Psychology myth of the day: we only use 10% of our brains at a time

Everyone has heard the saying that we only use 10% of our brains. Even the children’s planners in the last school that I have worked at in South Wales promoted this myth. The myth is known to originate from William James and Lowell Thomas. James had the idea that we only use a fraction of our faculties and that we have so much more to unlock, whilst it was Thomas who actually came up with the incorrect percentage in 1936. Nowadays, some people still believe this myth due to stories of individuals living with only a fraction of their brains.

This belief has been largely debunked through multiple case studies of brain injuries and through fMRI studies (see video below). Neurological studies consistently show that we use every part of our brains, and that unused brain cells and connections are deleted through the process of synaptic pruning to make space for new ones.

fMRI studies have found that specific parts of our brain regulates our breathing, temperature, balance (brain stem), language processing and production (mainly Left hemisphere- Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas) and planning (frontal areas), amongst oother things. From these evidence, we can see that we never ever use only 10% of our brains at any one time in our lives.

Behaviour Genetics and their research methods

Aside from our physical characteristics, our genes influence aspects of our personalities and behaviour. A The study of which is called ‘behaviour genetics’ (Plomin et al., 1997). In order to find out how much a certain characteristic is influenced by our genes, behaviour geneticists employ several research methods. Two of the most widely used of these are Twin Studies and Adoption Studies.

Twin Studies

It is known that over 1% of pregnancies involve twins, which could be monozygotic (MZ) or dizygotic (DZ) (Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003). MZ or identical twins  have exactly the same genes and are formed when a fertilized egg splits into two. DZ or fraternal twins share only 50% of their genes and are formed in two separate eggs.

Behavioural geneticists propose that if a certain charactiristic or behaviour is more commonly present in MZ twins rather than DZ twins (i.e. higher concrordance rate), it can be argued that that particular trait is brought about by genes instead of it being influenced by the environment since twins are more commonly reared in the same environment by the same caregivers (usually their parents). For example, research (Plomin, Owen & McGuffin, 1994) found that general intelligence, memory and verbal reasoning has a higher concordance rate in MZ than DZ twins, which means that these characteristics are heritable.

The figure above show another example into how twin studies can be used, in this study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS, 2008), the level of trust and trustworthiness are measured in a sample of people in Sweden and in the USA. They found that trust and trustworthiness have a genetic cause and do not just come about due to people’s interactions and the influence of their peers and parents.

It is important to note however, that concordance rates in all of the studies (that I have read so far, anyway) never equal to 100%. For instance, in Plomin et al.’s (1994) study mentioned above, general intelligence is found to have around 80% concordance rates in MZ and 60 % in DZ twins, whilst memory and verbal reasoning have lower concordance rates. It can be assumed that the characteristics in question are still influenced by other factors aside from people’s genes.

Adoption Studies

Another way of finding out whether traits are caused by genes is studying adopted individuals. Individuals who are adopted, particularly those who were adopted very early in their lives, were reared in the homes of their adoptive family. If a certain characteristic is heavily rooted in people’s genes, it will manifest regardless of the environment. If, for instance, a child displays a certain behaviour that is more like his adoptive parents than his  biological parents, it can be argued that the environment causes that particular behaviour. If the opposite is found, i.e. if the child behaves more like his biological parents than his adoptive parents, then that behaviour can be attributed to genetics.

References:

Cesarini, D., Dawes, CT., Fowler, J.H., Johannesson, M., Lichtenstein, P., & Wallace, B. (2008). Heritability of Cooperative Behavior in the Trust Game. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(10), 3721–26.

Plomin, R., Fulker, D.W., Corley, R., & DeFries, J. C. (1997). Nature, nurture and cognitive development from 1 to 16 years:A parent–offspring adoption study. Psychological Science, 8, 442–447.

Plomin, R., Owen, M. J., & McGuffin, P. (1994).The genetic basis of complex human behaviors. Science, 264, 1733–1739.

Smith, P.K., Cowie, H., & Blades, M. (2003) Understanding Children’s Development, 4th Ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

10 Things I’ve Learned As A Special Needs Learning Support Assistant

My love for psychology is applied through my job as a Learning Support Assistant for young children with Special Educational Needs.  Having done this job for about half a decade now, I have learned some valuable lessons along the way.

