November 2019 – Page 2 – Intro Psych Blog (F19)

Classical Conditioning & Puppy Training

Organisms naturally process new information through daily experiences and observations. This concept may be referred to as biological preparedness, when the mind sequentially connects experiences in order to learn by association. However, there are many different ways that the brain can be conditioned to form these connections. Classical conditioning is a learning theory discovered by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. In general terms, this type of learning associates an environmental stimulus with a naturally occurring stimulus in order to produce a new learned response in a person or animal. Classical conditioning can be broken down into stages before, during and after conditioning to better understand how organisms develop a response to stimuli. The chart below pictures the general relationship between stimulus and response in each stage of classical conditioning that can be applied to the Little Albert experiment example discussed in the next paragraph.

Pavlov found that objects or events could trigger a conditioned response, which was further proven in this experiment with Little Albert. Before conditioning, the baby would hear a loud noise (unconditioned stimulus / US) and naturally begin to cry (unconditioned response / UR). He was also separately shown a white rat before conditioning but had no response to it. During conditioning, the baby heard the loud noise (US) at the same time that he was shown a white rat (neutral stimulus), making the baby cry (UR) in the presence of both. After showing him the white rat each time a loud noise was played, the baby eventually began to cry whenever the white rat was shown even when a loud noise wasn’t played. This means that the white rat turned from being a neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus (CS) and the crying became the conditioned response (CR).

This past summer, my family and I got a new puppy. The puppy was not trained at the time so my family and I had to condition it to behave and follow certain commands. In order to get her to sit down when we did a certain hand gesture, we decided to use treats as incentive. Before conditioning, the puppy would see the treat (US) and jump up to try to get it (UR). During conditioning, we showed the puppy the treat (US) at the same time as we did the hand gesture (neutral stimulus) but placed her into a sitting position when she tried to jump up on us (UR) and didn’t give her the treat until she was in that position. After doing this for a while, the puppy eventually learned to sit (CR) each time we did the hand gesture (CS) because she eventually associated the hand gesture to getting rewarded with food.

Sources:

Trimmer, Lisa. “Learning: Classical Conditioning.” PlayLearnParent, 6 Oct. 2011

Neese, Brian. “Consumer Behavior Theories: Pavlovian Theory.” Husson University, 26 Aug. 2019

Depressive Disorder in Real Life

Blog Post 3

krp5381

11/15/19

Depression

In the current lectures, we learned about disorders, one of which being the major depressive disorder. Depression is a very common disorder, around 16.2 million American adults have a depressive episode in a year. Depression is a very real, common, and very scary thing, and many people seek professional help following symptoms. I have been witness to this mental disorder since a young age. Having a close family member suffering from a mental illness as major as depression has been a very hard thing to face, especially growing up not quite understanding yet. Symptoms of depression include lethargy and tiredness, feeling of being worthless and the loss of interest in friends, family and activities that once had interested them. It was hard as a child trying to figure out what my family member was going through and wondering why they seemed so sad. Why they would be okay one day, and the next be gloomy and handle situations in a maladaptive way. Depression slows the individual down and even can bring thoughts of suicide, which was a hard concept for me to grasp at first, how and why it happens. As I grew up and learned more about what this illness does to an individual, it made much more sense to me and I learned ways to help my family member cope with this disorder when dark times came

. Depression is also described as a response to past and current loss. I not only was open to depression in my family, I watched and helped my best friend with her struggle with this mental illness disorder as well. Her struggle got worse as she lost her aunt that she was very close to, to cancer. Losing a loved one is going to bring anybody sadness, but after months passed, I noticed she still was withdrawn to many things, always was tired on both the inside and the outside, and just had an overall loss of interest. It was hard to have to sit and watch someone close to you grieve and feel like you could not do anything to really help, besides being a friend. Therefore, professional help is so common in depression.

One thing about depression is that it isn’t just being a little upset after a fight with a parent or being discouraged that you failed a test. Depression disorder is raw and painful. It is the darkness an individual diagnosed with deals with their life. A sign is the symptoms lasting multiple weeks, not just crying and feeling temporarily sad following a breakup. Major Depressive Disorder should be thought of with care and empathy towards people with this illness. Although that being this close and exposed to this disorder has been difficult for me as well, I feel glad I am more knowledgeable and can understand better just what Depression is.

