My Life Story

Above is the entire project put together and below are each section separated so the pictures and words may look a bit clearer.

This was a very interesting task. To try to convey your life story with the six dimensions of development really made me look at how I became the person I am today as well as my plan for the future. When organizing my past with the dimensions given, I had trouble deciding which event, place, or person helped guide my development. As I gathered my thoughts into what I wanted to express, I felt that helped the process in all as I went into the present time period. It was much easier to convey my development in the present time period based off how much I continue to think about the now. For the future time period, I wanted to not only express some short term goals I hope to accomplish, but some long term goals as well. I felt I was able to convey my development clearly over my past, present, and future life. I look forward to see how my future turns out, and see if my developments were accurate or not.

Personality Assessment

Personality Assessment:
An assessment of ones personality creates the ability to bring together the unique variety of traits one person carries and use them to describe several broad traits that can relate to everybody. My mind explodes when thinking about the thousands of traits used to describe the personality of a human being, yet we have found ways to filter those thousands of traits down into several broad traits. In order to assess someones personality, we have to understand their traits are unique in their own form or fashion. Those several broad traits I was describing indicate these differences in people's personality by setting these basic trait dimensions that may change over time and in different scenarios. The Five-Factor model is one of the most widely used systems that attempt to identify a person's personality. This system includes five broad traits and uses the acronym OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Each of these terms implements a variety of unique traits each person may carry and that helps identify the percentage of each broad term a certain person carries. These traits aid in guidance towards identifying ones personality. With that saying there are others who may seek other traits in which they feel the Five-Factor model cannot grasp. Three huge names that helped pioneer this idea a trait approach to personality are: Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell, and Hans Eysenck. They wanted to give people a self-report measure while creating statistical evidence based off the respondents traits when answering some questions. In fact, I choose to take Eysenck's personality test.

Eysenck's Personality Test:
Eysenck's personality test has determined with statistical evidence that personality is composed of three main elements: Extroversion, Neuroticism, and Psychoticism. As we see, the first two come from the Five-Factor model so that gives a pretty big hint that these are two significant broad traits in defining someone's personality. Now I was a little questionable on the third's importance but I understand it must have some sort of significance in identifying one's personality. Psychoticism differs from the first two in that it implies more negative qualities in a person. The test is guided through a series of questions that contains five answer choices varying from very inaccurate to very accurate. With the answers given by the applicant, the test provides statistical results of the percentage it believes the person to have in each category.

Eysenck Test Results:

Extroversion (sociability) |||||||||||| 50%
Neuroticism (emotionality) |||||||||| 36%
Psychoticism (rebelliousness) |||||||||| 40%
Extroversion results were medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting.
Neuroticism results were moderately low which suggests you are relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.
Psychoticism results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the expense of your own individual development (martyr complex).




Reflection Over The Results:
I agreed with the results of neuroticism and psychoticism, but not extroversion. I like how in neuroticism described me being relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic because I feel I portray these traits on a day to day basis. That goes for the psychoticism traits as well: kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the cost of my own individual development. As for extroversion, I personally feel I lean more towards the shy side rather than being outgoing, talkative, and very sociable. Though I do enjoy social interaction at times, I portray more of the introvert character on a day to day basis. Other than that, I was very impressed on how accurate this personality test is.

Works Cited:

• https://study.com/academy/lesson/choosing-a-personality-assessment-technique.html
• http://similarminds.com/eysenck.html
• file:///C:/Users/jgsar/Downloads/Week%206_Chapter_Personality%20II-2.pdf
• file:///C:/Users/jgsar/Downloads/Week%206_Chapter_Personality%20I-2.pdf

Nature-Nurture Debate

How do we receive the particular aspects of behavior in which make us who we are? For centuries now, we've had a debate over whether we received our traits genetically as they were passed down from our parents or rather received them based off our environmental background. This is the nature-nurture debate. This debate is not one that is likely to come to a simple resolution anytime soon due to so many different aspects of behavior being revealed that can be tested between nature and nurture. The overview of the nature-nurture debate looks at how both make their own contribution to influence behavior.


In the nature aspect, we see the behavior in people and animals caused by genetics. From a science perspective, this aspect would make total sense. Our genetic code carries all of our physical traits, and it would only make sense to look at behavior traits in the same way. When looking at the nurture aspect, we look at behavior traits being effected by the environment in which the person or animal that lives in. A person's environment can cause a person to change and form them into the theme of the environment in itself. More often than not, nature and nurture contribute together in forming someones behavior traits. In thus, making the debate extremely hard to identify which perspective is being used when looking at the certain behavior.
 

