Stealth

Though only covered in a short section of Chapter 10 and not traditionally thought of as “psychology”- as it is not human, artificial intelligence is an interesting concept that raises many questions of the capabilities and limits of technology.

 In the movie Stealth, the Navy has created an experimental computer, called EDI, with artificial intelligence that can fly a plane. The implied goal is for it to become the perfect pilot and to remove the factor of human-error from flying. Three pilots are selected to test out cutting edge fighters called Talons and the EDI soon joins their team. While flying missions, the EDI quickly learns the other pilot’s techniques, capabilities, limits, and personalities. It also learns that it has none of the limitations they do, as it is not human, but a machine. When flying back from a mission, the EDI is struck by lightning, which results in its circuits being changed and it to begin to completely think for itself and not follow orders. It began to make judgments on its own: choosing not to abort a mission even when the possibility for civilian casualties was high and it gave itself a mission to destroy a target in China. After trying to destroy the EDI, losing a team member and failing, one member decides to talk the EDI back to its senses…which for some reason works-possibly because it adopted a sort of conscience while training with them, or something silly like that. Then the EDI sacrifices itself to save the two remaining team members at the North/South Korean border and everyone is happy with the cheesy ending.

Back to what matters though. Can human technology create a machine that thinks and makes judgments for itself in addition to having emotions (of a sort)? According to the two-factor and James-Lange theories of emotion, I don’t think so, as both of these theories require a physiologic response. However, a cognitive machine, that is, one possessing cognition (the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating), is not impossible for the future. Given enough data, a computer might be able to form concepts and prototypes and use them in conjunction with algorithms (the idea of a heuristic would be impractical for a computer, as it would be able to go through the process of an algorithm just as quickly). One limitation an artificial intelligence computer may fall victim to could possibly be the development of a mental set in its approach to similar problems. Only time will reveal the limits of artificial intelligence.

Chiari Malformation

This post is about Chiari Malformation; there are many articles, forums, and blogs about people suffering from Chiari Malformation that finally are correctly diagnosed after a lifetime of misdiagnoses or being told it is “all in their head”-little did they know that was all too true. For a large list of symptoms, see http://chiarione.org/symptoms.html. My example is from http://ihavechiaritype1.blogspot.com/ by a person named Jenn Ann. I am linking this condition to Chapter 2 in our textbook. Chiari Malformation is a disease first recognized in 1890s by Professor Hans Chiari. Chiari Malformation is a congenital defect involving hypoplasia of the posterior fossa and the descent of the cerebellar tonsils through the foramen magnum. This neurological condition can cause a wide array of symptoms that have the potential to drastically alter a person’s life.

The cerebellum is a part of the brain that sits in the back and at base of the skull. It is often referred to as a “little brain” because of its shape and its striated appearance mimics the gyre of the cerebral hemispheres. Maintaining balance and coordination of voluntary motor control are key functions of the cerebellum. The cerebellum also plays a role in muscle tone; someone with damage to the cerebellum may have slurred speech, abnormal eye movements, and weakness of limb muscles as well and would tend to be asymmetric in the degree of weakness.

People presenting with Chiari can be evaluated with a neurological exam that, among other factors, tests for improper reflexes, such as a Babinski, an asymmetric gag reflex, and an asymmetric pupil response to light. Maintenance of a normal gait is a function of the cerebellum, and as a result damage to it can result in a very wide gait to protect from falling. The position of the cerebellum causes it to respond to pressure in different ways than the rest of the brain. It is located above the foramen magnum (the hole in the base of the skull allowing entrance of the spinal cord). The medulla and pons also make up the majority of the brain stem, an important autoregulating structure of the brain. They share several of their functions and complement each other where they differ. They moderate heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and vasodilation/constriction as well as serving as a link to the cerebellum. Displacement of the cerebellar tonsils, usually as a result of dysplasia, anteriorly and inferiorly through the foramen magnum creates pressure. The cerebellum directly pushes on the medulla and pons causing many heart rate, blood pressure, and autoregulatory abnormalities to potentially develop. The wedging of the cerebellar tonsils between the brainstem and the wall of the foramen magnum can significantly reduce the size of the canal. 


Some patients with no herniation of the tonsils can experience symptoms just as severe as patients who have five or greater millimeters of herniation. One explanation for this could be the descent of the tonsils, as seen on an MRI, just takes two dimensions into account (from a sagittal view). The total space they occupy in relation to the size of the canal/degree of hypoplasia of the posterior fossa is not taken into account. The narrowing of the canal restricts CSF flow. Because cerebrospinal fluid flows in a pulsing manner, if CSF flow is blocked or restricted at the base of the skull, pressure (intracranial pressure) will increase dramatically. If outflow is hindered, ICP can increase with each pulse. Build up of CSF can result in several dangerous or crippling conditions, such as Hydrocephalus and Syringomyelia. I won’t go into the details of those conditions or discuss cerebral perfusion pressure, as I’ve already written too much. Needless to say, this is a highly variable disease that is potentially debilitating but also can manifest completely asymptomatically.