Token Economy Ashley Niland

Token Economy

Psychotherapy is the treatment of a mental disorder that takes place between a trained therapist and a patient. This type of therapy does not involve the use of drugs and it also divides into 4 main categories: psychological therapy, humanistic therapy, behavior therapy and cognitive therapy. Each of those four therapies are either known as a type of insight therapy or action therapy. Insight therapies understand the patients feelings, beliefs, motives and everything going on inside their head. Action therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on your actions, but not you’re reasonings behind them, and tries to find solutions to help minimize the occurrence of your behaviors.

Behavior therapy is a type of therapy that applies learning principles to either eliminate unwanted behaviors or increase wanted behaviors, therefore, making it a type of action therapy. Behavior therapy believes that all of your behaviors are learned and that the unpleasant ones can be changed. One of the many techniques used in behavior therapy is token economy. Token Economy is a system of exchange where you can either add or lose “tokens” based off certain behaviors you express. This technique is providing positive reinforcement and is used in many schools and even prisons. The goal is to increase the frequency of good behavior and in return getting a reward for good behavior being shown. The tokens can then be traded in for a prize or an item they want.

In 6th grade, my middle school had a reward system called “P.A.W.S (positive attitudes will succeed) stickers.” There were about 4 sheets of paper printed into our assignment books to place our earned P.A.W.S stickers and the whole school participated in it. P.A.W.S stickers would be handed out by teachers or helping aids throughout the school day. Kids would earn P.A.W.S stickers by completing their homework, cleaning up a mess in the classroom, using your manners when talking to your peers, having respect towards your teachers, etc. At the end of each quarter you would rip out a sheet with all the P.A.W.S stickers you collected from that quarter and hand it in to your teacher. The stickers could be traded in for bonus points, candy, a ticket to get put into a raffle to go to the community pool instead of school, a free pretzel on $1 pretzel day and so many more other options. How many stickers you got in that quarter determined how big the reward was. For example, for every 5 paw stickers your sheet had you could pick out 1 piece of candy, or if your sheet was full you could then enter the raffle for the pool day.

P.A.W.S stickers is an example of a token economy. Teachers would reward positive behavior they liked in order for them to keep happening. P.A.W.S stickers helped encourage good behaviors from all the students because we knew the more we earned throughout the month, the bigger reward we would get. The school used this technique because in middle school kids are still learning whats right from wrong and with this reward system in place, I think it helped kids figure out the difference much quicker.

American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/topics/therapy/psychotherapy-approaches.

Operant Conditioning & Easter Egg Hunts

Conditioning is one way of controlling a person or animal’s behaviors, actions, and responses. While classical conditioning forms an association between two stimuli in the environment, operant conditioning forms an association between behaviors and resulting events, essentially a reward-punishment system. In operant conditioning, certain actions are rewarded and consequently are more likely to occur, which is deemed the law of effect from Thorndike’s experiments. In contrast, other actions are punished, and the person is less likely to do it again. Thus, the person/animal is trained whereby an appropriate or desired response is learned. Often, when this occurs in a step-by-step process, it is called shaping whereby each rewarded step is a successive approximation.

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/operant-conditioning-a2-2794863

In the scope of operant conditioning, there are reinforcers that result in strengthened behavior, and there are punishments that result in decreased behavior. In both cases, “positive” means adding something, while “negative” means removing something accordingly. Therefore, a positive reinforcement adds something positive or desirable to strengthen a behavior, while a negative reinforcement removes something negative or aversive to strengthen a behavior. Meanwhile, a positive punishment adds something negative or aversive to decrease a behavior, while a negative punishment removes something positive or desirable to decrease a behavior.

Source: https://blog.betternaturedogtraining.com/2012/06/05/reinforcement-in-dog-training-the-positive-and-the-negative/

Since I do not have a dog, when we discuss conditioning through rewards and punishment, the first thing I think of is my baby cousins. I come from a very large family with a lot of cousins, so all my life, there have been children of all ages running around the house at family parties. I’ve learned the ropes when it comes to teaching kids to adopt certain behaviors, but it wasn’t until Psych 100 did I learn that these techniques were legitimate terms with research behind them!

Easter, one of the most chaotic family parties of the year, sees every technique in action through our family’s annual egg hunt. First, my older cousins hide all the eggs in the backyard. My young cousins who are participating in the hunt are always tempted to look outside a window upstairs to see where the eggs are being hid, so to prevent this cheating, it is the middle-aged cousins like me who are tasked with the job of confining all of the participants in one bedroom with the blinds drawn.

