Professional Psychological - Literature review Example

First Psychology American Psychologist journal: Praising Children for Their Personal Qualities May Backfire, New Research Finds Http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/02/children-self-esteem.aspx The article states that according to research, praising children with low self esteem for their qualities may in turn harm them, instead of helping them gain high self esteem. This is because when such a child fails in a given field; the failure may cause too much shame to the child leading into greater levels of low self esteem. According to the study, praising children ought to be on the attempt they put into their work, rather than their personal qualities. The study established that parents tend to praise their children for the effort they put to an activity if the child has high self esteem. However, when the child has a low self esteem, most parents will praise the child’s qualities as opposed to their effort. During the research, parents were asked to describe the compliment they would give their children in accordance with task completion. There were also descriptions of how the children felt about themselves in regard to their esteem. The researchers found out that parent gave much praise to children with low self esteem in comparison with children with a high self esteem. In addition to this, parents would say things like, “good job” to children with high self esteem, and to children with low self esteem they would say, “You are an excellent kid.” However, researchers said that while parents may think such a compliment may lift up a child’s spirits, thus their self esteem, it can become detrimental over time. According to Brad Bushman, “it is better to praise the performance rather than the personality.” The research conducted in Netherlands suggested that children who receive praise for their effort do not associate failure with their character, but rather as a set back that they need to overcome. While the children who received compliments on their character took failure as a personal fault, and could further lower the child’s self esteem. Brain & Language Vocal pitch shift in congenital amusia (pitch deafness) Http://www.journals.elsevier.com/brain-and-language/recent-articles/ Http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X13000291 Congenital amusia is a term that people use to refer to an individual suffering from pitch deafness. People with this condition are unable to hum, or recognize familiar tones regardless of whether they have good intellectual, memory, and audiometric abilities. Different studies have shown that around 4% of the population suffers from congenital amusia, though some may be unaware of their condition. There are two classes of amusia, acquired and congenital. Acquired amusia may result from brain damage mostly from cases of stroke. Congenital amusia, on the other hand, is hereditary along birth lineages. This study was carried out on congenital amusics. The purpose of the study was to find out the relationship between the pitch of a person’s voice, and a sudden change in the pitch of applied vocal feedback in people who have pitch perception deficit. The researcher used a group of nine amusics, and had them listen to their own recorded voice from a previous communication. The researchers then had the amusics listen to feedback of their recording, whether speaking or singing, with shifts in the pitch of feedback, in mid utterance. A majority of the amusics showed a response in pitch shift while remarkably few registered no effect. In addition to this, the pitch shift response was evident to both tiny and large shifts. During the study researchers established that there is evidence of a dual-route model of peach processing in the human brain due to the dissociation between the aptitude to willfully perceive small pitch changes, and then produce and monitor vocal pitch. The outcome of the research showed dissociation between pitch awareness and production abilities. Therefore, this goes to explain why an amusic may find it difficult to hum back a familiar tune, despite being aware of the correct tonal variation. Clinical Psychology This Is Your Brain… This Is Your Brain on Chemotherapy by Maria Esposito, MA Http://brainblogger.com/2013/03/11/this-is-your-brain-this-is-your-brain-on-chemotherapy/ According to a research in Rutgers University, prolonged chemotherapy treatment has two key effects on patients. One of these is the decrease in the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, which renders the patient unable to learn new things. The other effect is also in the hippocampus theta activity; also called brain rhythm, which comes to a halt. The hippocampus controls learning, but not the long term memory, therefore, people can still remember and replicate tasks they learnt before undergoing chemotherapy according to the researchers. When an individual learns a new task, it is these areas that coordinate to the other bodily structures on how the new activity ought to be done. When the hippocampus is inhibited, the communication process is altered; thus a person cannot carry out any new task they learn. The research was conducted through testing rats injected with temozolomide a drug that doctors use to treat brain tumors. The dose of the temozolomide