VYGOTSKY VS PIAGET

Introduction

Both of Vygotsky and Piaget made significant contributions to research into the development of thought
and language. Here we will discuss about these two different approaches.

Difference/similarity

According to Vygotsky cognitive and linguistic skills are developed through social interactions. Language
is a cultural tool, so the knowledge of a society passes from generation to generation. On the other
hand, Piaget proposes that all children acquire cognitive skills in the same way, through stages in order.

Vygotsky supports the influence of social interaction between child and mentor on the cognitive
development, using the term "zone of proximal development" to describe a situation in which a child
needs help and receives support and guidance (scafolding). The language is essential in this process. On
the contrary, Piaget sees child as scientist that tests theories and learns from results. When a “schema”
(actual knowledge) is contradicted by new information there is a disequilibrium that is balanced by
adapting the schema to the new information. During ASSIMILATION: the child solves problems presented
by the environment relying on existing skills or knowledge and during ACCOMODATION: the child alters
his/her behaviour to solve the problem. Social interactions and the role of language aren’t important.

In modern teaching methods, Vygotsky has encouraged more advanced learners to teach to less
experienced learners, through social interactions and language. Piaget has suggested that listening to
the opinions of other learners increases disequilibrium and, consequently, learning.

Conclusion

Surely, these two authors have revolutionized psychology, especially in the school environment.

Cyberbullying
Introduction

In recent years, as internet use has spread, it has become more common for young people to meet their
friends online out of school. A consequence is that bullying is no longer restricted to “real life”, but also
to the virtual one.

Body

Instant messaging has made it easier for vulnerable people to become victims of gossip or threats, so
cyberbullying. The victim usually continues to log on the social network to remain in the group or creates
alternative online identities, intimidating the other young people anonymously as they do with them,
giving them a temporary sense of power. This situation affecting her self-esteem and the victim isolated
herself even more, hiding into chatrooms.
Conclusion

To conclude, the data reveal that a significant number of young people is insulted online more than once
in a month and even if most service providers have implemented safety features to reduce the risk of
cyberbullying, Internet is a dynamic environment: it’s difficult to control and predict all the situations,
but we can still teach to young people how to behave on internet.

Modern Addictions
Introduction

According to Walters, addiction is a persistent and repetitious behaviour pattern.

Body

One of the most common addiction is that one related to drugs, but, in the modern society, there are
many other addictions, such as shopping, eating, playing videogames and chatting on social network.
Drug dependency and these “new addictions” have one big difference: the first one has a direct effect on
the brain, so a physiological and a psychological harm, and the second one has only psychological and
social consequences.

Griffiths considers Internet as a truly addiction and consider the six main dimensions of addiction applied
to modern behaviours: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflict, relapse.
An excessive use of Internet appears to be purely symptomatic: 86% of Internet addicts are afflicted by
other psychiatric disorders.

Conclusion

It must be noted that a different view is adopted in China, where research has identified massive levels
of Internet addiction. Here is been revealed that about 13% of internet users has an addiction to it. So
Chinese government has decided to introduce innovative ways to control online gaming.
This is exactly what I think should be done in every technological society and on any platform.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF COMPUTERS

Introduction

Under the influence of Gestalt and starting from cognitivism, computers and psychology have been
related in many ways.

Body

In the modern society, technologies are used to diagnose and treat mental disorders. Computers has
made possible to analyse brain without be invasive: Computerized tomography (CT) and computerized
axial tomography (CAT), taking a series of X-rays of the brain and put them in a picture, are used to
diagnose brain damage. Positron emission tomography (PET) is more accurate, because it uses radiation
instead of X-rays. There is also a cognitive behavioural therapy: during treatment for anxiety, patients are
exposed to virtual reality scenarios, which represent anxiety-producing situations that gradually help
patients to overcome their fears. Virtual reality has expanded the boundaries and encouraged the users
to experiment with alternative aspects of their personality. Online games can develop problem-solving
skills, hand-eye coordination, creativity and novel ways to relate with others. On the other hand,
technologies can lead to addiction, losing touch with reality, violence, cyberbullying, revenge porn etc.

Conclusion

In the future, the two sciences will likely become more interconnected, as technological progress is
essential to understand the brain and generate new treatment for mental disorders.