1. Background Knowledge Is Important

Working with children with Special Needs is not easy. Background knowledge of their condition is very important in order to at least have an idea why they are doing the things they are doing, how they are thinking, how best to discipline them and more importantly, how best to help them acheive their full potential.

2. Experience is Invaluable

While I highlighted the importance of background knowledge, experience on the job is still paramount. Some of the teaching staff that I have worked with do not have a Psychology degree but they knew far more than me how to handle difficult situations. Whilst on the job, you will learn a multitude of ways in how to deal with conflicts between children. You’ll learn different ways on how to teach specific topics. More importantly, you’ll learn different ways of communicating with different children.

3. View Them As Individuals, not As Diseases/Disorders

Again, I know that this sounds rather obvious as well as it being a cliche, but some people (possibly due to the lack of knowledge about a disorder) avoid interactions with children with SEN because of their disorders.

4. Each Child Requires A Unique Set of Strategies

There is not one set of strategies that will work for every single child with Special Needs. If you have ten pupils in your class, regardless of whether they have the same diagnoses of conditions or not, you need 10 diferent sets of strategies in order to help them reach their full potential. Some children for instance, might like verbal praise, some might like written and subtle praise.

5. Avoid Comparing Children with Special Needs to Mainstream Ones

I understand that this is a delicate subject, but I’ll attempt to address it anyway. Comparing children with SEN (Special Educational Needs) to mainstream ones run the risk of possible discrimination and de-motivation in their part, and frustration in your part. It is widely researched that the two groups have different developmental trajectory, and as a result (in my opinion), should not be compared. It is always nice to see someone with SEN perform as well as or even better than their mainstream counterparts but still, I think comparisons should be avoided.

6. SEN Children are Capable of Academic Acheivements

I mentioned that children with SEN have a different developmental trajectory. But this should not deter you from expecting them to acheive academically.

7. Patience

I developed an extremely long patience whilst being on this job. One has to realise that some things like giving a verbal response, which seems fairly easy for all of us, takes so much more effort in the children’s part. Also, there are some conditions which cause children to be totally unaware of the consequences of their actions. In these cases, you need to be extremely patient and keep in mind that they do not intend to irritate or offend you.

8. Communicate With The Parents

This again may be limited or even prohibited depending on each case or school policy. With caution, those woking with children with SEN should communicate with parents to give each other advice on how best to manage situations, let each other know about events that happened that may trigger certain behaviours in the child’s part. Communication also helps reassure each other.

9. Don’t Get Too Attached

Being assigned to a specific child or group of children for years can make one become really attached to them. LSAs and classroom assistants know the children assigned to them far better than anybody else in the school. However, being too attached to them may lead to you being too lenient on them, or maybe removing your objectivity when it comes to assessing them.

One has to keep in mind that in almost all of the cases, the job of LSAs and Teaching Assistants are making the kids independent learners. This means that our job is to make sure that these children that we work with no longer need our help when they leave school or hopefully before that.

10. You Can’t Always Win

As positive as I want to be, the reality is, you can’t change everything. At the time of writing, we still don’t know what causes autism and how to treat it. There is no known cure for Down Syndrome that I am aware of. As much as we like to take away these conditions from the children, we can’t. All we can do is to manage their situations as best as we could. There are also some cases that no matter how hard we try, we cannot solve. Sometimes, we have to refer them to other professionals who can help them far better than we can.

So…

Even with the last point in mind, I still would love to carry on helping children acheive their full potential, be it socially or academically. I love seeing their bright smiles everyday and I hope that all of you would (already do) too!

Genes, Chromosomes, DNA…What’s the difference?

I know that this is supposed to be a blog about psychology and not biology. But trust me, you’ll benefit from knowing what these three are when you study psychology.

We often hear people in the news, TV programmes or in general day-to-day conversations that such and such genes cause such and such disorders, or that some killers were caught because the police tracked the DNA they left on a crime scence. But what do we really mean when we say DNA, Genes or Chromosomes?

Within each nucleus of each of the 1 trillion cells in our bodies (except the egg, sperm and red blood cells which doesn’t contain any), are DNAs. DNAs (Deoxuribonucleic Acid) contain stretches of sugar and phosphate chains which run in opposite directions and are joined together by ester bonds. Each strand of DNA contains combinations of Adenin, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine (reffered to in most literature as A, C, G and T respectively). These nucleobases are where the ‘instructions’ for our development and functioning are contained. Genes are specific parts/portions of the DNA. The variations in the combinations of these genes bring about the differences that we see in each of us. For instance, eye colour.

