SUMMARY SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES
ARTICLE 1
Source :
McLeod, S. A. (2007). Psychology Perspectives. Retrieved
www.simplypsychology.org/perspective.html
Psychology Perspectives
This article tells the various approaches in contemporary psychology. An approach in psychology is actually a perspective that involves certain assumptions about human behavior including the way they function, which aspects of them are worthy of study and what research methods are appropriate for undertaking the study. There may be several different theories within an approach, but they all share these common assumptions. The differences of the theory drives the perspective of psychology becomes vary to each other. Although there are many psychology perspectives most psychologists would agree that no one perspective is the most correct one because each perspective has its own strengths and weaknesses.
In general there are six main psychological approaches or perspective : Behaviorist perspective, Psychodynamic perspective, Humanism perspective, Cognitive perspective, Biological psychology perspective, and Evolutionary psychology perspective.
Behaviorist perspective is different from most other approaches because they view people and animals are controlled by their environment and specifically that we are the result of what we have learned from our environment. Behaviorism concerns on how environmental factors become a stimuli that affect observable behavior while giving a certain response.
In Behaviorist perspective, there are two main processes that can be used to observe people’s behavior called classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning involves learning by association, and operant conditioning involves learning from the consequences of behavior. Classical conditioning process, introduced by Ivan Pavlov, contains a systematic desensitization that is effective for phobias and aversion therapy. In the other hand, operant conditioning introduced by B.F. Skinner mentioned that human’s behavior is a set of behavior coming from internal motive of the person. Therefore there are three main behavior shaping techniques in this process: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. Behaviorism has been criticized in the way it under-estimates the complexity of human behavior.
Psychodynamic perspective, introduced by Sigmund Freud, believes that people’s behavior is determined by the unconscious mind and childhood experiences which make them have little free will to make choices in life.
Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, explained the human mind as like an iceberg, with only a small amount of it being visible, that is our observable behavior, but it is the unconscious, submerged mind that has the most, underlying influence on our behavior. Freud used three main methods of accessing the unconscious mind: free association, dream analysis and slips of the tongue.
Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has been greatly contributory to psychology (for example it attempts to help patients resolve their inner conflicts) in that it has encouraged many modern theorists to modify it for the better, using its basic principles, but eliminating its major flaws.
Humanism perspective is a psychological perspective that emphasizes the study of the whole person. Humanistic psychologists look at human behavior, not only through the eyes of the observer, but through the eyes of the person doing the behaving. Humanistic psychologists believe that an individual's behavior is connected to his inner feelings and self-image. The humanistic perspective centers on the view that each person is unique and individual, and has the free will to change at any time in his or her lives. Two of the most influential and enduring theories in humanistic psychology that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s are those of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
Cognitive perspective focuses on the study of cognition which is ‘the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired.’ It is concerned with “mental” functions such as memory, perception, attention and so on. It views people as being similar to computers in the way they process information. For example, both human brains and computers process information, store data and have input an output procedure.
This had led cognitive psychologists to explain that memory comprises of three stages: encoding (where information is received and attended to), storage (where the information is retained) and retrieval (where the information is recalled).
Biological psychology perspective proposes that human’s behavior is affected by the genes. It believes that most behavior is inherited and has an adaptive or evolutionary function. Biological psychologists explain behaviors in neurological terms, i.e. the physiology and structure of the brain and how this influences behavior. Many biological psychologists have concentrated on abnormal behavior and have tried to explain it. For example, biological psychologists believe that schizophrenia is affected by levels of dopamine. These findings have helped psychiatry take off and help relieve the symptoms of the mental illness through drugs.
Evolutionary psychological perspective explains humans behavior in terms of the selective pressures that shape behavior. Most behaviors that we see/display are believed to have developed during our environment of evolutionary adaptation to help us survive. A strength of this approach is that it can explain behaviors that appear dysfunctional, such as anorexia, or behaviors that make little sense in a modern context, such as our biological stress response when finding out we are overdrawn at the bank.
Therefore, in conclusion, there are so many different perspectives in psychology to explain the different types of behavior and give different angles. No one perspective has explanatory powers over the rest. The fact that there are different perspectives represents the complexity and richness of humans behavior.