1. The boys are always the ones who try to distract us so they can make their way to the window and peek through the blinds. However, we announce that whoever cheats in this way will be held back for 10 seconds at the beginning before they can start the hunt. With this positive punishment, we add a penalty to condition them, thus teaching them that cheating is not the right thing to do.

2. Second, in the egg hunt, we always have the Giant Egg as the grand prize, and it is always hidden in the hardest spot. With this positive reinforcement, we present a positive reward to encourage the children who think outside the box, using creativity and strategy to find the egg instead of pure luck.

3. At the end of the hunt, there are some children who have a lot more eggs than others, and in the past, we’ve had problems with kids who purposefully brag to make the other kids feel bad. Therefore, to decrease this behavior, we implement negative punishment by withdrawing their object of desire: if you purposefully make someone else feel bad about having less eggs, you have to give them one of yours to show you’re sorry for being mean. We teach them that it is good to be humble, not arrogant.

4. Finally, there was one year where my 12-year-old cousin was extremely generous and gave the Giant Egg he found to his 7-year-old sister. To reward this benevolent behavior, his mother instilled a negative reinforcement: he had previously had TV privileges taken away as a punishment from the day before, so his mother now took away that restriction to encourage this generous side of him.

In these ways, it is apparent that operant conditioning and basic psychology is prevalent in everyday life!

Source: https://gloucestervillage.com/event/easter-egg-hunt-main-street/

Operant Conditioning

Since childhood, we have all experienced operant conditioning, but most of us probably aren’t sure of what this means. Operant conditioning relates to the associations we create with our behavior and events that follow as a consequence. This in turn can result in shaping, which is guiding one towards a desired behavior through reinforcement and or punishment.

Reinforcements strength the exhibited behavior. This is done through positive and negative reinforcements. Positive reinforcement is when a positive stimulus, or something that one likes, is given or shown towards an individual or animal. This summer I had the privilege to work with children and experience first hand how this works. Each day I was with them, we gave one child a special award, which symbolized that they exhibited great skills that day. Some days the child would clean up without being told to, helping a new child feel welcome, or even conquering one of their fears. This is positive reinforcement because they were given a positive stimulus as a result of behavior that we wanted to strengthen.

Negative reinforcements, on the other hand, remove a negative stimulus, or in other words, taking away something they don’t like. For example, when the children were behaving well on certain days, we would take them to play one of their favorite games instead of going to a pre-scheduled activity where no one had fun. We didn’t do this very often, though, especially as the children had to have behaved exceptionally well. Many people struggle with the idea of negative reinforcements, so here are some other every day examples: cleaning the kitchen to avoid getting in a fight with a roommate; leaving early for work in order to beat traffic so you’re not late for work; putting on sunscreen to avoid sunburn.

Punishments are the opposite of reinforcements. Instead of trying to strength a behavior, the idea is to decrease the behavior. This is also done through positive and negative means. A positive punishment is when an aversive stimulus is administered, which means that a negative consequence is given or added. In order for positive punishment to be effective, though, the negative consequence has to be immediate and consistent. An example of this can be seen when the children were goofing around during their instructional swim time. As a result, the instructor made them swim additional laps, something they didn’t like.

A negative punishment is when a desirable stimulus is withdrawn. In other words, something they like is taken away. One time, two of the children were taking too long in the bathroom, so I went to go find them. I found that they were messing around instead of coming back right after they were done. As a result, their privilege to go to the bathroom without supervision was revoked until they showed that they were responsible enough to go by themselves.

Here is a summary table of positive and negative reinforcement as well as positive and negative punishment:

Chung, Cindy. “Positive Punishment.” Verywell. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-positive-punishment-2795411. Accessed 14 Nov 2019.

Olah, Jessica. “Negative Reinforcement.” Verywell. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-negative-reinforcement-2795410. Accessed 14 Nov 2019.

“Operant Conditioning.” Boundless.com. http://oer2go.org/mods/en-boundless/www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/learning-7/operant-conditioning-47/reinforcement-and-punishment-199-12734/images/operant-conditioning/index.html. Accessed 14 Nov 2019.

Seong, Joshua. “Positive Reinforcement.” Verywell. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-positive-reinforcement-2795412. Accessed 14 Nov 2019.

Recognizing Mood Disorders

Throughout my life, I’ve known many people with mood disorders. One of my best friends today has been diagnosed including General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Bipolar Disorder.