DNAs are organised in Chromosomes. We have 46 chromoses, 23 from our mothers and 23 from our fathers. As we know, one pair of those are the Sex Chromosomes which determine whether we are males or females, and it also contains information for our body characteristics. The other 22 pairs determine the rest of our body’s characteristics.

MUTATIONS

Mutations of a gene can occur when the pairings of the A, C, G and T go wrong, i.e. parings may be switched, dropped or replicated. Also, parts of chromosomes may break or get pair with another chromosome. These changes the coding of the genes and sometimes may cause diseases.

It is important to note and remember that a particular gene does not cause a disease or disorder, but the MUTATION of the gene.

For example, in chromosome 4 lies a gene that we all have. However, a mutation of this gene causes people to have Huntington’s chorea (a neurodegenerative disorder that affects muscle coordination and result in a decline in cognitive abilities and causes dementia). If on the other hand, the same gene in chromosome 4 is missing, this will result in Wolf-Hirchhorn Syndrome (characterized by delayed growth and development, distinct facial features, intellectual disabilities and muscle weakness).

For more info, check out Matt Ridley’s awesome Genome book and the Genetics Home Referrence Website.

Want to be a psychologist? What type?

Many young people tell me that they want to be a psychologist. However, they do not realise that psychology has many different areas that one can ‘specialize’ on. Below is a list that contains most of the different types of psychologists and basic descriptions of each one.

1. CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

A Clinical Psychologist aims to increase people’s well-being and mainly works in hospital settings. When people are referred to them by other clinicians, they assess them using different psychological tools and observations. They sometimes provide therapy or advice to patients.

People often get confused with Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatrists, which is understandable since both have basically the same aims. However, the main difference between the two is that psychiatrists have medical degrees, and are therefore liscenced practitioners. A lot of people believe that because of their inclination to medicine, psychiatrists are more likely to prescribe medication to their patients rather than therapy, which works for some but not all illnesses.

2. HEALTH PSYCHOLOGIST

Health Psychologists also mostly work in hospitals and health care settings, Their main roles usually involve promoting positive attitudes of people towards health. For instance, hand washing, reducing alcohol consumption, quitting smoking and healthy eating.

3. FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST

One of the more ‘sexier’ area of psychology due to its frequent mention in films and novels is Forensic Psychology. Mostly based in prisons, Forensic Psychologists mainly conduct prisoner profiling. They analyze criminal behaviours and predict the causes of them. In addition, they develop programmes for offenders in order to help them either manage their anger or improve their overall behaviour.

4. EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Educational Psychologists mainly work in schools and/or local education authorities. They assess children in order to find out how to best help them with their particular educational difficulty. Along with other professionals, they help plan children’s intervention programmes. They also work with parents and teachers of children with special learning needs.

5. CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST

A Child Psychologist works with infants, toddlers and older children. They are particularly interested in children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. A Child Psychologist may work in hospitals and universities, but may also be required to visit children’s houses. They may also diagnose children and provide or advice for treatment and/or therapy.

6. OCCUPATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Occupational Psychologists work mainly in private companies and are interested in people’s work performance and group dynamics in the work place. They aim to increase people’s satisfaction and well-beng in the workplace.

7. SPORT PSYCHOLOGIST

This area of psychology applies theories into the performance of sports. Sport Psychologists are mostly employed to keep athletes motivated and focused despite distractions or poor results.

8. MEDIA PSYCHOLOGIST

Media Psychology is a blanket term for psychology that deals with communication transmitted through technology. This covers newspapers, advertisement, television and all the types of media one can think of. Media psychologists are interested, for instance, in how to communicate effectively with a target audience and convey a message in the way that one wants it to be perceived. For example, media psychologists might investigate how to persuade males through a television commercial, to buy a particular facial wash?

 

SO…

If you are interested in becoming a psychologist, please be assured that there are many different areas that you can study. It can be seen that psychology can be applied to media, sports and education, and that not every psychologist is required to administer therapy or diagnose people’s mental conditions!

 

For more information, visit the British Psychological Society’s website.

DIfferent Psychological Approaches

There are many different approaches identified in psychology literature. In this post, I will attempt to define and explain the basics of four mostly talked about approaches in introductory psychology textbooks.

