Operant conditioning is the idea or concept that learning comes from adding rewards or punishments for a behavior. An example of this would be a student doing his homework every night knowing he will receive a piece of candy once it is completed. There are different elements associated with operant conditioning, like positive and negative reinforcement, which strengthen a desired behavior. Negative reinforcement is taking something adverse away to increase a desired behavior.  Punishment refers to the idea of taking away an undesired behavior. This can happen through positive punishment, and negative punishment. Positive punishment is adding something negative in order for the behavior to decrease or go away. An example of this would be getting hot sauce to the mouth by your parents if you say a curse word. This will decrease the amount of times you are likely to curse. Negative punishment is the idea of taking away something good to decrease a specific behavior. An example of negative punishment would be taking away recess for a student who didn’t do their work. You are removing something the child likes, which will prevent the child from performing the behavior a second time. The concept of operant conditioning  is used in so many places throughout the world. Humans use operant conditioning on animals they would like to tame. An example of this would be giving a dog a treat in order for it to do a specific trick for you. There are many behaviors developed today in mature adults that were specifically derived from an element in association with operant conditioning.  There are effects directly in response to the concepts of positive and negative punishment, and positive/negative reinforcement. It is important to note that this theory has lots of evidence provided through given examples and stories, and can be used at any moment to promote or take away a behavior.

Lecture 18 teaches us that a phobia is a persistent and irrational fear towards an object or situation that disrupts behavior. We learn that some people have social phobias and many random things. Many of you may know that triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13, but do you know what emetophobia is? It is the fear of vomiting. Now you’re probably thinking no one likes vomiting, but it is much more than a dislike towards it.

I suffer from emetophobia and it is very debilitating. It started in 3rd grade. I woke up on the morning of the last day of the PSSAs, a standardized test for PA elementary and middle school students for the non PA people. I felt horrible, but the test is super mandatory so I went to school. Breakfast was served to keep our minds sharp for the test. I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch. As I finished the math section of the test, I suddenly felt worse. I couldn’t breathe and I kept burping. Then it happened. I threw up on my desk.

Since then, I am horrified of the idea of vomiting. This includes coughing too hard, getting the stomach bug, food poisoning, motion sickness and anything else. I sometimes will stay with a relative if someone in my house is remotely ill or mentions being sick in any way. I won’t hang out with friends for a week after they have been sick. I compulsively check expiration dates on anything with dairy to avoid food poisoning. I make my mom check my chicken twice to make sure it is fully cooked whether its at home or out to eat. At one point, I stopped eating all meat because I was so worried about salmonella. I still won’t eat salad since the lettuce incident with E. coli.

For years I had a taste aversion to Cinnamon Toast Crunch because it was the last thing I ate before I threw up. I know it was not food poisoning from the milk or the cereal but the thought still crosses my mind.

This phobia has very much affected my normal behavior and caused me to be a bit weird around, well, everyone. It caused me to be diagnosed with anxiety, but I have gotten a hold on it. Emetophobia still affects my life. I may not enjoy the compulsiveness, but I have not thrown up in 10 years so I think that is a bonus.

Classical conditioning is a theory coined by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. His theory is centered around the idea that a when an environmental stimulus is accompanied by a naturally occurring stimulus, a new learned response can be created. When looking at classical conditioning, it helps to segment conditioning into phases to better understand what is happening. Classical conditioning tends to be separated into “pre-” “during” and “post” phases (wording may vary).

Phase 1: Pre-conditioning

• • This phase requires that a naturally occurring stimulus be present to elicit a response.
    • In other words, a stimulus needs to result in an unconditioned response (UCR)

Phase 2: During Conditioning 

•  This phase requires that the naturally occurring stimulus be paired with a neutral stimulus
  • In other words, an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) needs to pair with a naturally occurring stimulus in order to become a conditioned response (CS)

Phase 3: Post Conditioning

• Once an association is made between the UCS and the CS, presenting the conditioned stimulus even by itself will evoke the conditioned response (CR). It no longer depends on the naturally occurring stimulus to be there

Personal Application

When I was about 7 years old, I would always catch my parents watching 24. 24 was a very popular television show about a government agent named Jack Bauer. One night my family was eating Chinese takeout (UCS) while watching an episode of 24. In the episode, Jack Bauer was eating Chinese food alone while on mission when all of a sudden he was dragged out of the restaurant and thrown in prison. The episode went on to show Jack Bauer being tortured as his captors attempted to solicit information from him. Watching something painful (naturally occurring stimulus) terrified me (UCR). For years after that evening, I stayed away from Chinese food (CS). Every time I was around it, terror gripped me (CR) and I was reminded of the horrific scene I witnessed as a kid.

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

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 

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.