Questions
Post how a social work administrator’s personal leadership philosophy and style may influence a human services...

Post how a social work administrator’s personal leadership philosophy and style may influence a human services organization’s culture. Also, explain how the organization’s culture might influence a social work administrator’s personal leadership style. Finally, explain how interactions with stakeholders may ultimately impact the organization’s treatment of clients. Be sure to provide specific examples in your explanations.

In: Psychology

Do you think the stigma of being a single mother is fully removed from our society?

Do you think the stigma of being a single mother is fully removed from our society?

In: Psychology

Introduce yourself. Explain your previous leadership experience and skills (both personally and professionally). Describe an individual...

Introduce yourself. Explain your previous leadership experience and skills (both personally and professionally). Describe an individual who might serve as an inspiration for you in a future leadership role. Explain how this example might influence you. Evaluate what style of leadership seems to be a good fit for you as you prepare for a leadership role in social work, and why.

In: Psychology

Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words: Imagine that you were invited to...

Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:

  • Imagine that you were invited to take the test as a child. Predict how you would have responded to the test. Would you have been able to exercise willpower and self-regulation? Why or why not? What techniques might you have used to delay gratification?
  • Refer to Skinner’s Behaviorist theory. Based on your response to the marshmallow test, what might Skinner have to say about your personality? Incorporate two or more of the following terms in your response:
  • Reinforcement (positive, negative, continuous, intermittent)
  • Punishment (not to be confused with negative reinforcement)
  • Social control
  • Self-control

In: Psychology

Explain your own personality as a function of Freud’s structural and topographical model.

Explain your own personality as a function of Freud’s structural and topographical model.

In: Psychology

Disorders Discussion This is one that many people find interesting.. but really is troubling. Why do...

Disorders Discussion

This is one that many people find interesting.. but really is troubling.

Why do so many disorders start in childhood? What about the developing brain that can cause peoples perspective and thoughts to become disordered?

Can you Find a TED talk (or TEDx) about this that is different than the ones in the video assignment?

In: Psychology

1From Bloom’s taxonomy of human experience, define each domain. Note: define each primary domain, not the...

1From Bloom’s taxonomy of human experience, define each domain. Note: define each primary domain, not the sub-elements of a particular domain.

2Describe how each domain relates to interacting with music and art.

In: Psychology

To Sign or Not to Sign? Child development experts agree that it is a good idea...

To Sign or Not to Sign?

Child development experts agree that it is a good idea for parents to begin talking to their babies from the moment of birth. From that moment on, babies are learning language.

Why wait until babies can speak to teach them to communicate with the caregivers? Why not teach them sign language and communicate with them in sign language when they are 4 or 6 months old??


Controversial at the time it was first suggested a few years ago, teaching babies to sign has plenty of supporters and lots of companies willing to train you and your baby to sign. In fact, the only detractors come from those who fear that parents may feel under pressure to learn sign language in order to make sure their babies get the claimed “jump start” on language development.

Among the benefits are exposures to making language six months or more before most children speak their first word (usually at 12 months) thus enabling babies to express themselves. Experts say babies and caregivers are less frustrated because they can express their needs and wishes. It is also believed that signing babies become more adept at spoken language earlier. Some suggest that IQ scores are higher among babies who signed before speaking by as many as 10-12 points.


What is your take of this idea? Have you ever heard of it? Would you want to learn sign language in order to teach their babies to sign?

Below are a number of websites to further explore the topic. Look at one or two of them before participating in the discussion.  

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby/signing.html#talk

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/infant-and-toddler-health/expert-answers/baby-sign-language/faq-20057980

http://psychcentral.com/lib/teaching-your-baby-sign-language-can-benefit-both-of-you/

In: Psychology

As it pertains to Social science disciplines , should we protect our digital self or not?...

As it pertains to Social science disciplines , should we protect our digital self or not? Elaborate.

In: Psychology

Should children/youth who receive a diagnosis of a chronic illness be told the truth about their...

Should children/youth who receive a diagnosis of a chronic illness be told the truth about their disease?

