Edward Thorndike believed that to learn you should do trial and error. He made the puzzle box experiment which consisted of putting a cat in a puzzle box to see how it behaved and what would the cat do to escape and get food. Thorndike explains what he learned with the “Law of Effect” which was that the animals would repeat what gave them a good effect; they did that because they associated and that gave them a good result. He also came up with the “Law of Exercise” which said that practice would give you strength and that if you stopped practicing you would get weaker. Operant conditioning was reinforcement and punishment changed our behavior. What reinforcement does is increase behavior. What the punishment does is for behavior to occur less. Positive reinforcement is better than punishment in altering behavior, punishment was not simply the opposite of positive reinforcement.
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch08_animals/thorndikes_puzzle_box.html
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Pavlov and Watson
Ivan Pavlov
Pavlov was studying how he could make a dog salivate without the presence of food when he developed his theory of classical conditioning. He conducted his experiment by first ringing a bell and immediately after giving food to the dog so the dog got used to it and even before the food was present and the bell rang, the dog started to salivate. The conditioned stimulus used was the bell, the food was the unconditioned stimulus and the salivation of the dog was the response. Extinction was predicted by Darwin in his theory of evolution and it means that organisms of the same specie start to die and there are more death rates than birth rates so the specie sooner or later comes to an end. Extinction happens when the unconditional stimulus does not happen that much with the conditioned stimulus. The response to specific stimuli is stimulus generalizations and in the other hand, learning to respond to a specific stimulus is stimulus discrimination. One limitation that the experiment had was that it could work differently with other humans and the dog was operated so he was not a good example. What Pavlov theorized was responding conditioning and the learning by association.
John B. Watson
Watson studied “Little Albert” by showing furry animals like a white rat to him to see how he reacted but he did not do anything so he then made loud noises when he showed the animals so then the baby became afraid of them and cried when he saw one. The white rat is the conditioned stimulus of the experiment, the loud noise the unconditional stimulus, and as a response they had Little Albert crying. The limitations of this experiment were that it was unethical, only one child was used, and it was never done again. Watson’s law of frequency has to do with association, the more often things are linked, the more association there will be. The law of recency is that what happens more recently will be more associated and remembered because it’s more recent. Watson stated that behaviorism had everything to do with psychology and is determined by how people act and what is around them.
class notes on chart
Monday, November 1, 2010
sweat dreams
High School Students With A Delayed School Start Time Sleep Longer, Report Less Daytime Sleepiness
Mary B. O'Malley, MD, PhD, The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
What this article states is that a study as made about the time that students enter school; the earlier they entered the more they would fall asleep in school but if they entered a little bit after the students would be very active. This happened because students need more sleep to work better, at least 9 hours of sleep. As your age changes the time needed of sleep varies but for students it’s around 9 hours.
I believe that this article is very truthful because in the experiences I have had I work much better when I wake up later than normal, when I wake up to early I fell I do not work well because I am sleepy. Schools should take this in consideration; have late starts at least once a week to see if they see a change in the students.
Delayed School Start Time Associated With Improvements in Adolescent Behaviors
Judith A. Owens, M.D., M.P.H., of the Hasbro Children's Hospital, Dr. Wahlstrom, The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by JAMA and Archives Journals.
To make the study of this article they made a late start to school in which the students would get more rest and more sleep. By doing this, they discovered that the behavior of the students changed a lot. The students were happier, not mad, and better health; the late start definitely benefited the students.
I agree with this article because of many reasons. First of all, when people don’t get enough sleep they are grumpy and mad because they want more time to sleep, that happens to me when I go to sleep to late and in the morning I am mad because I want to sleep more. Relating to health, if we don’t get enough sleep we fell very tired and feel we have no forces to do anything so that’s why we need to sleep well to feel good.
Being A Night Owl In High School Is Linked With Lower College GPA
Jennifer Peszka, PhD, psychology department chair at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
In this article they talk about at what time do the students make their homework and how does it affect their grades. They found out that the later in the day the students they do their work, the lower their grades or GPA for college will be.
