Touch Observations for Class

        Our skin is essential to our emotional connection with other living and non-living things. Not only is it essential to fully functioning people but it is even more essential to those who are blind and see with their haptic perception. They cannot touch color but they can map out a room in their minds just by feeling everything located in it and distinguish what everything is just by recognizing its texture and size. They don’t have to see the impending storm on the horizon to feel its moisture in the air or feel the sun beat down on there skin after the storm passes.

        All of these sensations are transmitted throughout our adult bodies over approximately 2 square yards to our brains registering the beauty of the day or the sweet embrace of a loved one or even the harsh interactions with rude manner-less people who shove their way passed. Every hug I give to my son is registered through his skin starting with his mostly unnoticeable hair that covers his whole body and his glabrous hands that are hugging me back that sends information through the outer layer of epidermis skin to the inner layer of dermis skin. From there it is transmitted to somatosensory receptors that are located throughout his spine and then it follows a fast path through large fibers of the lemniscal system. Its final destination is the somatosensory cortex of the brain where it registers my warm loving embrace as comforting him or protecting him or just marveling in the simple gesture of squeezable goodness. The importance of skin is truly beyond measure because without it we could not register pain or register real love. Skin allows us to feel temperature changes and vibrations of sound, it allows us to truly experience the world around us by not only seeing and hearing it but physically getting involved in it. With every passing movement we make our skin informs us to everything that we're walking on or touching, informing us as to how to dress to feel comfortable in changing temperatures and what to avoid in order to avoid pain or if the pain is occurring informs us so we can move to stop it or what to seek help for, may it be a burn or intense pressure. If problems with the skin sense should occur phantom feelings can arise leading us to think such things as insects crawling on us when they’re really not. Also, we can sometimes have phantom temperature feelings arise that cause our body heat to rise or our cooling mechanisms to kick in despite temperature stabilization around us. These phantom symptoms can inform us that something else may be going on with our minds or bodies that we need to address or maybe just be the reaction of eating a chili pepper or York peppermint patty.

       While it is important to hear and see everything and even smell and taste everything it is just as equally important that we feel everything so that we can attain as much out of life as we humanly can. It is a true travesty that there are people in this world that do not have pain receptors in their skin and therefore cannot feel if something is hurting them consequentially leading to their early death. Those people miss out on so many aspects to life because even though we would essentially like to avoid needless pain, to not feel it means an inability to know personal limitations that create longevity.

Sound Observation for Class

        The auditory system is an amazing thing. While I have heard it referred to as the second most important sense behind visual, I think it is number one. While it would be incredibly difficult to live without sight, it would be even more difficult to live without sound. The counterpoint to that would be that they have made great strides in developing technology to get our hearing back, such as the cochlear implant, and have not been so successful in creating technology to get our sight back. This is a valid point, however, I stand by my thought that I would simply be lost without my hearing.