Comments
My comments about this article :
This article tells us about the diversity of psychology perspective in observing people’s behavior. Those differences determine how complex a human is. Human’s behavior can’t only be seen by one single perspective, but should be more than one perspective to show its complexity. Each of the perspective has its own weakness and strength in determining the complexity. Even though many arguments about each perspective were made through the years, we can not infer that one perspective is more superior than the other one since each of them hold their own contribution part for the psychology world. Overall this article is really good in explaining the details of the psychology perspectives. It uses simple form of languages that can be easily understood not only by the English speaker but also non –English speaker. This article really amuse the reader by the new knowledge about how complex a human is, so while observing it we need to use many perspectives. This article can be suggested as a course reader for the elementary until pre-intermediate class of English.
ARTICLE 2
Source
:McLeod, S. A. (2007). Stages of Memory - Encoding Storage and Retrieval.
www.simplypsychology.org/memory.html
Stages of Memory Encoding Storage and Retrieval
Memory is the term given to the structures and processes involved in the storage and subsequent retrieval of information. Memory is really essential for our life, without memory we could not remember or learn anything. Memory is involved in processing vast amounts of information. This information takes many different forms such as images, sounds, or meaning. For psychologists the term memory covers three important aspects of information processing : Memory Encoding, Memory Storage, and Memory Retrieval.
Memory Encoding is a process when information comes into our memory system from sensory input and needs to be changed into a form that the system can cope with, so that it can be stored. . For example, a word which is seen (in a book) may be stored if it is changed (encoded) into a sound or a meaning (i.e. semantic processing).
There are three main ways in which information can be encoded (changed) :
1. Visual (picture)
2. Acoustic (sound)
3. Semantic (meaning)
The principle encoding system in short term memory (STM) by using acoustic coding. In the other hand the principle encoding system in long term memory (LTM) appears to be semantic coding (by meaning). However, information in LTM can also be coded both visually and acoustically.
Memory storage concerns to the nature of memory stores such as where the information is stored, how long the memory lasts for, how much can be stored at any time and what kind of information is held. The way we store information affects the way we retrieve it. There has been a significant amount of research regarding the differences between Short Term Memory (STM ) and Long Term Memory (LTM). Information can only be stored for a brief duration in STM (0-30 seconds), but LTM can last a lifetime.
Memory retrieval refers to getting information out from our storage. If we can’t remember something, it may be because we are unable to retrieve it. When we are asked to retrieve something from memory, the differences between STM and LTM become very clear. STM is stored and retrieved sequentially, so when we are asked to retrieve something we recall it from its order, meanwhile LTM is stored and retrieved by association which means that something being recalled when we associate it with the thing around it.
A large part of the research on memory is based on experiments conducted in laboratories. Those who take part in the experiments - the participants - are asked to perform tasks such as recalling lists of words and numbers. Psychologists use the term ecological validity to refer to the extent to which the findings of research studies can be generalized to other settings. Many experiments designed to investigate memory have been criticized for having low ecological validity. First, the laboratory is an artificial situation. People are removed from their normal social settings and asked to take part in a psychological experiment. They are directed by an 'experimenter' and may be placed in the company of complete strangers. For many people, this is a brand new experience, far removed from their everyday lives.
Often, the tasks participants are asked to perform can appear artificial and meaningless. Few, if any, people would attempt to memorize and recall a list of unconnected words in their daily lives. And it is not clear how tasks such as this relate to the use of memory in everyday life. The artificiality of many experiments has led some researchers to question whether their findings can be generalized to real life. As a result, many memory experiments have been criticized for having low ecological validity.
Comments
My comments about the article are :
Memory is really crucial for human being. Memory is not only a tool to memorize something but also a tool to help human doing their daily activities properly. Without memory people can’t learn anything or even do anything. This article mentions memory as a mechanism which means that memory has its steps in memorizing something. The steps should be in a right order. If one of the step is ruined, the memorizing process will be ruined too which caused a thing being memorized can’t completely being memorized. That particular thing can be easily forgotten or completely forgotten. This article tells us how powerful our brain and our sensory organs are. Our brain should think quickly and correctly about the things around us that are going to be memorized. Our brain should clearly copying the thing so we can memorize it in detail. Our sensory organs, in this case are our ears and eyes should work intensively and effectively in recording the thing being memorized then the neurotransmitter nerve deliver the message being pictured into our brain. This articles really tells us explicitly on how the process of memorizing go through. This article also uses simple language that easily to be understood.