In my opinion, students who do their homework late at night get lower grades because they get less sleep and they need to sleep to function correctly and be active. At school the students need to be full of energy to do their work correctly. So the earlier you do your work, I agree it’s the better.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The teenage brain
It has been discovered that adolescents need lots of sleep because in that way their learning is easier, they partcipate more in the classroom, they are full of ideas, have more creativity and are full of energy all day long. If they dont get enough sleep what could also happen is that they will feel sleepy in the morning and falling asleep everywhere they are even standing but as the day goes by they will have more and more energy and stop feeling so tired.The average time an adolsent need of sleep is around 9 hours which is more than what a child needs. Teenagers who get more sleep act faster, get better grades, and understand easier what is happening. Having a routine makes the peoples lifes easier by going to bed at the same time always and getting up so that the body gets used to it and works correctly. Its better if sports are played eariler in the morning than at night. Many people have problems when they try to wake them up because they are still sleepy so they get mad to their parents or the person waking them up, this is most commonly seen in teenagers.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
How our brain works
The brain is an organ that has two halves which are called hemispheres. Each hemisphere has different functions. The left and the right sides of the brain are very different. The left side is logical, analytic, rational, objective, deals with reality, and looks at specific parts. In the other hand, the right brain is random, intuitive, subjective, crative, and looks at wholes not at details. The left and right hemispheres are connected and communicate by the corpus callosum which are lots of nerve fibers that are found in the brains of mammals and is composed by white matter. Paul Pierre Broca was a french physician, anatomist, and anthropolisgt born in 1824 and died in 1880. He became famous for discovering the center of speech which was named “Broca area” in his name for discovering it and for discovering many other things in brain localizations and various functions. His discoveries helped a lot for medical information. In the 1960s, Roger Sperry discovered that the ability to talk came from to specfic parts from the left brain. He won a price for dicovering it and he named it “Slit brain” which means that the corpus callosum is damaged a needs an operation; one side of the brain cant feel what is happening on the other. Carl Wernicke was a German physicia, anatomist, psychiatrist, and neuropathologist born in 1848 and died in 1905. After Broca discovered the “Broca Area” he started to investigate more about it and foud out that if the left posterior part of the brain is damaged it can cause problems in language comprehensions so in his name that part is now called the “Wernicke´s areas”. The lobe which is the most responsible for vision is the occipital lobe. The temporal lobe is the lobe incharged of hearing and language. For math calculations you use and also judgemet, reasoning, and impulse control you use the frontal lobe. The brain has so many functions that it is interesting to learn about each one of them.
Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage was an American who lived from 1823 through 1860. He worked in the construction of the railroad and became famous at age 25 after surviving an incredible accident in which an iron rod passed through his left cheek bone and frontal lobe of his brain, it then went out of his head completely. After that terrible accident happened to him his personality and behavior change completely to a very bad and mean one which made him lose his friends and live the rest of his life alone, this happened because his frontal lobe was damaged. Although it was an awful accident that could have caused him his death it was very useful for medical information and studies because they could notice that the personality had to do with the front part of the brain which is an interesting fact. It was unbelievable how his life changed, he used to be a good and friendly person but unfortunately he became all the opposite. Every part of the brain carries a different and important function. Some of the brain functions are the abilities to see, hear, talk, plan, understand, how to control hunger, thirst, and regulate the emotions. Any small injury that happens to the head is very delicate because the brain is there so it should always be checked by a doctor if not, it could change a life completely, just like it happened to Phineas Gage and his strange reaction because of his accident. It is amazing that he survived after that accident that happened to him.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Criminal Behavior
Their a various topics debated in Nature vs Nurture just as homosexuality, athletic ability, intelligence, personality, criminal behavior which is very serious, and many others. These topics are debated to see if the human bodies al already born with things because they have it in their genes like their parents or grandparents or if you change because of the environment you live on. I strongly believe that criminal behavior is one of those topics debated which has a great importance and it often occurs because of many reasons. In my personal opinion, I believe that both nature and nurture have to do with it but the one who influences the most is nurture because criminals are responsible for their own acts and they should change it makes them no good. As it is known pregnant women who drink or smoke may cause serious damages in the baby and one of them could be that the baby grows to be a criminal. That would be the mothers fault and that is an incorrect thing to do, she should love her baby because its hers and should take care of it although it is still not born, the baby has a life since it is created. What I think that affects the most on the human body is the environment in which the person lives on. Where do they live, with how do they live, do they have any friends and who are them, how do people around them treat them, are they bullied or do they bully other people, etc. If a kid grows up being treated in a very bad way by their parents meaning that they are yelled at too much, hitten, abused, in between others they are most likely to do the same with their own kids or even other innocent human beings because they did not have a good example so it may become a non stopping cycle by the parents giving it to their sons and daughters and so on. Many of this kids end up in jail because they tend to treat people badly or even kill them with no reason, they are most likely not under control and that is why they do it. In my opinion, if a person is treated badly I think that the best idea is to communicate it to another person they trust and they can help them to feel better but most of the people are afraid of telling others what happens to them and they think that killing or making other feel bad will make them feel better. Not only parents treat their kids bad, it might have been that at school or another activity somebody sexually abused them which caused them a serious trauma and when they get big they do the same that was done to them maybe because they want others to feel what they felt, just as revenge, or simple for no reason. It is also said by sources that when you are a baby and they shake your head that hurts your brain and it becomes damaged so that can also make you become a criminal. Those are some of the reasons why I believe that nurture has to do more with criminal behavior than nature although both have to do.http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/jones.html
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