Observation of the psychophysical state is an important method in behavioral assessment. The increased emphasis on this phenomenon is explained, in particular, by the growing recognition of the importance of the physiological components of behavioral problems, such as depression, anxiety, and many others.
The Importance of Psychophysical Assessment
Behavioral therapists are increasingly involved in evaluating and treating disorders that have traditionally been the focus of medical interventions - cancer, chronic pain, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The importance of assessing the psychophysical state is that many behavioral intervention procedures, such as relaxation training and desensitization, partially focus on changing physiological processes.
Advances in outpatient monitoring, computerization, and other technologies have enhanced the clinical effectiveness of psychophysiological measurements. Finally, the psychophysiological dimension is easily combined with other behavioral assessment methods, such as self-monitoring and analog observation. Recognizing the importance of the physiological response mode in behavioral problems involves the inclusion of electrophysiological and other psychophysiological measurement methods.
Behavioral Assessment Methods
Electromyographic, electrocardiovascular, electroencephalographic, and electrodermal measures are especially applicable to behavioral assessment with adults. A number of behavioral problems, such as panic disorders, schizophrenic behavior, obsessive-compulsive behavior, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, sleep initiation and maintenance disorders, have physiological components.
Assessment of the psychophysical state is a complex, powerful and useful assessment method. Psychophysiological science is trying to understand the relationship of physiological and psychological processes. The psychophysiological assessment is language-free and thus goes beyond cultural, ethnic and age boundaries in a unique way. Depending on age, children may not be aware of their emotional or cognitive processes and may not have the knowledge to describe them.
Such obstacles can be exacerbated in children with clinical disorders that are associated with impaired communication. Thus, the questionnaire or interview methods may be biased or inappropriate for the output of such information. An important context for understanding the complex characteristics of the psychophysical state can be provided through self-reporting and behavioral measures, which are often obtained in combination with psychophysiological responses.
Behavioral research
Behavioral observations and interviews were weighed heavily in children's assessment practice. However, conceptually and statistically, adding psychophysiological variables with sources of measurement errors and biases, regardless of other methods of assessment, it is possible to increase the overall reliability and reliability of the assessment of attention, emotions and cognition.
In addition, an assessment of the psychophysical state can give an idea of how the basic physiological mechanisms can participate in the formation of the child's behavior. Moreover, since the regulation of the autonomic nervous system changes during development due to structural and functional changes in the central and peripheral nervous systems, the prospect of understanding changes in the development of children's behavior can be significantly expanded by studying physiological data.
The connection between body and mind
It is no longer a secret that our mental states (emotions, thoughts and feelings) affect our physical health, and vice versa, nutrition, lifestyle and exercise affect our mental well-being. Recently, science has proven that the connection between the physical and spiritual shells plays a significant role in determining our overall well-being. There is even a certain technique for managing your own psychophysical state. Pedagogy has several methods, many of which were designed to help the mind-body relationship focus around calming the mind.
For both children and adults, it is also important to pay great attention to nutrition, exercise and sleep, since all this together and in the right proportions ensures that our mind will function at the highest possible level. It is also obvious that all mental stresses should be minimized, however, there are still some inevitable situations that make us feel fear, anger, hatred, and other negative types of psychophysical states.
The failed attempt at public speaking will provoke fear of the microphone the next time we go on stage. The cultural belief that job interviews are an unpleasant procedure makes us think of something terrible and uncomfortable and exhibit nervous behavioral tendencies such as biting nails, fidgeting, lowering our eyes, and so on. The fear of being rejected when we enter any social situation makes us anxious and forbids us to be ourselves.
Mental health
While diet, exercise, meditation, and other methods of relaxing the mind and body can help maintain mental and physical health, avoid cases that require treatment. Fortunately, since the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, you can consciously change your emotional state by changing your body language. The psychophysical state of a child, adolescent or even an adult can often be easily determined by the way he looks or behaves.
Body language can tell a lot about the internal state. It would be impossible to find a person who, being very depressed, will demonstrate an open and confident body language. Likewise, someone in high spirits will not sit and look gloomy at the floor. This is a real connection between mind and body, and by consciously changing body language, it is possible to change mental states anywhere, anytime, anywhere.
Psychophysics
Psychophysics quantitatively explores the relationship between physical stimuli and sensations and the perception that they produce. This scientific knowledge is described as a scientific study of the relationship between the stimulus and sensation, or, more fully, as an analysis of perceptual processes by studying the effect on the subject's experience or behavior of the systematically changing properties of the stimulus in one or more physical dimensions. The study of psychophysical states belongs to the general class of methods that can be applied to study the perception system. This direction has wide and important practical application.
History
Many classical techniques and theories of psychophysics were formulated in 1860, when Gustav Theodor Fechner in Leipzig published his work “Elements of Psychophysics” . He coined the term “psychophysics,” which describes research aimed at linking physical stimuli to the content of consciousness, such as sensations . As a physicist and philosopher, Fechner sought to develop a method that connects matter with the mind, linking the public world and a person’s personal impression of him. Fechner developed his famous logarithmic scale, now known as the Fechner scale.
Modern approaches to sensory perception
Psychophysicists usually use experimental stimuli that can be objectively measured, such as pure tones, varying in intensity, or lights, varying in brightness. All senses were studied: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell and sense of time. Regardless of the sensory area, there are three main areas of study: absolute thresholds, discrimination thresholds, and scaling.
Classical Psychophysical Methods
Traditionally, three methods have been used to test subjects' perceptions when stimuli and difference detection experiments are detected: the limit method, the constant stimulus method, and the tuning method.
