Law of Effect and Operant Conditioning

Edward Thorndike:

1. Explain Thorndike's puzzle-box experiment.
Thorndike used a puzzle box and he substituted a foot-pedal so the research could be done with cats. If the animal stepped on the switch, the door of the cage opened.The cats at first did not have any idea how to escape to reach the food outside the cage. Eventually they stepped on the foot switch accidentally and the trap door opened. On succeeding trials, they operated the switch faster.

2. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Effect".
The law of effect was when his animals repeated a behavior that resulted in a "pleasing effect". He believed if the animal produced a behavior that produced a desirable effect, the animal would repeat the behavior and this time, faster.

3. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Exercise".
The law of exercise states that connections become strengthened with practice and when its not practiced, it weakens.

B.F. Skinner:

1. Explain Skinner's concept of Operant Conditioning.
The theory was about learning by consequences; about a increasing or decreasing hte behavior by reinforcement or punishment.

2. What does  reinforcement always do?
It helps the behavior to increase.

3. What does a punishment alsways do?
It helps the behavior to decrease.


4. Explain the difference between "postive" and "negative" as they are used in opernat conditioning.
Positive is when something is given to reinforce or punish and negative is when something is taken away to reinforce the behavior or punish it.


http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch08_animals/thorndikes_puzzle_box.html
http://tip.psychology.org/thorn.html
http://tip.psychology.org/skinner.html

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov:
1. What was Pavlov actually studying when he developed his theory of classical conditioning?
It was in 1904 when Pavlov won a noble prize for his work on studying digestive processes in dog. While he was in his study of  digestion he noticed in his dogs that every time one of his assitants entered their room, they salivated.
2. Explain (in detail) how Pavlov's experiment was conducted.
Pavlov noted that his dogs would begin to salivate when food and it smell was brought to them. He noticed that this was not due to a physiological process.Based on his observations, Pavlov suggested that the salivation was a learned response. The dogs were responding when they saw the researchers and assistants white lab coats which they related to food.
3. Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Pavlov's experiment.
Pavlov focused on investigating how these conditioning responses are learned or acquiered. He makes an experiment and uses food as the unconditioned stimulus, or the stimulus that brings to a response naturally and automatically. The sound of a metronome was chosen to be the neutral stimulus. The dogs would first be exposed to the sound of the ticking metronome, and then the food was immediately presented. So the unconditioned stimulus was the food, then the metronome which was chosen to be the neutral stimilus had become as the dog associates the metronome with food, to be the conditioned stimulus that provoked the conditioned response which was sthe salivation of the dog.
http://psychology.about.com/od/classicalconditioning/a/pavlovs-dogs.htm

4. Explain what extinction means in relation to classical conditioning.
Extinction occurs when a conditioned response decrease or disappear. This happens when a conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with an unconditioned stimulus
5. Explain what stimulus generalization means in relation to classical conditioning.
Stimilus generalization is when the conditioned stimulus revokes to similar responses from similar ojects to the conditiones stimulus itself.
6. Explain what stimulus discrimination means in relation to classical conditioning.
Discrimination  is being able to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that are similar to it.
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/classcondbasics.htm

7. Explain at least two limitations of this experiment.
The limitations are that he did the experiment only with dogs and it required a surgical procedure.

8. Explain what Pavlov theorized about how we learn.
He created the first learning theory which precedes the reinforcement learning theory. Classical conditioning does not include rewards and punishments which are key terms in the reinforcement learning theory. Classical conditioning is creating relationships by association.
http://www.psychologicalharassment.com/ivan_pavlov.htm


John B Watson:
1. Explain (in detail) how Watson's "Little Albert" study was conducted.
Little Albert was a 9month old baby that was chosen from a hospital for the study. He was given a battery of baseline emotional tests; the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc. He didn't show any fear at all.They begin to condition Little Albert until approximately two months later, when he was 11 months. The experiment began with putting Albert in a room with a table.A white rat was placed near him and he was allowed to play with it. He did not show any fear at all at the beggining but then  Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer when the baby touched the rat. Not surprisingly Albert showed fear and began to cry.

2. Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Watson's study.
white rat (original neutral stimulus, now conditioned stimulus)
the loud noise (unconditioned stimulus)
emotional response of crying and fear (originally the unconditioned response to the noise, now the conditioned response to the rat).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment
3. Explain at least two limitations of this study.
The limitations were that the experiment was made just in a child and not in a bigger kid, teenager or adult and that their was also other sound besides the one they made.

4. Explain Watson's law of frequency.
Stated that the more often two things are linked the association will be more powerful.
5. Explain Watson's law of recency.
Refers to the responds that have occured after a stimulus.
6. Explain the basic assumptions of behaviorism according to Watson.
According to him behavior can be reduced to its basic components.
 

Article #1
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215074351.htm

http://www.google.hn/imgres?imgurl=http://news.discovery.com/human/2010/06/09/sleepy-teen-278x225.jpg&imgrefurl=http://news.discovery.com/human/teens-school-start-times.html&usg=__AkiPEj1SfLXMQAmXHy0HGsW2jYw=&h=225&w=278&sz=27&hl=es&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=MsQeuHFboSv9DM:&tbnh=123&tbnw=155&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dearly%2Bschool%2Bstart%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26rlz%3D1T4ADBF_esHN310HN310%26biw%3D1003%26bih%3D519%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=664&vpy=114&dur=2823&hovh=180&hovw=222&tx=99&ty=202&ei=xR_XTMOYBMWclgfo_7yCCQ&oei=xR_XTMOYBMWclgfo_7yCCQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0

Study conducted by senior author Barbara Phillips, MD, director of the UK Healthcare Good Samaritan Sleep Center in Lexington, Ky.
A survey concerning the sleep habits of students was made after a change in school start times. In 1998 students filled out the first survey concerning their sleep habits in school nights and non-school nights. In 1999, students filled out the same survey. During year one, school times were during 7:30 to 8:00 and in the second year school times were during 8:30 to 9.
Their results were that because of the change in school start times, enabled students to get more sleep which decreased young teenagers auto accidents.
In my opinion this study is relevant because it demonstrates social pressure as well as school pressure give adolescents an inadequate and little amount of time of sleeping which cause big problems such as car accidents.

Article #2
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609072813.htm


http://www.google.hn/imgres?imgurl=http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/vox/media/all-nighter-main_Full.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/vox/2007/dec/18/duh-of-the-week-study-all-nighters-hurt-students-grades/&usg=__jsQSSicqIQc5KCnWW7mn9MAo5ZQ=&h=400&w=600&sz=33&hl=es&start=15&zoom=1&tbnid=EVmY3tOZ8DurJM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnight%2Bstudying%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26rlz%3D1T4ADBF_esHN310HN310%26biw%3D1003%26bih%3D519%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C88&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=384&vpy=273&dur=4477&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=148&ty=137&ei=xyXXTLf8HcL98AbVrPHOCw&oei=WCXXTJ-sD4SClAexk5z5Ag&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:15&biw=1003&bih=519

Lead author Jennifer Peszka, PhD, psychology department chair at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark.,
The study detected that students experience lack of sleep hygiene during their change from high school to college. It was based on data from 89 students with ages between 17 and 20 which were beginning their freshmen year and 34 of the students who were finishing their freshamn year in an arts college. The study states which were the negative effects in poor sleep which affected educated high school and college students.
They found a decline in the grade point average of students during the transition from high school to college. Results indicate that evening types had significantly lower first year college GPA (2.84) than morning and intermediate types (3.18). The evening type students had a greater lowering of their GPA in their transition from high school to college in concerning of the rest of their peers.
In my opinion, this study can make any teenager realize how sleeping issues really afect our grades and even though we got a lot to do for homework every night, we shouldn´t stay up that late doing our work because its really making it worst.

