“Sensory Deprivation.” The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 4th ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2022, pp. 1117-1118. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX8273700731/SCIC?u=ko_k12hs_d60&sid=bookmark-SCIC&xid=0521b085. Accessed 18 May 2023.
The article first begins with the explanation of what sensory deprivation is. It is when our senses are limited for a long period of time, for example, an experiment from the 1950s is mentioned in the text, in which college students would stay in a small and empty room. To limit their senses they had translucent glasses that would limit their vision, they wore cotton gloves and cardboard cuffs, and they had U-shaped pillows to limit their hearing sense. They were only allowed to leave if there was a necessity to either eat or go to the washroom, and for every 24 hours in the experiment, they would receive a money reward, just to keep them on the experiment or pay for a traumatizing experience. Almost if not all were able to stay for longer than 72 hours. As for the results itself, it was notable that the subjects got very moody, disorientated, and their problem solving skills were slowly deteriorating. After the students were taken off the chamber, their brain took a while to go back to normal, and work and process as it normally would. The author then goes on to explain that physical and mental stress are directly related to a being level of arousal, if you either have too much or too little levels of arousal, either physical or mental stress will be resultant. That is why a sensory deprivation simulation was created, it is called REST, and it consists of floating long periods of hours on a soundproof tank, with water on body temperature. Going through this simulation will not fix sleeping issues, but it can be somewhere for someone to relieve stress without affecting others, or a place to think, but it is also not a place for sleeping.
This source seems to be very reliable because it is very recent, last edited in 2022, it also comes from the science section of Gale. Gale is a database that for 65 years has partnered with schools, libraries, and educators around the world as a form of spreading knowledge with trustworth content for students in need of reliable content.
This text connects to The Road because of how and when the story is set. The man and the boy live in constant sensory deprivation, the only exception being that they have each other. The father and son are alone through most of the text alone and most of the encounters with other humans resulted in fear or disaster. At some point in the text, when they are visiting the man’s childhood house, the boy sees another child on the streets, lurking around and staring at the kid. This kid could actually be a visual hallucination, this is directly related to the article because “Some subjects experienced auditory or visual hallucinations” (Longue 2022). Both the students and the boy were in need of any kind of social activity, the boy specifically wanted another boy of his age, in fact he repeats that need many times throughout the novel. Whilst the man was left by his wife, his reason to keep going before the boy was born. This caused his arousal levels to go really low, if not zero because “The deterioration in both physical and psychological functioning that occurs with sensory deprivation has been linked to the need of human beings for an optimal level of arousal” (Longue 2022). This could have resulted in the amount of stress he felt mentally, when he almost went crazy everytime he thought of the woman.
Rasmusen, Eric B., and Richard A. Ponser. “Creating and Enforcing Norms, with Special Reference to Sanctions .” Chicago Unbound, 2000, chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgireferer=&httpsredir=1&article=1146&context=law_and_econo
mics#:~:text=Norms%20are%20enforced%20by%20internalized,undertake%20relative%20to%20the%20benefits.
The article first begins by explaining that a norm is a moral law, which is neither created nor enforced by the government because it would be too much work for something that would not be fair to uneducated civilians. A norm is something that is built over time and is hard to be substituted or excluded, it is also a common knowledge that will allow the people to live in a more comfortable society. But the reason why people do not just go around and not follow the norms they were expected to know and follow is because of the reaction of people around them. It is described that a negative reaction norm-wise would be a judgemental silence. This would not only make a person feel embarrassment (a reaction created as a payment to show whether someone is or not following a rule), guilt, and shame. These are all reactions one might have if they do not follow the norms expected to be followed. Afterwards, the article goes on to explain that whether someone will, will not, or will simply be emotionless if does not follow norms is directly related to their creation. If someone is taught to not feel guilt for not following norms, for them, there is no difference if they are or not following norms, and they will have almost reaction afterwards. Norms are something that is not easy to be created and destroyed. To change a norm, it would require that everyone begin to follow this new norm together, which is what happens on rapid changes in the social environment. Norms are the pillars of our society, sometimes even more important than laws, but as said before the government does not transform these norms into laws because it would be too costly and would be unfair to those with poor education.
The text is very well written. The author is Richard A. Posner, a Havard graduate who was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago before he retired. Through the text he would cite from many different resources, which is a sign that he got his information from various sources and chose the best to add to his article. But the only issue of this text is that it is outdated, last edited in 2000, it may affect the effectiveness of the information since it might have changed during all those years.
In the novel, not much is explained about how things got the way they are, the only information is that everything burned, and the world has turned into ashes. The story is also set in an apocalyptic environment, where everyone is living for their own good, and because there is no government or law enforcement anymore, everyone simply does whatever they want. This norm disconnection is directly affected by not only the disinformation, but “rapid change in the social environment may make norms dysfunctional before enough time has passed for the normative system to adapt fully”(Posner 2000). But that does not mean that everyone will simply forget what they were taught their whole lives, for example, the family that helps and will take care of the kid, even though there will be a cost on adding him to their lives, they chose to help anyways because that is what they were taught to do, help those in need. But others seem to forget about norms but after guilt and shame, the person comes back like when the man had left the boy alone on the beach and when he came back everything was stolen. Both the boy and the man go after their items until they are able to locate another man with their stuff. The thief instantly regrets stealing and “the violator feels that his action has lowered himself either in his own eyes or in the eyes of other people. In its most common form, shame arises when other people find out about the violation and think badly of the violator” (Posner 2000).