Anxiety is essentially a feeling of unrealistic or excessive fearfulness. Often times, people get anxiety about the future or current stimuli they’re experiencing. However, in the case of GAD, the anxiety often comes out of nowhere; you’re not able to recognize where the worry is coming from. In order to be diagnosed with GAD, you have to have uncontrollable and persistent anxiety for at least six months. Anxiety can also present itself in other disorders, like panic disorders. This is where someone might experience a panic attack, a minutes-long espisode of dread that can be accompanied by physical symptoms, like chest pain.

I’ve watched her struggle with the constant anxiety, and it can get very exhausting for her. For example, we could be in the car going somewhere, but she suddenly gets too anxious to continue to our destination.

Bipolar Disorder is when a person’s mood will switch between extreme lows and extreme highs. This is formerly called manic-depressive disorder, and it can often be attributed to genetics. In the case of my friend, her mother also has bipolar disorder. My friend will often be very energetic and spontaneous during her “manic” stages and very uninterested and slow in her down stages.

I’ve found that being supportive of friends with mental illness is incredibly important. It helps to not act like you know or understand everything they’re going through, but rather allow them to tell you about their own experiences. It’s important to be knowledgeable about mental health, so that you have a very general idea of what someone might be going through, and can therefore support someone through what could potentially be a time of hardship.

Blog Post 3: Schedules of Reinforcement

Today I will be giving an in-depth explanation on reinforcement schedules and I will tell stories that relate to each of the schedules of reinforcement. First off, there are two reinforcement schedules; continuous and partial. Continuous reinforcement schedules are when the desired response is reinforced every time it occurs. For example, when you give your dog a treat each time he rolls over, your dog is on a continuous reinforcement schedule. While this schedule does ensure quick learning, rapid extinction takes place when the reinforcer is removed. On the other hand, a partial schedule of reinforcement is when sometimes the desired response if reinforced and sometimes it isn’t. Partial reinforcement schedules lead to slow learning but is more resistant to extinction. This is because of the anticipation between reinforcement. Since we aren’t rewarded every time we complete the desired response, it forces us to keep recreating the response until we are rewarded again. There are four types of partial reinforcement schedules; fixed-ratio, fixed-interval, variable ratio, and variable interval. Fixed-ratio schedules are when behavior is reinforced after a specific amount of responses. Fixed-interval schedules are when the first desired response isn’t rewarded until a specific amount of time has passed. Variable-ratio schedules are when behavior is reinforced after an average number of responses. However, the number of responses before reinforcement is entirely unpredictable. Finally, variable-interval schedules are when behavior is reinforced for the first response after an unpredictable amount of time. In my life I’ve had multiple real-life experiences that applies to the schedule of reinforcement. My first experience was when Weis Markets had a buy two get one free deal for Hungry Man frozen dinners. This is an example for fixed ratio because you must make two responses (purchasing two frozen dinners) in order to get one free frozen dinner. In my younger days, I would do my weekly house chores and receive an allowance. This experience falls under fixed-interval schedule because I’m not rewarded for doing my chores until a specific amount of time has passed (1 week). This next experience is not mine but my grandmothers. Every once and awhile, my grandmother loves to go gamble at the slot machines. Using slot machines are an example of variable-ratio schedules because my grandmother will win after an average, but unpredictable number of playing the slots. My last story is a current habit I have when I’m expecting an important email. Whenever this happens, I always find myself checking my email excessively. This is an example of variable of interval schedule because eventually I will be rewarded by checking my email, however the amount of time until I receive a new message is unpredictable.

Blog Post #3: Classical Conditioning

The topic I chose for this blog assignment is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a type of conditioning based on the root of psychology that it behaviorism. This type of conditioning is when there is relatively permanent change in an organism due to behavior. This is an effective way to change an organism because genes are not flexible. Classical conditioning is when an organism learns to associate stimuli to each other. There are lots of parts to this. The first part is the unconditioned stimulus; that is the natural action that takes place. Next comes the unconditioned response; this is the natural response to the unconditioned stimulus. After that come the conditioned stimulus; this is the new association learned in the organism. Finally, it comes to the conditioned response; this is the response that happens because of the other parts of classical conditioning. In my situation, I have tried to do this classical conditioning to myself. There may be some issues with this, obviously, but, I believe it has worked. In my situation, I have tried to use classical conditioning to better myself in music, specifically Blue Band. During rehearsals, we have time to practice with others in our section (trombone). I have tried to train myself to remember what we talk about when we are in those sectionals. The way I did this is that whenever I heard a comment regarding what we need to work on, I would hit my chest with my fist a couple times. Then, when I heard something that we did well, I would tap my chest with my hand. As a result, I was able to remember what we had talked about during those rehearsals if I hit or tapped my chest. In this situation, the unconditioned stimulus was the comments I was receiving regarding what we had played. The unconditioned response was to listen and learn from those comments. The conditioned stimulus my tapping vs. hitting my chest. The conditioned response was the recall of the comments received during the sectional. These are related because I directly used a form of conditioning in my own life.

