Chapter 13: Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan
Summary
This chapter talks about the different choices young adolescents have to make. There comes a time when people have to choose if they will continue their education to become professionals, or they don't want to continue their education and just work.
Discussion
This chapter is interesting because she gives you the ability to relate everything to how the Americans go about their life. The freedom given to young people has to be tightly monitored in order to avoid them making serious mistakes.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Book Reading # 39 - Why We Make Mistakes
Chapter 0: Introduction & Chapter 1: We Look but Don't Always See
Summary
Chapter zero introduces the concept that people frequently make mistakes and gives some examples such as the car example. The author Hallinan points out that if people are aware they make mistakes, they should decrease the amount of mistakes in the future. In the following chapter he claims how things that cause mistakes are sometimes right in front of us and yet we do not see them.
Discussion
This idea that the chapter one describes where we look but don't always see is really interesting because we would like to think that we never do this when in fact we do this all the time. We sometimes focus on a certain aspect of an environment that we forget other important details. I think this is the main idea behind people proofreading a paper before final submission, checks and balances in government, etc. This is particularly important to keep in mind when implementing software.
Summary
Chapter zero introduces the concept that people frequently make mistakes and gives some examples such as the car example. The author Hallinan points out that if people are aware they make mistakes, they should decrease the amount of mistakes in the future. In the following chapter he claims how things that cause mistakes are sometimes right in front of us and yet we do not see them.
Discussion
This idea that the chapter one describes where we look but don't always see is really interesting because we would like to think that we never do this when in fact we do this all the time. We sometimes focus on a certain aspect of an environment that we forget other important details. I think this is the main idea behind people proofreading a paper before final submission, checks and balances in government, etc. This is particularly important to keep in mind when implementing software.
Book Reading # 40 - Coming of Age in Samoa
Chapter 14 : Education for Choice
Summary
This chapter talks about the things that one can learn from the Samoan lifestyle. Mead talks about the many choices adolescents have to deal with, and the key factors that lead them to act the way they do. She describes that the parents are the ones that decide how to educate their kids. She mentions that parents should educate their children to make good decisions to face all the different choices that will be presented to them.
Discussion
I agree to some extent with the belief that parents should give some freedom to their children to make decision, but not in their early adolescent years. I like the idea that parents should lead children to make their choices because that is the only way children will actually learn by making their own mistakes.
Summary
This chapter talks about the things that one can learn from the Samoan lifestyle. Mead talks about the many choices adolescents have to deal with, and the key factors that lead them to act the way they do. She describes that the parents are the ones that decide how to educate their kids. She mentions that parents should educate their children to make good decisions to face all the different choices that will be presented to them.
Discussion
I agree to some extent with the belief that parents should give some freedom to their children to make decision, but not in their early adolescent years. I like the idea that parents should lead children to make their choices because that is the only way children will actually learn by making their own mistakes.
Paper Reading # 17
Comments
Comment 1
Comment 2
Reference
Estimating User's Engagement from Eye-gaze Behaviors in Human-Agent Conversations
IUI'10 February 7-10,2010 Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper talks about different strategies to see if a person is engaged in face-to-face conversations, and how people interact with each other through the use of technology. The main goal of the system described in this paper is to determine if the user is fully engaged in a conversation. The most complicated issue to resolve in their research is to make sure that the system must perceive nonverbal behavior such as facial gestures, body movements, and other key movements that could infer a person is not fully engaged in a conversation. According to their research there are many eye-tracking systems that are very stable, and therefore can be used in their complex system. The system or the agent-as the authors refer to it as- must be capable of reengaging a person if the person seems to have lost the full engagement in a conversation. The agent must do this by changing the topic when some eye-gazes infer the user is bored during a dialogue. In order to analyze their system the authors describe a Wizard-of-Oz approach to collect data. The scenario of the experiment is a salesperson in a mobile phone store. The experiment is set up such that there is a person called the user located in a room looking a screen where the salesperson is being projected. Outside of the room, there is another person called the observer. The observer can look at the user through a one way window. Both of these individuals will have a button to press. The instructions are different for both individuals. The user must press the button when he believes the salesperson description to be boring. The observer will press the button when he believes the user is bored by the salesperson's description. The analysis used in this experiment is called 3-grams. The results observed by the authors show that selecting the agent's behaviors according to engagement estimation turned out to be effective in this agent-human interaction.
