Category: EPPP Preparation Materials

Listen as Dr. Elizabeth Soliday shares some insight into EPPP keyword; Trend Analysis. This video is from a series created by the Taylor Study Method to supplement your EPPP study materials, and aid in visual association to EPPP exam relevant content. Please watch and enjoy!

Our last post looked at the power that associations have in organizing experiences presented to our brains, and we considered the phenomenon of smell as one example of this. We saw that if certain things are associated with pleasant or unpleasant experiences, then those things can actually become pleasant or unpleasant to our brains through the power of association. Continue reading →

In our earlier post ‘The Eroticism of Odor‘, we looked at the strange (to us) custom of other cultures to actually prefer the smell of body odor, especially that of the opposite sex. We saw how it was typical for a woman to put apple pieces under her arm and, after it had absorbed her scent, offer it as a gift to her boyfriend.

There’s a good reason why other societies have felt like this about BO and why we don’t, and it gives us insight into an important feature of the human brain that we will be discussing in a series of posts over the next few months.

The reason has to do with the power of associations. Having largely banished body odor from Western society, we now associate the body’s natural smell with uncleanness and lack of hygiene. But put yourself back in Elizabethan times. In their pre-deodorant society, the smell of the body was normal, because that is what they were used to. Moreover, it could even be pleasant because that was the smell you associated with being in the presence of the person you love.

Don’t worry, this is not a plea for a new naturalism. I am not about to embark on a campaign to eliminate deodorant from our society. However, I mentioned the above facts because it leads into a theme I wish to spend some time unpacking, which is the power associations have in ordering our brains.

Put simply, if certain things are associated with pleasant or unpleasant experiences, then those things can actually become pleasant or unpleasant to our brains through the power of association.

Even today there are more subtle body odors that can only be perceived if we are in close proximity with a naked member of the opposite sex, which means that such odors tend to be associated with sex—an association that renders certain smells pleasant to us because of the power of association, though this process usually happens on an instinctive level far beneath the conscious mind.

Listen as Dr. Wayne Casio shares about EPPP key term “Disjunctive Task”. Hear a brief overview that is sure to enhance your understanding of this term, and aid in your overall preparedness for your upcoming EPPP!

Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing some of the ways you can improve your online study skills in your psychology licensing prep. The suggestion I’ve offered have been rooted in the latest advances in brain science, including some discoveries that are still considered cutting-edge. Now that we’ve completed running that series, it may be helpful to summarize the ground we’ve covered and provide a complete list of links for future reference.

We opened the series with our post ‘Online Learning: The Way of the Future.’ This article looked at some of the important shifts that have occurred in the history of the university, culminating in the rise of online education. We suggested that, as with other changes in the past, special skills are required to maximize the benefits of the new tools available to students.

Continue reading →