        The auditory system tells a person so much longer before I ever see anything. The way it collects information and processes it is complicated but so helpful when it's dark out and you’re trying to stay safe. Much like the visual system, it has its limitations but they are minimal when you consider the incredible advantage you have when you can hear something coming and determine its direction before you see it. The auditory system is made up of three sections the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The outer ear consists of the pinna, external auditory canal, and eardrum/tympanic membrane. The outer ear essentially helps keep little insects from crawling down inside the ear as well as acting as an amplifier to make those sounds around us more audible. The middle ear is next and it is made up of the eustachian tube (runs from your ears to your throat), the ossicles bones (malleus, incus, and stapes also help to amplify sounds), and the ossicles muscles (help to de-amplify sounds that may be too loud). Then we come to the inner ear which is made up of an oval window and a round window. The oval window leads to the vestibular canal from the stapes then passes its fluids onto the tympanic canal at the far end where the helicotrema passageway is. The fluid then flows until it hits the round window that will work opposite the oval window to keep the pressure even. These 2 canals also run along the cochlear duct which is encased in the basilar membrane on the tympanic side and Reissner’s membrane on the vestibular side. From the stapes comes a vibration through the oval window that turns into a traveling wave of sound down the membranes where auditory receptors are. Inside of the cochlear duct is the organ of Corti which is an extremely important part of the hearing process. This organ makes electrical and chemical energy out of the sound wave energy pressure we get from its auditory receptors. The basilar membrane meets this organ at its base. Inside this organ are hair cells that do amazing transductions of sound waves and at the top of this organ is the tectorial membrane. About 3500 inner hairs reside inside and about 12000 outer hairs reside outside this organ and they work together to help us hear everything so wonderfully. Inner hair cells can tell frequency changes in sound waves through hyper and de-polarizations. The outer hair cells help amplify sound in noisy conditions by filtering out the noise. Once the sound wave has left the inner ear it enters the auditory nerve from the cochlea where it travels to the cochlear nucleus, then to the superior olivary nucleus, then the inferior colliculus, then the medial geniculate nucleus before finally reaching the auditory cortex. This is done on each side of the brain for each ear. The inferior colliculus is where the tonotopic organization of the auditory stimulus occurs. Inside the auditory cortex which is located on the side of the brain in a groove of the temporal lobe localization of sounds will occur as well as speech perception, etc. Much like with the visual system there are also limitations to the auditory system that can occur when a pitch or frequency is too high or too low. They then become inaudible to the human ear, even though they are audible to the species that is emitting the sounds; which happens to be a defense mechanism for certain species. Also, some sounds can be produced in a too-short fashion that turns there frequency and pitch perception into a click sound as opposed to the sound it is. These sounds can then only be heard if they are recorded and the recording is then played back in super slow motion. Limitations can also occur when certain situations arise such as when I get a cold and my ears or ear becomes “clogged” and I feel like I can only hear out of one ear or no ears because the sound becomes too muffled. Also when I hear a sound coming from directly in front of me I can get disoriented and confused as to where it is actually coming from, as opposed to if it were coming from a specific side and then I could say it’s coming from my right or left side.

        When it comes to sound I usually have no problems unless the white noise is masking out the sounds completely, which can happen cause I love to run fans in my house and the emit a lot of white noise, or if I am around water, which seems to drown out sound because sound becomes between 95 and 99% waterlogged depending on the specific water situation and depth of water your in, and I love to swim. Also sometimes sound can become increasingly disturbing and confusing when I have a migraine because the malleus seems to be hitting the incus a little too hard and therefore loudly. Otherwise, I cannot recall too many limitations to my hearing. I am a very avid lover of silence and just listening to what comes out of silence, which helps me keep my ears “in tune”.

Perception Observation for Class

        Perception is made up of many processes and explanations of these processes are explained in many theories/approaches. Some of the most known approaches are the bottom-up process/direct perception approach proposed by James Gibson, the top-down process proposed by Richard Gregory, Gestalt principles developed by German psychologists, empiricist approach described by Bishop George Berkeley, and the computational approach. Each theory/approach lending its expertise opinions to why it is that we perceive the world around us the way that we do. This is not to explain the world around us, but simply our perception of it. The perception of it is different from person to person. What I perceive will not be what you perceive, but with explanations as to why we each perceive the way that we do, it is easier to understand how different people think and therefore shed light on why we act, say or do what it is that we do. James Gibson explained back in 1966 what he called the bottom-up process or the direct perception approach. In this approach, he defines it as “data-driven processing, because perception begins with the stimulus itself. Processing is carried out in one direction from the retina to the visual cortex, with each successive stage in the visual pathway carrying out ever more complex analysis of the input.” (McLeod, S. A. 2007)

       Gibson strongly disagreed with Gregory believing that no hypotheses were necessary. Everything was right there in front of our faces and in a sense we just know how to react to our sensations, therefore our perceptions as the two are one, sensations are perceptions and perceptions are sensations. Everything is in direct correlation with each other. He presented his theory with 3 points: optic flow patterns (movement), invariant features (depth of field), and affordance (clarity and distinction through examples such as textures and light). Richard Gregory explained back in 1970 what he called the top-down approach. In this approach, he defines it as “the use of contextual information in pattern recognition. For example, understanding difficult handwriting is easier when reading complete sentences than when reading single and isolated words. This is because the meaning of the surrounding words provide a context to aid understanding.” (McLeod, S. A. 2007) A basic use of contextual clues to form and understand what it is our senses are being presented with. Gregory liked to use the words hypotheses and prior experience in much of his explanations for this process. That without prior experience we could not construct plausible hypotheses for the information that is being presented to our senses that we are supposed to perceive and therefore understand. A form of data analysis that comes from our senses, that we are directly experiencing life and thus making assumptions based on our own prior knowledge as to who, what, when, why, and where.