Real life examples:

In Tanya Lewis', "Twins Separated at Birth Reveal Staggering Influence of Genetics",  she describes how identical twins are so similar no matter the barrier of being raised in separate environments. She describes the Jim twins being born together but raised separately but still sharing common traits amongst themselves no matter how far apart they are. One quote that really caught my eye over the study of this situation, "Among identical twins, 80 percent of those surveyed reported feeling closer and more familiar with their twin than they did to their best friends, suggesting a strong genetic component in the bond between identical twins." This statement creates a large amount of evidence when looking from the nature perspective for identical twins.

For professional athletes, nature is implemented first as it grants the child their extraordinary physical attributes based off the genetic code given to them by their parents. Though their genetics play a huge role towards how they become professional athletes, their environments creates the traits that allow them to reach such a goal. The way they are raised and setting they are raised in creates a lot of motivational behavior traits to work harder than anyone else in order to become a professional athlete. Creating the willingness to practice at the craft in which they are trying to perfect, in which resulting in the goal they set for themselves. Though a combination of nature and nurture are used towards this topic, nurture is used more when looking at how the athletes get there.


http://guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Kawhi-Leonard-Tim-Duncan.jpg

When looking at dogs, when identify some dogs being rather aggressive compared to others, such as pitbull's or Chihuahua's. Is it the genetics's in the dog that makes this temperament, or is it the environment they live in? In fact, both nature and nurture are implemented in this case. Common traits have seemed to be passed down within the dogs ancestry to cause such aggression, but unfortunately there are cases in which some dogs may be treated poorly based off their environment which causes this mood. One thing about nurture is that it can create aggression amongst a variety of dogs rather than the select few in which nature focuses on. 
http://dog-training-essentials.com/american-pit-bull-terrier-training-how-to-train-an-aggressive-dog/

There have been adoption studies set up to see if the kid being adopted keeps the genetic behavioral traits from their actual parents or if they pick up traits from the adopted parents based off the way they nurture them. Both nature and nurture having a chance to affect the behavior traits of those kids that are adopted.

http://www.parenting.com/article/adopting-child-another-race-part-3

When looking at the sexuality of an individual, nature-nurture debate is definitely discussed. Some may believe that nature may be the solution to the development of the individual in all, and just includes sexuality as one of the traits the genetic code carries. Most follow the viewpoint of the nurture perspective. How the environment and upbringing of the individual created the unique sexuality they ended up choosing.
https://choiceforyouth.org/

Personally, I believe both nature and nurture influence the development in not only human beings but all animals as well. I understand the great importance of the genetic code in an organism to identify it's physical traits as well as it's behavior traits, but I am a strong believer that the environment we live in effects our behavior traits just as much. Together, both nature and nurture formulate the behavior traits that makes us the person we are.

Works cited:
http://nobaproject.com/modules/the-nature-nurture-question
https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html
https://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html

Sensation and Perception

Sensation and perception help us interpret the world by complementing each other with their two unique roles. The five senses most commonly recognized are taste, touch, sight smell, and hearing. These senses allow us to gather information from our everyday lives and send it to the brain. Perception is the interpretation of the information our senses gather. Both sensation and perception need to work off each other in order us to function correctly. Sensation and perception allow us to understand the environment in which we live in.

Sensation and perception can work in mysterious ways with our minds. They can be the cause for illusions to make fundamental changes within our body. In the rubber hand illusion, a divider blocks away one of the person's hands so they are only looking at the rubber hand. The person working the illusion then begins to stroke both the rubber hand as well as the hand blocked off from sight. This is meant to use the person's visual sense to cause a fundamental change in the brain so it may think that the rubber hand is their actual hand. To conclude the experiment, they strike the rubber hand with a hammer causing the person to get startled. Whenever the test person jumps from the hammer striking down on the rubber hand, you know their brain has made a sudden change to make them feel as if that rubber hand is their actual hand. This is explained as neuroplasticity, when the brain can change due to experience.


