BOOKS FOR PSYCHOLOGY CLASS
  • Books for Psychology Class
  • Blog
  • Contact/Submissions
  • Other Psychology Websites
  • For Students

Gifted Hands:  The Ben Carson Story

9/16/2015

1 Comment

 
Gifted Hands:  The Ben Carson Story
Author:  Ben Carson M.D.
ISBN:  978-0-310-33290-9

APA Style Citation
Carson, B.  (1990).  Gifted Hands:  The Ben Carson Story.  Review and Herald; Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Picture
key_activity_gifted_hands.pdf
File Size: 140 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

key_activity_gifted_hands.pdf
File Size: 140 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Book Description

In light of the announcement of Ben Carson’s declaration that he will be running for president in 2016, it seems appropriate to take a closer look at the individual who until now was primarily known as a pediatric surgeon at John Hopkins hospital.  In Gifted Hands, Carson recounts his tough childhood in Detroit and the challenges he faced academically growing up.  Carson credits his mother’s persistence with allowing him to see his own talents and to persevere in the face of failure and challenges.  Ben’s parents were divorced and his mother, despite trying to encourage her two children to excel, suffered from mental illness.  As a result, Ben and his brother periodically lived  with family members while his mother sought treatment.  When Ben’s mother was present, she had strict rules and expectations.  Ben and his brother Curtis were limited to watching two television shows per week and were encouraged to read at least two books per week in addition to completing their schoolwork and helping around the house. While they initially complained, they both found a love of reading and excelled academically (Curtis is an engineer).  Ben’s mother expected the best from her sons and despite Ben’s poor grades in middle school and part of high school; she never lost her faith in his abilities.  She seemed to know what Ben was capable of even if he did not yet realize it himself.

In his teens, Ben had to learn to control his temper, because when other children teased him because of his perceived lack of intellect or his out of style clothes, he would sometimes lash out.  Ben once tried to stab a friend in a fit of rage, but thankfully instead of hitting his friend’s belly, he hit his belt buckle.  Ben became so frightened by what he could have done that he turned to God for guidance.  Ben would continue to seek this guidance throughout his life and from that point on, he claims, he no longer had a problem with his temper.

Carson was initially interested in rocks and geology, but later became interested in becoming a missionary doctor.  He became interested in psychology when his older brother bought him a subscription to Psychology Today for his birthday.  By the end of high school, Ben had earned a 90 percent scholarship to Yale.  While he was thrilled to attend the Ivy League school, he found it difficult because everyone at Yale had been successful at their respective high schools and the competition was intense.  Ben found chemistry particularly difficult and believed that failure in this subject might prevent him from achieving his chosen career path of neurosurgery.  Ultimately, he credits God with his ability to pass chemistry and his future success.  During his time at Yale he also met his future wife Candy who was a musician and shared Ben’s faith and love of classical music.

Ben successfully graduated and completed his internship at John Hopkins Hospital; he was selected as one of 2 interns from 125 potential candidates.  He learned much during his internship and residency and often took on cases that others were not interested in treating.  In one instance, a young man came in who had been hit with a baseball bat.  This required immediate surgery, but as a resident Ben did not have the authority or experience to conduct the surgery.  All of the other doctors were away at a conference and Ben had to make a decision.  He risked his career, and luckily the surgery went well and the hospital did not fire Ben.  The man recovered and had it not been for Ben’s quick action, he would have likely died.

After all of his schooling was complete, Ben decided he wanted to remain at John Hopkins and eventually became the head of the pediatric neurosurgery department.  While Ben is careful to acknowledge others who have helped him in his career, it is also clear that he sees his career at God’s fate and himself as an extraordinarily gifted individual.  He claims that his divine gift of eye and hand coordination made him an outstanding surgeon thus the name of the book, Gifted Hands.  He also cites many instances in which his ability to think differently allowed him to see a way to improve a surgical procedure or complete procedures others claimed were impossible.  Carson claims that even as a medical student he knew more about neurosurgery than the intern and junior residents and as a result, they relied on him and gave him more cases.  Carson also indicates that he was nice to everyone and that because of “help from the lower echelons” he was able to find success in his career.  Carson faced some discrimination or surprise from those who had never seen or did not expect to have a black surgeon; but ultimately his ability won out and people began to seek him out because of his surgical abilities and medical knowledge.

Carson is perhaps most well known for his work in performing hemispherectomies, often on children who were experiencing uncontrollable seizures.  His first hemispherectomy was conducted on 4-year old Maranda Francisco who suffered from almost constant seizures impacting only the right side of her body.  She would have almost certainly died without the surgery. Many others told her mother to give up hope because there was nothing that could be done for her daughter but Carson believed the surgery would work.   Today, Maranda leads a normal life and because of the plasticity of the brain in young people, she has regained most of the motor functioning on the right side of her body.   

