Edward Thorndike and B.F. Skinner

Edward Thorndike:

1. Explain Thorndike's puzzle-box experiment.

Thorndike put an animal in a box and the animal had to get out of the box to get to the food. The animal would try different things and all of them would fail. Then, the animal would accidentally find the way out. On next trials the animal would find the way out faster and faster.

2. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Effect".

It states that the animals tend to do something again when that thing gives them pleasing results.
3. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Exercise".

It states that stimulus response associations are strengthened through repetition.

B.F. Skinner:

1. Explain Skinner's concept of Operant Conditioning

It states that the behavior is based on past behaviors and its consequences.

2. What does reinforcement always do?

It makes the behavior occur with more frequency.

3. What does a punishment always do?

It causes behavior to occur less frequently.

4. Explain the difference between "positive" and "negative" as they are used in operant conditioning.

Positive reinforcement is when there is a reward for a behavior and negative reinforcement is when there is a removal of an unpleasant stimulus. Positive punishment is when something unpleasant is added to decrease the frequency of the behavior. Negative punishment is removing something desired to decrease the frequency of the behavior.

Ivan Pavlov and John Watson

Pavlov’s Eperiment

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist. He first studied the digestive systems in animals. Pavlov was then interested in learning how the reactions of animals in some situations worked. He wanted to know if he could make a dog salivate without the presence of food. He first gave the dog food, which made him salivate. Then, he gave the dog food and rang a bell. After a few times doing this, the dog started drooling when the bell ringed, even if food was not present. The conditioned stimulus was the bell, the unconditioned stimulus was the food and the conditioned response was the salivation of the dog. Extinction is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the conditional response tendency. This occurs when the conditioned stimulus happens too many times without the unconditioned stimulus. Stimulus discrimination is learning to respond to one stimulus and not another one. Pavlov had to change the route of the salivary glands and that the results of this experiment could be different with humans. Pavlov theorized that we learned through association.

John Watson

John Watson made an experiment that proved behaviors on humans. He used Little Albert and he exposed him to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc. Two months later, Little Albert was placed near a laboratory rat and he was allowed to play with it. Little Albert was not scared. While he was playing with the rat, Watson and his assistant made a loud noise by striking a steel bar. After this, Little Albert cried and showed fear. When he was shown a rat or something close to a rat, even Watson’s white hair, he would be scared. The conditioned stimulus of the experiment was the white rat, the unconditioned stimulus was the loud noise, and the conditional response was Little Albert crying. The limitations of this experiment were that it was unethical and that it was never done again. The law of frequency states that the most often events are linked, the more powerful will be the association. The law of recency states that the response that has most recently occurred after a particular stimulus is the response most likely to be associated with that stimulus. Watson believed behaviorism was almost all of psychology since he believed that psychology was the study of human behavior. He believed that he could turn someone into whatever he wanted if he controlled his behavior.

http://nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/readmore.html

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/psychbeginnings.html

http://www.mysdcc.sdccd.edu/Staff/Instructor_Development/Content/HTML/Laws_of_Learning.htm

http://www.ftrbooks.net/psych/behaviorism/behaviorism.htm

Sleep Studies

Delayed School Start Time Associated With Improvements in Adolescent Behaviors

This document is part of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine in which Judith A. Owens and some of her colleagues studied a high school in Rhode Island. They were seeing if a change in start time in school would do any difference to the performance in the school of the students. They were allowed to do this in a high school in Rhode Island. They changed the start time from 8:00 AM to 8:30 AM. The results of this experiment were incredible. Students getting less than seven hours of sleep a night was decreased amazingly by a 19.4 percent. Students who thought themselves depressed or unhappy decreased also from 65.8% to 45.1%. Also the percent of students who felt annoyed or irritated throughout the day decreased from 84% to 62.6%. I believe that if this change in time would be done in our school many things would change significantly. I would prefer to wake up later in the morning since we are more willing to learn than waking up at a normal time. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100705190532.htm

