Author: sfl5515

Operant Conditioning is a form of learning where you would use positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment to solidify or obtain a behavior. By using this form of learning humans and animals are able to create associations between their behavior and the event that is occuring. This results in the behavior to be strengthened by repeated attempts. I used this tactic to train my dog when I was younger. Teaching tricks to a dog that’s around the age of 2 or 3 is not the easiest thing because it’s like resetting their previous knowledge. So to teach my dog how to sit I used positive reinforcement by giving her a treat when she would successfully sit down properly when I would say “Sit”. I did this by raising the treat over her head so her body would basically lean back on its own resulting in her to sit. When she would jump up while trying to reach the treat instead of sitting she would not receive a treat. She soon associated that the only way she would get a treat if she would lean back into a sitting position. Now when she displayed a behavior that was displeasing like jumping on the couch and engaging in rough play, we would take away the toy she was playing with on the couch. She continuously would jump and play on the couch which repeatedly resulted in her toy being taken away. She soon realized that when she played only on the floor she was able to keep her toy and play. By using Negative punishment her behavior of jumping on the couch became extinct. By using operant conditioning I was able to teach my dog proper behavior by having her associate her correct behaviors with the event that would follow.

 

It would be mind boggling to find out that sometimes the memories that we think we experienced at a point in time never actually happened. We don’t actually know if our memories are true or not and discerning false memories is not easy at all. For example many theories like source amnesia where you connect an event to the wrong source, or implantation of memories. Something like this happened to me where I thought a memory that I had and would repeat multiple times was true, but later found out it was false. 

When I was younger I remember it was the anniversary of 9/11 and I was in 2nd grade. I had just learned and watched a movie on the horrific event and couldn’t wait to go home and tell my mom about everything I had just learned. I vividly remember my mom telling me that the day 9/11 happened that we were actually supposed to be in the city on that day. She told me my grandfather had a doctors appointment and me being only 4 months old she brought me too. But luckily, on our way there she had forgotten paperwork at home in Jersey and had to turn around and we never ended up going because when she was in the house she saw on the TV that the attack had occurred. I repeated this multiple times throughout my life until recently in High School I brought it up to my mom and she told me that my memory was false. 

I believe that my false memory was developed through either source amnesia and the implanting of memories. That I heard multiple stories from my classmates about their parents that were supposed to go into the city on that day but something resulted in them not having to and it implanted and I turned it into my own memory.

 

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