Ego.

I thought that my room needed brightening up so I ordered myself another batch of moocards from my favourite Flickr photos and edged my noticeboard with them (as you can see on the left). I really like it and already the place feels more homely. =] I think I'm also gonna get to work on some drawing's or something to brighten the room up, as it just doesn't feel like my room, it's too bare!

In other news I got another A* on my weekly test! Which now makes he count 1 A-, 5 A+'s and 2 A*'s, not bad going methinks.

And in even more brainy news, I've been given a humanities award from Stratford College. Go me.

A new leaf?

I'm blogging twice in quick succession could this be me turning over a new leaf? Who knows.

The weather here seems to have taken a very sudden turn for the worse, it wasn't that bad when I woke up but now the wind is howling and it's starting to rain. On the plus side though the strong wind does seem to be blowing the rainclouds away, so maybe it'll brighten up soon. I just hope the weather isn't too bad in Snowdon for poor old Rob, as I got a text from him yesterday telling me his coat had frozen!

I also realised that I didn't actually say in my last post we raised enough money for all of our staff to get dressed up for Children in Need! This meant that on Thursday I was learning all about T-tests from Batman, an amusing concept indeed. There was also Andy Pandy and Looby Loo, Cruella Deville and a dalmation, Robin Hood and Maid Marion, Wonder Woman and Supergirl, Robin to go with Batman, a half man half woman (Mike even shaved half his beard off for this) and Darth Vader and Princess Leia. Darth Vader was hilarious as he was Prof. Thierry who is French and hearing his talking about the dark side in a French voice was hilarious!

Update. =]

I'm getting really bad at updating this blog! So here's a "what's happened this week" post.

I attended the scholarship presentation on Tuesday, which was rather nice. Mum and Chris came and watched and it was really good to see them. =] Sadly it meant having my photo taken whilst I was up there, but getting £3000 in exchange I guess it's worse a few little photos. =P

Thursday saw another corridor meal and this time it was Qi Li's turn to cook, he is one of the chinese students on my corridor and this always makes for an interesting meal. I very much enjoyed the rib things and the rice dishes but passed on what was apparently a kind of tree fungus... An update on the shithead loser table, Mo is way out in front on 11 loses but I am sadly in second place with 8, and with only 3 weeks to go this is quite dangerous I think!

Last night a few of us went to the cinema to see Quarantine. It's basically just your typical next step up from zombies, stuck in a house horror. Not bad, but not great either, but it did at least have a few good jumpy edge of your seat moments in it. I felt very sick after leaving the cinema though as it was a pretty gory film and I had eaten ALOT of food previously, but oh well.

I'll blog again soon! (possibly. =P)

xx

Finally a non-Psychological post!

I'm a little worse for wear whilst writing this post so I'll apoligise in advance for spelling and grammatical errors! Me and some of my flatmates played a lengthy game of drinking Monopoly last night, which I can assure you is brutal! I didn't actually crawl into bed until about 5:55 this morning and woke up not long after so I'm feeling understandably fragile!

But anyway I thought it was time to blog as I havn't for a very long time now! Mum and Chris come up to see me on Tuesday and I finally get presented with my scholarship money so that should be cool. =] Spoke to Rob on Skype this morning and heard of his fruitshoot escapades last night (hopefully he'll blog about it); made me laugh ALOT.


It's less than 4 weeks until Christmas break too! Which I can't actually belief, this semester has flown by, I don't know where it's gone.

Schizotypy.

Here is a very long overdue blog!

Last weeks research colloquium was cancelled so I'll just talk about the one before it on here, which was about Schizotypy and Flexible Learning; looking into whether having a particular level or type of schizotypy could actually be a positive thing.

To begin with I should probably explain that there are 3 main dimensions of schizotypy; positive, negative and cognitive disorganisation, and you can exhibit schizotypal behaviour without being schizophrenic.

