Law of Effect and Operant Conditioning

Edward Thorndike:

1. Thorndike was trying to figure out if rewards for certain responses reinforce those responses in animals. For his emperiment, he placed a cat in what was called a puzzle box, which he invented, and watched the cat try to get out. At first, the cats were only able to get out by trial and error, but over time, they learned how to get out of the box, where the food was, with only one try.

2. The law of effect states that responses followed by satisfaction, like a reward, become attached to that specific situation and are more likely to occur again if the situation repeats itself.

3. The law of exercise states that behavior is better established through many connections of response and stimulus.

B.F Skinner:

1. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning states that if a response is followed by a reinforcement, then it is likely to occur again. Unlike Thorndike, he does not mention rewards but only says that practice makes perfect.

2. Reinforcement will always, over time, make you better at what you are doing.

3. A punishment will always cause a decrease in the amount of what you were doing wrong, but it will not teach you what to do right.

4. Positive reinforcement increases the response and negative punishment will decrease he response.

Sources:
http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~Lynda_abbot/Behaviorism.html
http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/thorndike.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/lindex/g/lawofeffect.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/689639/Thorndikes-law-of-exercise

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov:

1. When Pavlov discovered classical conditioning, he was actually studying digestive processes in dogs.

2. First, Pavlov hooked a small tube into the dog's cheek that would capture saliva. Then, using a metronome as a stimulus, he turned on the metronome and presented the dog with food. The dog would salivate into the tube. He did this so many times that eventually all he had to do was turn on the metronome and the dog would respond and begin to salivate. This automatic learning process was called classical conditioning.

3. In Pavlov's experiments, the conditioned stimulus was the metronome after the dog began to respond to it. The unconditioned stimulus was the food and the salivation was the conditioned response.

4. Extinction occurs in classical conditioning when you stop pairing the unconditioned stimulus with the conditioned stimulus, like the metronome and the food, and the dog begins to respond to the metronome without the food. This is called extinction because the conditioned response disapears.

5. Stimilus generalization is the tendency when the conditioned stimulus creates similar responses after the response has been conditioned. For example, if the dog began to respond to a sound similar to the metronome, like a bell or a whistle.

6. Stimulus discrimination is when the subject is able to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus and other things similar to the unconditioned stimulus. For example, if the dog was able to distingiush the difference of the metronome and the whistle.

7. Two limitations of classical conditioning is that first, it is difficult to replicate because of the specific procedure and the tube in the dog's cheek and second, because humans may not have the exact learning processes as dogs.

8. Pavlov theorized that the most basic form of learning is associative learning, where the being makes associations between objects in the enviroment.

http://www.learning-theories.com/classical-conditioning-pavlov.html

http://psychology.about.com/od/classicalconditioning/a/pavlovs-dogs.htm

John B. Watson:

1. In the Little Albert study, John Watson attempted to stimulate fear in a baby boy whom he call Albert. First, Watson would present Albert with a variety of animals, including a white rat. Later, once Albert was accustomed to these animals, Watson would present him with the animals again, only this time he would make a loud noise behind the baby's head, stimulating fear. Over time, Albert began to associate his fear of the loud noise with the animals, and he became afraid of them.

2. The conditioned stimulus was the white rat, the unconditioned stimulus was the loud noise, and the conditioned response was when the baby started to cry when presented with the rat.

3. Two limitations of this study are that it is highly unethical, because it is creating fear in an innocent child, so it can't be replicated, and secondly, Watson only used one baby, so others may have responded differently.

4. Watson also stated a law of frequency, where he stressed that the more frequent a stimulus and response occur, the stronger the habit will become.
5. Watson's law of recency stated that the response that has most recently occurred after a particular stimulus is the response most likely to be associated with that stimulus.
6. Watson called behaviorism the study of people's responses while being able to predict and control these actions. Basicall he believed that people's actions and emotions could be predicted and controlled.
http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/behaviorism/Watson.html
http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~Lynda_abbot/Behaviorism.html
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Little%20Albert.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment

Summaries of Sleep Articles

Starting High School One Hour Later May Reduce Teen Traffic Accidents:

The UK Health Care Good Samatarian Sleep Center in Lexington, Kentucky conducted an experiment on how sleep affects the number of car accidents which teens are involved in on their way to school early in the morning. In a county in Kansas, the group took a poll of the teen driving accidents during a two year period when the high school started at 7:30 and the middle school started at 8:00. Then the county pushed the school starting times back one hour, and for the next two years the group carefully observed the number of teen driving accidents. The observers found that the crash rates decreased 16.5% compared to the years when school started earlier. Students also reported they felt fresher and more awake at school. Scientists believe that just one more hour of sleep significantly helps these teens to be safer and more alert in school and on the road. I also believe that a little more sleep would greatly benefit students who are not able to get enough and in the long run it will help them do better in school.



