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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.

Conformity is defined as changing your behavior to match other people’s behaviors. For example, a common example of conformity is when you’re with a group of friends and they decide to drink and drive. Even though you know it’s not safe, you agree to drink and drive with them because of the fear of being excluded from the group. Another example that is currently happening in today’s world is the use of vapes. I feel as if people get influenced by their friends and conform to what they’re doing. People end up buying their own vapes to fit in with their friends even though they were most likely not thinking of even getting one. Group pressure and conformity can be seen throughout the world, mainly occurring through younger generations. Conformity is often exhibited when a person doesn’t want to be the ‘odd one out’ in the group and doesn’t want to go against the group. Group pressure is similar to conformity and they often go hand-in-hand. Group pressure is when a person feels influenced by a group to do certain things they feel uncomfortable doing, but they do it to agree with their peers.

A personal example of conformity and group pressure is when I was back in highschool. There was a big party that all my friends were going to and I wasn’t comfortable to go because I didn’t know many of the people there. Although I wasn’t comfortable to go, I ended up going because I didn’t want to upset my friends.

As described above, group pressure and conformity go hand in hand. You can see that in my situation I agreed to go somewhere I didn’t have no intention of going. Also, another thing to realize is the reason why I also agreed on going to that party. I agreed to going to that party because of my friends and their opinion on me. I didn’t want them to think different about me and I was trying to please them. Overall, after taking this class I can now realize how conformity and group pressure play a role in today’s society.

social facilitation occurs when an individual performs a task better when others are around. This was first discovered by Norman Triplett in 1898. He had a cyclist race against another cyclist and then he had a cyclist race against the clock. He realized the cyclist rode faster when he was competing against someone else. In this situation, the cyclist rode faster due to himself being competitive. This is the co-action effect, where the task performance was increased when someone else alongside is performing the same task.

Another way that can increase an individual’s performance is when there are people watching the individual doing it. This phenomenon is called the audience effect. Dashiell found in 1933 that the subject’s multiplication skills increased when there were audience spectating. He was able to complete more equations when others are watching him. This only works when someone who’s performing the task is good at it in the first place; if the individual is bad at some task, and an audience is watching, the individual’s performance may actually decrease. This is called social loafing.

Social facilitation happens to me all the time. When I was in my high school varsity basketball team, we have to face people who are performing the same task while an audience is watching. This means both co-action and audience effect are taking place.  I have been playing this sports for a long time so naturally, my performance increased in games. I get really competitive as I want to be the best on the court and I also get really excited and wants to play harder when the there is a huge crowd. I remember playing in the Jr. NBA finals where I was playing in front of the biggest crowd I’ve seen, and I played my best basketball in that game.

 

 

Dashiell, J. F. (1935). Experimental studies of the influence of social situations on the behavior of individual human adults.

 

Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. The American journal of psychology, 9(4), 507-533.

 

Adolescence is the time period between childhood and adulthood, where adolescents begin to start thinking more deeply about life’s experiences. Beginning around puberty, the neurons in the adolescent brain begin forming more connections and speeding up neural pathways. As they go through more life experiences, they begin growing in social awareness and different levels of morality. For the first time, they begin to really think about what others think about them and how they are viewed from others. Adolescents typically go through 3 stages of morality: preconventional- showing morality to gain reward, conventional morality- following social laws and rules for own sake, and post conventional morality- the following of one’s own ethical principles. Adolescents typically begin to form an identity as well, after trying out different roles.

Learning and understanding about my own personal adolescence interests me. I realized the silly things I used to get upset over when I was a younger teen are most likely due to hormonal surges and the limbic system. Also, during adolescence I grew self conscious like my other teenagers, which can be due to the “imaginary audience” we perceive. Also, I went through many “phases” as an adolescent, until I became comfortable with who I was. I also realized how much I grew to depend on my friendships and grow closer to my peers.

Taste aversion is a fascinating psychological and physiological phenomenon that combines an organisms’ biological disposition with classical conditioning. In this case, an organism becomes nauseous, or disgusted even by the smell of a food that they once became ill after eating. The illness  does not have to have been due to the food as long as it followed consuming that particular food or drink. This is a version of classical conditioning where the food or drink becomes a conditioned stimulus, that triggers the illness as a conditioned response. Before this occurs, the illness is a natural, unconditioned response to either a virus, or another natural and unconditioned stimulus.  I have become very familiar with taste aversion, and can no longer smell cheetos without wanting to throw up. How did such a strange taste aversion occur? One night as a freshman my friends and I decided to see who could eat the most cheetos in a single sitting. (One of us had too many meal ponits). During this time I was feeling slightly unwell and was in the early stages of the Penn State plague. Regardless of this I ate about three family sized bags of cheetos. Later that evening I became quite ill.  In this case, the cheetos acted as an unconditioned stimulus that induced an unconditioned response of illness. However, I associated that feeling of illness with the taste of the powdered cheese. This process had made the smell of cheetos into a conditioned stimulus that triggers nausea, a now conditioned response. Note that there were many other stimuli during that evening that I could have associated with my illness, but my biological predisposition for the connection between taste and nausea took precedence.