Occupational psychology and clinical psychology

Introduction

Occupational psychology is the branch of psychology that applies psychological concepts and methods to
the work environment, while Clinical psychology studies and applies psychology to prevent, assess,
diagnose and treat mental disorders.

Body

Occupational psychology is the branch of psychology that applies psychological concepts and methods to
the work environment.

It is also known as industrial, organizational, or work psychology. Includes sub-branches like

organizational psychology (which examines the impact of work environments and management styles on
workers and productivity) and personnel psychology (which applies psychological methods in personnel
selection and evaluation procedures).

Occupational psychology may design and apply psychometric tests, explore and solve organizational
problems, design reward systems and appraisal systems, design staff selection and evaluation
procedures, explore and advise on stress management at work or design organizational and
management systems.

Clinical psychology, instead, studies and applies psychology to prevent, assess, diagnose and treat mental
disorders as well as promote subjective well-being and personal development. It is employed in diverse
activities like psychological assessment and psychotherapy, research, teaching, consultation and
administration.

It is the largest subfield in psychology and includes specialty areas such as:

• child mental health

• adult mental health

• learning disabilities

• emotional disturbances

• substance abuse

• health psychology

• geriatrics

Conclusion

clinical psychology and occupational psychology are two subgroups of psychology that focus the study on
different factors, but both are aimed to improving the life of the individual.

Classifying psychology

As psychology is such a wide discipline, it can be classified in a variety of ways.

For example, it can be viewed either as a pure science (researching into theory) or as an applied science
(used for practical purposes). It can also be classified according to approach: the process approach
analyses the processes that constitute human behaviour; the person approach focuses on the interaction
between people.
Alternatively, psychology can be classed under several major theoretical principles: behaviourist (which
rejects the belief that subjective factors are valid means of explaining behaviour), cognitive (interested in
analysing mental processes such as reasoning and language), psychodynamic (focused on the role of
unconscious drives), humanistic (asserting the importance of individual free will),…
In addition to these categories, psychology can be divided into specialist fields, for example:
biopsychology, social, developmental, forensic and clinical psychology.

The fact is, although research has provided the psychologist with a range of approaches and principles,
the boundaries between them are neither fixed nor mutually exclusive.

Process or person?
Since the mid-19th century, two approaches to understanding the mind and behaviour have been a topic
of discussion: the scientific, or process approach, and the introspective, or person approach.

The process approach focuses on the analysis of the internal mental mechanisms, only be accessed
through observable behaviour. This view is founded on Pavlov’s research into classical conditioning and
supported by behaviourists such as Watson, for its alleged scientific objectivity. A limitation of the
stimulus-response theory is that, as Dewey pointed out, human beings (unlike animals) will respond
differently to a similar stimulus.
The person approach emphasises the importance of individual experience and the effect of social
interaction on behaviour. According to Carl Rogers, self-awareness is at the
centre of our human experience. This approach is supported by the psychodynamic, humanist and
social-constructivist theories. The main argument against this approach is that any data based on
reported experience is necessarily subjective and, therefore, unverifiable.

Whilst the process approach is scientifically valid, the person approach provides a wealth of information
not available from objective observation. Each of these approaches provides researchers and
practitioners with useful data and techniques.

Freud vs Jung
Believing that our conscious thoughts have less influence on our behaviour than our instincts, both
Freud and Jung were interested in the interpretation of dreams.

Freud believed that the self (personality) is comprised of three components: the id, the ego and the
superego (personality theory) and that the unconscious plays a major role in directing our daily
behaviour. The underlying energy guiding our behaviour is motivated by unfulfilled sexual urges, that can
produce emotional disorders. These unconscious instincts can reveal themselves in dreams: hence, the
interpretation of dreams can make patients aware of their unconscious urges.
Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious drives our behaviour, but Jung also believed that the
individual self is a part of the collective unconscious, the unconscious accumulation of human
experiences throughout the evolution of the species. Jung didn’t agree with Freud that dreams are just
disguised enactments of repressed desires: he believed that dreams link us with the accumulated
knowledge of our ancestors, through primordial images and symbols.

Even though both Freud and Jung were interested in the manifestations of the unconscious the role of
dreams, their theories differed on key issues.

DISCUSS THE MAIN CAUSES OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Introduction:

In this essay we are going to talk about the different causes of mental illnesses, first of all we try to give a
definition of mental illness: it is a broadly inclusive term which concern about a disease of the brain,
mind or personality with behavioural symptoms.