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Gilman in 1892 that was not per se based on her own battle with severe depression, incorporated elements of her past circumstances into her story. Even though this short story would best incorporate elements of psychological disorders from Chapter 16 in our textbook, I will use it to link principles found in Chapter 6 that it illustrates and principles in Chapter 17 that are neglected.

The narrator, unnamed, in The Yellow Wallpaper, is an upper-class, newly married woman who has recently had a child. She is undergoing treatment for her “nervous depression”, which has been diagnosed by her husband that is a physician. Her husband believes that the “rest cure” is best for his wife, so he takes her out to a house in the country that they will stay in together. He continues to go to work, but she is to stay at the house and not stress herself by doing any sort of chore, writing, or anything else active. 

The forced inactivity proves to be ineffective, and gradually seems to be detrimental to her. She decides to keep a journal, though she is prohibited from doing so, and the beginning of her descent into madness can be traced by the subtleties in her journal. The way she describes the wallpaper in her room and the house as a whole- unpleasant, bars in the windows, revolting- gradually go from neutral to implied discomfort/unpleasantness, to irrational fear and hatred of her surroundings. Provided with no other stimulus besides her secret diary she eventually fixates and becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper and feverishly strives to “figure it out”. Whether it be because of her natural perceptual set, her mental illness, or a combination of the two, she eventually perceives a woman to be “trapped behind bars in the wallpaper”. From a logical standpoint, her perception was probably a result of the grouping of the complex patterns in the wallpaper into figure-ground sets, combined with the lack of external stimulation/mental illness that caused her to see the women in the wallpaper. 

She notices gouges in the wood of the bedposts and tears/smudges along the wallpaper and wonders if her room had previously been a kid’s room, as it would explain the damages. She dreams of the woman behind the wallpaper tearing at the walls and shaking the bars (patterns). Once she “figures out” the wallpaper, she focuses her efforts on freeing that woman creeping along behind the wallpaper. Paradoxically, the further she descends into her illness, the greater insight she acquires into her situation. The reader realizes the tears and gouges were caused by the narrator. The narrator realizes that it is she who is trapped in the wallpaper, along with the other ladies. Her husband comes up to check on her to find the door locked. They have an exchange, whereupon he results to breaking to door down. He sees how the wallpaper has been torn and the wood gouged and his wife- completely consumed by her madness, crawling around against the wall smudging it with her shoulder that fits in a perfect little groove. Her husband faints in the doorway and she has to “creep over him every time!”

Instead of taking an active approach to his wife’s depression, John (the narrator’s husband) decides the “rest cure”, which is forced inactivity. He believes that the absence of excess stimulation will calm her brain, which had been processing too many things and she had stressed herself into depression. He thought that the relaxation would allow her to build her resistance block anxiety-laden material. Instead of referring her to another doctor or engaging her in psychotherapy, he actively did nothing. I believe she would have benefitted the most from psychoanalysis, as it would have helped both of them to figure out the source and the depth of her depression, which would point them in the right direction and/or help them considerably in treating it. Client-centered therapy, such as active listening would have also benefitted her, but John chose to ignore her instead.

I am the Cheese

I am the Cheese is a fictional novel written in 1977 by Robert Cormier about a kid suffering from amnesia that has lost both of his parents. The plot, according to Adam Farmer, the protagonist of the story, involves him riding his bicycle from Monument, Massachusetts to Rutterberg, Vermont, in order to visit his father in the hospital and bring him a package.

 Reality is gradually revealed to the reader, as every chapter or so the scene switches back and forth between Adam riding his bicycle to Vermont and Adam meeting with what we can assume is his psychiatrist- Brint. In order to emphasize the dissociation/loss of reality that Adam experiences, the story is told in first person in the chapters that he rides his bike, and in third person when he is with his psychiatrist (bike riding Adam does not remember these meetings). Adam’s past is, notably the fate of his parents, is revealed to the reader during the meetings with Brint. It is revealed that Adam and his family had to receive new identities after his father testified against a government conspiracy in order to protect themselves. Mr. Grey is appointed to protect their family and help them adopt their new identities. However, Mr. Grey ends up killing Adam’s mother, putting his father in the hospital, and giving Adam a concussion, which results in amnesia. This is revealed to the reader at the same time it is revealed to Adam, which he rediscovers during one of the meetings with Brint. This meeting occurs when Adam finally makes it to the hospital, to learn that his father had died long ago, and he has been making the trip from Massachusetts to Vermont on his bike for three years in order to piece together his memory for Brint, who is investigating both the murder of his parents and the knowledge Adam may have of the government conspiracy. The book ends with Adam beginning his trip once again.

