Native America Hypothesis

The initial clash between the European and Native American cultures is the start of our Mixed-American history. Like many other colonization stories, concepts such as culture, religion, trade, and colonialism are tossed in a mix between virtues such as trust, acceptance, and fairness. Often times neglecting the latter of the mixture. The oddity of such unions is that the native people are generally tolerant with the foreigners… until the foreigner grows into the oppressor. Such is the case between the Native Americans and the European colonizers. Despite early collaboration, Native American tribes responded with great despise and animosity towards the expanse of European colonization.

THESIS STATEMENT: The Native Americans were historically doomed because of the Europeans inability to accept elements of Native American culture that they felt were savage, the natives inability to acknowledge the Europeans threat to their lifestyle and land, and the far superior European army used to defeat Indian tribes.

Contact between the Native Americans, Africans and Europeans impacted the world and course of history. Predating the arrival of the Europeans, different Native American groups were scattered across the continent, each population, political, economic, and religious beliefs differing. Each group was heavily influenced by the environment and ecosystem they lived in. There was a great amount of gold in Africa, creating a source of power and large amounts of international interest. Three large empires formed from the Sudanic civilization, which was ruled by kings and princes and formed their own traditional monotheism. These king and princes were thought of divine and believed to be able to communicate with spirits. Men would have many wives, women

Roughly 16,000- 40,000 years ago a group of nomadic people known as the Paleo-Indians who are the ancestors of the Native Americans followed the herds of animals from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge called Beringia that connected Asia to North America (Mintz & McNeil, 2013). The land bridge that was used has been covered by water due to the rise of the Bering and Chukchi Seas (United States National Parks Services [NPS], 2014). The timeline for this journey has been in question because nothing was recorded so archeologists have an approximate time this took place. By the year 8,000 B.C.E these nomadic people spread and settled into different tribes throughout North and South America

Cognitive aging is the term to describe changes in cognition with age. While Salthouse (2004) found that with cognitive aging comes cognitive decline regardless of the individual, Hayden and partners (2011) found that most (65%) elderly persons showed slow decline that does not substantially affect abilities, 27% experienced moderate decline, and only 8% showed substantial cognitive decline. These new findings show that in fact there may be individual variability when it comes to cognitive aging. One factor shown to affect cognitive aging is race (Glymour and Manly, 2008). Thus, in this paper we will review and analyze findings pertaining to cognitive aging as related by race to better understand this relationship and will also discuss suggestions for future research.

Throughout history, the subject of who discovered America has been greatly disputed. While some say the Native Americans were the first to discover America, others postulate that the Vikings or the Romans were the first to find it. While convincing evidence is presented on all sides, the Native Americans were definitely the first people group to walk on American soil.

According to Blanchard-Fields (2005, p. 539), “These declines occur in a number of cognitive functions such as sensory functions, working memory, attention and executive abilities that tax deliberative, effortful information processing.” Theories suggest that brain cells development reaches its peak in the late twenties and memory is thought to peak when brain weight peaks and then degenerate slowly in the thirties. The brain weight begins a gradual and progressive shrinking that causes impulses to travel more slowly which cause a decrease in reaction time (Blanchard-Fields, 2005).

159 students were chose to be participants in this study. Participants in the study were all undergraduates recruited from the same private university. Out of the 159 participants, 85 of the people that were tested were males and the other 74 participants were females. The participants came from many different races, but many consisted of Caucasian students (103). Other races were made up of Asian American (24), African American (10), Latino/ Hispanic American (9), Pacific Islander (1), and Biracial or multiracial students (12). Participants age ranged from 17 to 24, averaging at 19.1 in age. In order to take place in this study, students were required to hand in written informed consent, and completing a questionnaire. The study was approved by the university’s institutional review board. The participants were to complete the self- report measures assessing the

As predicted this study did replicate some previous findings. However, based on the data from this experiment sex differences did not yield a significant difference in reaction times when presented with the different stimuli.

They focused on the experiment stimuli and the response of the brain. Also, they talked about how older people and people with Alzheimer’s disease have a difficult time with estimating chronological age. “Disorientation to chronological age becomes more pronounced with dementia severity” (“Time Perspective and Positivity Effects in Alzheimer’s Disease”, 2016). It mentioned that people with Alzheimer’s Disease tend to remember more positive images than negative images. In the conclusion it talked about the results they found out and talked about how important using a variety of ages

There have been a number of studies that have used both cross-sectional and longitudinal methods. In two cross-sectional analyses of 77 (mean age = 50.5, S.D. = 16.7) and then 127 participants (mean age = 45.9, S.D. = 15.5), Salthouse and colleagues (1996) found that the relationship between sensory functioning (near visual acuity) and cognition (working memory, associative learning, and concept identification) increased with age. With a similar cross-sectional approach, Baltes and colleagues (1997) analyzed data from two large age groups: a younger adult sample (25-69 years, n = 171, mean age = 48.2, SD = 14.7) and an older adult sample (70 – 103 years, n = 516, mean age = 84.9, SD = 8.66).

From the results collected it could be implied that the reaction time generally increases when the age increases and also when the participant is male instead of female. Figure 2 suggests that it is easier for women to distinguish the differences between the colour and the word due to the fact that the average time taken was quicker than men. This clarified that women have better colour recognition and have a longer attention span than men. On average women were around 1 second faster than men in completing each test. The fastest time for each individual test was achieved by females under 50 years of age. Figure 1 revealed that both Elderly women and men found it harder to complete each test.

Older adults are less likely to see the gorilla because aging increases inattentional blindness or the ability to notice unexpected events.

The phenomena of perception refer to the sensory processes that enables human beings to recognize and organized the information that is received from the environment. Such process allows individuals to perceive the world and objects. For such process to occur, theorists research visual perceptual patterns during the period of infancy. Research has found that there are differences between the way a newborn infant perceives the world in comparison to adults, as their visual system is not fully developed at such an early age. An infant’s visual system is heterochronus which disables them from seeing a complete view of the world, compared to adults.

The aging process is well understood when it comes to changes in the brain and body that affect the use of technology. Differences in memory, cognitive processing, dexterity, vision and hearing all have profound consequences on device interactions. Memory performance, especially short-term memory, decreases with