Attention?

Go to www.luminosity.com. Create a free account. Train your brains for  5 days. Report your progress and share your experience. You can customize the training based on what you are interested in. Do you think that the daily use of these activities help users to be better learners, memorize important facts, increase task speed and accuracy or solve problems?

I've been waiting to post my blog so I could train my brain this week through daily workouts on luminosity.com. My scores overall seemed to variety quite a bit. I did notice that my 'workouts' in the evening scored much higher than my morning workouts. The range of available games is impressive and I wonder if physical therapist use this website or  others like it to engage patients. I'm not sure I'd use the games to workout a young healthy mind - I don't really have a solid reason behind this thought so it could easily be persuaded to change, I guess I hope children's play would develop the same skills in a more organic and natural way of evolving. I suppose I might be one of those people who needs to get away from the computer more often, but all of my classes are online right now.

The Luminosity tasks were each interesting, I'm curious to know more about their development and the intended focus of each task. If I want to increase my memory, why does the card game of Memory seem to be a favorite but is one game I least enjoy. I do like that type of variable on Luminosity, I couldn't alter my workouts since I was using a free trial. Being able to rate the tasks and setting my preferences for tasks that I'd like to try again over time would be very helpful. Everyone learns differently and the website appears to offer many options but I'm not sure if those options can be controlled by a paying member.

Being able to participate in more than three  tasks would also be nice, even more than the five allowed for paying members. Some days I feel better and I like to take advantage of 'good' physical and mental health days. Other days are a total loss due to frustration or a change in the weather causes body aches. I've placed pressure on myself this week to complete training every day so maybe I should have started soon so I could skip a few days. The tasks only took a few minutes though and they are a fun diversion.

I do feel like the tasks were a diversion, something new to try besides watching TV, reading homework, or other mindless activities available online. I wondered a few times how different these tasks may be compared to video games and the idea that our society views Luminosity tasks as more educational while video games are seen as a waste of time and played by many lonely misfits. Or the view that video games have a link to violence. None of the Luminosity tasks were violent by any means, but once we start trying to train our brain it feels like there is thin line between education and learning versus wasting time and resources.

I also found some other "brain games" online but those tasks were similar to jigsaw puzzles, dragging tiles into place to create an image, or simple math games. The Luminosity tasks felt much more mature and less like a lack of time spent on each one, but I'm not sure why even though I've been asking myself that question all week.

Overall I have to say that it is wonderful to find games online similar to the games I planned as a child. Perhaps their marketing of food, colors, and old fashion competition still works to bring people together. The Luminosity tasks do not bring people together, at least not in the trial version, since each individual is working on their own tasks. Perhaps we become better people and that will bring us to new people in the future.

Attention

Please select (a), (b) or (c) and post your experience/reflection on your blog.

(a) Go to www.luminosity.com. Create a free account. Train your brains for  5 days. Report your progress and share your experience. You can customize the training based on what you are interested in. Do you think that the daily use of these activities help users to better learners, memorize important facts, increase task speed and accuracy or solve problems?

(b) What do mobile phones, loud radios and DVD players in cars, as well as high traffic, passengers, and other modern elements mean for driver attention to actual driving? If it is available to you, try going into a room that has a radio, TV, and any other distraction you can find. Now try to do your multiplication tables through 12. Talk about your experience. How much cognitive load can a driver handle while remaining effective at his/her task? Now, think about this in terms of the noise of an educational environment. How much noise is useful during learning? How much interferes with attention and consciousness? How should this impact the design of a learning environment? How much should it? Please look up some research to support your arguments.

(c) As a learner, what strategies do you use to pay attention? Please discuss 3 or more strategies and explain from a cognition point of view why these strategies work for you.

The most famous hermits in Literature.
Marcel Proust (France) - wrote the seven volume "In Search of Lost Time" after the untimely deaths of his parents. Proust secluded himself in his apartment and would only go out at night.

Emily Dickinson (United States) - only published seven poems in her lifetime. In 1862 Dickinson broke up with her boyfriend and went into seclusion.

Leo Tolstoy (Russia) -  writer, playwright, activist, and philosopher. 

Thomas Bernhard (Austria) - novelist, poet, and playright.  

Psychology Perception

1. Go to a coffee shop with a notebook, order some coffee and sit down. Find someone in the room to stare at for two minutes or until they look back. Write a one or more page response on how they reacted and how it made you feel to do this.
2. How do your perceptions compare with those of other people? What does a red apple look like? Do we see the same color of red? What does chicken taste like? What does falling in love feel like? If we both place our hands on a hot stove, will our pains be similar?
   
3. Go to http://www.gerardkeegan.co.uk/psychart/psychology_art.htm. Examine the pictures. Write a couple of paragraphs about which theories or neurological functioning explains how seven of these pictures exploit our perception of the world.

