August 2006 - Posts

• The expert mind and scripts

  A man walks along the inside of a circle of chess tables, glancing at each for two or three seconds before marking his move. On the outer rim, dozens of amateurs sit pondering their replies until he completes the circuit. The year is 1909, the man is José Raúl Capablanca of Cuba, and the result is a whitewash: 28 wins in as many games. The exhibition was part of a tour in which Capablanca won 168 games in a row. How did he play so well, so quickly? And how far ahead could he calculate under such constraints? “I see only one move ahead”, Capablanca is said to have answered, “but it is always the correct one”. He thus put in a nutshell what a century of psychological research has subsequently established: much of the chess master’s advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought. This rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well. Just as a master can recall all the moves in a game he has played, so can an accomplished musician often reconstruct the score to a sonata heard just once. And just as the chess master often finds the best move in a flash, an expert physician can sometimes make an accurate diagnosis within moments of laying eye on a patient. Because skill at chess can be easily measured and subjected to laboratory experiments, the game has become an important test bed for theories in cognitive science. Researches have found evidence that chess grandmasters rely on a vast store of knowledge of game position. Some scientists have theorized that grandmasters organized the information in chunks, which can be quickly retrieved from long-term memory and manipulated in working memory. To accumulate this body of structured knowledge, grandmasters typically engage in years of effortful study, continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond their competence. The top performers in music, mathematics and sports appear to gain their expertise in the same way. Experts can do wonders by packing hierarchies of information in to chunks. (Philip E. Ross, Scientific American, August, 2006) Chunks could be understood as meaningful patterns of information. Posted Aug 28 2006, 04:21 PM by amparo with no comments

• The importance of changing scripts in psychotherapy

  The emphasis I place in changing scripts, and the emotions that are a component of them, is due to the importance that bringing about change in behavior and feelings has in psychotherapy. Clients that come to therapy usually notice that the way they act does not allowed them to get the adequate social feedback and acceptance they will like to have. A person that has an adequate emotional level of growth might get away with low levels of acceptance. In deed someone who is very self assure might not care too much whether she or he is accepted or not. However for most people a healthy degree of acceptance from others is important. Even those that do not feel they need to be accepted by others most often rely on the acceptance of one or two individuals that are close to them. Humans are fairly sensitive about been welcome and accepted by the members of the group or groups they belong to. The feeling of belonging and acceptance in deed is part of Maslow hierarchy need scale. Sometimes however the client doesn’t need to change but rather need knowledge and assurance concerning the degree of what he should expect of others and what others should expect of him Some people have abnormal expectations of others and of themselves. Changing a persons expectations of himself and others is something that can be accomplished usually through Rational Emotive Therapy or Cognitive Therapy. Nevertheless most clients need to change expectations, behavior and feelings too. I have already explored what is necessary to do in order to change scripts which involve behavior, emotions thinking and expectations (which are part of the thinking process). Posted Aug 22 2006, 04:04 PM by amparo with no comments

• The role of emotions as part of scripts

  Changing one or more emotions in the most important factor behind changing scripts. Emotion guide behavior and there are body postures associated from birth with specific emotions. Take for instance those body postures link to self conscious emotions. The self conscious emotions are four: hubris, pride, shame and guilt. Hubris and pride are distinguished by a straight posture with shoulders back in straight and upward position. Shame is characterized by shoulders forward and down, simulating with the upper body a fetal position. It seems that body postures are wired form birth to certain basic emotions. Emotional memories could and do play an essential role in behavior by influencing perception; emotional memories add an emotional nuance to perception. Through Emotional Darwinism the child’s emotions are selected, from the available set, and then magnified or reduce and coupled with behavior, by the family or social environment during early and late childhood and adolescence. The family helps the child select emotions that are to survive, thrive and do well, while others are destine to be reduce sometimes to the point of being close to extinction. Some of the chosen emotions could be destructive in nature for the individual(anger or fear) as well as for those with whom he relates to. Dysfunctional families usually help children select destructive emotions that go together with dysfunctional behavior. Of course each child comes to the world with a certain emotional inherited predisposition to respond to the world. Neurotransmitters such as nor epinephrine or serotonin are among those responsible for this emotional tendencies. Children’s behavioral response are usually a result of the interaction of their inherited emotional predisposition and their environment. Is during infancy and childhood that humans are taught to select and tune emotional sequences closely link to behavior in order to respond to their social and physical environment. To be continue… Posted Aug 15 2006, 05:51 PM by amparo with no comments