High School Students With A Delayed School Start Time Sleep Longer, Report Less Daytime Sleepiness:

Zaw W. Htwe, MD, of Norwalk Hospital's Sleep Disorders Center in Norwalk, Conn. conducted an experiment on 250 high school students who completed the School Sleep Habits Questionnaire. The first thing they discovered was that the average sleep time of these students was seven hours a night, because their school started at 7:35. After the school time was delayed forty minutes, the average sleep time for school nights increased 33 minutes, to 7 and a half hours of sleep a night. Although this is not the recommended nine hours of sleep that adolescents should be getting, but students reported having less trouble with being sleepy at school. One doctor observed that the students were using 83% of the added time to get more sleep. I believe that even the smallest amount of sleep is helpful and we should all always try to get as much sleep as we can to do our best.

Delayed School Start Time Associated With Improvements in Adolescent Behaviors:

Judith A. Owens, M.D., of the Hasbro's Childrens Hospital, Providence, conducted a study on 200 students in Providence ages 14-18. For the experiment, their school start time was pushed from 8:00 to 8:30 and they were interviewed before and after the change in starting times. Studies showed that most of the students on average were getting a full hour more of sleep and seemed to be more active and reported less depressive moods. There were significantly less reported incidents of medical concerns related to fatigue and students more actively participated in school activities and the majority rated themselves in happier moods. All this caused simply by delaying the school starting time half and hour. I firmly believe all of the statistics in this article and how even a little more sleep can change a student population. I think all schools should be striving to give their students more sleep, because it is so important to us.

Inside the Teenage Brain

The video we have been watching in psychology is called Inside the Teenage Brain. It basically study teenagers and why they act the way they do, with their attitudes, depression, and mood swings. It was interesting to watch because we are teenagers and most of the time we ourselves don't understand why we act the way we do. By far the most interesting thing I learned from the video is why teenagers have mood swings. This specifically captured my attention because I can relate to it. Unlike the kids in the video, I normally do not have attitude problems or trouble in school, and I get along well with my parents. But, like many other people, I have mood swings. I learned that I am not the only person who can go from being sad to happy in a matter of minutes, and not the only one who is scared about it. But I learned from the video that this normal in adolescence because of the changing and developing hormones in our body and that it is nothing to be worried about. I also learned that the reason teenagers may be so lonely and depressed at times is because we are simply growing up and trying to figure out our place in the world, which is always a hard thing to do. However, hopefully, we will grow out of it and learn to become better people.

How Our Brains Work

1. The brain is split into two main parts, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, which refer to the two sides of the brain and what specific functions each side performs.

2. The main difference between the two sides of the brain is that each side controls different ways of thinking and processing. The left brain controls more rational and logical ways of thinking, while the right brain deals mostly with intuitive or creative thoughts. Whatever you think or do is controlled by one side of the brain.

3. The corpus collasum is a bundle of neural fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain and helps them communicate with each other.

4. Paul Broca was a French physician who is most famous for discovering the area of the brain that controls speech production now called Broca's area, which he found from studying patients with speech disorders.

5. Robert Sperry was the first person to discover the left and right hemispheres of the brain, ina series of experiments called the split brain experiments, which eventually revealed that the two sides of the brain control different tasks.

6. A German neurologist named Carl Wernicke notices a connection between the dominant cerebral hemisphere(which is the left for most people) and the mimcking of words and syllables. Furthur study showed that this area, now called Wernicke's area was involved in the understanding of spoken and written language.
7. The lobe most responsible for vision is the occipital lobe.
8. The temporal lobe is most responsible for hearing and language.
9. The lobe most responsible for performing math calculations if the left parietal lobe.
10. The frontal lobe is most responsible for judgment, reasoning, and impulse control.

