Apple iBooks · And most other online stores Clicking on the book’s title will show you all the stores where you can purchase the book: · Autism Questions Parents Ask · Autism Questions Teachers Ask · Autism Goes to School · Autism Runs Away · Autism Belongs · Autism Talks and Talks · Autism Grows Up Well, I hope that you enjoyed the interview; I know that I did; please comment down below if you enjoyed the interview and would like to see more interviews, and please check out Sharon's books! Have a great week everyone!