• Psychotherapy Rebecca’s case

  Rebecca’s dependency in her parents childcare assistance was reduced considerably. Karla, Rebecca’s aunt had divorced recently and moved not too for away from her. Rebecca had asked her if she could baby sit for a fee. Karla had accepted and so far she was getting along fine with the child since it gave her something to do, also Karla happened to like small children any how. Rebecca’s relationship with Karla had also added to her emotional health since now there was a family member who is also a friend with whom to talk. Karla had also welcome Rebecca’s friendship and actually visited her when Rebecca was home alone. Karla was really a blessing in Rebecca’s life, she was accepting of her, being also respectful of her decisions. Karla had also her own retirement money and charged a very reasonable amount for the child care service she provided for Rebecca. Rebecca’s parents loved their grandson and babysat for him approximately every 15 days. One could say that Rebecca’s script’s change had to do with a number of factors among which, three of them were: psychotherapy, medication and the good luck of her aunt’s assistance and friendship. To be continue… Posted Aug 10 2006, 05:10 PM by amparo with no comments

• How to change scripts

  The environmental psychologist Icek Ajzen has develop a theory known as Theory of Planned Behavior. According to this theory three factors are involved when we make a decision to implement and action; this factors are: 1. Attitude toward the behavior (are the probable consequences of my deed compatible with my convictions?). 2. Social norms (do others, whose opinions matter to me, expect me to behave like this?). 3. Perceived behavioral control (can I see anything that might help or hinder my carrying out this action?). Those factors seem reasonable, however one should think about how they are to change in order to restructure or create a new script. The persons own convictions if dysfunctional could be the product of faulty erroneous thinking, but also however it could be the result of automatic perceptual and behavioral patterns that bring about the undesirable behavior guided by and unwelcome emotion. In this case one has to become aware of the social context that brings about the dysfunctional behavior and after identify the disturbing emotion. Bringing emotions and automatism into the right path could help the person behave according to his own convictions. Convictions that hopefully are not destructive to one self or others. In order for the second factor to change one might have to try new behavior in a new social context or restructure the social context by changing (one or several) a number of members of the groups one interacts with, so that the expectations of the new formed groups are in accordance with the persons own convictions and values. Making all members of the group the person interacts with (change their expectations) accepting of new behavior is often difficult. Posted Aug 08 2006, 06:06 PM by amparo with no comments

• Psychology: emotions and learning

  Gordon Bower’s State Mood Learning Theory explains how emotions influence learning. If we learn a certain skill under one emotional state our learning process will be faster and better if we continue our learning under the same mood state at a later point. We certainly will remember the learned skills or facts quicker once we are in the same mood state that we were before. Paul MacLean (the triune theory of the brain) was always surprised of how our emotional mammalian brain dominated the neo cortex via the emotional system. To be continue… Posted Aug 06 2006, 04:21 PM by amparo with no comments

• Psychology: emotions, top down perception and changing

  The problem with Rebecca, as with almost all patients, is how to change or restructure memories involved in a script. Memories and specially emotional memories play a powerful role in our perceptions. Emotional memories have strong influence in perceptual process including perceptions known as top down. We might perceive cues or perceptions from our social environment and if those cues or perceptions are link to representations and those in turn to strong emotions through associations, emotions could then trigger a whole cascade of behaviors by calling related modules of prescribed behavioral sequences. Emotions not only call modules but also play a role in organizing them. Emotions too if strong enough can control thoughts patterns. Cognitive therapist used to believe in the phrase “I think therefore I feel” I however believe that although that’s true in some cases, “I feel therefore I think” is also true for cases were emotions are powerful enough to take control and dominate thought. Due to the fact that psychotherapist are part of our modern scientific and technological culture, they have a tendency to believe that thinking dominate feelings. Because of the emphasis our society places on science and the good results people obtain from applying logical thinking to plans of action in their lives, we have a tendency to believe that thoughts are above feelings. However man did not survived thru evolution by relying on logical thinking but rather through the implementation of quick behavioral sequences that were more effective when trying to escape of a depredator. In cases where quick responsiveness was needed for survival, emotions played and all important role. An emotional state will place a person in a certain mood(fear, anger) and such a mood then could help afterwards assemble and trigger appropriate quick sequences of behavior to escape or fight an enemy depending on the circumstances. To be continue… Posted Aug 05 2006, 06:10 PM by amparo with no comments

• Psychology Memory

  Memory plays a crucial role in most human activities, memory can be divided in two large groups which are: declarative memories: 1) episodic 2) semantic non declarative : 1) procedural skills 2) associative 3) non associative Understanding how memory works helps therapist help their patients to change old behavior patterns and learn new ones. Posted Aug 02 2006, 05:42 PM by amparo with no comments