- Method of restrictions. In the bottom-up limit method, some property of the stimulus starts at such a low level that the stimulus cannot be detected, then this level gradually increases until the participant reports that he knows about it. For example, if an experiment tests the minimum amplitude of a sound that can be detected, the sound is too quiet and it becomes gradually louder. In the top-down limit method, this is the opposite. In each case, the threshold is considered the level of the stimulus property at which stimuli have just been detected.
- The method of constant irritants. Instead of being presented in ascending or descending order, in the method of constant stimuli the levels of a certain property of the stimulus are not associated with one test for the next, but are presented randomly. This prevents the subject from predicting the level of the next stimulus and, therefore, reduces the errors of addiction and expectation.
- Customization method. It requires the subject to control the level of the stimulus, and change it until it is barely noticeable against background noise, or the same as the level of another stimulus. This is repeated many times. This is also called the average error method. In this method, the observer himself controls the magnitude of the variable stimulus, starting with a variable that is noticeably more or less than the standard, and he changes it until he is satisfied with the subjectivity of the two. The difference between variable stimuli and standard is recorded after each adjustment, and the error is tabulated for significant series. At the end, the average value is calculated, which gives the average error, which can be taken as a measure of sensitivity.
Adaptive Psychophysical Methods
Classical experimental methods often claim to be ineffective. This is due to the fact that before testing the psychometric threshold is usually unknown, and many data are collected at points of the psychometric function that provide little information about the parameter of interest, usually the threshold. Adaptive staircase procedures (or the classic tuning method) can be used so that selected points are grouped around a psychometric threshold. However, the cost of this effectiveness lies in the fact that information on the form of the psychometric function is less.
Psychophysical education
It is important to recognize that learning concerns not only the mind, but the whole person. Nowadays, so much attention at school is paid to the study of the subject (in contrast, for example, from the study of the arts) that it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to think about the functioning, development and psychophysical state of a child or adult in a truly holistic way.
But the child does not learn simply with his brain, but perceives information as a psychophysical whole. But in education that does not understand the work of this common system, the most fundamental knowledge that we must possess is lacking, since all education must be based on a solid foundation of self-knowledge.
Higher art of education
Imagine a classroom full of children. There is a teacher at the head of the room, and the children are engaged in various activities: drawing or making letters, playing games, chatting. These children are not 4 or 5, they are 10 and 12, 14 and 16 years old. They do not just engage in activities, but draw attention to themselves in a way that almost never happened in the classroom of secondary schools. Their teacher is also concerned not only about what they are studying, but also about the quality of how they participate in their activities, because she (or he) is aware of the whole system of the child. That is, the teacher also cares about how the children do what they do, the learning process, as well as the goals.
A new approach to child development
How a child behaves is fundamental to health, development and learning. Training should not be focused on external actions and achievements, but on mastering oneself as "the central tool on which all training depends." Besides the fact that it is extremely practical in helping children to solve the main problems of learning, this approach leads to full development, since a blind habit is replaced by intellectual self-awareness, giving the child a command over himself as the basis of all learning processes and as the basis for a completely new and reasonable approach to learning.
The state of psychophysical health of preschool children is of great importance. Perhaps the first thing we should pay attention to while helping children to control themselves is the process of breaking down skills into discrete steps, so that instead of focusing on the ultimate goal, we can master the intermediate steps in the learning process and thus pay more attention to how we do something than what we do. Even such a simple skill as swinging a tennis racket, if you study it carefully, can be divided into five or six different elements, but we are rarely given the opportunity to independently master these steps or even understand that these different elements exist.
The second element of skill is the “receptive” component. If you have ever watched someone learn how to hit a moving ball with a racket, you know that the main concern of a teacher is to show how to swing the racket correctly as the basis for hitting the ball. But how can a student hit the ball if he does not see him for the first time, or if the process of swinging a racket really distracts the student from observing him?
The psychophysical state of the sports form of organisms is such a state of athletes that implies a holistic reaction of a person to external and internal stimuli aimed at achieving a useful result. This may seem obvious, but many of us have been given the opportunity to learn just to see the ball first, as the basis for the shot. Most skills actually consist of many susceptible components like this, and if we want to work efficiently, we need to take the time to identify and learn these elements.
The third element is coordination, which is by far the most difficult element in learning a skill. For example, learning to swing a tennis racket is not so easy, most students, as a rule, are not aware that in order to swing a tennis racket, you need to perform a coordinated squat and carry your weight.
All these elements fall into the general category of focusing on the process, which raises an even more fundamental question, namely approaches to teaching in schools. If a child should learn on the basis of attention to the process, then the methods on which all education is based both in the school and outside it should be considered in kind.
What is the psychophysical state of a person?
The physical and mental health of a person depends on his ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. For example, the subjective factors of the student’s psychophysical state before the exam are fear of testing, relationships with the host teacher, previous successes or failures. Some cope with the overvoltage of adaptive mechanisms easily, while others are more difficult. In more serious cases, this can lead to depression or other painful conditions. The impact of environmental factors on a person is subject to the active participation of his psyche. Here objective factors of the student’s psychophysical state are used, for example, the level of his training.
Psychophysical approach to education
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The psychophysical state of a university student or a high school student before the test, or a job seeker at an interview are all examples of negative conditions, the reasons for which can be very different. However, it is possible to defeat such conditions. From childhood, it is important to acquire such skills as self-control, adequate self-esteem and self-knowledge. The psychophysical state of the student before the final exam is the totality of his previous experience, this is the result of how strong his values are, whether he has the ability to concentrate, does he learn and live more relaxed, does he have a healthy lifestyle and He maintain balance in everyday situations.