Kiavett Gavino

Psychology: 1010

Professor: Joel Skaria

9/13/2019

Unit Report 1

Part I

1.) I chose to go with B, when I was watching the video about Clive Wearing I was

very shocked that Wearing has a memory that is less than 30 seconds, in the

video it said that he lives entirely within the present and can only remember his

wife from the past. My guess would be that the connection between the

hippocampus to the frontal lobes is damaged or just the frontal lobes are

damaged, because the left side of the frontal lobe is active when the brain is

encoding information and the right side of the frontal is active when retrieve the

information, which Wearing can encode information but not retrieve it.

2.) The difference between internal and external control is how a person believes on

their failures and successes in life. With external control people state their

theories from god, faith and luck; which they are less likely to be in control of their

life. With internal control people have more control in their lives because they

believe that they can change their actions and decisions with their hands rather

than thinking of faith and luck.

If a person had internal control and got their first job they would say “ I'm going to

work hard so I can get a promotion in a few months ” vs if a person had external

control they would say “ hopefully if I work hard enough I’ll be lucky to get a
 promotion.'' Likewise, if a person had internal control and got an A on a test they

would say “ See, I got an A on the test because I studied every night for the past

two weeks” vs an external person would say “ I got an A on the test because

the teacher taught fantastic”. Lastly, if a person went through a break up the

internal person would say that it wasn’t his fault and blame it on his girlfriend vs

an external person would say that they broke up for a reason.

3.) I chose to watch the video on how parents either praise their children by their

hard work or by their intelligence. The independable variable would be on how

the parents are praising their children either by the children's hard work or their

intelligence. The dependable variable would be the children because depending

on what their getting praised on is how they will react to it.

Part II

When I was reading about the 3 real stories from the refugees it was very shocking on

how many people are fleeing their country for a better future. There are about 19.5

million refugees in the world and most of them are children from Syria(1). All of the three

stories have one thing in common and that was they all went and experience some

stressful situations, they all wanted a better lifestyle and they left their hometown

because they didn't feel secure and didn’t have an opportunity to succeed and move

forward.

Doaa was the first story I read, she felt scared in her hometown because she

struggled to work at a low wage job and didn't feel like she had security. When she tried

to move to England, she had a fear of dying because the smugglers that tried to help
her move to Eupore abandon her in the sea . Emmual felt stressed out because when

his mother died and got abandoned by his father, he knew that he had to take action to

afford and give a better life to his siblings; he tried to more to Europe but was trapped in

the sea, he survived and went back home, Emmanual said that he didn’t see himself as

a failure instead he saw himself as a survivor. Um Nawwaf feared for her children life in

syria that she fled to Jordan. Since Um Nawwaf arrived in Jordan she has been

struggling to put a roof on their family's head, her oldest son had to quit school to go to

work because she didn’t have enough money and it breaks her heart to see her 13 year

old child go to work instead of school. (2)

All of the three stories has shown the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) which

is the three stages that an individual process when they are stressed. There are three

stages of GAS and they are alarmed, resistance and exhaustion. Doaa and Um Nawwaf

experienced the alarm stage because both of them were scared and fearful when they left

their country and arrived to the new one, as for Emmanuel he experience a different stage

which was resistance, when he came back from trying to get into England he learn that its

better off to live in and adapted to your country rather than entering a country the wrong

way. (3)

Part III

I learned new things from this unit from how to handle stress to how to improve

your short term memory. I have noticed these past years that I have a hard time dealing

with stress, I haven't really thought about improving that situation till I went into
psychology and read thought chapter 14 ( health psychology). In the past when I

encountered a stressful situation or just stress in general from having too much on my

plate, I just tried to ignore rather than confronting the issue. From chapter 14 I learned

many ways on how to handle stress. For so long I've always thought that stress was my

enemy and it affected my health in a bad way; I never saw the other end. I watch one of

the videos from “Ted” in class on how stress can actually be good for you. At first I

thought that was impossible, but then I remember that your mind can be very powerful ,

so I thought to my-self if I can approach stress in a different way maybe it can help me

in the future. Instead of seeing stress as a negative factor I started seeing it in a good

way; I thought of stress as a challenge and form this mind set it has helped me

throughout these past weeks. I’ve also learned other ways to cope with stress by eating

healthier foods, preparation, meditation, support groups and much more. I’ll take what I

learned from this chapter and continue to apply it to my lifestyle and overall health.

Resources

1) “3 Real Stories from Refugees.” World Economic Forum, 17 Dec. 2015,

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/3-real-stories-from-refugees/.
2) Burgess, Lana. "General adaptation syndrome: What it is, stages, and examples." Health

News - Medical News Today. 28 Nov 2017. Web. 16 Sep 2019.

<http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320172.php>.

3) King, Laura A. Experience Psychology ( 4th ed). McGraw-Hill Education, 2019.