1. THE PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH

As mentioned in my previous post, this approach was the brainchild of Sigmund Freud. He likened our minds to an iceberg, wherein only a part of it is observable. He termed this part the ‘Ego’. The ego is always affected by the conflict that arises in the ‘submerged’ or ‘unconscious’ parts of our minds, the ‘id’ and the ‘superego’. The id houses our basic desires and it does not know the difference between good and bad, and it is also impulsive. The superego on the other hand, is socailly aware of the rules and norms and according to Freud, acts as a parent in the sense that it controls the id’s desires and impulses. Attempts to manage these conflicts are made in the ego, along with keeping in line with reality. However, if the ego sides with the id more, the superego punishes it through guilt and anxiety.

In order to cope, the ego employs defense mechanisms. Freud identified denial, displacement, intellectualisation, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formations, regression, repression and sublimation as types of defense mechanisms.

Included in Freud’s theory are the Psychosexual stages summarised on the picture below. Freud suggested that these stages affect an individual’s development throughout the lifespan, and that fixation on one stage  can lead to bad consequences.

Freud’s theory is criticized due to its high emphasis on sex and the lack of scientific support.

 

2. THE BEHAVIOURIST APPROACH

This approach explains behaviour as a result of the environment. A well-known theory on this approach is Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning. During one of his experiments, Pavlov noticed that his dogs salivated when they heard bells ringing, even without seeing the food. In other words, the dogs associated the ringing of the bell to food.

Classical Conditioning can also explain why we automatically behave (at least I hope we do) appropriately when someone wearing a police uniform comes close.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operant conditioning is another popular theory in this approach. Originally from B.F. Skinner, Operant Conditioning assumes that all behaviour is based on motive. Positive reinforcement, when behaviour produces a reward and Negative reinforcement, the withdrawal of negative outcome, increases the likelihood of the behaviour’s reoccurence. Whereas Punishment, i.e. something unpleasant introduced after a behaviour, decreases the likelihood of that behaviour happening again.

 

 

 

 

 

3. BIOLOGICAL APPROACH

Proponents of this approach believe that human behaviours are brought about by genetics and/or neurological factors. Stemming from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, psychologists who adopt the biological approach believe that everything we do has an evolutionary motivation behind it. For instance, the majority of people would save their own children in a flood instead of their pets because they want their children to reproduce, hence preserving their genes.

Also, chemicals in the brain, for instance, cortisol are increasingly believed to cause conditions such as stress (in the case of cortisol). As a result, psychologists who adopt this approach would attempt to treat mental disorders through drugs.

 

4. HUMANISM

Humanists believe in studying the whole of the person. Each individual’s behaviours are a reflection of his/her feelings and ideas of self-worth. This approach views each person as a unique entity that is allowed to change at any time.

A popular proponent of this approach is Abraham Maslow, who believed that each person desires to reach his full potential. According to him, in order to acheive this ‘self-actualization’, one must first acheive the ‘lower’ needs identified in his ‘hierarchy of needs’:

 

CONCLUDING REMARKS

It can be seen that there are many approaches that psychologists adopt. One should understand that one approach is not enough to explain the complexity of human behaviour. A particular approach may be better at explaining one aspect of a particular behaviour whilst one may be better at offering a treatment for a specific mental illness.

What is Psychology?

What better way to kick start this blog than to define Psychology? The earliest appearance of the word ‘Psychology’ was in the book ‘The Physical Dictionary: Wherein the terms of Anatomy, the names and causes of Diseases, chyrugical Instruments and their Use; are accurately Describ’d’ by Steven Blankaart published in 1693. In this book, psychology was defined as something which treats the soul. A definition that people of today would ot often use for the word. Nowadays people define psychology as the ‘study of people’s mind’. Even this definition is not enough as many still argue what the word ‘mind’ is and this definition excludes many of what psychology is about. For instance, cognition (mental processes such as attention, memory and comprehension) is not covered by this definition. Also, people’s behaviours and its causes are not mentioned. Rather, I would agree with Oxford’s dictionary definition of the word which covers most aspects of psychology: The study of the nature, functions, and phenomena of behaviour and mental experience.

Many people also associate psychology with Sigmund Freud (pictured above). Freud is famous for his Psychodynamic theory and his way of ‘treating’ people with mental problems through ‘psychoanalysis’. Although many still believe that psychoanalysis works, Freud’s theory is now largely discredited due to the lack of scientific evidence. An explanation and evaluation of his theory will be discussed soon in this blog.