Author: jxl6314

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired: a response which is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone. The first stimuli is named conditioned stimulus, the second stimuli is named unconditioned stimulus and the response before conditioning is called unconditioned response, after conditioning is called conditioned response.

I have a personal story related to classical conditioning. I have a niece who is 10 years younger than me, and as her aunt, I always bring her gifts whenever I go back home, and the gifts are mostly snacks because she likes snacks. But instead of giving her the treats directly when I see her, I usually hug and tickle her first and then give her them. Her response when I give her the gifts is running in circles and laughing happily. And after a few years doing this, I noticed something interesting–I unconsciously applied classical conditioning to my niece. Last year when I went back home, I brought my niece treats as usual, but in order to prove that classical conditioning actually worked on my niece, I did things differently. So I hugged and tickled my niece like before, but this time, I didn’t take out the treats immediately, and a funny thing happened–my niece is already running in circles and laughing, as if she received the treats, when in reality, she didn’t even see a sign of the treats yet. Of course, I gave her the treats in the end because I’m a good aunt and she is still happy about it.

In my story, classical conditioning was applied to my niece. And in this case, the unconditioned stimulus is the treats, conditioned stimulus is my hug, and the unconditioned and conditioned responses are both running in circles laughing. My niece showed the conditioned response when only the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus. Classical conditioning is everywhere in our lives but we just didn’t pay enough attention to it, and it’s fun to discover small things related to psychology concepts.

Reference:
Wede, J. (n.d.). Psychology.

Blog Post 2–Proactive Interference

We learned about memories retrieval failures in class, and one concept attracted me—interference of memory retrieval. There are two kinds of memory retrieval interference: proactive interference and retroactive interference. Proactive interference is when your old knowledge interferes with new information you are trying to learn. And retroactive interference is when the new information interferes with the information you learned earlier. These two types of interferes lead to the failure of memory retrieval.

There was one time when I was learning Korean, I was trying to memorize some basic words in Korean. I wrote down the words on paper, and then started to pronounce the words. After I was more familiar with the words, I began memorizing them along with their meanings. And after I finished all the words I needed to memorize, it’s time for me to make a sentence with the words I just memorized. It took me 5 minutes trying to make a sentence out of the words, and among all of the words, there’s a word which means ‘in this way’ in English. I placed that word in the sentence as an adverb phrase, and then read the whole sentence to my teacher. But when I was reading it, I misread that phrase, instead of saying that word, I said a phrase that has the same meaning in Japanese. Since I learned Japanese before, plus Korean and Japanese kind of having similar pronunciations, when I read that sentence, I accidentally said a Japanese word. And that wasn’t the only time it happened, it happened a lot of times later on too, and I couldn’t even notice I am doing it.

My experience vividly shows the proactive interference of memory in real life. Since I learned Japanese before, now when I learn Korean, the old knowledge of Japanese will influence my memory of new knowledge which leads to confusion of memory retrieval or failure of memory retrieval. Especially when the phonetic system of Korean and Japanese are similar, it increases confusion for me when trying to recall certain information from either language. Memory retrieval failure is common and the best way for us to retrieve our memories more precisely is to use elaborative rehearsals and make the memories more meaningful to you.

Reference:
Wede, J. (n.d.). Psychology.

Brain’s Plasticity

We learned in class about brain’s plasticity–Brain is sculpted by our genes but also by our experience, some type of injury or illness can modify our brain. Our brain is inborn, and in the past, some psychologists believe the brain can not be altered. But later on, scientists did some research and found that brain has the ability to modify itself due to injury or illness. By modifying, it’s referring to the brain’s ability to modify its own functions in certain areas or its physical structures.

I’ve read a story about a man named Ben, who got into a car accident with a truck (Morgans, 2019). He was sent to the hospital immediately, and then he was put in a coma for a week. When he woke up from the coma, he found that no one could understand him but a Chinese nurse. Surprisingly, he was speaking fluent Chinese to his families when he only learned really basic Chinese in high school. He didn’t realize he was speaking Chinese and was frustrated since people can’t understand him. Luckily, he didn’t forget how to speak English and he was able to communicate with people in English a few hours later. His parents were worried about him, so they asked a neurologist to do a brain check for him. And the neurologist told them due to the car accident, his brain is modified, the left hemisphere is damaged and the right hemisphere now is taking the responsibility of managing language. And according to past experiments and research, English speakers use more of their left hemisphere when Chinese speakers use both hemispheres. And because his left hemisphere is resting, the right brain is managing language, his old Mandarin memory becomes more accessible and his Mandarin becomes more natural than English.

This story showed us the brain’s plasticity–its ability to modify its function due to injury or illness. Because of the car accident, Ben’s brain’s left side was damaged, which drives the brain to modify its old functions on that side and makes the right side to take over it. And this is why Ben becomes more fluent in Chinese than English.

Reference:

Morgans, Julian. “Meet the Guy Who Woke From a Coma Speaking Another Language.” Vice, 28 June 2019, www.vice.com/en_uk/article/3k3w8w/ben-mcmahon-woke-car-accident-coma-speaking-chinese-mandarin-language.