The hypothesis of this study was that healthy positive schizotypals would be better at rehearsal learning that negative ones. Participants did a test devised by Raine to determine schizotypy scores and those with very high +ve and low -ve, or low +ve and high -ve were selected, along with some average for a control group.

They were then giving a gambling task to do where they got to keep their winnings. One pile to chose from was low risk, low reward and one was high risk, high reward, it was better to go with the low pile as you always got more money this way and all participants were able to do this. The two piles were then reversed 4 times during the next test, and the participants had to continually relearn which pile to draw from for success (reversal learning). Again all the participants succeeded in doing this, but the high -ve and control group showed very similar results whereas the high +ve participants had much larger successes, showing that flexible learning is increased in those with a high level of positive schizotypy.

In other news I got another A+ in my weekly test. Don't know how much longer this will continue for though as I found today's one very hard!!

Brainwaves and Ego Boosting.

I am feeling very good at the moment for two reasons, firstly I got an A* on my third weekly test and secondly I have spent the past hour being told how great I am. =]

The reason for this ego stroking was I took part in an experiment this morning, it was and EEG (Electroencephalogram) experiment so I had to wear a rather fetching cap like the one which you can see on the left. I first had to wash my hair with baby shampoo to remove any grease from my scalp, then I also had to have alcohol rubbed in to my scalp through the holes in the cap to clean away any more oils. Then Nicola (the experimenter) put a mixture of sand, salt and gelatin through each hole to increase conductivity, nice. I got to watch the Simpsons whilst this was a happening as it takes a while, and it was good because I hadn't seen either of the episodes before.

The experimental tasks were simple, I had a keyboard on my lap and in the first one I had to press the space bar for every capitalized word that wasn't an animal, and in the second one I had to see if the psuedo-word in lowercase sounded the same as the real word in uppercase pressing C for yes and M for no.

Now comes the ego stroking, as it was a test on dyslexics and non-dyslexics I had to do several reading, remembering and spelling measures. The first was reading as many words as possible in a minute - I got to the end with time to spare and no mistakes, the second was a spelling test which I did well on, the third was reading nonsense words as fast as possible - I was very accurate and fast, and the final one was remembering numbers and reciting them forward and then remembering numbers and reciting them backwards - she couldn't believe how much I could remember and said I was by far the best yet. =] All in all a good morning.

I'll speak about Monday's research colloquium in another blog as this one has gone on long enough already! Maybe tomorrow. =]

A distinct lack of umming.

Good news! I did my first prepared speech in POPPS (Psychology Oral Presentation Practice Sessions) on Thursday and it went a lot better than expected. The way POPPS works is you have to do both prepared and impromptu speeches, and someone times you and someone else counts how many times you 'um' and 'er'. My speech was called an icebreaker, it's something that all first years must do and is basically just introducing yourself. Although it was obvious to everyone that I was very nervous and my voice wobbled a little I'm pleased with how I did as I managed to speak for 3 and a half minutes, and only ummed 3 times (less umms than anyone in the class, even the second years!) So yes Paul our POPPS mentor said it was clear I was nervous but I had no reason to be as I did very well, and Josie, one of the second years also commented that it was a hell of a lot better than her first speech was. So all in all a success.

I have just got back from a busy day at Alton Towers. My alarm first went off at 5.45this morning, and thank god I set three of them as I snoozed through the first two unaware that I was actually meant to be going somewhere today! The weather was pretty lousy, and the queues were longer than they were when I went in the Summer, but I still had a great time and went on lots of rides. I also got chased something that looked an awful lot like a nightmarish version of Mr Tumnus and terrified by a giant duck on the rapids as it is scarefest at Alton Towers because it's nearly Halloween.

Mummy is arriving tomorrow and I'm very excited as I haven't seen her for 5 weeks now! The longest we've ever been apart I think. =( The weather will probably be terrible but I'm sure we'll have fun anyway, and I'm very muchly looking forward to having a bath in the travelodge as I really miss them, I think Mum's even bringing bubbles!