As a consulting Child and Youth Therapist or Child Life Specialist, begin to prepare for your session involving discussion with the parents focusing on the child/youth. Research the topic including what parents should tell their children/youth about their diagnosis and prognosis, and how the information (both content and delivery) might vary across age groups.

In: Psychology

Explain your own personality as a function of Freud’s structural and topographical model.

Explain your own personality as a function of Freud’s structural and topographical model.

In: Psychology

Assignment Sensation and Perception: Signal Detection Psychologists have always been interested in the relationship between physical...

Assignment
Sensation and Perception: Signal Detection

Psychologists have always been interested in the relationship between physical stimuli and the cognitive interpretations of the sensations and perceptions these stimuli produce. This field of study is called psychophysics. One of the major contributions of psychophysics is signal detection theory (SDT). The concepts behind SDT had a very practical beginning. They were first developed as a way to help the military pick the best sonar and radar operators during World War II. For example, detection of an enemy plane on a radar screen requires picking a target “signal” (the enemy plane) among lots of other extraneous signals (called “noise”) that may show up on the screen. Humans vary in their ability to do this, and SDT provides a way to analyze this variability.
From a psychological perspective, SDT is really a way to factor a human’s decision-making behavior (called “criteria” or “bias”) into a perception activity that involves sensitivity to a stimulus. Consider a lab experiment in which a subject wears headphones and is asked to indicate whether or not a very weak sound has been presented on a given experimental trial. Typically, there is ambient background noise (called “white noise”) present on every trial, so the subject must pick out the sound within the context of the background noise. The subjects respond “Yes” if the sound is heard or “No” if it isn’t. The sound could either have been present on the trial or not. If the sound is present and the subject decides “Yes”, this is a correct response, called a Hit. If the sound is present and the subject decides “No”, this is an incorrect response, called a Miss. If the sound is absent on the trial and the subject decides “Yes”, this is what is called a False Alarm. If the sound is absent on the trial and the subject decides “No”, this is a Correct Rejection.
We could arrange the possibilities from our example in a simple chart, which is called an SDT table:
Stimulus (Sound) Actually Present?
Subject’s Response
Yes (Signal + Noise)
No (Noise Only)
“Yes, I hear it”
Hit
False Alarm
“No, I don’t hear it”
Miss
Correct Rejection
Now, let’s put some real numbers into our example. Suppose that there are 100 trials in our experiment, with 50 trials, randomly selected, in which the sound is present (called a Signal + Noise trial, because the stimulus sound is presented “on top of” the background noise) and 50 trials on which the sound is not present (called a Noise only trial, because the only thing present is general background white noise). If, on the 50 Signal + Noise trials, the subject said “Yes” on 40 trials and “No” on 10 trials, then that subject got 80% (40/50) Hits and 20% (10/50) Misses. Note that the Hits and Misses are complementary, so if we know the Hit percentage, we can find the Miss percentage by subtracting the Hit percentage from 100%. Similarly, if on the 50 Noise only trials, the subject said “Yes” to 20 trials and “No” to 30 trials, then that subject made 40% (20/50) False Alarms and 60% (30/50) Correct Rejections. Once again, the percentages are complementary.
Now let’s see how we can use these concepts to differentiate the detection abilities of humans. Assume we run both Subject A and Subject B through our above example of 100 trials, 50 with the sound present and 50 with it absent. Let’s say Subject A correctly detects the target sound 25 times, and Subject B correct detects it 17 times. The question is: “Who is doing better?” You might want to say Subject A since he got more Hits, but the frequency of False Alarms clearly needs to be factored in. If Subject A has 20 False Alarms and Subject B has 5 False Alarms, then B is better at distinguishing the trials in which the sound is present from the trials in which the sound is absent. Specifically, these results would seem to indicate that A is pretty much guessing that the sound is present but is wrong (i.e., exhibits a False Alarm) as often as right. Subject B is more selective about saying the sound is detected but rarely says the target sound is there when it is not. Thus, it could be argued that B is in actually doing better at the task.

