HELP

Respond to Student 1 & 2 while being respectful of and sensitive to their viewpoints. Consider advancing the discussion in the following ways:

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Post an article, video, or visual to reinforce a peer’s idea or challenge them to see their point from a different perspective.

· Engage in conversation with your peers around scaffolding as it relates to the zone of proximal development. Consider asking a question or sharing your own personal experience.

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Student 1

Roy’s feedback loops gave us an excellent example of scaffolding and the zone of proximal development. It broke down how certain words are learned by where they are said, for example in the video talking about the worst “water” in his household and showing where it was said the most in the house and correlation how his son learned to say and associate the word with action. It showed how his son learned over time to associate this word with a certain place in their home and the action that comes from saying the word water. It started with the caregivers asking the baby if he would like water and then turned into the baby asking for water when he wanted it.

A time that I learned a new schema was in therapy when I was learning to cope with feeling overwhelmed in my life, this would often lead to panic attacks. My therapist talked me through some different techniques that I could try when I started to feel overwhelmed. She used scaffolding to talk me through the steps of things that I could do such as focusing on things that I could see, smell, hear and feel to keep me grounded. After she talked me through the different things that I could try I started using them in my life, I knew that I was becoming more competent and the more she explained to me what to do and why I was doing each step it then became clear that these exercises were to help me breathe, slow down, and focus in the now. 

In my particular example that I have above about a new schema that I learn and how I learned to better process my emotions when I feel overwhelmed especially apply to the course themes of self-care and emotional intelligence. The scaffolding here applies to self-care because it talked me through the steps to calm me down and take a minute to focus on my needs. A lot of times when I feel overwhelmed I have my kids with me and they always come first but I do also have to remember to focus on self-care because I cannot help others if I need help myself, that is why the techniques I learned are so great for self-care. This particular scheme also applies to emotional intelligence and helps me regulate my own emotions and stay aware of when I am feeling overwhelmed and what I need to do to help myself in those situations and what is best for my mental health. 

Reference:

Ted Conferences, LLC. (2011). TEDTalks: Deb Roy–The Birth of a Word. The Birth of a Word. 

Student 2

I found the TED talk to be widely interesting especially when towards the end of the talk he described how his five-year-old understood that these videos were going to be able to be shown for generations to come.  Even when we doubt their abilities slightly, kids always prove us wrong.  Roy’s feedback loops demonstrate scaffolding and the zone of proximal development when we were able to look at the 3-D wordscape where we were able to see where specific words were being said.  When they looked at the wordscape for water it showed that most of the time that the kid used the word water was concentrated in the kitchen, which makes sense, in the kitchen is where you would get water.  We see in one of the videos his nanny asks if he wants water in the living room which he responds yes but then she goes into the kitchen and he follows and begins to learn where the water is coming from.  After being asked many times if he wanted water then having to go to the kitchen to get the water the child learned that is where he could ask for water and receive it.  He did the same exercise for the word bye and showed the wordscape to be more structured and concentrated throughout the entry way.

I time a learned a new schema was learning how to act at a wake and funeral.  I can distinctively remember in the 4th grade getting out of school early to go to a wake for my mom’s childhood friend’s father who had passed away.  I was lucky to have never been to any type of function like this so in turn had no idea how to act.  I, being a 4th grader, was so excited to get out of school early on a Thursday and I was not going to be in school Friday because of the funeral so it was a long weekend in my book.  When we got to the wake my younger brother and I were fooling around but quickly saw the environment around us and were quiet until it was time for us to leave.  In the car on the way home, we resumed our normal behavior as if nothing had ever happened.  My mom used scaffolding to teach us basically what we had just gone to, and what to expect tomorrow and what was expected of our behavior in those settings.  I remember her being very open with us and having us ask questions because it was an overwhelming thing to go to as a child who had never been in that situation before.    

Scaffolding and the zone of proximal development relates to the programmatic theme of emotional intelligence.  In my scenario where I described my new schema learned and the scaffolding that my mom used to help us understand what was going on helped me better understand other people’s feeling and helped me show empathy and have self-awareness.  I wasn’t personally experiencing any loss when I went to those services however having the emotional intelligence to be able to perceive what was happening around me is directly related to how my mom explained to me what was happening and how I should carry myself at those types of things.

 
Ted Conferences, LLC. (2011). TEDTalks: Deb Roy–The Birth of a Word. The Birth of a Word. https://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word?language=en.

Reply to student 1 & 2 with a comment on facts about the normal distribution posted below, supporting your response by explaining why it captures your interest or describing how the principle can be applied in psychology and/or everyday life.

Student 1

The most interesting part relating to normal distribution in chapter 5 was the value of the central limit theorem. According to Bennett et al (2018), polls and surveys used for statistical sampling allows the researcher to make a good estimate of the population mean by using only the mean and the standard deviation of the entire population. Figure 5.2 shows how “as the sample size increases, the distribution of sample means approaches a normal distribution, regardless of the shape of the original distribution” (p. 179). The book gave an example of a dice rolling experiment that proves this rule showing that the more times the dice was rolled (the larger sample size was), the closer the standard deviation of the mean, was to zero. Additionally, this rule makes any sample size over 30 (n>30) considered to be nearly normal in distribution, regardless of the population. I find this helpful for psychology research because although a researcher does not know which mean in the sampling distribution is the same as the population mean, they can select many random samples from a population, allowing for a good estimate of the population mean (McLeod, 2019). This is likely why data from larger sample sizes (above 30) are stronger more reliable.

References

Bennet, J., Briggs, W.L., & Triola, M.F., (2018). Statistical reasoning for everyday life (5th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

McLeod, S. A. (2019, Nov 25). What is central limit theorem in statistics? Simply psychology.  

https://www.simplypsychology.org/central-limit-theorem.html

Student 2

The most interesting part of Normal distribution is the “bell-shape” distribution. The term “bell-shape” which is commonly referred to as the Gaussian curve is named after the 19th century German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, the American Logician Charles Peirce introduced the term normal distribution in 1870 (Briggs,2018).  The normal distribution is the most important probability distribution in statistics because many continuous data in nature and psychology displays this bell-shaped curve when compiled and graphed (Mcleod,2019). When the data is symmetrical it produces a bell shape that is frequently seen in psychology. When there is a normal distribution, it can help bring better clarification to data that has been researched. The data that is calculated within a normal bell-shape allows for scientist to know where most of the data they are looking for lies. The bell shape distribution has been used to help to distinguish variations within testing and the scores such as in IQ tests and SAT scores.

Bennett, J. O., Briggs, W. L., & Triola, M. F. (2018). Statistical reasoning for everyday life. Boston: Pearson.

McLeod, S. A. (2019, May 28). Introduction to the normal distribution (bell curve). Simply psychology: 

Introduction to the Normal Distribution (Bell Curve)