Clinical depression is something that isn't that much explored here in the Philippines. Sometimes, people just use the term colloquially saying they are "depressed" with a meaning that they are sad or heartbroken or feeling under the weather. Maybe you have used the term to refer to those moods as well. However, because of this, people who are clinically depressed almost always end up getting judged to be just "dramatic" or being "irresponsible" when they are experiencing the bouts of depression. Sometimes, we just assume it is temporary and tell them to cheer up or worse, tell them that there are worse things in life and they should think of their problem in comparison to others. I've recently witnessed three people who were/are depressed and it isn't something they can just snap out of.
Depressed people often report seeing the world as a dull, grey world. You can often see these dark, somber colors being used by artists in their works and paintings depicting sadness and depression. It isn't actually just an artistic representation. Studies showed that there are biological reasoning behind these phenomena.
Depression actually affects your visual perception by affecting cognitive functioning. Bubl and his coworkers (2010) found that people who were depressed had an impaired contrast perception as opposed to healthy individuals. The study showed that the depressed participants were less able to detect contrast differences in black and white checkerboard patterns shown to them. This was shown through the electrical recordings of their retinal activities measured through electrodes attached near the participants' eyes. The more severe the depression, the less were the electrical responses of their retina to contrasts. Antidepressants and other medications didn't make a difference on the results of the study.
This study is actually very helpful in the future assessment of depression among individuals. These electrical responses provide psychiatrists with more objective means of measurement for depression and its severity among those affected with it. Having this dulled contrast perception can prolong the depressive state of the individual and can feed into the depressed person's mood.
If you don’t, then perhaps I’m really getting old. It’s
actually a children’s show I really liked to watch way way way back to the good
old days when I had so much free time and all I was worrying about was what show
to watch. Unlike now that I can barely watch TV because of all the things I
need to do (e.g. write a blog), but I still don’t feel pretty bad especially
when one of my friends doesn’t even know who Kuya Kim is (ehem, Micah :)).
Anyway, Batibot is
like Sesame Street which uses mascots and puppets as characters to create
stories for children. I can still remember how fascinated and curious I was on
how these characters could speak like humans. It was only when I was a
little older when I realized that they were not really speaking on their own,
but they were actually being dubbed and/or manipulated and I just tend to
perceive them as the one directly speaking.
Anyway, here's a Jessica Soho's (2007) feature of Batibot: (sorry, I can't find a better resolution)
Apparently, this is what we call a visual capture or
ventriloquism effect wherein we perceive sounds to be coming from the apparent
visual source, even if it actually originates from another location (Goldstein,
2010). This is what commonly occurs on acts of stagecraft, in which a person
changes his/her voice to make a puppet seem alive.
I actually found a very interesting study by Baldwin (2012),
on how ventriloquist dolls are being used nowadays to interact with people with
dementia. In his experiment, he exposed the patients into three treatments:
interacting with staff members (control group), listening to music, and
engaging with the doll. They scored the patients with their level
of interaction and interest on the three conditions by putting observers on
each conducted session.
The experiment showed a 28 percent increase in the level of
engagement when the doll was used compared to the other types of interaction. This
shows how the ventriloquist doll helped residents, especially those withdrawn
or depressed, open up their feelings. They also observed how those who
rarely communicated with their family or care staff, suddenly preferred
engaging with the doll than with people.
Ventriloquist doll used for dementia therapy
This led them to conclude on how patients considered the
doll as a surrogate, non-threatening, and light-hearted entity that made
communication with it easier and freer. Another reason is how engaging with the
ventriloquist doll also possessed what Cooren (2012) calls as “one of the key
elements of communication, that is, our capacity to make other beings say or do
things while we speak, write, or, more generally, conduct ourselves”.
The use of dolls in treating patients with dementia has
actually been started by Mackenzie et al (2006). In their experiment, dolls
were put on visible areas (e.g. tables) where patients can easily locate and
engage with them. They observed a largely positive effect on the patients, and
they saw how the residents became “less agitated, more engaged and more likely
to communicate with staff”.
This is really interesting for me, since the ventriloquist
dolls and puppets that I thought as just part of my childhood, are now actually
being used as a therapy for dementia. Also, this again highlights how our
senses do not work in isolation, but how different modalities work together, like
our audio-visual-tactile senses as in the case of doll ventriloquism. It is
amazing how memory can falter, like in the case of patients with dementia, but our ability to
sense and perceive stimulus simultaneously is still automatic, and how it can still affect one’s level of interaction and disclosure.
Though there are criticisms that these ventriloquist dolls
face infantilisation or the danger of treating old age as that of a
second childhood (Mackenzie et al., 2012), I just think that recognizing it as
a potential form of therapy still has large implications and pioneering
approaches on dealing with people with neurodegenerative disease.
There are still more researches to be done on this field but
as for me, I guess I need to buy a Pong
Pagong stuff toy and practice ventriloquism in the near future.
Well, if you really don’t know who Pong Pagong is, then here is just a video of one of my most
favorite ventriloquists, Paul Zerdin:
Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception 8th ed.
Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Mackenzie, L., James, I., Morse, R., Mukaetova-Ladinska, E.,
Reichelt, K. (2006). A pilot study on the use of dolls for people with
dementia. Age and Ageing, 35(4)
441-44.