Body

Secondly we are going to introduce some causes of mental illness with their related disease: one of the
most well known is the drug abuse which could bring to the mental disorder called schizophrenia, which
directly releated to depression, the condition of unreasonable or illogical beliefs, caused not only by the
excessive use of drugs, but in addition by the chemical imbalance in the brain. Often this kind of people
live in a condition of poverty, which contributes to the onset of the illness.
Other causes may have biological origins, such as hysteria, whose cause is genetic, as the case of
depression for schizophrenia, this mental disorder is releated to anxiety which is provoced by traumatic
experience.

Then there are some mental disease which are the consequence of the traumatic experience and the
abuse in childhood, for instance phobias or dissociative identity disorder.

Conclusion

As we can see there are many different type of mental illness, which are often linked to other ones, and
for each one of them there are many different origins.

GRAFICO

This graph is a bar chart. It shows the dream content of young people aged 18-24, by gender. Overall, it
can be seen that both of men and women dream about being chased, falling/flying, being happy,
death/murder, snakes, magic/myth, failure, being out of control and extraterrestrials. The "x" axis
indicates gender while the "y" axis shows the percentage of sample. The highest column is the women's
one related to dreams about falling or flying, that has a percentage of about 90%. On the other hand, the
lowest bar is still about women and represents dreams about extraterrestrials, that has a tiny
percentage, around 5%. In general, both of women and men's content of dreams is mostly about being
chased and falling or flying and the smallest column represents dreams about extraterrestrials.
Moreover, there are some significant differences between the two genders: when in men the percentage
of dreams about magic and myths is around 40%, in women it is a little more than 20%; moreover, in
women death and murder's dreams represent a significant portion of the graph, more than 60%, while in
men is less than 40%. Other differences can be seen in the bar chart, but they're not so relevant as the
ones mentioned above. Hence, both of men and women dream about these topics, but they have
distinct tendences.

GRAFICO

Data reveal that 5,2% of violent crimes are commited by people who suffer from severe mental illness.
This circle graph shows the percentage of these crimes. The research comes from American Journal of
Psychiatry and is related to the period from 1988 to 2000. The major sector of the graph is about arsons
and it's more than a third. On the other hand, the minor sector is related to common assaults, that has a
tiny percentage of 7%, immediately followed by the percentage of robberies, 9%. We can also see that
the percentages of sexual offences, assaulting a police officer and threats and harassments are around
15% each. Observing the pie chart it can be concluded that arson is the most frequent crime commited
by people suffering from severe mental illness, maybe because it's related to losing control and having a
sense of power as well, typical of different mental disorders.

GRAFICO
This bar chart shows the avarage monthly rainfall in one Asian city, during the period from 1950 to 2000.
The "x" axis represent every month of the year and the "y" axis represent the rainfall in mm.

Overall, starting from January the development of the columns increases untill September and then
decreases. In fact, it can be seen that September is the most rainly month, with a rainfall of 168 mm, and
the minor bar is the one of January with a rainfall of 5mm, which means that January is the less rainy
month. In general, it can be noticed that the most rainy seasons are summer and autumn and that the
lowest level of rainfall can be found in the winter season.

It can be seen an exception in this rising trend: in the month of May there is a grow up of rainfall that
reaches 112 mm.

In summary, it is remarkable that the rainfall between 1950 and 2000 of "an Asian city" was discontinous
with a big difference between its lowest and highest level.

GRAFICO

This bar chart shows the percentage of men and women in senior positions at Hadford University in
2009. The horizontal axis indicates the teached subjects (maths, law, english, pshyscs) and the vertical
axis represents the percentage of women and men. Overall, it can be seen that men occupied more
senior positions than women for every subject if not for english, in which women's percentage was
exactly 25% and men's was around 20%. About maths' occupation, the percentage of women was 15%
and the percentage of men was exactly a quarter (25%). If we look at the law's position, we can see that
there was an increase of the percentage of women teachers, around 20%, but men still had a major
percentage, around a quarter. Finally, the percentage of women and men in physics' position was a tiny
portion for the first, around 10%, and an higher portion for the second, around 20%.

In summary, it's noticeable that women's percentage of senior positions at Hadford University is often
lower than men's, both of them have discontinous tendencies based on the different fields they worked
in.