Reading

Source: www.localgroup.net/article/art.html

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ROLE OF ART

For tens of thousands art has been a unique form of expression and communication among people. Art was intermixed with the development of written language during the early days writing. Art also enabled man to express him self in a way that is not available through the spoken or written word.

What is the psychological role that art plays in human life? Why do people search the world of art and pay upwards of one million dollars for single work of art? The answer is that art provide pleasure and inspiration to its beholder.

People attend to concert, view a play, observe a sculpture, or read a novel with the implicit goal of experiencing a sense of pleasure or even awe. In this case, art can be said to satisfy the soul the way a delicious meal satisfies the stomach or the way the massage satisfies muscle. People from all over the world in all over different cultures produce and observe art in this various forms of the delight, inspiration, and pleasure it provides.

Vocabulary:

Unique = Khas/Unik

Intermix = Mencampur

Pleasure = Kesenangan

Inspiration = Inspirasi

Beholder = Pemirsa

Attend = Menghadiri

Concert = Konser

Sculpture = Seni pahat/ukir

Observe = Mengamati

Delight = Kesenangan

True of False:

1. Art is unique form of expression and communication among people ( ... ).

2. Art disabled people to express their feeling and emotion. ( ... )

3. Sometimes people spending much money only for art, because they want to get pleasure and inspiration. (  ... )

4. Art can make human feel satisfy. ( ... )

5. Many people in this world observe art for the pleasure. ( ... )

Speaking

Source: http://suite101.com/article/the-psychology-of-music-a45967

The Psychology of Music

Studies indicate that music can have profound physical and psychological effects not only on people but also on animals and plants.

Research into the effects of music on behavior, intelligence, learning, pain tolerance and health have generated a number of interesting findings. This article describes the results of some of the more intriguing experiments and studies

Music, Mice and Madness
A student named David Merrill devised an experiment to discover how music would affect the ability of mice to learn new things. Merrill had one group of mice listen to classical music 24 hours a day and another to heavy metal music. He then timed the mice as they ran through mazes to see if the music affected their speed of learning. Unfortunately, he had to cut the first experiment short because the heavy metal mice all killed one another. In a second experiment, mice that listened to Mozart for 10 hours a day dramatically improved their maze-solving abilities, while the heavy metal mice actually became worse at solving mazes than they had been at the beginning of the experiment.

Music, Intelligence and Learning
According to the Association for Psychological Science, intelligence test scores grew higher in children who took lessons in keyboarding or singing. In another study, boys between the ages of 6 and 15 who took music lessons scored higher on tests of verbal memory than a control group of students without musical training

Music and Pain Reduction
Researchers found that patients who listened to harp, piano, synthesizer, orchestra or slow jazz experienced less post-surgical pain than those who did not.

Music Therapy and Autism
Music therapy is particularly helpful for autistic students, who have difficulty interacting with classmates and teachers and become agitated in noisy, changeable environments. Autistic students respond very well to music therapy, which can be used to help them remain calm under stress and socialize more effectively. In addition, many autistic children have spectacular music skills.

Music and Violence
In a study of university students, participants listened to seven songs with violent lyrics, while a control group listened to seven songs without violent lyrics by the same artists. Afterwards, when asked to classify words as violent or nonviolent, those who had listened to violent lyrics were more likely to ascribe aggressive meanings to words such as “rock” and “stick.” The American Psychological Society has also published a report stating that research has definitively proved the link between youth violence and violent media, including music

Music and Suicide
On a stranger note, sociology professor James Gundlach found higher rates of suicide among those who listen to country music. However, Gundlach notes that the suicide link occurred only with older country music, which he believes is not as upbeat as today’s.

Music and Plant Health
Experiments conducted by Dorothy Retallack to learn about music's effects on plants are described in her 1973 book The Sound of Music and Plants. Retallack played rock music (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge) for one group of plants and jazz for another. When two weeks had passed, the jazz plants were healthy and bent toward the radio. The rock music plants grew very tall and droopy, with faded blooms, and most had died within 16 days.
Retallack tried other types of music, including country, to which the plants showed no reaction, and modern (discordant) classical music, which caused the plants to bend away from the speaker. The plants seemed to “like” Bach and North Indian sitar and tabla music.
Other people have conducted similar experiments, and some claim to have achieved similar results. However, Retallack has been criticized for using unscientific methods in her experiments.
Most music studies to date have used small sample sizes and some have not controlled for confounding variables, so although these findings are compelling, more research is required. However, given that many studies have generated similar results for certain types of music, the psychology of music is certainly worthy of further exploration.

