I greatly enjoyed the last section on their current events as we considered dementia and Alzheimers. Personally, I am deeply interested in the two topics, since my major is Cognitive Science Specializing in Neuroscience and my passion is understanding the intersection of aging, dementia, and caregiving and understanding caretaker burnout. My interest in aging based on cognition is what drove me to apply to the Life Course Scholars program and I really enjoyed being able to have a conversation about a topic more based in neuroscience and more closely related to my own major (though learning about aging from a public health and policy perspective is also interesting). It is interesting to talk to my other classmates, in particular, Lesley, and hear what she has to say about how research is conducted and how different racial groups interact with being approached for research. Her practical experience adds onto what I’ve learned in my classes. As a cognitive science major, we have to take three courses -- COGS 13, COGS 14A, and COGS 14B -- on research methods and the strengths and weaknesses of certain techniques. One of my professors said that research is often conducted on WEIRD samples, which he translated into Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. This meant that a lot of the people in the studies were only a small fragment of the overall society, and yet the research itself is deemed applicable to everyone, despite the methodology for capturing the data not accounting for the vast majority of people. On a medical level, this has major implications and on a cultural level, it excludes many and can potentially invalidate (in the eyes of academia) their experiences.
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ELIZABETH PEEKWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2019
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