http://satnexschool.isti.cnr.it/images/School%20Bus%20-%20Cartoon%207.jpg

Why Does Lack of Sleep Affect Us Differently? Study Hints It May Be in Our Genes

The study that was carried away by Namni Goel, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia says that there is a gene that has to do with the way lack of sleep affects us. They decided to test 92 adults without the gene DQB1*0602 and 37 adults with that gene. They will give them two nights in which they will sleep ten hours and five nights in which they will sleep for only 4 hours. The adults with the gene were more sleepier and tired than those who did not have the gene. They also woke up more times than those without the gene. I believe that this gene would be an explanation of why some people sleep more than others but still are more fatigued than those who slept less.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101025161023.htm 

http://www.memoryfoampillowblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/therapeutic-pillows.jpg

Being A Night Owl In High School Is Linked With Lower College GPA

Jennifer Peszka, from the Hendrix College made a research with her colleagues on if being awake until late hours will affect your GPA. The study was done to 89 students from 17 to 20 years old who were ready to start their freshman year in college. 34 others were tested as they finished their freshman year. An average GPA for a night owl is of 2.84 in the first year in comparison to the ones who were not, which had 3.18. I believe that sleeping late will have some effect in your grades whatsoever. Sleep is very important and you cannot stop sleeping what you need to sleep well to be performing at normal levels.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609072813.htm

http://lindseypollak.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/report_card_1.gif

Teenage Brain

The teenage brain is changing extraordinarily fast in those years. When kids get to teenage years they change completely. They want their parents out of their lives and their frontal cortex is developing fast. Most of the teenagers do not know a thing about this. Scientists say that the brain, as muscles, grows when it is used frequently, if not it weakens. The scientists are encouraging teenagers to work with their brains daily so it can develop fully and perfectly. Teenagers are characterized for being one minute grumpy and the other joyfully active. These changes in mood happen frequently during teenage years. These mood changes are part of the development. Adults do not understand the reasons because teenagers think completely different from what adults think. Teenagers believe their parents are only there to bug them and make their lives impossible. On the other hand parents believe everything teenagers do is an act of rebellion against their house rules.  One of the major problems with teenagers nowadays is that they do not get enough hours of sleep every day. Sleep is incredibly important for the development of the brain and for better results and grades in the school grounds. Tests have shown that teenagers with more sleep get better at tasks they do. The teenage brain is a brain that only teenagers could understand, but will get to develop fully in these years.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/teenage-brain-3.jpg

Brain Functions

The word hemisphere refers to one side of the brain, either the left or right side.People refers to the left hemisphere of the brain as the boring side since it controls things like your speech. It also controls the right side of the body and its sensations and the right side of the vision. The right hemisphere controls music and art appreciation as well as drawing ability. It also controls the left part of the body and its sensations as well of the left side of the vision. The corpus callosum is a bundle of nerve fibers found in the brain. These nerve fibers connect the left and right hemispheres. It is composed of white matter. Paul Broca studied the brain of a person with speech impairment after his death. He learned that this patient had a lesion on his left hemisphere due to syphilis. Broca’s Area controls speech production, language processing, language comprehension, and facial neurons. Roger Sperry studied both of the hemispheres of the brain in this experiment with some epileptic people. The study made us know for sure that both hemispheres had different tasks. We realized what we know now and that the right side cannot be disconnected from the left side. Karl Wernicke’s work is very similar to Paul Broca’s. Although Wernicke found out those problems with language comprehension came from another part of the left hemisphere. This part of the brain is now called Wernicke’s area. The lobe responsible for vision is the occipital lobe. For hearing and language the temporal lobe is the one responsible. For math calculations and judgment, reasoning and impulse you use the frontal lobe.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-corpus-callosum.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-brocas-area.htm

http://nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background.html
http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~bbrown/psyc1501/brain/loclat.htm