I am the Cheese relates really well to Chapter 9 in our textbook because of its subtleties with memory and amnesia. Throughout the excerpts from the meetings with Brint, the reader learns of the many pieces of flashbulb memories Adam has-such as a dog he meets acting as a retrieval cue for an emotional memory in which his father fought a dog. Adam’s explicit memory retention has been damaged, and the repetition of his bike trip, coupled with Brint’s interrogation of him serve as a priming technique to help him remember the details from the past about his family and about Mr. Grey. Adam’s amnesia is peculiar: he can continue to make memories in the present up to a point-until he arrives at the hospital and is interrogated again, whereupon something triggers either the repression of everything he had learned and/or the regression to the Adam that existed before his first bike ride, just after his father was put in the hospital. It is implied by the end of the story that this process is to happen again

The Wave

The Wave is a 1981 movie based on the book The Wave, by Todd Strasser, which is based on a true story of a 1969 high school in Gordon High School. The story is about a social experiment in group dynamics that a teacher - Ben Ross – conducts on his classroom students that eventually spreads to the rest of the school because of a question one of his students asked: “How could the people of Germany stand by and let the Nazis do all of the horrible things they did during World War II?” Mr. Ross, of course, answers the students’ questions of Nazi Germany and explains the circumstances the country was in to the best of his abilities; however, he is unsatisfied with his ability to convey to them how it was really like.

Mr. Ross decides to conduct an experiment in order to show his students that which he was unable to explain about Nazi Germany. On the first day, he begins by having his history class sit up straight and obey his commands. Initially, this consisted of: standing at attention out of respect beside their desks and having to say "Mr. Ross..." before speaking. He decides to continue the next day by making a symbol, a salute, a motto he made up: "Strength through discipline, Strength through community, Strength through action." The movement/experiment is dubbed "The Wave". Being teenagers, most students are initially skeptical and reticent about participating in The Wave, but after seeing that all students are equal, and their obligations/responsibilities are streamlined, the class wholeheartedly adopts The Wave, and begins to recruit others for it. Robert Billings (in the movie), the class reject, changes the most due to The Wave (his physical appearance becomes neater and the students grow to accept him more), in addition to becoming more outgoing.

A few students aren’t so sure they like what The Wave is doing to people (Laurie, in the movie), as people are beginning to be singled out and hurt by Wave members for perceived dissent. Mr. Ross is pressured by many individuals (namely, the principal and his wife) to end the experiment, as it is getting out of hand. He recognizes this as well, but feels he must complete the lesson in order to fully teach the students what has happened. He calls an assembly for all Wave members in the gymnasium, during which they will be addressed by their true leader via television broadcast. When the televisions come on the students are watching a recording of one of Adolf Hitler’s speeches to Nazi Germany. It was only then that the students of Gordon High School realized how the people of Germany could either become absorbed in the Nazi doctrine or turn a blind eye toward it.

This movie fits perfectly into Chapter 18 of our textbook, which deals with social psychology. The students of Mr. Ross’s class experience fundamental attribution error when trying to comprehend how the people of Germany, during WWII, could go along with such a horrible administration. Mr. Ross gradually increases the gravity of the experiment by using the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Once the experiment is in full swing, the students fall victim to conformity, normative social influence, informational social influence, deindividualization, group polarization, groupthink, and ingroup bias, just as many Germans probably did during WWII.

American Psycho

Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale in the movie American Psycho (2000), is the antihero of the book American Psycho, written by Bret Ellis. Bateman works in the mergers and acquisitions department and is the Vice President of a fictional Wall Street banking firm called Pierce & Pierce. From the beginning of the movie, it is clear that there is something…wrong about Patrick Bateman; however, that something is not revealed immediately to the viewer. The movie never explicitly states that Patrick Bateman has a specific psychological disorder (nor does the book, I think), however, from Chapter 16 in our textbook I can make several assumptions as to the disorders he might have. 

Evidence for antisocial personality disorder and psychopathic personality disorder is practically littered throughout the movie. Bateman has no remorse for his unfriendly and violent actions, nor does he have any regard for the feelings of others he comes in contact with. When asked by a woman if he is seeing anyone, Bateman replied “maybe…I don’t know…not really”, the next day he broke up with his fiancé in a restaurant at lunch and when she started to cry he said “I’ve assessed he situation and I’m leaving. [Where are you going?] I have to return some video tapes”. His need to return video tapes is a recurrent quote throughout the movie and is an excuse to remove himself from the situation when it becomes undesirable to him. 

Throughout the movie (and even more so throughout the book that I have not read) Patrick Bateman kills many people in a variety of different ways. He kills men, women, children (though he didn’t particularly enjoy killing the child), animals, the rich, and the poor, whether he knows them or not indiscriminately for pleasure and to satisfy his bloodlust that consumes him. Though the bulk of the psychological evidence in the movie points to antisocial and psychopathic personality disorder, he has many other symptoms/characteristics that suggest other disorders too. Bateman has many obsessive interests, such as constantly trying to improve his physique and appearance and have the best apartment, business card, and taste in music and food (the restaurant Dorsia). This may suggest a generalized form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder His compulsive workout and cleanliness routine reflect these obsessions that control his life.

 Also, throughout the movie, Bateman experiences several auditory and visual hallucinations (many of which he thinks he actually says/does, such as saying he is in “murders and executions”, but other people hearing it as “mergers and acquisitions”). At the end of the movie it is revealed that his killing rampage from the whole movie was all inside of his head. One more thing is certain; he suffers from a psychotic disorder