For my CECS 5300 class I was instructed to complete one of the above tasks and write a blog about the experience. A friend of mine loves cognitive psychology and told me she wants to be included in any tasks I need to complete this semester. I love her enthusiasm and willingness to assist me. My dad was visiting from out of state when classes began and I mentioned the class to him. I told him one of my optional tasks was to go to a coffee shop and stare at someone until they looked back at me. My dad replied that this is a great way to get shot and seemed as a slightly dangerous task.

Dad is from a small town so I mentioned the task to two of my friends from the Dallas area to see what they thought. Both women, older than me, agreed with my dad and felt the task could be potentially dangerous and questioned what they might do if they found someone staring at them intently. I have to say, I agree with them and the coffee shop option is way too far outside my comfort zone. Flirting is done with small glances and looking away if the other person sees you looking at them, staring seems to be a very aggressive type of body language. I don't mind reaching outside my comfort zone and my dad would agree that I often live outside the comfort zone of most people. I don't mind going out in my pajamas and when traveling I usually prefer pajamas, especially when flying. If I'm going to be stuck in an airport with potential delays then I'm going to be comfortable and I don't care if other people do stare at me since they'll be wishing for pajamas if our flight is delayed. 

I do believe that everyone has different perceptions. I grew up in Nebraska and went to college there. Once I moved away from Nebraska I discovered that most people do not wear bright red all the time, and many people never red at all. In Nebraska red and white are the college colors for the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, also known as the Huskers. Many people, especially those living in Lincoln, have a large amount of red in their wardrobe and we were it year round. When I was married I had to separate our laundry into three piles: whites, colors, and always a load of red colors. I made the mistake of washing white undergarments with a red tshirt and my husband did not appreciate pink underwear.

My idea of a red apple is likely to be based upon my ideal of the color and shade of red compared to Husker red. Other teams also wear red but their colors are more burgundy than bright red. It is a subtle difference but college football fans notice the difference.

The taste of chicken is also likely to be different although many different foods are said to taste like chicken. I don't notice the taste of chicken so much but I did notice the taste of tomatoes after living in Dallas for a summer and then moving to northern Michigan (aka the Upper Peninsula). Tomatoes in Texas always taste fresh to me and taste more home-grown. After being in Michigan a few months I could really taste the difference of the imported tomatoes, they were not ripe even though the red coloring looked the same. They were not as juicy and the tasted very bland when compared to the taste of Texas tomatoes. Living closer to where the fruit is grown made a huge difference. Guacamole also tastes quite different in more northern states. The avocado is not fresh and is often overly mashed so the guacamole has a texture of pea soup or runny mashed potatoes. In Texas there are still small lumps of avocado in the guacamole so the texture is thicker.

Pain tolerance is very difficult to measure, even when one person is trying to describe their own pain and compare the differences within their own body. I have chronic pain in my lower back and right hip due to a car accident several years ago (someone turned in front of me and when I hit them it caused my car to roll over and slide about 100 meters, I was able to get out of the car by myself and did not appear hurt right after the accident). The nerve endings were damaged and I have since learned that the body only feels the pain in the area where the pain is most concentrated. In other words, I do not feel pain in other areas of my body unless that pain is greater than the usual pain I always feel in my lower back. My lower back pain will often change depending on my level of activity, the weather, and how much sleep I have had.

This past summer I had a very serve sunburn on my arm that eventually had blisters, probably a second degree burn. However, I could barely feel the burn even though a few blisters were popped when I scratched the area since I had a very active weekend due to my younger sister's outdoor wedding, a very long drive, and very little rest that weekend. My back pain was still worse than the sunburn so most of my pain was still focused on my back. My own pain is difficult to compare, from one area of the body to another but trying to compare my pain to another person's pain seems impossible. Everyone deals with pain differently and all of us have a very different pain tolerance, partially dependent on how much pain a person has known throughout their life. My pain tolerance used to be average but now my pain tolerance is much higher than it used to be before my car accident.

I also looked at the link in the third option for this class. I like optical illusions, probably because I can't draw and find it interesting how people learn to draw these illusions. Many of them are based on shading within the picture and perceptions that our eyes see. I often find the same type of shading can be done with fabric when people make quilts. I used to quilt when I had more time to devote to the hobby and still have a collection of fabric I hope to use one day when I am finished with school.

I've seen the same quilt pattern used throughout many quilts but the overall look and appearance of movement changes depending on the color of fabric and the gradients of shading seen in the fabric. One very popular quilt pattern is called Log Cabin, it involves a small square in the middle and rows added around the square in a circular pattern. However, once all of the quilt squares are sewn together many different looks can be achieved depending on the layout of the squares.

I did an Internet search for "Log Cabin quilts" and found the two following images. They use the same pattern, one quilt has red squares in the center, the other uses yellow, but the placement of light colors and dark colors results in very different overall images when the quilt is complete. The pattern can also be done with leftover fabric so there is no overall pattern with the planned shades creating another shape when finished. No optical illusions are created but the small patterns create bigger patterns depending on the placement of the pattern, color shades, and placement of the blocks next to one another. I could use the same quilt pattern over and over again and never create the same quilt twice but they could look very different.