        Gestalt theories explained back in the 1920s what German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, and Edgar Rubin said were “unified wholes” where we take our visual perceptions and group them by certain principles. They said these principles were: similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, and figure & ground. Where if we viewed an image that, for example, was not complete, we would assess it as a whole and fill in what was missing. These theories stressed that it was about the whole and not the parts. The empiricist approach described by Bishop George Berkeley back in the 17th century explained that sensation and perception are to be based on scientific evidence that can be tested and proven. The computational approach described by David Marr’s is a hardware/software approach to how we think about the world around us. In defining the computational theory by addressing the questions that are presented to our visual system, we can then represent those questions algorithmically (our software), so that we are then able to implement the data we have constructed into our brain (our hardware).

        Of all these theories/approaches I can honestly say that I feel that I can understand and relate best to the bottom-up approach. I am a see it and now it type of person. I assess my surroundings on a daily bases but not to an analytical degree, I seem to just know my depth and scope instinctively and it actually takes a more concentrated thought process for me to sit and assess and hypothesis and deduce things about my surroundings. It seems much more natural to just go with it. Though in going over all of these theories and approaches I sense some overlaps in each and it seems to me that the best theory or approach would be the one that incorporated aspects of each into one. It also seems clear that all of these are subject to the individual. Some people will resonate better with one theory/approach more so than another and that is because they perceive their sensations differently than the next person, as it should be.

                                                              Works Cited/Reviewed:

• McLeod, S. A. (2007). Visual Perception - Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html

Eyes Observation for Class

        I love to read. I actually feel bad for other species that can’t take their thoughts and write them down for others to read and reread whenever they want. The ability to read uses the ability to see different areas without moving our heads. Even every day when I’m doing this, that or the other thing and my son is running around the house playing, I have to keep my eyes on one thing but utilize my peripheral vision to see everything else going on around me. Without the ability to move my eyes without moving my head I’d constantly be giving myself whiplash. The advantage to humans moving our eyes without moving our heads is that we can see what is to approaching us from either side of our vision as well as what is right in front of us. It allows us to have a greater scope of vision without having to constantly move our heads to see what may or may not be coming for where a particular sound came from. It allows us to assess an area better and broader than if we had to constantly shake our head no to see what was around us. I honestly see no disadvantages to being able to move our eyes without moving our heads to see. There are other species that have eyes on the sides of their heads for food/prey purposes and they obviously have a greater side scope than humans do but they need that, they do not need here eyes in front of there heads to do such things as multitask or read. Humans do. Being able to move our eyes without moving our heads is one of those things that we take for granted that helps us navigate through life easier as humans. It is something that aids us when we're in certain situations and needs to have a broader scope on what is going on around us but can't take our eyes off of what were immediately doing, may it be driving a car watching for animals to dart out or being a mom, etc.

Sight Observations for Class

        While performing one of the many household tasks that I have to complete each day to keep my home running smoothly, I see out of the corner of my eye, my son about to go after the ball that rolled away from him and he’s about to hit his head in the process. So I drop what I’m doing and reach out my arm and snatch him back before he makes contact with the shelf. Though, on my drive home from work at 4 am down and around the windy back roads that lead me home, I miss the deer lurking in the brush. It had its head down so my high beams don’t catch the reflection of its eye that I usually see that allows me to miss them, and instead I get this one. So in one case, my eyes helped me tremendously to help my son avoid an accident, but in another instance, my eyes didn’t help me avoid the deer that had to cross my path.

        

        The advantage of the human visual system is that it allows us to see the world around us. I don’t need much more supporting evidence than to say, sunrise over a vineyard in Italy’s Tuscan countryside or sunset on the Hawaiian Islands. Without human visual ability the capability to see those things or someone’s smiling face or your child grow up right before you, would not be possible and how much more of an advantage do you want. Our ability to detect color and shapes and capture the vivid depth of beauty that lies around us at every turn (whether we choose to see it or not is not the point) is advantage enough to our ability to see. Because we can take electromagnetic energy and turn it into neural energy that is our perception, our understanding, our interpretation, our basic thought process for collecting and deciphering information that we then use to navigate through life. Our ability to determine between hue, saturation, and brightness allow us to determine colors which can be the difference between seeing a bright day or a gray day, a bright warning sign or a passing by like there was no warning sign at all, or seeing directional signs telling you where you are or getting lost in a wooded forest. 