on the rats imitated the treatment that humans go through during chemotherapy. After ix weeks of treatment, the researchers assessed the rats’ changes in the learning process by using the variation of an eye blink conditioning. This is a method that scientists use to study brain structures that facilitate memory and learning. This process is similar to Pavlov’s experiment when he would give food to his dogs after ringing a bell. After the tests, it was found out that the rats had difficulties learning to associate two events, especially when there was a gap of time between the tests. Therefore, the conclusion was that the effect of chemotherapy could be duplicated on humans after a prolonged process of going through the treatment process. However, there are no established facts as to whether this has already happened on human beings, due to the complex nature and differences between the brain of a human being and that of a rat. Family Psychology Happily Married Couples Consider Themselves Healthier, Says MU Expert: Medical professionals should consider how marital quality affects patients’ health Https://nbsubscribe.missouri.edu/news-releases/2013/0213-happily-married-couples-consider-themselves-healthier-says-mu-expert/ In accordance with a study in the University of Missouri, happily married couples rate their physical and mental health better than their unmarried, divorced, or single counterparts. The study indicates that people who are married and living happily are less likely to fall ill to chronic conditions, a complete opposite with their single equivalents. Christine Proulx, an assistant professor states that in every single stage of marriage, positive or negative effects on the status of marriage has a corresponding effect on that person’s health. She further adds, “Engaging with your spouse is not going to cure cancer, but stronger relationships lower stress.” Her advice to married people with chronic conditions is to improve on their marriage, and expect to see a corresponding result in their physical and mental health. During the study, Linley Snyder-Rivas and Christine Proulx asserted that each married individual is responsible for their partner’s health, by ensuring they maintain the marriage as a happy and stable institution. The study set out to differ with the assumption that natural processes like aging can be dealt with through exercise and pills. Christine Proulx adds that, engaging someone’s spouse will produce a peaceful mind when one is going through hardships of life and different life crises. The study published in the journal of Family Psychology under the title The Longitudinal Associations between Marital Happiness, Problems, and Self-Rated Health was co-authored by Linley Snyder-Rivas alongside Christine Proulx. The study was conducted on about 707 married people in a research that started in 1980 throughout the nation, with funding from the National Institute on Aging. The participant had above high school education, work with up to $55000 income per annual, and a majority was Caucasians. Linley Snyder-Rivas argues that such couples probably had some protection from mental, marital, and physical problems to their problems in contrast to people of different ethnicities. Child Development Immigration and Academics Http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01866.x/full Http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01866.x/asset/cdev1866.pdf?v=1&t=hf2dwxq8&s=9d137da3afef81b37f570c03337a5d40cd78aad0 According to a national survey in the U.S.A on the effect of immigration on the education of children, the researchers found that children’s development was highly dependent on parents’ level of education. The study also established that immigrant children tend to have more than one cultural affiliation, such as Jamaican immigrants in U.S.A having three cultural affiliations. That is, Jamaican, European, African American and American. Another fact that the study established is that the immigrant status of their parents has a heavy bearing on the health of children. Children from low income earning families have poor health. In addition to this, perception of others on the immigrant children contributes to cases such as underachieving in school, and cases of depression. Another key determinant of the development of a child in their academic lifestyle it the start they have in life. If children start out life in a healthy environment, they are likely to take that into adult life. This is according to data that was collected from over 46000 low income families from the year 1996 through to 2008. If immigrant families are poor, then the chances of the children seeing doctors are minimal, and this may translate to poor health. Once a child develops with a certain illness, the chance of this being carried into adult life is high. In addition to this, poor health has a negative impact on one’s academic performance. Another factor that affects the development of immigrant children according to the study is the religious considerations of the host country. Children may find it hard to relate with the host country’s religious views, especially if the children are from Islamic background. The study conducted in Netherlands also found that the parents’ religious identity had a profound effect on their adolescent children’s