SELF-ASSESSMENT

Semester is coming to an end and it is very interesting and important to think about tasks done during the ESP course and evaluate my own achievements.

The most difficult task for me was the ESP definitions tests. Despite the fact that all themes were familiar from the Introduction to psychology course we had first semester, notions and definitions in English were not so easy to understand and remember. I was not very happy about my performance in definitions tests and I think I could do better.

Moodle tests and online exercises from Feldman’s course book helped a lot to remember definitions, pay attention to most important points and were useful for the revision of the different topics.

Online listening practice and traditional listening themes were interesting and relevant to our profession but always presenting some different or unusual approach. These tasks were not difficult to me and always useful for extending vocabulary.

Power point presentation and short talks were the tasks which required not only knowledge and understanding of the subject but some creativity as well. It was a challenge to present information in the way it would be interesting for others too. I enjoyed doing both tasks and I guess my presentation and short talks were interested for classmates.

Speaking impromptu was my favorite practice as I really like to speak English. It was always very interesting to discuss with classmates about different issues and hear opinion of the others. And I think this task was very useful as trying to express your own opinion and thoughts helps to feel language and find the way to use all your verbal resources and abilities.

In summary, I would like to say that I can already understand benefit of the ESP course as almost all textbooks for my psychology studies are in English and only few are translated into Lithuanian so it means I have to read a lot specific texts in English and knowledge I have got during ESP course helps me a lot already. Despite that I still have a lot of things to learn I am satisfied with my progress and I feel like I did my best during the semester of ESP course.

Picture reference:

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2011/11/21/self-assessment-charting-your-own-progress/ 
(viewed at 2012 05 13)

Summary: The mystery of memory

Fascination with memory and how to improve it goes back millennia, though sciences of memory are barely a century old.

Two types of memory can be distinguished: short – term and long – term memory. Some things are recalled only for a few seconds and if, before being permanently lost, they are transferred into long – term memory can be remembered for ever.

Remembering involves recovering things from longer term memory and placing them into “working memory”. Two different systems are active here: procedural memory (remembering “how”) and declarative memory (remembering “what”).

There are two other sides of memory: recognition versus recall. This can be illustrated by example: it is very difficult to recall a friend’s face, but very easy to recognize the person when you see him.

One more aspect for memory: “eidetic” or photographic memory which is more attributable to the children and most of us lose the ability as we grow older.

The human brain contains some hundred billion nerve cells, each capable of making thousands of new connections with its neighbours. Each time a new memory is made, a new pattern of connections is created, which in some way stores new memory.  

Trying to remember the name of the person a variety of strategies might be used which suggests that different regions of the brain are involved in remembering.

The greatest challenge to the neuroscientists today is to understand how all of these different regions and processes are bound together to give us coherent conscious experience. 

Picture reference:

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/9730 (viewed at 2012 05 13)

Short talk: Psychology of motivation

Motivation: the factors that direct and energize the behaviour of humans and other organizms. This very simple definition of motivation presented in Feldman‘s book „Understanding psychology“.

Motivation is a term that refers to a process that elicits, controls, and sustains certain behaviors. Motivation is a group of phenomena which affect the nature of an individual's behaviour, the strength of the behaviour, and the persistence of the behaviour. For instance: An individual has not eaten, he or she feels hungry, as a response he or she eats and diminishes feelings of hunger.

Motivation has biological, cognitive, and social aspects, and the complexity of the concept has led psychologists to develop a variety of approaches. All seek to explain the energy that guides people‘s behavior in specific directions. There are many approaches to motivation: physiological, behavioural, cognitive, and social. According to various theories, motivation may be rooted in a basic need to minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure, or it may include specific needs such as eating and resting, or a desired object, goal, state of being, ideal, or it may be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism, selfishness, morality, or avoiding mortality.

The latest approach in developing a broad, integrative theory of motivation is Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT). Integrating theories of motivation, introduced in a 2007 Academy of Management Review article, it integrates into a single formulation the primary aspects of several other major motivational theories, including Incentive Theory, Drive Theory, Need Theory, Self-Efficacy and Goal Setting. The original researchers note that, in an effort to keep the theory simple, existing theories to integrate were selected based on their shared attributes, and that these theories are still of value, as TMT does not contain the same depth of detail as each individual theory. However, it still simplifies the field of motivation and allows findings from one theory to be translated into terms of another.

Despite all theoretical backgrounds and definitions motivation has another aspect. I would like to talk about motivation as most of us understand it in our daily life‘s context.

Motivation is literally the desire to do things. There is the difference between motivated actions and waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and lazing around the house all day. Motivation is the crucial element in setting and attaining goals.

It looks like motivation is quite a big problem in our society nowadays: we hear that even small children are not interested to learn something new or play with their peers, teenagers do not attend schools and show bad results, adults in the offices and factories work without energy and inspiration – all of them are experiencing lack of motivation. So this problem is a challenge for psychologists in almost every area of their daily work or scientific studies.  The question is can we control motivation and how can we do that?

Some researches show that is possible to influence your own levels of motivation and self-control. The others say that control of motivation is only understood to a limited extent. There are many different approaches of motivation training, but many of these are considered pseudoscientific by critics. To understand how to control motivation it is first necessary to understand why many people lack motivation. To understand motivation, human nature itself should be understood.

