When I used to babysit for my neighbor’s two children, they would always have a terrible time getting to bed. However, I would notice that different kinds of activities performed just before bedtime would get them to their rooms earlier, with a minimum of fussing. Often, it would seem as though a high-energy game would wear them out sooner and have them more ready for bed. I theorized that, if we played a high-energy game that involved lots of physical movement, the children would get to bed sooner than if a low-energy activity was performed, like watching television.
I decided to test this theory with a quantitative research method, gauging the time at which the children actually entered their rooms after being told to go to bed. This type research method is similar to those often used by psychologists to get measurable results, as certain different stimuli would produce unique and consistent effects. For the next six nights I babysat these two kids, I tried a different activity before bed – for two nights we played a game of paddycake (medium-energy game), two nights we just watched read a storybook (low energy game), and the other two nights we played a game of freeze tag outside (high energy game). Each night at 9 pm on the dot, I would tell them to go to bed.
My theory was, depending on the activity, they would fight and argue less, getting to bed quicker. It turned out that, with the freeze tag game, the children were much more worn out, and a lot easier to get to bed. They would actually enter their rooms within a couple minutes, as opposed to the other nights, where they wanted to keep playing paddycake or listen to the story.
If I were to do this experiment again, I would try to get a bigger sample size, and try a variety of activities, including television and the like. I would attempt to do the experiment for a bit longer, and I would investigate how the information could be applied.
The cerebral cortex handles all of the higher mental faculties, allowing us to speak and learn, as well as understand. It includes things like the occipital, parietal and temporal lobes, which receive information from the senses and allow perception to occur. Different lobes and cortexes handle the different senses, and even regulate our emotions, determining what motivates us to do what we do. Everything that makes us a sentient, thinking and intelligent being are found in the cerebral cortex.
The central core, on the other hand, handles all of the basic physical processes that keep us alive, like breathing and pulse, sleep and balance. The core allows us to survive, whereas the cerebral cortex allows us to think and comprehend the world around us. Without our cerebral cortex, our bodies would survive, but we would not be the intelligent human beings we are today – we would barely be anything more than animals.
Sensation involves the use of our five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) to interact with our world and receive information from it. Perception, on the other hand, is the way in which we use that information to inform our understanding of the world.
For example, say you eat an apple. You see the red color, you touch the rind, you taste the texture and flavor of the apple, you hear the crunch as you bite into it, and so on. You are sensing those things. However, the overall picture with those senses comes together to form perception. We group those senses together and organize them into a bigger picture of the experience of ‘eating an apple.
The reason perception is important is that, after that first time you eat an apple, you now know what that means and what it feels like. The next time you eat an apple, you can anticipate what it will taste and look like.