Depressive Cycle

About 10 years ago my grandmother became depressed because she had some issues with my uncle, her oldest son, in which he refused to ever talk to her again. This event caused her to become extremely sad and depressed, this being a response to past loss – when my uncle cut all ties with her. She came to have a major depressive disorder and all of its symptoms. I was very little when this happened but I remember clearly my parents talking about how worried they were because she wouldn’t go anywhere or talk to anyone.

Resultado de imagem para depression

As it is known, depression slows people down and restrain risk-taking. And that happened exactly with my grandma. She stopped driving and going places she once enjoyed going to. She wouldn’t even want to leave her house to go grocery shopping. She had these symptoms and more. My grandma complained about being tired all the time, this being an excuse to stay at home. She did not have an interest in going anywhere, even if it was to see her family or friends. And whenever she did see someone and they asked how she was she would immediately say how insignificant and worthless she was feeling.

Now referring to the issues my grandmother had with her son, everyone knew that she was, in fact, the right one in this matter and that he was dramatizing something that should not have become so big. Either way, my grandma went through this stressful experience when they were fighting, and after that period and when they stopped talking to each other she started to blame herself for that outcome. She then entered into a depressed mood that lasted a long period of time and her behavior changed completely as I mentioned earlier. This cycle of depression kept going on for about a year or so.

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After a while of much insistence from my family, my grandma finally decided to seek professional help. She went to various sessions, and still goes until today but not as much as before. She has gotten way better but she is still very sensitive about my uncle. All of us in our family avoid this topic as much as we can because we know that she can go back to the depressive cycle she was in.

OCD

Obsessive-compulsive disorder involves the persistence of thoughts that then trigger a reaction that must be completed because it is causing severe distress. OCD is typically thought of as a disorder for people who clean a lot and are always straightening up. This may be true for some people with OCD, but it goes beyond this. It’s a constant thought in their minds that completely consumes their lives and the “compulsion” must be completed on repeat in order to keep their stress levels low.

I personally do not suffer from OCD, but I have read a lot and watched a short documentary on someone who does have OCD. Howie Mandel, a very famous tv host and comedian, has both ADHD and OCD. Due to this, he faces daily struggles. He came out about this on tv and in plenty of articles. His particular OCD is centered around germs, this is one thing that he had been able to keep out of the public eye as it is not very noticeable. Since childhood, Mandel has struggled with his fear of germs which kept him from tying his shoes for many years. His relationship with germs was always unhealthy but as he got older the disorder only became more of a distraction. On TV he’s been able to hide his OCD for many years but finally is confronting it publicly in a new book called “Here’s the Deal: Don’t Touch Me.” In this, he addresses the many implications of his disorder and how to has deeply affected him from childhood to present. His famous fist bump shown on TV shows is actually part of his disorder. In the article, he says he views hand like Petri dishes and if he could he would spend all day washing them. So, avoiding hands, railings, doorknobs and other things that normal people interact with daily is a major adjustment that Mandel has to deal with every day. In the article it is also mentioned that Mandel will not touch his money unless it has been washed, his makeup artists are forced to use brand new sponges and brushes every day in order to keep it sanitary, and his baldness is actually a choice that helps him feel more clean and fresh. After having a family, his challenges began to grow, he often would have to separate from his children into his own private living space that was free of germs. His OCD has taken a major toll on not only him but as well in his family’s lives and often leaves him isolated from his loved ones. Certain things just trigger it more and when this occurs, he must complete his compulsion until his mind can get off the subject. Although he hid his disorder for a long time, he now has come out to bring awareness to mental illnesses and this is something that is incredibly admirable for someone in the eyes of millions to do.

OCD is a disorder that over 4 million people have to live with and raising awareness and acceptance of this disorder is imperative.

Citation

Haddad, Jessica, et al. “Germs: ‘No Deal’ for Host Howie Mandel.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 24 Nov. 2009, https://abcnews.go.com/2020/howie-mandel-public-obsessive-compulisve-disorder-fear-germs/story?id=9153966.