Wonky Eyes ;p

I helped out at the Orthoptist Clinical Skills Exam today. :p I was a patient for the prism fusion range test. I was not too keen to be spending 2 hours of my time on it. Now, having gone through it, it was pretty fun and enriching. :p

I was suppose to fixate on a target at a distance, while the orthoptist students placed prism of different refractory range in front of one eye. I was suppose to tell them when the target went double. This was to test how far my eyes can converge and how far they can diverge. There were 12 stations, and my task was just one of them. I might have gotten it the wrong way round... but I think I was 20-30 deg Base Out 6-8 deg Base In.

Funny thing was I met one of my orthoptist students from my tutor group last semester... which was nice... not too sure if appropriate, as were were having a 'subdued' chat after she finished the test on me. The funnier part was when another student who did the PSY 101 Lab I helped out with, last semester, was doing the exam too. I was doing the lab demo and telling stduents about this visual illusion. And after I finished my introduction to it... he was the one that commented, 'I've never met such a lively Chinese!' I thought that was hilarious.

Now my eyes feel a little wonky... haha...

I only go to church when I'm at work...

I went to Church with my client on Sunday. The pastor made a joke during the service...

One day, an Atheist was fishing in lake, in a boat.
Suddenly the Loch Ness Monster emerged from the waters and was about to eat the atheist and the boat.
The Atheist cried 'Oh God, please help me!'
Suddenly the scene freezed for the moment and the Loch Ness monster stopped, with it jaws almost devouring the Atheist.
There was a light from the sky and a voice boomed. 'I thought you did not believe in me...'
The Atheist replied, ' Oh give me a break... I did not believe in the Loch Ness monster until 2 minutes ago.'

I laughed at that... but I still not too sure about what it meant to me.

During the second part of the service, the service organizers prepared an 'exercise' for people. They made a big rectangle with 4 smaller boxes on the floor with masking tape. The boxes had the words 'Sorry', 'Praise', 'Thanks' and 'Please' in them. People were suppose to stand in each part and pray/ talk to God about they sins they have done, how great is God, for the things that He has given them, etc. I stood on the outside of the rectangle and watched as the believers made their rounds around the boxes. Some sat on the floor, some knelt on the groun and some stood up. Some spoke aloud and some prayed silently to God. I stood outside the rectangle with my client... clearly seeing how I was away from the supposed person up there...

Autism Research UK, 2007

I had a good 2 days in the 'city of Roundabouts', Milton Keynes, for the Autism Research UK Conference. The company was good and my sister came for a brief visit. There were many interesting pieces of research on display and the talks were thought-provoking. The conference re-assured me of the importance of the psychological approach in shedding light on developmental disorders.

The conference in the entirety was well-structured. It started the story of autism, with diagnosis and assessments, followed by aetiology, epidemiology, and genetics, on to neurobiological perspectives, followed by psychological approaches in perception and cognition, and finally with interventions. However, there was a large propotion of genetics and neurobiologically related talks on the first day. That did make some people in the audience cringe in their seats (including me). Genetics and neuro-biology had evidently become the top priority for organizations funding autism research. Don't get me wrong. I am all for neurobiological explanations of disorders and behaviour. The processed in our body and or mind are no doubt correlated. Even so, can autism be reduced to purines and pyramidines? Can we ignore/bypass the person that is in the midst of the condition? Many subsequent speakers from non-genetics and neuro-biological background reiterated the following point:

'it may be useful to know what parts of the brain and which segments of DNA are different in people with autism, but we need to know what these larger/smaller distances between neurons, or changes of one nucleic acid for another, means in psychological and behavioral terms...'

Autism is expressed in behavior. It is currently identified as having difficulties in social communicaion and interaction. People with autism also exhbit stereo-typed behavior or have restricted interests. It is only in this behavioral domain that the condition causes the person or other people distress. Thus, while it is important to find the biology of the disorder, we need to understand how the biological difference correlate with behavioural difference. Only then can diagnosis and interventions work in unison.

This is what I see the role of Psychology as... Autism can be studied on many different levels. The genetics level, biological level, cognitive level, psychological, behavioral and on the social level. Psychology seeks to bind these levels together. It ensures that while research from the different fields is going in parallel, there is inter-level communication. This is so that we can understand how processes at one level relates to processes at another level.

The psychological and social perspetives are as important as genetics and neuro-biology. As one of the speakers said... there is no autism without 'other people'. No one can have Autism on their own, on a deserted island, can they?

I made Lasagne :p

Been moaning and groaning too much... I'll post something happy in my blog. :p

I had friends round for dinner on Saturday evening. Cooked Lasagne with Spinach, Cheese and Tomato...

I also made a Chocolate, Fruit and Nut Refrigerator Cake which I put in the freezer and it was rock hard :p No picture was taken so that I will not be reminded of my silliness :p

Hallucinations...

Read an interesting article titled 'Researching psychotic complaints' by Dr Bentall, in this month's issue of the Psychologist... The issue was dedicated to ariticles talking about issues with diagnosing psychological disorders. Dr Bentall main argument was that if symptoms of disorders are explained well enough, the disorder itself will cease to have form... here are bits from his article.

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Hallucinations (hearing voices, seeing things, etc that are not really there) are experienced by a substantial minority of people who do no report mental disorders.

Voices heard can sometimes be negative or positive :)

Explanations of auditory hallucinations include source-monitoring errors. Inner speech could be mis-attributed to an external source. A proposed mechanism is that people who hear voices have difficulties monitoring their own intentional states. A research study showed that they are more able to tickle themselves than people who do not hear voices.
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One fact I learnt about general inner speech is that it is accompanied by 'subvocalisations'. There is activity present in our speech muscles during inner speech that can be detected by electromyography...
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Food for thought... haha breakfast for my mind...

A few reasons why I woke up in a bad mood...

I woke up to the smell of grease... My olfactory bulbs transmitted ringing signals to my limbic system which through some complicated neural mechanisms I have no idea about resulted in me feeling..... ANNOYANCE... for the 4th/5th time this week

Some highlights:

My room has smelt of grease the entire day on Sunday...
I wore clothes smelling of grease last tuesday...
To TOp it All Off... The Towels for My ERP participants Smell Of GREASE!

ANNOYANCE is always greater when there is no one to blame for a state of matter... but it was a source of motivation for me to tell the person who could minimize the occurence of this grease filling the whole house (predominantly my room coz the door cant close) issue.

Cross fingers I will not smell of grease tomorrow... I'm washing all the towels again tonight... I don't care if my housemate complains I'm using the washing machine 24 hours, 7 days a week!