Carson was part of the 70-person team that separated a pair of conjoined twins in the first surgery of this kind.  The twins were joined at the back of the head and the pre surgery preparation included inflating balloons under their skull to create enough skin to cover the area that would be separated.  They also used cadaver bones to create a new portion of the skull.  There is some dispute about the success of the surgeries, but both boys lived through the 22-hour procedure.  In many of the cases Carson completes, it is difficult to know how the patient will fare in the long run.  Many patients who undergo brain surgery must be placed in a coma because of the swelling in the damaged brain.  Not all surgeries are successful and Carson laments those patients he has lost, in particular the youngest patient (only 3-months old) who started convulsing after the surgery and lived only a few more weeks.  Carson’s future as a surgeon is unclear given his bid for the presidency, however his contributions to neuroscience will remain intact.

Other Related Resources
New York Times article about the work of Ben Carson at John Hopkins
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/08/science/scientist-work-benjamin-s-carson-for-many-pediatric-neurosurgeon-folk-hero.html

Gifted hands, The Ben Carson Story
Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Ben Carson in this full-length film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s33R7JhFO6s

Article about reunion of those with hemispherectomies
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1917&dat=19870827&id=DQ0hAAAAIBAJ&sjid=b3IFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1009,6038920&hl=en

Ben Carson for President website
https://www.bencarson.com

How is Ben Carson spending his campaign donations?
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/ben-carson-campaign-private-jets-luxury-hotels

Conjoined Twins
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/separate-lives-conjoined-twins-2357401.html

The Binder Twins
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1989/Binder-Twins-Far-From-Normal-Two-Years-After-Surgery/id-424f811a9feb67934f4c3b6e86586ae2

Psychological Figures and Concepts
Brain stem
Broca’s area
Craniotomy
CT scans
Dura matter
Epilepsy
Grand mal seizure
Hemispherectomy
MRI
Occipital Lobe
PET scans
Plasticity
Rasmussen’s encephalitis
Temporal lobes

 

 

 

 

 

1 Comment

Thinking Fast and Slow

9/2/2015

0 Comments

 
Maria Vita
Penn Manor High School
[email protected]

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Author:  Daniel Kahneman
ISBN-13: 978-0374533557

APA Style Citation  
Kahneman, D.  (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.  New York; New York:  Farrer, Strauss and Giroux.
Picture
thinking_activity.pdf
File Size: 156 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File


Book Description
Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) book exposes the human mind’s frailties and cognitive biases. It includes various errors in judgment in reference to sampling, heuristics, and anchoring – to name just a few. Kahneman’s book also provides insight into the ways in which empirical research is prone to these errors.  Kahneman categorizes the quick, effortless, snap judgments of our mind as “System 1” thinking.  This type of thinking includes habits, first impressions, associations, instincts, and impulses.  In Chapter 4, Kahneman describes a study in which people were primed to be more cooperative.  Normally, people in an office used an honesty policy to pay for the amount of coffee/tea taken.  However, when researchers placed a poster with photographed eyes near the collection box, individuals felt as though they were being watched and were more likely to pay for the number of drinks served.  

Kahneman provides many examples of reciprocal priming- that is: our body language can unconsciously influence our thoughts.  The facial feedback experiment is a familiar example.  In their personal connections to the book, one of my students noted that there is an “alarm app” for smart phones in which the person must genuinely smile in the camera frame of the phone in order to shut off the alarm clock.  The facial feedback experiment suggests that if one smiles, they can automatically influence their emotions to be more positive.  In another experiment, Kahneman noted that simple gestures could impact someone’s willingness to accept or reject a message.  By nodding in agreement, subjects were more likely to concur with researchers, while subjects who were asked to shake their head from side-to-side were more likely to disagree with the same researchers.

While “System 1” thinking often dominates our actions, Kahneman also addresses our lazier, slower, more effortful “System 2.”  This is exemplified by the Stroop test.  Our automatic “System 1” thinking is difficult to turn off: In the traditional Stroop test, we are likely to say the words as they are spelled rather than the color in which they are presented (which do not match to the color spelled out.  We do not routinely say colors when reading, so the self-control and effortful energy of “System 2” must be activated, and this takes more time than defaulting to “System 1”.  Here is a variation of the stroop test that Kahneman uses: Say whether the following words are lowercase or uppercase.  Complete this task as fast as you can.

CAT
dog
FISH
uppercase
teapot
illusion
LOWERCASE
CAR
uppercase
fork
LOWERCASE

Did you sense the conflict between “System 1” automatic ability to read the word rather than using “System 2” to follow the directions – especially with the words uppercase and LOWERCASE.
 
