2 posts tagged “psychology”

I'm slowly finishing the wonderful book "Neuroscience" (Bear, Connors and Paradiso), all about the brain, and thought I'd share three of the random things I've noted:

• To quote from a book by James Horne entitled Why We Sleep, "Many people feel that, despite 50 years of research, all we can conclude about the function of sleep is that it overcomes sleepiness"
  
• Some animals (but not Humans) can die from lack of sleep.
  
• Us humans spend about 1/12th of our lives dreaming.
  

I've added these to "The Biology of Dreaming" by Vexen Crabtree (2005).

I haven't got a page about the biology sleep in general, just about dreaming and nightmares and dream analysis and the like. On the same website is a dream diary containing dozens of my most epic and fascinating dreams, although I (unfortunately) haven't been having them for a few years now. Too busy!

"Field experiment [studies are those] in which children or teenagers are assigned to view violent or non-violent programs for a period of a few days or weeks. Measures of aggressive behaviour, fantasy, attitude, etc. are taken before, during and after the period of controlled viewing. [...] Almost without exception, they confirm the results of laboratory studies - in general, children who view violent TV are more aggressive than those who do not. [...]

The longitudinal panel study [can] tell us about cause and effect and which normally uses sound sampling methods. The aim is to discover relationships which exist over time between TV viewing and social attitudes and behaviour and so it is concerned with the cumulative influence of TV -[...] for example, in a 20-year follow-up of 400 children, heavy exposure to TV violence at age eight was associated with violent crime and spouse and child abuse at age 30, at all socioeconomic and intelligence levels (Huesmann and Eron, 1984). Sims and Gray (1993, cited in Newson, 1994), in a paper presented to the House of Lords Broadcasting Group, pointed to a vast world literature linking heavy exposure to media violence to subsequent aggressive behaviour. [...]"

Quote from "Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross, p424-426

Added it to: "The Mass Media: TV and Video Violence" by Vexen Crabtree