Phineas Gage

Phineas Gage was maybe the most famous person to have severe brain damage. He was born July 9, 1823 and died May 21, 1860. Phineas was a railroad construction worker. He was working on putting dynamite in holes to destroy huge rocks in order to construct the railroad. He worked with a tamping iron which was 3 feet 7 inches long and weighed 13 ½ pounds. An accident occurred one day. Some of the dynamite he had placed exploded when he was putting it in the hole with his tamping iron. This explosion made the tamping iron burst out of the hole and with point first into the cheekbone of Phineas. The tamping iron went through his left cheekbone and into the left frontal lobe and continued to fly about 30 feet away from him. This injury, which seemed fatal, did not kill him, but changed his personality drastically. The people who knew him realized that he was then very angry and with a very short patience. He then became an aggressive man and could not retain his job for long. Concerning his friends, they said Gage was no longer himself. By studying the case of Phineas Gage, scientists discovered that the brain had different parts that have different functions.  Brain localization is a theory in which scientists say that different parts of the brain control different functions. Brain lateralization is another theory that contradicts brain localization and states that the brain has two sides that control different actions and not different parts of the brain controlling different actions.

http://www.suite101.com/content/the-amazing-case-of-phineas-gage-a97002

http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/Pgstory.php

http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~bbrown/psyc1501/brain/loclat.htm

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http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/images/PgIron.JPG

Criminal Behavior

The nature vs. nurture debate has been present for many years in the world of psychology. The scientists have wondered how the human being works. Does it get all of its abilities genetically? Or does the human being learn to do it because of its environment? These questions are posted without any knowledge of who really is right and who is not. I believe that the human being gathers both from the genetics and the environment. I believe that we must inherit something from our parents that is not physical. But I also think that we as kids develop these ideas and new ones brought to us. We may forget some hereditary things if we stop practicing or doing them and this may have influence in what we do and like to do. Criminal behaviors I believe are part of what we see every day and what we learn from our parents and close friends. Most people that are criminals come from a broken family or have a record of being assaulted or have seen some violence when small. There is said that there are many reasons to why criminals do what they do. One of them is antisocial behavior. Children and people who are antisocial are more likely to be involved in criminal acts that lead to incarceration. This antisocial behavior could be hereditary or it could not. Also, some studies prove that adoptions might have an influence on how children behave and if they are possible criminals. The adoption of a child takes away the nature part from him. But researches tell that if a child’s parent was a criminal it is likely for him to be also. The environmental factor applies to many of the criminals today. Families that have weak bonds and poor communication make a child have more probabilities to have an aggressive and criminal behavior. Also families in extreme poverty, lack of education, and a broken home will most likely have a child with tendencies to react violently and do criminal acts. Statistics say that a child who was neglected or abused at their home has fifty percent more chances to become antisocial or a criminal. What some scientists say that affects a lot is age. Age only affects a criminal when they are kids because they have to bear with the family and the environment they are in. When they grow up they can decide in which environment they would rather live in. In many schools there are kids who are outcasts for various reasons. These kids are bullied and will probably be bullied in the future. This will make them react sometimes violently when they have the chance. It is also said that personality traits correlate to how criminals act. Psychologist, Eysenck, said that criminals normally have low arousal levels and this causes them to search for arousals themselves. This may be by violence itself. In conclusion, the nature vs. nurture debate seems to never end, especially in the criminal behavior aspect. Criminals perhaps have genes that make them want to search for violence or genes that make them violent. Or criminals might as well be born normal but because of the family and environment they were raised at, they turned into criminals. I believe a criminal is made partly by nature and partly by nurture. Each criminal has a special case, but there cannot be one without the other.
http://www.deviantcrimes.com/nature_nurture.htm


http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/jones.html

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b394/capitalx/X%20myspace/Handcuffed.jpg

http://www3.crk.umn.edu/academics/elements/images/ahss/criminaljustice_violator.png