According to one experiment conducted by Kahneman himself, the pupils were shown to dilate when “System 2” is activated.  Subjects were asked to perform complex mental arithmetic by calculating six to seven digit numbers.  When the pupil is dilated, the body is responding to a task that is mentally and physically demanding.  Because “System 2” thinking requires energy and blood-glucose to thrive, we are more likely to resort to effortless “System 1” which relies on impressions. 

Using the halo effect, Kahneman said that “System 1” often makes a “coherent” view of a person as either good or bad.  Additionally, “System 1” attempts to consistently maintain this impression, whether true or false.  Kahneman was quick to point out his own predispositions toward “System 1” thinking by using an example that most teachers and students can relate to: grading.  When Kahneman graded his own students’ work, he often found that his first impression of a student influenced the grades they received on an essay.  For example, if Kahneman graded two different essays for the same student, one after another, the second grade often matched the first.  When “System 1” biases permeated, a student who received a good grade on the first essay often earned a good grade on the second.  However, if Kahneman graded the first essays of the whole class, he was much more likely to be independent in his evaluation of each student.  Therefore, a student who earned a bad grade on the first essay would not be impacted by the professor’s impartiality and may very well earn a good grade on the second essay.  If teachers recognize the power of “System 1” impressions, they would be mindful of the order in which student work is evaluated in order to provide students with more objective and “fair” grading.

When it comes to a complicated self-evaluation like lifetime happiness, Kahneman argued that researchers failed to capture accurate results due to the interference of heuristics. To show how happiness can be arbitrarily reported, one German study asked subjects "How happy are you these days?" and then "How many dates did you have in the last month?" In this scenario, subjects reported on life satisfaction without considering the progress of their love life. The same study also reversed the questions. When participants first considered their dating life, the resulting affect heuristic or mood influenced their reported life satisfaction. Those who had fewer dates felt rejected and lonely, hence their life satisfaction ratings were lower.  It is difficult for participants to objectively report on lifetime satisfaction without letting an event or mood impact results. Participants’ apparent lifetime satisfaction varies with unconscious influences or with the first circumstances that come to mind.

Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky gained fame from their experiments in the early 1970s on the availability heuristic.  When making conclusions about the likelihood of an event, we often rely on “System 1” conclusions that come to mind quickly or easily.  For example, in California after an earthquake, people are more likely to buy home insurance.  After an incident such as an earthquake, the ease with which images of the tragedy come to mind causes us to overestimate the likelihood of the event occurring again in the future.  Yet, after the images and memory of a salient event fade, humans underestimate the tragedy’s frequency and are not as worried.  Acts of terrorism also speak to our “System 1” emotions and judgments.  For example, Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist, noted that there are more traffic deaths in Israel than cases of terrorism.  This goes against the images that easily come to our mind when we think of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

The book has 38 chapters even examining a couple of excerpts with your psychology students is a worthwhile endeavor!

Other Related Resources

Asap Science Brain Tricks - This Is How Your Brain Works January 31, 2013 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiTz2i4VHFw

Thinking Fast and Slow “Minute Video” January 29, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btTZA0XLd2k

Daniel Kahneman “BigThink” and the contributions of his research
http://bigthink.com/experts/danielkahneman

Examples of small sample size in baseball: small samples show EXTREME results
http://slowfastthinking.wikispaces.com/Small+Sample+Size

Psychological Figures and Concepts:  
Chapter 1: Invisible gorilla (selective attention); Stroop effect; Muller-Lyer illusion
Chapter 3: Flow, ego-depletion; Walter Mischel’s delayed gratification
Chapter 4: Priming; reciprocal priming (facial-feedback hypothesis)
Chapter 5: Robert Zajonc’s mere exposure effect
Chapter 7: Confirmation bias; halo effect; overconfidence; framing
Chapter 10: Sampling; randomness
Chapter 11: Anchoring
Chapter 12, 13: Availability heuristic; affect heuristic
Chapter 14: Representativeness heuristic

 
0 Comments

    Categories

    All
    Biological Psychology
    Cognition/Learning
    Consciousness
    Development
    Disorders/Treatment
    Educational Psychology
    Health Psychology
    Motivation/Emotion
    Positive Psychology
    Research And Statistics
    Sensation/Perception
    Social Psychology/Personality
    Testing And Individual Differences

    Authors

    Laura Brandt, Nancy Fenton, and Jessica Flitter are AP Psychology instructors. Nancy Fenton teaches at  Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, Laura Brandt teaches at Libertyville High School in Libertyville Illinois and Jessica Flitter teachers at West Bend East High School in West Bend, Wisconsin.
    If you are interested in reviewing a book for the blog or have comments or questions, please e-mail us at either [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected].

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    June 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    July 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

Proudly powered by Weebly