I am now somewhat getting used to my early morning schedule.
I woke up a little later this morning since now I know how long it takes me to
do everything. I headed down for breakfast, which I ate with Catherine,
Eugenia, and Cookie, all girls from my psychology class. We all walked together
psychology class together and prepared our materials for the class. Yesterday,
Cassie had told us that today’s class would be a little easier than previous
classes because we would be looking at many videos instead of just lectures.
Today for the first half of class extensively reviewing the
textbook readings we had done the night before. The chapter focused on the
physical and cognitive development in infancy. Babies learn in all different
ways. Sometimes they learn by watching what adults and caregivers around them
do actions, which they then try to copy. This is called imitation, and it does
not always happen immediately. An infant or child can keep an observed action
in their brains for days or weeks before they actually even try and do it for
themselves. Another kind of learning babies do is called conditioning. This is
where every time a baby does something there is a reaction. Eventually the baby
comes to expect this reaction, or conditioned to expect it. An example of this
would be if every time a baby drops a spoon off of its feeding table, it hears
a clatter. Eventually these two will associate in the child’s mind and the
child will expect a clatter the next time it drops a spoon. We went over
concepts like this for the first half of class to really make sure these ideas
were set in our minds.
We broke for lunch, which unfortunately, was not as long as
our lunch yesterday. I ate lunch with the same people I ate breakfast with, but
I also met up with Victoria, who sat with us. We didn’t get to stay long before
having to head back to class. To start out the second half of class, Cassie
started out with a difficult question to discuss. Do young infants think? At
first I thought, “Yes, of course”, and apparently so did every one of my peers.
When we took a poll, all sixteen of the students said that babies did think.
The professor and TA both said no. We had very different definitions of
thinking. It was described as conscious and rational judgment. This really
changed how I thought about the question, because if it made me question if
babies thought consciously. Eventually my arguments ended up supporting the
idea that babies do not judge consciously and rationally until much, much later
in their development. I thought about the fact that all the information that we
have about babies thinking and learning is coming from an outside stimuli. This
then made me wonder, if no information was being shown to them or processed,
would they be able to form a conscious though on their own? I thought no.
Cassie then told us that this question is not one that can be or has been
answered. We then watched multiple videos on how babies learn and the different
methods they use. After the videos we did some more group planning for our
final project.
After class, I thought I would have to hurry to the dorms
and change for the dinner, but it turned out that we planned to go a little
later than expected. At first I was going to take a nap, but Victoria asked me
if I wanted to go to the gym with her and I was up for it. When we got to the
gym she wanted to play some pick-up basketball games, and I wanted to do some
cardio, so we agreed to meet up at the entrance at a certain time and then
leave. The gym is really nice, and hopefully over the weekend I will be able to
go a couple more times before the new week starts and I am busy again.
 |
| On our way to dinner, we saw a tap dancer with an onlooker. The kid was also trying to tap dance, an example of imitation |
The dinner we had was at Capitol Grille in Downtown Chicago.
The students and admissions officers arrived shortly after us. Peter and Troy
were the admissions officers and I talked mostly to them since I was sitting
near them. The students were Eric, Lily, Leilani, and Teddy. Troy, one of the
admissions officers who traveled out to California said he remembered that one
person from ECHS was going to U Chicago, who I quickly figured out was Simon
Cohen. He also talked about his experience at U Chicago and how he first
thought he was interested in history, but was then later inspired by his
professors to take an interest in economics. This dinner was different than the
others since we already had much more of an idea of what U Chicago is like
before the dinner.
The food was delicious out. Since the grille specialized in
steaks, I decided to order the filet mignon with wild mushrooms and onions. It
was absolutely delicious, but also extremely filling. For desert I chose a
flourless espresso cake. It definitely kept me awake to finish my homework when
we got back to the dorms from the restaurant.
Tomorrow is Friday and I cannot wait to start my first
weekend here at U Chicago.
No comments:
Post a Comment