SYNOPSIS OF SHORT NOVELS
SHORT NOVEL 1
Source
: CARRIE (A PAPERBACK NOVEL) BY “STEPHEN KING”
CARRIE
Carietta or known as "Carrie" White was a 16-year-old girl from Chamberlain, Maine who lived with her mother Margaret White, a fanatical Christian fundamentalist. Carrie had a vindictive and unstable personality because she was always being bullied either mentally or physically by her friends at school. Her frumpy looks made her lack of friends and always became a victim of ridicule from her friends, but no one knew that she had a telekinetic ability.
One day after a physical education class when all the girls took a shower together in the bathroom, Carrie suddenly screamed and terrified when she saw blood running down from her groin that actually was her first menstruation. She didn’t know what it was because her mother never told her about the running blood from her body or about menstruation before. Her classmates used the event as an opportunity to bully her. Chris Hargensen was the one who began to bully Carrie. She asked all the girls in the bathroom to throw tampons and sanitary napkins at Carrie. Then a girl named Sue Snell, who was at first followed the other girls to bully Carrie later on felt pity to Carrie and tried to help Carrie by throwing back the napkins at the girls there. The gym teacher, Miss Desjardin, suddenly came into the bathroom and saw the scene of the girls throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at Carrie. At first she was mad at Carrie for her stupidity but then was horrified when she realized that Carrie really had no idea what has happened to her. Then Miss Desjardin helped Carrie to clean up her body and tried to explain about the menstruation to Carrie. After the school was over, Carrie went straight to her home and told her mother what was happened to her in the school. Carrie's mother showed no sympathy for Carrie’s problem, but instead she said to Carrie that menstruation was "the woman's curse".
Miss Desjardin was still mad at all the girls who were involved in the bathroom incident and felt ashamed for herself that at first she felt disgust with Carrie. Miss Desjardin then wanted all the girls who taunted Carrie in the bathroom incident given a hard punishment and banned from attending the school prom, but the principal instead punished the girls by giving them several detentions. Because of that decision, Chris involved in a long and hard arguments with Miss Desjardin. She refused to obey the detention that said she was being punished and banned to come to the prom. As her pleading efforts, she tried to get her father, a prominent local lawyer, to intimidate the school principal into reinstating her privileges.
Far from that, Carrie gradually discovered her telekinetic powers, which she had apparently possessed since birth. The problem was she didn’t have a conscious control over her telekinetic power after her infancy. To solve that problem Carrie often practiced to control her powers consciously in secret, developing strength of her power, and also found that she had a kind of telepathic ability.
Sue Snell, another popular girl who had earlier bullied Carrie, began to feel remorseful about her participation in the bathroom incident. With the prom fast approaching, Sue convinced her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, one of the most popular boys in the school, to ask Carrie to the prom. Carrie was suspicious but accepted his offer, and made a red velvet gown. Carrie's mother would not hear of her daughter doing anything so "carnal" as attending a school dance, as she believed that sex in any form was sinful, even after marriage. She also revealed that she knew about Carrie's telekinetic powers, which she considered as a form of witchcraft. Her mother thought that an ability like what Carrie had always appeared to every third generation in her family. Carrie, however, was tired of hearing that everything is a sin. Carrie really wanted to have a normal life like other girls in her school. She decided to go to prom because she wanted to make the prom as a new beginning chapter in her life.