Vocabulary:
Affect = Menyebabkan Ability = Kemampuan
Behavior = Kelakuan Agitated = Tidak tenang / gelisah
Intelligence = Kecerdasan Calm = Tenang
Experiments = Percobaan. Compelling = Memaksa
Discover = menemukan Unscientific = Tidak ilmiah


Discuss with your group and explain it.
1. Does the music give physical and psychological impact to us?
2. Do you have psychological experience when you were listening to the some music?
3. Do you agree or disagree if the music affect on behavior, intelligence, learning, pain tolerance and      health?

Reading 8

Source : http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/a/colorpsych.htm

Color Psychology

How Colors Impact Moods, Feelings, and Behaviors

"Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions." - Pablo Picasso

Do you feel anxious in a yellow room? Does the color blue make you feel calm and relaxed? Artists and interior designers have long understood how color can dramatically affect moods, feelings and emotions. It is a powerful communication tool and can be used to signal action, influence mood, and cause physiological reactions. Certain colors can raise blood pressure, increase metabolism, or cause eyestrain.
Of course, your feelings about color can also be deeply personal and are often rooted in your own experience or culture. For example, while the color white is used in many Western countries to represent purity and innocence, it is seen as a symbol of mourning in many Eastern countries.
Why is color such a powerful force in our lives? What effects can it have on our bodies and minds? Continue reading to further explore the history of color including how it's used, the effects it may have and some of the most recent research on color psychology.
What Is Color?
In 1666, English scientist Sir Isaac Newton discovered that when pure white light passes through a prism, it separates into all of the visible colors. Newton also found that each color is made up of a single wavelength and cannot be separated any further into other colors.
Further experiments demonstrated that light could be combined to form other colors. For example, red light mixed with yellow light creates an orange color. Some colors, such as yellow and purple, cancel each other out when mixed and result in a white light.
If you have ever painted, then you have probably noticed how certain colors can be mixed to create other colors. Marion Boddy-Evans, About.com's Guide to Painting, has an excellent overview of color theory basics including how different colors can be mixed.
Color Psychology - The Psychological Effects of Color
While perceptions of color are somewhat subjective, there are some color effects that have universal meaning. Colors in the red area of the color spectrum are known as warm colors and include red, orange and yellow. These warm colors evoke emotions ranging from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility.
Colors on the blue side of the spectrum are known as cool colors and include blue, purple and green. These colors are often described as calm, but can also call to mind feelings of sadness or indifference.
Color Psychology as Therapy
Several ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and Chinese, practiced chromotherapy, or using colors to heal. Chromotherapy is sometimes referred to as light therapy or colourology and is still used today as a holistic or alternative treatment.
In this treatment:
" Red was used to stimulate the body and mind and to increase circulation.


" Yellow was thought to stimulate the nerves and purify the body.


" Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels.


" Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain.


" Indigo shades were thought to alleviate skin problems.
Most psychologists view color therapy with skepticism and point out that the supposed effects of color have been exaggerated. Colors also have different meanings in different cultures. Research has demonstrated in many cases that the mood-altering effects of color may only be temporary. A blue room may initially cause feelings of calm, but the effect dissipates after a short period of time.

Vocabulary:
Anxious = Cemas Experiments = Percobaan
Calm = Tenang Heal = Menyembuhkan
Eyestrain = Kelelahan mata Soothe = Menenangkan
Mourning = Berkabung illnesses = macam-macam penyakit
Affect = Mempengaruhi Alleviate = Mengurangi/Meredakan

Answer the following question with the correct answer:
1. What is color?
2. Does the color can give an impact to our moods, feelings, and behavior? And why?
3. What color which are often to describe calm?
4. What color was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain?
5. Do you agree or disagree with all of statement in the passage above?

Reading 7

Source: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/02/13/who-says-stress-is-bad-for-you.html

WHO SAYS STRESS IS BAD FOR YOU?