Phineas Gage

Though Phineas Gage has been a famous case study for neuroscientists since his horrible accident in 1848, not much is known about who he was before that. At 25, he was the foreman of a railroad crew who were cutting a railroad bed in Cavendish, Vermont. As the story goes, he was using a tamping iron to pack explosive powder into a hole, and suddenly the powder detonated and the tamping iron shot up into his face. It ripped through his left cheek, penetrated his brain and came out through his skull, landing on the ground next to him. He had been blinded in his left eye, but miraculously he quickly regained consciousness and was able to walk and talk. Although he physically recovered very quickly, mentally he was never the same. He constantly made bad decisions and unleashed a vicious temper on anyone who even slightly contradicted him or what he wanted. He seemed unable to stick to plans that he or others set for himself and had trouble following social rules. He also didn't seem to care about what he said or how it would hurt people. Scientists later discovered that these changes were caused by damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. The reason he is so famous is because what happened to him is one of the first documented cases of severe brain injury. His case led scientists to confirm that psychopathology can result from brain damage, which may leave other brain functions, such as speech and movement, perfectly intact. It also inspired them to explore the frontal cortex of the brain, where they discovered where and why different behaviors are done by different people. It also led to the theory of brain localization, which has to do with the parts of the brain that have to do with specific functions and not all parts of the brain do the same thing. For example, the left frontal lobe is responsible for speech impediment and certain areas of the cerebral cortex make movement in different parts of the body. Brain lateralization, on the hand, has to do with the functions carried out only on the left or right hemispheres of the brain. For example, the right hemisphere controls movement on the left side of the brain, while the left hemisphere controls movement on the right side. Thanks to the fascinating case of Phineas Gage, scientists were able to come up with these two theories.

Hotly Debated Topics in the Nature/Nurture Debate

One of the most ongoing debated topics since the early 1800's is the topic of nature vs. nurture, or more recently referred to as Nature/Nurture. Nature/Nature poses the question where do you get your personality traits from? Did you inherit them from your parents or did you learn them due to the environment you were raised in? The trait I researched was intelligence, and how intelligent people become intelligent. Before I started my research I was convinced that intelligence came from nature and that smart people had just inherited it from their parents. But then I learned that with intelligence, like any other of the Nature/Nurture topics, it has to do with both, and not just one or the other.
The reason I was convinced that people inherited intelligence was because I thought about how intelligent people can come from any kind of environment, and be anyone on the planet. To follow this idea up with evidence, I read about a test that was done that separated a pair of twins at birth, and put them both up for adoption. Although both children were raised in different environments, it was proved that they had inherited the I.Q. of their birth mother, instead of their adopted one. After reading this I thought, if children can inherit their parent's eye color and nose, why can't they inherit their intelligence as well? For me, this was substantial evidence that intelligence mostly came from nature.
However, then I started researching the nurture side of the debate. At first I was very opposed to intelligence coming from nurture because I interpreted it as scientists saying that, for example, rich people were naturally smarter than poor people just because of their environment. But after researching a study that proved that a child gains 3.5 I.Q. points every school year if they go to a good school, this unfortunately proved that children that are better off have a higher I.Q. then children who are not so fortunate and are therefore smarter. After further research I discovered that although intelligence may vary according to different sitautions, for the most part a child who is taught the best material and pushed to succeed will come out into the world successful, which is substantial evidence for the nurture side of the debate. So, my research concludes that intelligence does indeed have to do with both nature and nurture.
However, you might be wondering if my opinion throughout the process has changed, and am I now in favor of nurture instead of nature. The answer is probably yes and no. I am definitely more in favor of the nurture side of the debate then before and I do agree that it plays a big role in raising a child's I.Q. and helping them be more successful in the world. But, stubbornly, I still belive that a child can inherit intelligence from any one member of his family and use that natural intelligence to rise up among the social classes and be just as successful as the child who was pressured to succeed. However rare it might be, it is often enough for me to conclude that there is an almost even tie between nature and nurture referring to which cause intelligence.
http://wilderdom.com/personality
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article
http://www.angryharry.com