In the beginning, the prom went smoothly for Carrie. Tommy's friends were really nice and welcoming towards Carrie. Tommy found himself attracted towards Carrie on that day, because Carrie was really different from her usual appearance at the school. Carrie’s eyes were really bright and shinning. Her white pale face shined together with her white blonde silk hair. Her red velvet gown made her beauty completely came out. Chris Hargenson, still furious, devised her own revenge with her boyfriend Billy Nolan: they filled two buckets full of pig's blood and suspend the buckets over the stage. They rig Carrie's election as prom queen and emptied the buckets on Carrie's and Tommy's heads. Tommy is knocked unconscious by one of the buckets and died within minutes, and he and Carrie were both drenched in blood. Nearly everyone in attendance, even some of the teachers, began laughing at Carrie, who was finally pushed over the edge. She left the building in agonized humiliation, remembered her telekinesis, and decided to use it for vengeance. Initially planning only to lock all the doors and turned on the sprinklers, Carrie remembered the electrical equipment set up for the sound system but turns the sprinklers on anyway. Watching through the windows, she witnessed the deaths of two students and a school official by electrocution, and decided to kill everyone, causing a massive fire that destroyed the school and trapped almost everyone inside.
Walking home alone, she burned almost all of Downtown Chamberlain by breaking power lines and exploding gas stations. A side-effect of her telekinesis was "broadcast" telepathy, which causes the city's inhabitants to become aware that the carnage was caused by Carrie White even if they did not know who she is. Carrie returned home to confront her mother, who believed Carrie had been possessed by Satan and that the only way to save her is to kill her. Revealing that Carrie's conception was a result of what people called marital rape, she stabbed Carrie in the shoulder with a kitchen knife, but Carrie killed her mother first by stopping her heart.
Mortally wounded but still alive, Carrie walked along the street by herself in worse condition until when she arrived into one of the roadhouse where she saw Chris and Billy leaving; after Billy attempted to run her over, she telekinetically took control of the vehicle and wrecked the car, killing them both. Sue Snell, who had been following Carrie's telepathic "broadcast," found Carrie collapsed in the parking lot. The two of them had a brief telepathic conversation. Though Carrie had believed that Sue and Tommy had set her up for the prank, Carrie realized that Sue was innocent and had never felt real animosity towards her. Carrie forgave her and dies.
One of the few survivors of the fire at the prom was Miss Desjardin, who resigned shortly afterwards, believing that she might have prevented the catastrophe if she had reached out more to Carrie. The principal also resigned. The surviving seniors attended a grim graduation ceremony.
Fictional transcripts of Congressional hearings and a final "White Committee" report were shown; at the end, the report concluded that at least there were no others like Carrie so events like these will not happen again. However, the final document in the book was a cheery letter from an Appalachian woman, Melia, to her sister, talking about her daughter's telekinetic powers and reminiscing about her grandmother, who had similar abilities.
COMMENTS
Carrie is a really an unbelievable story. Stephen King put all of his effort to work on this novel. He really described the character of Carrie tragically, so the reader can somehow feel pity towards her and feel scared about her in the same time. Stephen king brought an unusual idea to make a story based on an ability that the science itself hard to tell about it. Telekinetic. The horror sense of the story is not only produced by Carrie’s ability, but also her mother fanaticism of the old style Christian beliefs. Margaret white as Carrie’s mother somehow become more frightening than the Carrie’s character itself. It is because Carrie’s character was built by her mother treatment towards her. This novel also tells us about how the society looks like in the past time, where people lived in other’s people opinion. It is proved by how the towns people felt frightened to Carrie after the issue of Carrie is spread out all over the even though they have never met Carrie before. Stephen king again always make people trembling when they read his works. The language used in this story also really easy to be understood.
SHORT NOVEL 2
Source
: CHILDREN OF THE CORN (A SHORT NOVEL) BY “STEPHEN KING”
Children Of The Corn
Burt and Vicky, a bickering couple who was trying to save their marriage, were driving to California for a vacation. As they were driving through Nebraska in the road between the field full of corn, they accidentally collided a young boy who suddenly ran into the road. They were surprised and got out of the car. They looked at the young boy dead body. When they took a look really carefully to the young boy body, they discovered that the boy's throat had been slit and he was almost dead when he was hit. They decided to report this to the police and put the body in their car's trunk.
They decided to go to Gatlin (a small, isolated community which is right down the road) and tried to ask some help from the people there. Although Vicky suggested taking the corpse to the county capital, which was seventy miles away, Burt overruled that when he said doing that would cast suspicion on them and possibly got them arrested for manslaughter.