Discussion
This paper is really interesting because it could be implemented in academia. It would be extremely beneficial for a teacher to know when their audience is not being engaged by his/her lectures. The Wizard-of-Oz approach in this interaction showed great results in the agent-human interaction. This type of research can have great benefits for people who are always presenting, and can provide feedback to improve their presentation skills.
Comment 1
Comment 2
Reference
Estimating User's Engagement from Eye-gaze Behaviors in Human-Agent Conversations
IUI'10 February 7-10,2010 Hong Kong, China
Summary
This paper talks about different strategies to see if a person is engaged in face-to-face conversations, and how people interact with each other through the use of technology. The main goal of the system described in this paper is to determine if the user is fully engaged in a conversation. The most complicated issue to resolve in their research is to make sure that the system must perceive nonverbal behavior such as facial gestures, body movements, and other key movements that could infer a person is not fully engaged in a conversation. According to their research there are many eye-tracking systems that are very stable, and therefore can be used in their complex system. The system or the agent-as the authors refer to it as- must be capable of reengaging a person if the person seems to have lost the full engagement in a conversation. The agent must do this by changing the topic when some eye-gazes infer the user is bored during a dialogue. In order to analyze their system the authors describe a Wizard-of-Oz approach to collect data. The scenario of the experiment is a salesperson in a mobile phone store. The experiment is set up such that there is a person called the user located in a room looking a screen where the salesperson is being projected. Outside of the room, there is another person called the observer. The observer can look at the user through a one way window. Both of these individuals will have a button to press. The instructions are different for both individuals. The user must press the button when he believes the salesperson description to be boring. The observer will press the button when he believes the user is bored by the salesperson's description. The analysis used in this experiment is called 3-grams. The results observed by the authors show that selecting the agent's behaviors according to engagement estimation turned out to be effective in this agent-human interaction.
Discussion
This paper is really interesting because it could be implemented in academia. It would be extremely beneficial for a teacher to know when their audience is not being engaged by his/her lectures. The Wizard-of-Oz approach in this interaction showed great results in the agent-human interaction. This type of research can have great benefits for people who are always presenting, and can provide feedback to improve their presentation skills.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Ethnography Results Week 7
This week I observed the College Station movie theater. I arrived at 9:35p.m. on Sunday, and watched a movie at 10:05p.m. This time I observed something I had not seen yet in the seven weeks of this ethnography. I saw a person bringing in a small dish of food into the theater without the theater staff noticing. I was not very close to identify the type of dish the person was smuggling, but from a distance it seemed like a to-go plate from Fazzoli's Italian Restaurant. The even funnier fact is that the person who had smuggled the food was in the same movie I went to see. If you are asking how I know? It was because I could smell the marinara sauce all over the place, I was right!! The person brought in some type of Italian food! I have known of people bringing in cokes, or candy into the theater but never had experienced someone bringing in an actual meal. This experience reminded me of a chain of movie theaters in Mexico called Cinepolis VIP. In these theaters, you sit in lazy boys and are given a menu with beer, sushi and other type of food which you can order prior to the movie starts.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Ethnography Results Week # 6
During one of our presentations in class, a student pointed out that the Bryan movie theater allows people over the age 21 to bring alcoholic beverages into the theater. For this week, our group has decided to try this out. WE would like to observe how this affects the interaction in the lobby and in the theater itself too. We suspect that not many people know about this, therefore when we walk into the theater we will expect weird faces. We want to measure how many people attend the theater at a certain time, and of those visiting how many are bringing alcoholic beverages. Since we do not know the regulations it could be interesting if only certain types of alcohol are allowed. We are planning to go on a weekend night since we expect an older crowd to be present.
