Author: czk5413

How to Train your Dog to Talk

Humans and animals are able to learn behaviors through operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is when associations are formed between ones’ behavior and its resulting effects. We behave in certain ways for many reasons, such as gaining rewards or to avoid consequences. There are types of reinforcers that affect the way we behave. Positive reinforcement is when behaviors are increased by adding something to produce a desirable stimuli. An example of this type of reinforcement is receiving a paycheck after working a certain amount of hours. People are eager to show up to work knowing in the end, they will get paid for their actions. Most people wouldn’t show up for work if there wasn’t some sort of compensation. Negative reinforcement is when you take something away to remove negative stimuli. An example of this type of reinforcement is when you automatically put your seatbelt on once you get into a car to avoid hearing the seatbelt alarm go off. In these cases, positive doesn’t mean good and negative doesn’t mean bad. The diagram below shows some new examples of the two types of reinforcements. 

Available from:

http://www.educateautism.com/behavioural-principles/negative-reinforcement.html

In the past, I have used positive reinforcement to train my dogs, Buck and Nash, to do certain tricks. When I wanted them to behave a particular way, I would reward them with a treat to show them they are doing something right. I taught Buck to play dead when I hold out my hand in a way that looks like a gun and say “bang bang”. To do this, I would go through the motions of holding out my hand in the gun shape, saying “bang bang”, pushing him onto his side and then finally rewarding him with a treat. It took a few tries but he eventually learned what he needed to do to earn himself a treat. 

One really cool thing I taught Nash to do was to say “I love you”. Linked below is a video I took after I first taught him how to say it (you might need to use your imagination a little to hear it). I used the same method as before to teach this trick to Nash but it was a bit trickier and took him a little longer to learn. At first, I would say the words “I love you” over and over again and Nash would just bark randomly. After a while I think he started to understand that he needed to bark in sequences of three, which makes it sound like he’s saying “I love you”, in order to receive a treat. Today, whenever Nash sees me holding a treat he will bark, trying to say “I love you” before I even have the chance to say anything because he thinks he will be rewarded. 

Link to Nash saying “I love you”:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDNgRj2JIog

 

Interference

The way our brains remember and organize information is a pretty complex process and there are several factors in how we remember, and even how we forget. One example of forgetting is interference. Interference can be proactive, meaning information learned in the past interferes with information learned in the future, or retroactive, meaning information learned in the future interferes with information learned in the past. The image below helps explain the difference between these processes.

From: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Proactive-and-Retroactive-Interference-adapted-from-Passer-Smith-2011-273_fig13_297577879

In proactive interference, the student has previously learned Spanish and is currently attempting to learn French. Their past of learning Spanish is making it harder for them to recall the French words that they’re trying to memorize and understand. But, in retroactive interference, since the student is currently learning French, it makes it harder for them to recall information in the past, which is their knowledge of Spanish.

I have noticed an example of interference in my life when I was in middle school and high school. Throughout middle school and high school, I danced and each spring we would have a recital. After this lesson on interference, I realized that throughout this time period, I was experiencing proactive interference. While learning new dances, I remember I would sometimes mess up the choreography by using moves that I previously learned in a dance a or two year prior. This was an ongoing cycle throughout my dance career. This shows how the past information (the old dance moves) were affecting my ability to remember the present information (the new dance moves).

While I was researching these topics online, I came across a clever, and pretty funny, example of retroactive inference. One article stated that when you call your new boyfriend or girlfriend by your ex boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s name, you are experiencing a retroactive interference. This shows how information that is currently being learned (new boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s name) is interrupted by information from the past (the old boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s name).

 

Sources:

“Proactive and Retroactive Interference: Psychology.” tutor2u,

https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/proactive-and-retroactive-interference.

 

Illusionary Correlation or My Good Luck Charm?

Several people believe in superstitions and that other “forces” cause certain things to happen when they do something specific or act a certain way. In reality, superstitions represent a false relationship between two things. This type of inaccurate relationship is known as an illusionary correlation, meaning that it gives off an illusion of two things being related. Two different scenarios can show similar results, no matter how extremely different they seem. An example of an illusionary correlation is shown below.

From: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

This graph shows a strong direct relationship between US oil imports and the number of people killed from trains. Although these two events show a similar trend on the graph, they have no actual correlation to each other and neither one affects the other, it just doesn’t make sense for them to be connected.

For me, I have been basing my success in my education off of an ongoing superstition. When I take exams or quizzes, I will usually wear this specific necklace because I believe it is my good luck charm, which is another example of an illusionary correlation. When I had my Confirmation back in 2013, as a gift, my grandmother had bought me a gold and diamond cross. At the time, this was one of the most valuable items I owned, so I handled it (and still do) with extreme care and would only wear it for special occasions. A few years later when I went into high school, I started wearing the necklace basically everyday. At this time as well, I started putting in much more effort and time into my studies than I did in middle school because I knew colleges would see my freshman year grades. When I started to see myself receiving better grades, I initially blamed it on wearing the necklace and that is when I started calling it my good luck charm. In reality, the necklace wasn’t doing anything; I had just started putting more time into my work. I still wear it to this day whenever I had a major test because it sort of tricks me into doing well. When I don’t have the necklace on for an exam, it throws me off slightly because I’m so used to wearing it and giving it credit for helping me do well. It is obvious that there is no real relationship between me wearing a necklace and doing well on an exam, but it creates an illusion in my eyes.