If you aren't already paralyzed with stress from reading the financial news, here's a sure way to achieve that grim state: read a medical-journal article that examines what stress can do to your brain. Stress, you'll learn, is crippling your neurons so that, a few years or decades from now, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease will have an easy time destroying what's left. That's assuming you haven't already died by then of some other stress-related ailment such as heart disease. As we enter what is sure to be a long period of uncertainty—a gantlet of lost jobs, dwindling assets, home foreclosures and two continuing wars—the downside of stress is certainly worth exploring. But what about the upside? It's not something we hear much about.

In the past several years, a lot of us have convinced ourselves that stress is unequivocally negative for everyone, all the time. We've blamed stress for a wide variety of problems, from slight memory lapses to full-on dementia—and that's just in the brain. We've even come up with a derisive nickname for people who voluntarily plunge into stressful situations: they're "adrenaline junkies."

Sure, stress can be bad for you, especially if you react to it with anger or depression or by downing five glasses of Scotch. But what's often overlooked is a common-sense counterpoint: in some circumstances, it can be good for you, too. It's right there in basic-psychology textbooks. As Spencer Rathus puts it in "Psychology: Concepts and Connections," "some stress is healthy and necessary to keep us alert and occupied." Yet that's not the theme that's been coming out of science for the past few years. "The public has gotten such a uniform message that stress is always harmful," says Janet DiPietro, a developmental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. "And that's too bad, because most people do their best under mild to moderate stress."

The stress response—the body's hormonal reaction to danger, uncertainty or change—evolved to help us survive, and if we learn how to keep it from overrunning our lives, it still can. In the short term, it can energize us, "revving up our systems to handle what we have to handle," says Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist at UCLA. In the long term, stress can motivate us to do better at jobs we care about. A little of it can prepare us for a lot later on, making us more resilient. Even when it's extreme, stress may have some positive effects—which is why, in addition to posttraumatic stress disorder, some psychologists are starting to define a phenomenon called posttraumatic growth. "There's really a biochemical and scientific bias that stress is bad, but anecdotally and clinically, it's quite evident that it can work for some people," says Orloff. "We need a new wave of research with a more balanced approach to how stress can serve us." Otherwise, we're all going to spend far more time than we should stressing ourselves out about the fact that we're stressed out.

When I started asking researchers about "good stress," many of them said it essentially didn't exist. "We never tell people stress is good for them," one said. Another allowed that it might be, but only in small ways, in the short term, in rats. What about people who thrive on stress, I asked—people who become policemen or ER docs or air-traffic controllers because they like seeking out chaos and putting things back in order? Aren't they using stress to their advantage? No, the researchers said, those people are unhealthy. "This business of people saying they 'thrive on stress'? It's nuts," Bruce Rabin, a distinguished psychoneuroimmunologist, pathologist and psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told me. Some adults who seek out stress and believe they flourish under it may have been abused as children or permanently affected in the womb after exposure to high levels of adrenaline and cortisol, he said. Even if they weren't, he added, they're "trying to satisfy" some psychological need. Was he calling this a pathological state, I asked—saying that people who feel they perform best under pressure actually have a disease? He thought for a minute, and then: "You can absolutely say that. Yes, you can say that."

This kind of statement might well have the father of stress research lying awake worried in his grave. Hans Selye, who laid the foundations of stress science in the 1930s, believed so strongly in good stress that he coined a word, "eustress," for it. He saw stress as "the salt of life." Change was inevitable, and worrying about it was the flip side of thinking creatively and carefully about it, something that only a brain with a lot of prefrontal cortex can do well. Stress, then, was what made us human—a conclusion that Selye managed to reach by examining rats.


Vocabulary: 

Paralyzed = Lumpuh                           Worrying = Khawatir

Anger = Marah / Kemarahan.             Disease = Penyakit.

Convince = Meyakinkan.                    Researcher = Penyelidik / Petugas riset

Circumstances = Keadaan                  Under pressure = Dibawah tekanan.

Survive = Bertahan                             Medicine = Obat.


Answer the following question with the correct answer:


1.     Why stress sometimes good for us?

2.     According to this passage, who state that some stress is good?
3.      “it” in paragraph 3 line 13 refers to . . . ?
4.    What is the synonym of “worried”?
5.     Do you agree or disagree with the statement in this passage? And why?