And  if we start looking deeper into the practical side of motivation we will find plenty of hand books, internet websites, lecturers, teachers or even schools or clubs which will offer us enormous quantity and types of advice, different motivational strategies how to keep ourselves  motivated or become a leader who could motivate others.  We should think critically and be careful not to waste or time and money on meaningless and useless ideas as I have mentioned before in some point of view motivational training is considered as pseudoscientific. 

References:

 Robert S.Feldman. Understanding psychology. 8^th edition, 2008. Mc Graw Hill.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/motivation (viewed at 2012.04.17)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation (viewed at 2012.04.17)

http://www.accel-team.com/motivation/index.html (viewed at 2012.04.17)            

Picture references:

http://junkmiles.org/tag/motivation/ (viewed at 2012.05.12)

http://www.lifeinpalawan.com/other/effective-self-improvement-motivation-techniques.html  (viewed at 2012.05.12)

Short talk: Psychology of obsession

An obsession is a persistent, unwanted thought or idea that keeps recurring.

All of us can think of an occasion when idea or mental image has popped into our head without warning and most of us are never bothered by these thoughts and can easily forget them. But some people can’t get rid of them as easily as the rest of us. A man can go on vocation and wonder the whole time whether he locked his house. A woman may hear the same tune running through her head over and over. In each case, the thought or idea is unwanted and difficult to put out of mind. Of course, many people suffer from mild obsessions from time to time, but usually such thoughts persist only for short period of time. For people with serious obsessions, however, the thoughts persist for days or months and may consist of bizarre, troubling images.

People who suffer from obsessive – compulsive disorder (OCD) are plagued by intrusive thoughts and they can’t banish from their mind, no matter how hard they try. They are tortured by obsessive thoughts and images, which they found profoundly disgusting and distressing. The obsessions experience by OCD suffers can be grouped along several common themes: fears of contamination by germs, dirt or chemicals; fears of flooding the house, causing a fire; aggressive thoughts about physically harming a loved one; concerns about exactness or symmetry; intrusive sexual thoughts or urges; excessively doubting own morals or religious convictions; a need to tell, ask or confess. 

And even if person is not suffering from OCD, obsession may be very harmful as it is as an iron mask that permits to gaze only in one direction at one thing. We may become obsessed with a person, a place, a goal, a subject – but obsession leads to the same thing in all cases: addiction.  And like all addictions, obsession is intoxicating. And also like all addictions, with time obsession unbalances us. We very often begin neglect parts of our life we should not. And sometimes we believe that we will never be happy again if an object of our obsession is taken away from us. But this belief is a delusion, because our happiness never depends on any one thing, no matter how important that one thing may seem.

Despite the above, it is very important to mention that it is hard, or even impossible, to achieve something great without being just a little bit obsessed with it. Actually, if made to serve us, obsession can bring out our most capable selves, motivating us to find the creativity to solve incredibly difficult problems. In short, obsession can lead us to greatness. The challenge is to make our obsessions function positively, controlling them so they do not control us, extracting benefit of obsession and here, of course, I am not speaking about  obsessions which are part of serious disfuntcion such us mentioned above OCD.

 

References:

http://www.psychologytoday.com (viewed at 2012 03 04)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/disorders/ocd.shtml (viewed at 2012 03 04)

Pictures references:

http://www.teisescentras.lt/index.php/lt (viewed at 2012 03 20)

http://www.diskusijos.darnipora.lt (viewed at 2012 03 20)

Study psychology abroad: master at University of Amsterdam

 

Although I am fully satisfied with my studies at Mykolas Romeris University it is very interesting to know what are studies at other universities, especially at universities abroad and with the purpose of career planning it would be wise to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of studies abroad. Opportunities are significant, question – what to choose?

I would like to present short information about University of Amsterdam as it would be one of my priorities for master’s studies abroad.

As city of Amsterdam features as one of the world’s 15 best places to live in Mercer’s 2010 “Quality of living Survey” it should be wonderful place for studies and living with amazing architecture and friendly people.

University of Amsterdam (UvA) was established in 1632 and since then continues a tolerant, open and international academic tradition. It has international recognition as is ranked among the top 30 universities in Europe and the top 100 worldwide.

University of Amsterdam offers about 133 master programs, including 58 taught in English. Psychology bachelors have opportunity for further specialization in any area of psychology including brain and cognition, clinical psychology, development psychology, methodology and statistics, social psychology, work and organizational psychology. University offers research programs which are designed for students who are interested in a career in academic or applied (industry) research. Furthermore, structure of the programs ensures that students get involved in at least two areas of psychology, one of which is chosen as their major. This is called major – minor structure.

As UvA is the member of League of European Research Universities (LERU) it is an active partner in many EU-wide initiatives with other universities or research institutions.

All mentioned above should be considered as essential advantages of studies at University of Amsterdam. Is there any disadvantages? I would say, yes. Here in Lithuania the best students can expect to get state funding for their master’s studies as well as for bachelor’s, what is not possible if you choose studies abroad. 3 year part time master program in psychology at UvA would cost €1540 per year and living expenses are €1000 – 1300 per month. Finding work is rather difficult without speaking any Dutch. 

Though financial part of the matter makes choice slightly more complicated, this could never stop really motivated person but should encourage to look wider and find new opportunities for excellent future career.

References:

http://www.uva.nl/international (viewed at 2012 02 15)

http://www.istip.com/netherlands/amsterdam/education (viewed at 2012 03 20)