This example suggests that we need a measure of performance that includes both Hit rates and False Alarm rates in order to successfully differentiate among the signal detection abilities of different people. To this end, researchers have developed a measure of signal detection sensitivity called d’ (pronounced d-prime) that can be computed for an individual who has participated in an SDT task. While the derivation of this measurement is well beyond the scope of PSYC, it is important to understand that the larger the value of d’ the better the subject is at distinguishing the target signal from the noise.
The computation of d’ is fairly complex, but I have provided an Excel spreadsheet for the calculation given Hit and False Alarm rates. To continue with our example above, Subject A has a calculated d’ = 0.253. Subject B has a calculated d’ = 0.869. (You can verify these numbers using the spreadsheet.) This shows that Subject B, while having a lower Hit rate, is actually the better overall performer in our SDT task.
The experiment you are to conduct for Assignment #1 (with you as the subject) measures face recognition abilities of people using these same SDT principles. Humans have an uncanny ability to recognize faces of people they have previously seen, and SDT is a good tool to investigate individual differences in this ability.
Procedure

Questions/Tasks

1. Explain in a paragraph or two the concept of signal detection.

2. What is the independent variable(s) in this experiment?

3. What is the dependent variable in this experiment?

4. Define “Hit”, “Miss”, “False Alarm” and “Correct Rejection” in the context of this experiment.

5.Using your scored results, construct an SDT table that summarizes your performance. Your table should have the same format as the table on the top of page 2 in this handout with the only difference being that you are to put your performance percentages in each cell of the table.

6. Using the “d’ Calculator” Excel spreadsheet, find your d’ value and record it here. This is a measure of your “sensitivity” (i.e., skill) in the face recognition task. While a higher value is associated with greater sensitivity and skill, it is more useful for comparative purposes, so you might want to ask your fellow students in PSYC what their d’ values were – and, of course, brag if yours is higher than theirs!

7. Consider a radiologist who is in charge of reading lung x-rays to detect possible cancerous tumors. Using the Presence of Stimulus as the Presence of Cancer in this case, build an SDT table (like the one above) that shows the four possible outcomes in response to reading a patient’s x-ray. Consider the two possible errors (False Alarm and Miss) that the radiologist could make. In the context of the task, explain these two errors and comment on the ramifications of each one. Many medical people would argue that one of the mistakes has more serious consequences than the other. Which one? From an SDT perspective, how might you “coach” or “train” a radiologist in order to minimize the more consequential mistake?

In: Psychology

Creating a children’s book of your choice! -For this assignment, you must create an original story...

Creating a children’s book of your choice!

-For this assignment, you must create an original story of your own making.

-The story should be at least 5 pages long. (If your text is very short, you can consider full-page illustrations.)

-You can choose the form of your text (i.e. will it be a poem? A rhyming narrative? Will it include rhyme at all? Will it be a fairy tale? Will it be an extended lyrical poem? Will it be a prose book about a real-life event? Will it be a multicultural book (either general or specific)? Will it be fictional? Realistic or fantastical? Science fiction? Will it be a story meant to communicate an ageless truth? Will it be more serious or more lighthearted? What is the book’s purpose? Does it have specific lessons/morals? Theme?)

In: Psychology

What is The Reciprocal Model and how does affect society today?

What is The Reciprocal Model and how does affect society today?

In: Psychology

Que. As we saw in the class lecture one of the most controversial ideas of Marx...

Que. As we saw in the class lecture one of the most controversial ideas of Marx was his quote: “Religion is the opium of the people”. Many people now discuss the decline of the role of religion in people’s lives and wonder if Marx’s concept may be outdated. Here is your chance to update Marx’s ideas. For this question, you are to substitute the word “media” for the word “religion” in the above quotation. In other words, the quote you are dealing with reads “Media (or “social media”, “Facebook”, “Twitter”) is the opium of the people”. What you are to do is to focus on one aspect of media (it could be television, “reality tv”, video games, advertising, “second life” computer simulation games, sports (on television and in person), movies, social media, “Facebook”, or “Twitter”) and using the ideas discussed in the summary of Marx’s quotation – apply the same analysis to media today. Using examples to support your ideas, in what ways can it be said that today media operates to “dull the senses” and thereby (using Marx’s terms) operates as a highly addictive and sedative “opium of the people”?(subject is sociology)

(The answer need to be soft copy only)

In: Psychology

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