Article #3
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308121912.htm

http://www.google.hn/imgres?imgurl=http://portal.sochipe.cl/subidos/noticias/fotos/9344-genes-picture.jpg&imgrefurl=http://portal.sochipe.cl/modulos.php%3Fmod%3Dnoticias%26cat%3D25%26fn%3De21e678148e464378f367f5fd7ee4f54%26pag%3D5&usg=__yu-_EvTDFg-60CXEw2eml5jdEYE=&h=320&w=400&sz=14&hl=es&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=IH1QkHH7cT5xKM:&tbnh=123&tbnw=154&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgenes%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26rlz%3D1T4ADBF_esHN310HN310%26biw%3D1003%26bih%3D519%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=288&vpy=66&dur=967&hovh=201&hovw=251&tx=167&ty=124&ei=VyrXTMvYLoXGlQeimISBCQ&oei=VyrXTMvYLoXGlQeimISBCQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0

The study was reported by Antoine Viola, Derk-Jan Dijk, and colleagues at the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Center.
The study was used to compare how individuals that hade only the longer gene variant and those that had only the shorter one struggled on keeping themselves awake for 2 days, including the intervening night. The researchers found that although some individuals struggled to stay awake, others did not have any difficulty doing it.
The results came out very early in the morning, between 4 to 8 in the morning and justified that individuals with the larger variant of the gene had very poor results on tests for attention and working memories.
In my opinion, this study is helpful for someone who has or think that they might have a sleeping disorder
and want to know the cause of it but it also interests people to find out what gene of sleeping do they have according to the amount of sleeping they´ve been getting in their lives.

Teenage Brain

Parents do not understand their teenager sons or daughters, and they do not understand their parents. This is because the teenagers are having drastic changes on their body as in their brains, which brings to emotional problems. In the video I really learned that every thing that a teenager goes through, his change in mood, and their way of dealing with things are all the cause of the devolpement they are having on their brain because the brain is what mainly controls our emotions and actions. Another important characteristic that a teenager brain has is the way of thinking that they can do anything they want to and that it does not make any change if its very dangerous and could kill them. A teenager´s brain, is very different from what it was before as a kid and different but close to be how it is going to be as an adult just the same way it goes with puberty. A very important part of the brain being developed through our teenage years is the frontal lobe. A very important thing that helps us the teenagers to have a good development of our brains is too have good sleep but the problem is that all the activities,school work and any other important stuff does not allow a teenager to get the amount of sleep required every day(8 hours the least) so that makes things worst making the teenager have a more slow and uneasy way to learn new stuff for a good development of their brain.

http://neuroanthropology.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/leslie-cober-gentry-on-teen-brain-in-harvard-magazine-oct-08.png

How our brain works

The hempisheres in our brain  are the division of the cerebral cortex, the left and right sides of our brain which work together but have different areas of speciality; also known as brain lateralization. The differences between these two sides of our brain are that the left hemisphere specializes in analitical thought such as structures, discipline and rules, mathematics, categorizing, logic and rationalization, knowledge, etc., but controls the right side of our body therefore the right hempishere specializes on softer parts of life such as intuition, sensibility and fellings, emotions, day-dreaming, creativity in arts and music, relationships, etc., but controls the left side of our body.The corpus callosum is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers beneath the cortex in the eutherian brain at the longitudinal fissure. It connects the left and right hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication. It is the largest matter structure in the brain.

The Broca's area is a region of the "hominid" brain with its function is related to speech production.
The production of language  has been related to the Broca’s area since Pierre Paul Broca reported impairments in two patients. They had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior "inferior frontal gyrus" of the brain. Since then, this region he identified has become known as Broca’s area.

Wernicke's area named after Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist and psychiatrist,  is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex related to speech as the Broca´s area. It is involved in the understanding of written and spoken language. It is traditionally considered to consist of the posterior section of the "superior frontal gyrus" in the dominant cerebral hemisphere which is the left hemisphere in most of the people.

Roger Sperry was who, by the results of his studies, won a noble prize in physiology or medicine in 1981. He recieved this price for his concerning to the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres. With the help of his "split brain" patients he got thorugh some experiments and for he first time in history, accureate studies about the left and right hempisheres of the brain came out. The studies of the "split brain" demonstrated that the left and right hempisheres of the brain were functional in different tasks.
In the cerebral cortex which is the major part of our brain, there are 4 different lobes as there is the left and right hemispheres. These four lobes are the parietal, the frontal, temporal and occipital. The lobe thats responsible for vision and contains the primary visual cortex is the occipital lobe. Another lobe which is responsable for heraing and language is the temporal lobe which also contains the primary auditory cortex. Than, their is the parietal lobe which contains the primary somotosensory cortex and is responsible for performing math calculations as also responsible for information related to the sense of touch. The last lobe is the frontal lobe which contains the primary motor cortex which controls muscle movement and processes judgement, reasoning and impulse control. The left frontal lobe also contains the Broca´s area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca's_area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernicke%27s_area
http://nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background.html

