Legion of Nerds Perspective in Nature Versus Nurture

Television and Our Children Ali Maniscalco

Television is a time-passer, a supplier of background noise, and now, it seems that in many homes it has become a babysitter. According to some studies, 99% of families have at least one television in their home and children spend around three hours daily glued to the screen. One question is being asked by concerned parents- what are they watching? Here, there are a few problems in children’s television that are the main focus- violence, respecting elders, early romance, gender roles, and the beauty obsession. People are the most impressionable as children, and some things that they are shown should not be geared towards children and preteens. Some parents definitely do not know what their children are watching, but it is their right and responsibility to know. A petition will be available to be signed that hopefully will get into bigger hands, and maybe someday, there will be children’s television. I am studying children’s television and the questionable messages portrayed in them.

You may think you know as a high-schooler what you want to be when you grow up, but do you really have the mental freedom? This experiment will be to find whether the career choices of a teenager are discarded as an adult in favor of a job similar to that of their parents’. As heritability of complex brain functions (including intelligence) increases as you get older, while most teenagers may want to be different than their parents and want a job severely different than that of your parents as a teenager, you will involuntarily become more like your parents and choose a similar job. This will be investigated through interviewing adults and teenagers, and seeing how their past and present career choices compare to their parents’. Is Genetics the Key Factor of Your Future Career?

When C # is Orange and “ Words ” Tastes Musty Synesthesia is the overlapping of the senses. It occurs in all newborns until natural processes make the extra connections disappear. However, for some people these processes don ’ t occur, resulting with parts of their brain communicating that don ’ t usually communicate. When a person has synesthesia they are highly likely to have multiple forms of synesthesia. Is there a correlation between the different forms that appear in people? If so, are there particular forms of synesthesia that are more likely to appear together? Alyssa Oplt

Through the Ages Marlisa Wang At this very moment, there are seven billion pairs of eyes seeing the Earth in seven billion different ways. Just as each person has a unique perception of the world, each also interprets situations differently. Tests have been done to examine individuals’ perceptions of the world through showing ambiguous pictures and asking the test subjects to tell a story based on their interpretation of them. However, not much research has been done focusing on age groups as a whole. Would all younger kids interpret pictures in a more optimistic light as compared to teenagers and adults due to their innocence? Are there definite similarities or patterns in perceptions within age groups? If so, then would perceptions ultimately be more influenced by age rather than personality?

Sammy Levey M.C. Escher, Salvador Dali, John Muntean, and Rex Young. What do they all have in common? They’re artists who dabble in painting and creating optical illusions. Artists like these specialize in cognitive illusions, illusions that interact with the part of the mind that deals with perceptual processing and challenges the built-in assumptions everyone has about the 3-D world. Specifically, paradox illusions mess with the mind by providing a situation normally impossible by the real world’s standards. This experiment deals with recreating some of these so-called “impossible shapes” in real life, understanding how people can perceive that they exist, and taking the former two points into account to create and bring to life original paradox illusions.