Full Blog - Opening Skinner's Box
Summary:
Lauren Slater's Opening Skinner's Box book was very interesting. In every one of the chapter she describes the findings of important psychologists and analyzes the impact their findings have had in our daily lives. There are ten chapters in this book. I will try to give a short description of every chapter.
The first chapter describes B.F Skinner and his findings of how behavior is shaped by the environment. Slater talks about an example of she uses Skinner's principle of positive reinforcement in her personal life. The second chapter talks about Stanley Milgram and his studies of authority of obedience. Milgram conducted the fake shocking experiment and this chapter reveals that more 65% of the people in the experiment should apply the highest voltage. The third chapter describes David Rosenham's insane test in which along with seven other people fake being insane. Everyone in the group gets admitted into a mental institution and this chapters describes Rosenham's findings. The next chapter describes the study of diffusion of responsibility. This means that if an accident happens to an individual, the larger the present crowd the least responsible individuals feel to help the person involved in the accident. The following chapter describes Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. The sixth chapter describes Harlow's monkey experiments which proved monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother than a milk bearing one. The next chapter talks about experiments done to rat to prove addiction to certain drugs. In specific the experimenters in this chapter wanted to disproved that the classic addiction experiments could not prove anything about addiction, instead they only revealed that the environment of the experiment inferred addiction. Chapter eight explains Loftu's work related to people distorting past memories. The next chapter talks about the molecule CREB which disrupted long term memory. The last chapter talks about the initialization of lobotomy and its founding father Antonio Egas Moniz.
Discussion
I really enjoyed reading this book because it was an easy reading, yet I was able to learn many facts about psychological findings. It was interesting seeing scientists trying to disproved other findings, and being able to prove new contradicting findings. There were many chapters which involved unethical activities according to several class lectures. I personally had never read any material to psychology and it is an interesting field to study.
Lauren Slater's Opening Skinner's Box book was very interesting. In every one of the chapter she describes the findings of important psychologists and analyzes the impact their findings have had in our daily lives. There are ten chapters in this book. I will try to give a short description of every chapter.
The first chapter describes B.F Skinner and his findings of how behavior is shaped by the environment. Slater talks about an example of she uses Skinner's principle of positive reinforcement in her personal life. The second chapter talks about Stanley Milgram and his studies of authority of obedience. Milgram conducted the fake shocking experiment and this chapter reveals that more 65% of the people in the experiment should apply the highest voltage. The third chapter describes David Rosenham's insane test in which along with seven other people fake being insane. Everyone in the group gets admitted into a mental institution and this chapters describes Rosenham's findings. The next chapter describes the study of diffusion of responsibility. This means that if an accident happens to an individual, the larger the present crowd the least responsible individuals feel to help the person involved in the accident. The following chapter describes Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. The sixth chapter describes Harlow's monkey experiments which proved monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother than a milk bearing one. The next chapter talks about experiments done to rat to prove addiction to certain drugs. In specific the experimenters in this chapter wanted to disproved that the classic addiction experiments could not prove anything about addiction, instead they only revealed that the environment of the experiment inferred addiction. Chapter eight explains Loftu's work related to people distorting past memories. The next chapter talks about the molecule CREB which disrupted long term memory. The last chapter talks about the initialization of lobotomy and its founding father Antonio Egas Moniz.
Discussion
I really enjoyed reading this book because it was an easy reading, yet I was able to learn many facts about psychological findings. It was interesting seeing scientists trying to disproved other findings, and being able to prove new contradicting findings. There were many chapters which involved unethical activities according to several class lectures. I personally had never read any material to psychology and it is an interesting field to study.
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