When they reached the Gatlin, they found a strange thing in that town that no any single people were in sight. The town seemed like a dead town. There were only empty lifeless buildings there. Burt and Vicky decided to walk around the outskirts of town, they found buildings in disrepair, to include a 76 gas station and a Howard Johnson's, both of which advertised in outdated prices far lower from the towns they just traveled from.
Vicky was scared by all this and asked Burt to leave Gatlin immediately, but Burt suggested her to stay until they got to the town square, where there would be the police station. Burt and Vicky soon arrived at the town square, where they found shops and residences unattended, further suggesting evidence of a ghost town.
However, in stark contrasted to all of this, Gatlin's church looked reverently taken care of. Vicky stayed in the car while Burt went into the church to find clues. Inside the church, Burt saw the cross was displayed in an inverted manner. The church organ was unable to play, and corn stalks had been stuffed into its pipes. Burt approached to the altar, where he saw a King James Bible with several pages torn out and the town registry.
Burt finally realized the shocking truth about Gatlin. 12 years ago, all the parents and adults were murdered. He also saw the registry of births and deaths, and saw every child died on his or her 19th birthday. In addition, all the names of the children were changed, with modern American names being replaced with Biblical ones, for example Zack being changed to Zachariah and Allison being renamed Abigail. Vicky then honked the horn, and Burt rushed out of the church to see Vicky sitting in the car surrounded by children wearing Amish-style clothing. The children attacked Burt and Vicky and managed to destroy their car. They kidnapped Vicky, drag her into the cornfield, killed her and hang her on a cross.
Burt, however, wards them off when he used a kitchen knife which he had taken earlier from the Howard Johnson's, using it to attack the biggest kid in the group. This caused him to bleed to death, and the other children are momentarily stunned by the defeat of their squad leader, giving Burt the opportunity for escape. They tried to chase him, but he managed to outrun them. He ran quickly into the cornfield and wandered around until he reached a circle of empty ground in the middle, where he found Vicky's body on a crucifix made out of corn stalks. He also found two men who had been crucified before. He presumed that those body were being sacrificed at the child revolt 12 years ago because only their skeletons were remained. One skeleton was wearing priestly robes and a frock, the other one was wearing a blue uniform with a tarnished badge that says "POLICE CHIEF", and Burt surmised that they must had been Gatlin's pastor and police chief. Before Burt could escape from the corn field, suddenly a big green shadow with glowing red eyes showed up and killed him on that night.
The next evening, the children gathered in the cornfield. A 9-year-old boy named Isaac, who was the cult's leader, told them that He Who Walk Behind the Rows (a name given for the big green shadow) was displeased with their sacrifice because they were unable to also catch and kill Burt. He Who Walks Behind the Rows had to do the job himself (to kill Burt himself with his own hand), just as he had to do so earlier with "the Blue Man" and "the false Minister" who were managed to escape from the kids many years ago. As a punishment, Isaac declared that the age limit for the sacrifice would be lowered to "eighteen harvests of corn", meaning death would now come at 18 years of age instead of 19 as they used to be.
That night, all of the 18 year olds in Gatlin walked into the cornfield and offered themselves to He Who Walks Behind the Rows. One of these children was Isaac's lieutenant, named Malachi. Malachi's wife, Ruth, was pregnant with their child, and expressed anger and sadness that their baby would grow up without a father. On that time Ruth really wanted to burn all the corn and also burned Gatlin to the ground, but as she knew that He Who Walks Behind the Rows took control all the children there. He not only saw everything, but also he read everything that kept inside in the deep hearts of the children. In the end of the story, it only tells us that the corn surrounding the Gatlin were seemed pleased on that night. Maybe it is a reference that He Who Walks Behind the Rows had taken the soul of children being sacrificed and felt happy about that.
COMMENTS
This short story is actually really scary. I can feel the sense of horror since the beginning of the story while Stephen king mentions about the empty town of Gatlin with no one there. I imagine my self being there at the scene of the story. Stephen king put all the details on how the town of Gatlin looks like really clear so the reader will explicitly determine on how the environment of the setting looks like. Even though the characterization in this short story is not really being emphasized, but the story still interesting. This story also has an unpredictable ending which can attract the reader’s intention to read further of the story line. The language used in the story also really easy to be understood, so people can easily find the horror sense when they read it even though they are not really good at reading in English.
Home