Interference is a phenomenon commonly seen in those whose memories overlap or attempt to learn similar subjects, such as romance languages. It can also be as common as recalling the wrong concepts than the one you intended to.  Interference has many forms, but is mainly seen in proactive and retroactive interferences. This is where information learned earlier interferes with information learned later, and information that was learned later on interferes with information learned earlier, respectively. This is a testament to how the brain making memories is a constructive process rather than a one-time recording. Memories can be changed and emphasized over time much like a book being written. While remarkable this constructive has pitfalls in that we tend to filter or fill in the gaps of our memories with little to no regard for accuracy. This is the origin of effects like interference, retrieval failure and the misinformation effect.

I have personally noted the effects of interference when attempting to learn multiple romance languages. As a junior in high school I had studied French for about seven years, making recalling it almost as automatic as English. However, I ruined this by attempting to learn Italian as well. On a major French exam, I remember writing what I thought was a cohesive, and well written essay, only to find out later that I had written the entire paper in (very poor) Italian.   This is a prime example of retroactive interference, where information learned later overlaps and interferes with information learned earlier. This effect was probably amplified by the fact that I studied both languages often, and back to back during my day causing my brain to mix the two together. Interference is an interest subset of retrieval failure in that the brain mixes up what concept it is supposed to recall. I was unable to recall french because my retrieval systems “thought” that the italian encoded in my memory was french.

Anxiety Disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by feelings of significant anxiety. Anxiety is a worry about future events. There are 5 types of Anxiety Disorders: Anxiety, GAD, Panic Disorder, Phobia, OCD.

Anxiety is feelings of excessive or unrealistic anxiety or fearfulness. Some triggers for anxiety could be speaking in public, parties and social interactions, etc. Anxiety can cause eating disorders, shyness, panic attacks etc.

GAD is Generalized Anxiety Disorder. GAD is persistent and uncontrollable tenseness and apprehension (for 6 months or more), and autonomic arousal. People with GAD are unable to identify or avoid the cause of their feelings.

Panic Disorder is minute-long episodes of intense dread and may include feelings of terror, chest pains, choking or other frightening sensations. Anxiety is a large component in Panic Disorder. This causes people to avoid certain situations instead of leading a normal life.

Phobia is a persistent and irrational fear of a specific thing. Here’s some of the many phobias.

OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD is the persistence of unwanted thoughts and urge to engage in senseless rituals that cause distress. Some people must unplug a microwave 10 times before they leave a room to make sure it’s off. This can lead to people’s lives revolving around the rituals.

My family recently adopted a puppy that we named Barret. As Barret (“Bear”) is only three months old, his actions are based only on his natural instincts, such as eating and sleeping. He does not yet respond to any unnatural stimuli, and is not fully trained in any way. We are starting to classically condition him as he ages to respond to a variety of unconditioned stimuli, such as a leash, bells, and verbal commands so he becomes well trained.

Classical conditioning is defined as a learning process in which the subject associates unconditioned stimuli with neutral ones, until they become conditioned stimuli. After this process, unconditioned, natural responses become conditioned ones. In Bear’s case, we are attempting to associate his natural response of going to the bathroom with a bell that is attached to the back door. Each time Bear indicates he wants to go outside by crying and clawing at the door, we jingle the bells and let him out. Over time, Bear will learn as our other dogs have, that causing the bells to jingle will result in his being let outside. In this case, the conditioned stimulus, bells ringing, comes from the unconditioned stimulus of needing to use the restroom and go outside. So far, Bear has displayed minimal connection between the bells and needing to go outside. However he has displayed some generalization by bumping against the bells when his water bowl was empty.

My family is also making use of operant conditioning to train Bear. Operant conditioning is different from classical conditioning in that it forms associations between behaviors and resulting events. Meanwhile, classical conditioning links two events that are not controllable in the subject’s environment. My family and I are attempting to use operant conditioning to train Bear to heel while walking, to sit and to stay. This is being accomplished by slowly shaping Bear’s behavior by guiding his actions closer to the intended ones. For example, when Bear stopped tugging on his leash he was rewarded with belly rubs and treats. Soon after, he was rewarded for walking close to each family member on a leash. This exemplifies positive reinforcement, as Bear is continually presented with positive stimuli after each desired behavior. We have not yet used punishment on Bear, for the primary reason that he is too cute to punish, despite the fact that it would likely diminish any behaviors it followed. If punishment is used in the future it will likely be positive punishment, as in adding undesirable stimuli as a result of unwanted behavior. This is more simple to provide to a dog than negative punishment, the removal of desirable stimuli like a toy, which Bear will likely not associate with his bad behavior. It is possible that with sufficient training Bear will one day be capable of successive approximations like our older dogs, that are able to do left and right handed paw shakes.