Phineas Gage

Phineas Ggae was an American railroad construction foreman which had a famous accident that could have killed him but survived,  being remembered until today for this tragic accident. He was blasting rocks in Cavendish,Vermont in 1848 when a thirteen pount iron rod blew and traspassed directly through his head leaving him alive but with a hole on his head for the eleven years he had of life after this accident. It seemed like Gage had recovered from his acdicent and everything was going to be the same. He could walk, talk, work but still something in his head changed. His doctor said "Gage was no longer Gage"; before his accident he was well liked and got along well with the people that surrounded him but after this he became mean, rude and impossible to get along with easily. What is taken out from this accident that all of us have learned about is that the their are some parts of our brain that can be serverely damage but that does not mean we are going to die and that also, one of those parts of our brain is the frontal lobe which controls our emotions and personality and that it can be drastically changed if some part of the lobe damages or gets destroyed. The brain has something called localization of function. That means that every part of the brain is different and has different functions live for example vision, control of voluntary movement, language understanding. This might seem obious and logical for someone but also their are some organs, such as liver, that do not eshibit localization of function. Brain lateralization is the same thing as brian localization. It is where both sides of your brain are not identical and have different roles and specialized functions.

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

http://desdeelmanicomio.blogspot.com/2009/07/phineas-gage-el-hombre-que-cambio-de.html

http://agelessmarketing.typepad.com/ageless_marketing/2006/01/an_aging_societ.html

http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch02_human_nervous_system/phineas_gage.html

Intelligence in Nature vs Nurture

The nature vs. nurture debate in psychology is the ideas of how humans intelligence, personality and athletic ability are determined as well as homosexuality or criminal behavior. Intelligence is a very important characteristic of a human individual and their is no complete answer of what the causes of the level of intelligence someone has are as if they are developed because of the environment(nature) or their genetics(nurture). I believe that all of these are caused by both genetics and environment. For example, someone can be intelligent because their parents are too and someone can have a normal level of intelligence as anyone else but being in a great school with a high educational level or also being very intelligence but not having the opportunity to show the world their intelligence or to develop it if they do not receive any good education.


According to the research made, psychologists attribute both nature and nurture to the level of intelligence an individual has. On the genetics side, a great deal of adoptive study has provided evidence of a certain amount of genetic which influence our intelligence. Using studies that involved twins separated at birth, and those separated and adopted, psychologists were now able to get rid with many of the undetermined theories and ideas that had previously caused other studies to fall apart. Studies say that adopted children are more common to have the same or around the same level of intelligence or IQ of his or her biological mother and not of the adoptive mother. This indicates to us that nurture is more involved; this study showed that genes do affect our intelligence and it is not only our environment that measures our level of capacity. Even though studies say to us genes are already a great part of our intelligence, it is still not sure because yet, researchers have not been able to identify which genes are that affect our intelligence; but this also does not mean that they are not their. We can also look to the brain for in relation to our intelligence. Although our intelligence has only a little amount of relation to our brain size, it does affect it. What has been seen also is that certain areas of the brain also influence intelligence. The part of the brain that relates to specific intelligence areas are spatial intelligence or mathematical intelligence, have been shown to affect quite a bit in intelligence. For example in a specific part of Albert Einstein´s brain relating to spatial intelligence was found to be larger and this is attributed to higher intelligence.

In conclusion what it is believed is that both genetics and environment play a roll in an individual´s intelligence, but still we can see from the research made that from what psychologists have found out from the studies made is that genetics is very important in our intelligence but that our environment help us develop that intelligence that we inherit from our parents or any other ancestors of our family tree.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/267545/nature_vs_nurture_and_intelligence.html?cat=25

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_Adoption_Income.gif

http://scienceaid.co.uk/psychology/approaches/images/twins.png