Blog Post #7

I would say that sensation deals with using our five senses. We can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear all the things around us. Our senses detect the different things around us and we get different sensations sent throughout our body. By defintion it is when our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment. To me perception is how we process all the sensations and what it means to us. When we have all these sensations, different people can have their own opinions or explanations which would be our own perception of things. By defintion perception is the process of organzing and interpreting information and for us to recognize meaningful objects and events.



One of the things that I found interesting about this chapter was the section on hearing loss and the deaf. Conduction hearing loss occurs when the eardrum is punctured or if the tiny bones of the middle ear lose their ability to vibrate, and the ear can no long conduct vibrations. Sensorineural hearing loss happens when there is damage to the cochlea's hair cell receptors or their associated nerves. A cochlear implant is the only way to restore hearing for people with nerve deafness and it is also know as a bionic ear. In the close-up article, I was suprised to know that their are 500 million people who live with hearing loss. I was also suprised to read that if yo uare raised in a signing household, you are more likely to express higher self-esteem and feel more acceptable. After reading, this really makes me think about the challenges they face everyday. It also makes me realize how lucky I am and how to many people take, not only hearing, but all their other senses for granted. I can apply this to my everyday life by really being thankful for what I am blessed with. I can also assist those that I come across who are deaf and really try to understand what they are going through.

I read an article called Psychology of Magic: 3 Critical Techniques. In 2007, a group of magicians and psychologists met and talked about the psychological principles they use to produce magic. They aimed to uncover new ways of investigating human thought with behavior. Many psychologists are interested in the principles of magic because many tricks create mind-binding effects that manipulate people's expectations, misdirect their attention, and influence their decisions. All these things are what psychologists are interested in. There are three different techniques they talk about using called psychological misdirection, cognitive illusions, and mental forcing. Psychological misdirection is when the magician points to an object then some sort of gesture distracts the audience and the trick happens. Cognitive illusions are when the magicians uses mental illusions which can fool our attention or play with the way we predict things. They can use smoke and mirrors and other techniques to create the illusions. Mental forcing use different tricks that put the spectator under pressure to answer quickly but the free choice is still emphasized. Many psychologists have begun to use these tricks in their studies to help them learn more about the human brain. This article really makes me want to go to a magic show and really analyze what they are doing. It makes me think how gullable some people can be to these such obvious tricks but yet magicians can still fool everyone. I really don't know how I can apply this to my everyday life other than the fact that if I were to ever see a magic show that I would really try to figure out how each trick works.