At times, the perception on one person may differ from the other. In 2015, a picture of a dress created absolute mayhem on the internet due to the public's perception over the color combination of the dress being split between either blue and black or white and gold. In Adam Roger's "The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress," he gives a clear explanation on why our brains cause us to perceive the colors differently. He states that, "your brain tries to interpolate a kind of color context for the image, and then spits out an answer for the color of the dress." He's explaining how we look at the entire image, causing the context of the image to effect the visual perception of the dress. The wiring for each person may differ fro the next, and this may be why we differ in the perception of the colors. No matter what, we'll all know that the dress was BLUE and BLACK!

Works cited:
https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwn1w7MJvk
http://info.thinkfun.com/stem-education/fall-learning-series-part-4-the-five-senses
https://medialeaks.ru/2010atyan-rubberhand/

Music and Brain

I thought my overall experience towards this experimental task went very well. I feel both Rosemary and I learned something when hearing each other's perspectives. To sit down with a professional musician and discuss their point of view over what they feel whenever they listen or play music is very interesting. Her perception over her craft had the largest impact on me. Just listening how music has made her feel over the years and why she choose to pursue music as a career. Whenever I described the connection music had with the brain, I felt like breaking up the topic in to three pieces was the best way to get my point across to Rosemary. When I described perceiving the sounds of music, I fed her a ton scientific studies that help the human body perceive a sound. I wanted to give her this scientific perspective of connecting the brain with music because I felt I could give her some insight when looking over this topic she may not have known about before. I tried to translate that scientific perspective towards the two other topics as well: recognizing music and the emotion towards music. The one thing that hit me from hearing her perspective is hearing how music flowed so naturally within her. She never really felt any need to stop herself and think about any of the scientific terms I described when playing. Music was pretty much second nature to her for as long as she can remember and that all has to do with the brain.

Work Cited:

https://www.verywell.com/your-musical-mind-2488722

Brain and Behavior

The brain is an extraordinary subject. An organ that only takes up to approximately 2% of our total body weight but functions as the coordinating center for processing and maintaining basic life functions. When dividing the brain into a left and right hemisphere, we see the functions performed by the brain divide as well according to their appropriate hemisphere. Some examples of functions that occur in the left hemisphere are: language, logic, analytical thought, and math and science. As for the right hemisphere: holistic thought, intuition, creativity, and art and music. Each hemisphere of the brain also controls the opposite side of the body. When breaking the brain down even more, you can define each function the brain produces into each tissue that makes up the brain. When looking at the size of the brain and how many functions it contains, I would think the loss of a piece of your brain would create an huge conflict when trying to perform normal tasks. I took a personal interest in the story of an extraordinary little girl named Cameron Mott who had to go through a surgical procedure in which removed an entire hemisphere of her brain but yet strives for greatness as of present day.

Cameron Mott was 6 years old when she underwent the procedure of the removal of the right hemisphere of her brain. Cameron had been diagnosed with Rasmussen’s encephalitis - a rare disease that leads to paralysis and brain damage. She would have electrical surges flow through her brain, causing her nervous system to not cooperate. A few of her symptoms that occurred on a daily basis are seizures, muscle contractions, and temporary unconsciousness. Her first seizure would come in the first hour of her waking up. With all the risks at hand towards going through with the procedure, the possible outcome of having a normal life and not having to suffer through anymore of her symptoms outweighed all those risks for her parents. The largest conflict that would arise after her procedure would be, how would she be able to control the left side of her body without the right hemisphere of her brain? Cameron was going to have to find a way to use the left hemisphere of her brain to not only continue to control the right side of her body, but also produce the functions that were produced by the right hemisphere of her brain as well as control the left side of her body. This process of combining one side of the brain to the other is called plasticity. Fortunately enough, the process seems to be working as she continues to get stronger as each day goes by. Though her ability to walk and do some other functions may never recover all the way, she has come a long way since the day of her procedure. She's able to walk on her own, she's going to school and even going to summer camps as recorded from an article going over her progress as a 13-year-old. The only word I can use to describe Cameron Mott is extraordinary, just like the brain in itself.


Works Cited
-Extraordinary People - Living With Half A Brain: Six year old Cameron Mott had half her brain removed three weeks ago – today she pedals. https://youtu.be/iYJuqughKmw
-http://www.pbs.org/the-brain-with-david-eagleman/blogs/behind-the-scenes-blog/meeting-the-extraordinary-cameron
-https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170419131801.htm
-https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/brainhemispheres/