Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to associate stimuli. For example, when there is lightning, there is thunder. Therefore, when a person sees lightning, they are scared because they are expecting thunder to follow due to classical conditioning. One famous experiment that shows classical conditioning perfectly is Pavlov’s experiment with dogs and salivation around food. This experiment was done by having dogs in a controlled environment where the scientists could measure each dog’s level of salivation. Before the conditioning began, the scientists noticed that food produced salivation. When they began using classical conditioning, they would use a neutral stimulus, and an unconditioned stimulus to produce and unconditioned stimulus. In this particular experiment, the neutral stimulus was a tone that signaled food was coming. The unconditioned stimulus is the dog’s food. The two of these together produced the unconditioned response of salivation. This scenario was done multiple times and yield the same response. After the classical conditioning process was done, the neutral stimulus (the tone), which was originally irrelevant, now becomes the conditioned stimulus. This now triggers salivation from the dogs, which is now the conditioned response because it is learned. This process was also used in the famous “Little Albert” experiment. This was were a baby was conditioned to hate rats through classical conditioning. The experiment realized how little Albert disliked loud sounds because they are startling. The experimenter paired the loud sounds with rats. Little Albert soon realized that whenever he saw a rat, there would soon be a loud sound that he disliked. This ended up with little albert generalizing this to all other small furry animals. So whenever he saw one, he would become visibly upset assuming there was a loud sound soon to follow. These experiments can be used to explain other real life scenarios.
Author: mip5408
Memory Construction
Memory is a constructive process that is unique to each person and their memory. What most people don’t know is that as humans, we filter or fill in missing pieces of information to make our recall of memories more coherent. This leads to a few issues because it makes our memories not completely correct even when we think they are. The misinformation effect is when we incorporate misleading information into one’s memory of an event. Another thing that affects false memories is source amnesia. This is when a person attributes an event to the wrong source. This could be something we experienced, heard, read or imagined. An example of this is when you ask someone where they were at the time of 9/11. In a study, everyone that participated reported they were somewhere else than the actual place they were during 9/11. This relates to the misinformation effect. By having these false filled in bits of information, this makes it very difficult for someone to be sure if a memory is true or false. Scientists believe that most memories must be true. A study on this was done by Hyman and Billings in 1998. They conducted this in three phases. During the first phase, they obtained memories from the subjects’ childhoods. Then, they asked the subjects if they remembered five events. Four of the events had occurred while the last one didn’t occur. Three days later, they would conduct phase three. Phase three was when the researchers would ask the participants again if they remembered the five events. The results were that the students remembered the event that never happened. Although I have never been through this entire research study, my friends played a joke on me a few years ago. One night, my friend Sofia asked me if I remembered a girl named Kelly. I said I didn’t, she then proceeded to explain a little bit about who Kelly was. She said she moved away while we were still in elementary school. The next day, Sofia asked me if I remembered a girl that we went to elementary school with named Kelly. I then responded saying I did in fact remember Kelly. Sofia burst out laughing, exclaiming that Kelly wasn’t real. She said that she made her up to see if I would go along with it.
Split Brain Patients
In class, we watched two videos on split brain patients. This is a topic I have a lot of difficulty understanding. People who study split brain patients give the patients two tasks. One task is to give a verbal report, and the other task is to pick up and object or draw the object. There will be a point that the split brain patient has to focus on. A word or picture will be flashed on one side of the focus point. The patient will then be asked what they were shown. In the class example we were given, there was a key flashed on the left side and a ring flashed on the right side. In this case, a person with split brain would be able to pick up a key with their left hand but would not be able to say that they saw a key. The patient would be able to say they saw a ring and would be able to pick it up with their right hand. This can be explained by lateralization. The left hemisphere of the brain specializes in language. It is analytical and classifies words. The left hemisphere controls the right hand. The right hemisphere specializes in art and music perception, faces and shapes. The right hemisphere controls the left hand. One of the videos we watched in class was on split brain patient named Joe. In Joe’s case, he can only verbalize what he saw on the right side of the dot. If he sees something on the left side of the dot, he cannot say what he saw. In the video, a picture of grapes is flashed on the right of the focus point. He is able to say he saw grapes. After that, the word “pan” is flashed on the left side of the focus point. Joe said he didn’t know what he saw, but when asked to close his eyes and draw, he drew a pan. Finally, a car and a wheel were flashed simultaneously. The picture of the car was flashed on the left side and the picture of the wheel was flashed on the right side. Joe was able to say he saw a wheel and was able to draw a picture of the car.