religious, ethnic, and national identifications. Educational Psychology Does Discovery-Based Instruction Enhance Learning? Http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/edu-103-1-1.pdf The process of discovery learning takes place when a learner is does not have the target information, but is supposed to come up with a conceptual perception of the details they ought to provide. The task on the learner is to use provided material to come up with the target information independently. The extent of assistance which the learner receives from the teacher is dependent on the difficulty of the task at hand. Therefore, if a task is exceptionally complicated, then the learner will get more assistance as opposed to a lesser complicated task. The researchers argue out that according to study unassisted-discovery learning has many limitations when in comparison with enhanced-discovery where, learners are actively engaged. These enhanced discovery learning methods include where learners have worked examples acting as a guide, or, tasks that demand learners to explain their ideas using their own words. According to Klahr (2000), while there are times when there is a need to give less explicit directions or minimum assistance is required, the use of discovery learning ought to be carefully approached. He further argues that there is no scientific proof that discovery learning is more advantageous than assisted learning. “As long as there is no scientific proof that discovery learning offers higher return to the society, there is no need to insist on its use.” Sweller (2006) is quoted as saying. However, further studies by the same research team point out that explicit instruction are more beneficial and effective compared to both forms of discovery based learning. Giving explicit instructions must go together with assisted discovery because learners have a lot to gain when they generate some of the learning materials in some way. The research team in its conclusion argues that assisted discovery should be integrated with instruction based learning in order to advance the reasoning ability of the learner. Personality and Social Psychology PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: Personality and Obesity across the Adult Life Span Http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-3-579.pdf The health of an individual is affected by their personality trait, according to this research, mainly due to the association with manageable risk factors like obesity. In this study, researchers argue that body weight reflects a person’s lifestyle contributing to the way people believe about themselves, and relate with others in the society. The authors suggested that, through the analysis of personality traits, doctors can find effective ways of treating diseases. The purpose of the research was to try and establish a connection between different individual personality traits and the diseases, or health traits they face. According to the research, most lifestyle diseases are down to personality traits and not external conditions as earlier thought. Obesity was the subject of research, and the authors tried to come up with factors that could show that the lifestyles of individuals affected the risks of such people contracting obesity. It was established that people who have obesity, in most cases, are aware that the decisions they make in terms of what they eat may lead to them being obese. Therefore, according to the study doctors ought to evaluate the lifestyle of an individual before giving any medical treatment. The study goes further to suggest that doctors can achieve more success in treating patients if the focus is on behavior modification, and not just treatment of the disease. The body weight of an individual highly reflects how the person conducts their personal life, hence, their lifestyle. The lifestyle of an individual has an effect with a person’s personality traits. Resulting from the correlation between personality traits and how people mingle with members of the society, the authors said the two factors are tied to how a person feels about themselves. For this matter, upon studying the traits of the person in question, doctors can help them overcome lifestyle health risks such as obesity. Works Cited "Praising Children for Their Personal Qualities May Backfire, New Research Finds." American Psychological Association (APA N.p, n.d. Web 3 Apr. 2013. . "This Is Your Brain… This Is Your Brain on Chemotherapy | Brain Blogger." Brain Blogger N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2013. . "In This Issue - 2012 - Child Development - Wiley Online Library." Wile, Online LibraryN.pn.d. Web 3 Apr. 2013. . "ScienceDirect.com - Brain and Language - Vocal pitch shift in congenital amusia (pitch deafness)." ScienceDirect.com | Search through over 11 million science, health, medical journal full text articles and books. N.p, n.d. Web 3 Apr. 2013. . . "Recent Brain and Language Articles" Subjects | Elsevier N.p, n.d. Web 3 Apr. 2013. . Clark, Ruth Colvin, Frank Nguyen, and John Sweller. Efficiency in learning: evidence-based guidelines to manage cognitive load. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Klahr, David. Exploring science the cognition and development of discovery processes. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. Read More