Author: tuh92

Pavlov’s experiments related to Conditioning stimuli to expect an outcome based on something else. For example, whenever a dog is fed, the owner would feed the dog. Thus resulting in every time the dog hears that same pitched bell, he expects food and then his mouth salivates. Another example of this is when Jim conditions Dwight to expect an Altoid every time Jim’s computer boots up by offering him an Altoid every time he turns on his computer. This causes Dwight to reach out his hand expecting an Altoid when the computer was turned on but Jim did not offer one to him.

I feel like this happens a lot in a person’s everyday life. For example, every time I ate dinner last semester, I would have a glass of iced tea after. One time I was out of tea and my body was very confused as to why a certain trained result was not happening. Another personal example is whenever I am home, my dog knows exactly what time she is supposed to eat, and then gets excited and starts jumping up and down when that time arrives. She obviously is expecting food at this time and has visible tells that show this.

These two experiences are related because both of the experiences share a pattern of actions that then have another action that follows it. Because of this, they are examples that help prove Pavlov’s experiments were real and factual. It is possible to classically condition someone to expect a result from a non related stimuli. Based on these test, I am interested to try and condition someone to expect something based on a completely non related not without them knowing. I think that it would be very fascinating to see if it worked and could lead to an interesting conversation about the process taken and if the subject noticed the conditioned response happening

Piaget has four stages of cognitive development that he developed. The age ranges for these stages are birth to 2 years old, 2 years old to 6/7 years old, 7 to 11 years old, and 12 years old to adulthood. For the first stage, a person experiences the world through sense. The infant really can only comprehend looking, touching, mouthing, and grasping. Stage two become more complex as words and images start to have logical reasoning and meaning. In the third stage, a person starts to think more logically about concrete events. The person also starts grasping concrete analogies and performing basic arithmetic. Lastly, the person starts understanding the world as we all do today with abstract reasoning and logic.

In my life, I can remember some of when I switched from each stage to the next, but also have watched younger cousins grow up and graduate from one stage to another. I obviously can not remember anything about my first stage as I was an infant, but I have watched the transition of my cousins from crawling and exploring different shapes, to grasping different objects to experience texture, and looking at everything around them. The most common example for my cousin, is that she would always stare at the ceiling fan wherever she was.

In the next stage, I am able to relate my own life to the words on the page. I remember vaguely events that happened. I remember what our house looked like, specific images of places I was, but not necessarily events that happened there. I do remember one event that I had a strong emotional reaction to which is why it stayed in my memory until today. In stage three, I start to remember more concrete events that happened, but not as many details still. I remember going on vacation to the beach and building an amazing sand castle that  was so proud of. Also around this time I started performing and learning beginner math concepts which fits in with Piaget’s theory.

In the last stage of the theory, we are all living in now. The way we contemplate situations, current events, conversations that we have, all shows that our mind has matured and is now capable of so much more. I am also wondering if this last stage continues to advance in complexity as we age forever, or if we stay the same after a certain point. I would assume that we always are becoming more complex based off of experiences that we have and people that we meet.

An African man hands me a dull knife and asks me to slaughter a chicken. I am one of six students on a Global education trip in Malawi. I am having an opportunity to cook a meal with a local family.

Before my chicken’s moment of truth, we bussed to the market and met our African hostess, Tiwonge. There were stands packed with vegetables and fruits, along with the coveted butchered goat hanging from the top branch.  I heard music and the chatter of all the shoppers.

Tiwonge led us from table to table, where we purchased tomatoes, onions, and my chicken, struggling to free its wings from my arms. Only after the van had been completely loaded for the drive to the village did the driver relieve me of the bird, dropping it into a bucket.

Once in the village, we walked to twelve shaved tree limbs, supporting a roof made of leaves where we were to cook. Underneath, there was a bamboo cooking mat where we chopped vegetables, shredded lettuce, and ground the salt and pepper.

When the time to kill the Chickens arrived, Tiwonge’s husband Frederick marched toward the killing spot holding a knife. I cringed, as he dug the hole for the blood, plucked the feathers on the neck with quick precision, and sawed his chicken’s throat with a firm and steady grip. This was the first time I had witnessed an animal slaughtered. He then handed me the old, rusty piece of metal used as a knife, and I knew what he was about to ask me to do.

I panicked inside, thinking of Peeps and Nugget, our family’s Buffed Cochin and Rhode Island Red, buried on our family farm next to our other pets.

I snapped back into reality, still questioning whether to kill the chicken or hand the knife back to the man. Would that be disrespectful? The decision became clear when I looked at the children sitting around watching us. They were staring at the birds with hungry eyes.

All of a sudden, I was looking at the world through their eyes. I thought about having fat chickens at home that gave us fresh eggs, and treating them as pets because we could buy our packaged meat at the store. I stared down at the chicken now in my hands, and then back at the children. I started cutting.

During this day, I had vast emotions that occured many times, changed rapidly, and were very severe. This day consisted of lots flares by the Limbic System, caused by fear. I was also very anxious at one to do because my amygdala was being very hyperactive when I was handed the knife. But by then end of the day I had settled with feeling empathy from the children looking longingly at the chicken in my hands caused by my supramarginal gyrus. Throughout the course of this day, I went from scared, to anxious, to empathetic. It truly is so interesting to look at what these emotions do to our brain and how they effect us in different ways internally.