        

        The obvious disadvantage would be our visual systems ability to be tricked. Much as in many species, camouflage is a sly attribute. Funneling of information as the photoreceptors are moved away from the retina can also cause some information to get missed in our visual perceptions. Not that the stimuli weren’t there but because we are trying to take in so much information all at once, bits and pieces of a scene may not make it into our recallable visual field. Dark and light adaptation can have minor to severe impacts on our visual system as well. Depending on the intensity of the dark to light or light to dark situation a person is exposed to. A temporary blinding effect does occur at the initial time of switching and can lead to a bump on the head cause u forget just how close that door is in the pitch black. While sight is a very important attribute to have so that we can see all the beauty that Mother Nature and life has to offer it definitely has its disadvantages as well. As with all things, there is good and there is bad and we must be able to adjust and take each with the other to be able to maximize our abilities in life.

My Resume

                                                                      MARIA


                                                FREELANCE WRITER AND EDITOR

                                              FREELANCE ARTIST AND DESIGNER

                                                   FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER

        I can write. I can read. I can think. I can speak. I can eventually get things done. Nothing more should need to be sugar-coated and/or exaggerated to entice people to tell me what to do. I seriously don't care about anything that much anymore to suck-up to get it. My ass-kissing days are long gone. #myresume #mylife #dontlikeitmoveon 

EDUCATION:
Master of Arts in English and Creative Writing
Southern New Hampshire University
Manchester, NH
GPA: 3.5
Graduated: May 2018


Bachelor of Arts in Psychology
Robert Morris University
Moon Township, PA

GPA: 3.2
Graduated: May 2014


KEY SKILLS: 

• Business Writing
• Curriculum Development
• Lesson Planning
• Literary Analysis Writing
• Literary Critiques/Reviews
• Public Speaking
• Teaching Strategies 
• Social Media/Marketing
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Blogging and SEO
• Scholarly Databases and Research
• Digital and Standard Camera Knowledge
• Graphic Design/Marketing
• Public Relations
• Multitasking

EXPERIENCE:

• Freelance Blogger, Calmcoolair.blogspot.com, Ambridge, PA 2001- Present
• Create content for a blog using various support tools, to outreach reading audiences on psychological topics, literary reviews, and creative writing samples.
• Proofread, research, blog, and build brand awareness through tailored voice and imagery on posts, while consistently engaging with readership.
• Manage grammar, typographical, and compositional errors, while multi-tasking to meet deadlines in order to consistently publish clean, clear copy.
• Contributing Writer, Vocal Media 2018- Present
• Photographed Weddings, Portrait Still Life, and Candid. Which you can find on Instagram at Summerbreeze0808

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE:

• Graduate Student, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH 2016-Present
• Conduct extensive scholarly research to investigate various topics, authors, and literary theories, to produce original content to theses which are rooted in relevant concepts from primary and secondary sources.
• Critique peers’ writing in a positive and effective manner to provide high-quality, detailed accounts of the strengths and areas for improvement within a piece, to demonstrate greater clarity, grammar, and syntax.
• Develop creative writing skills, concentrating on character development, poetry, and defining the voice of the work, to deliver unique, captivating pieces for the intended audience. 
• Took 48 credits worth of Graphic Design work.
• Took 12 credits worth of Advertising/Marketing/PR
• Took 12 credits of Business Administration 
• Psychological Research and Writing background 
• Performed Counseling - Drug and Alcohol (out of and within AA/NA)

WORK EXPERIENCE:

• Chegg Tutoring, Chegg.com 2017- Present
• Mail Handler, United State Postal Service, Warrendale, PA 2005- 2018
• Photolab Tech, Giant Eagle, Pittsburgh, PA 2005-2006
• Data Entry, Today’s Staffing Agency, Pittsburgh, PA 2004- 2005
• Administrative Assistant, Allegheny Settlement Company, Wexford, PA 2003- 2004
• Library Assistant, Northland Public Library, Pittsburgh, PA 1996-1997