Tag: ILoveWede

Reinforces vs Punishment

During lecture 15 Professor Wede discussed Operant Conditioning. One of the topics touched on during this lecture was reinforcements and punishments. Reinforcement increases behavior and punishment decreases it, but there are two types of reinforces and two types of punishment. Positive Reinforcement increases behavior be presenting positive stimulus. This would be like getting a hug, receiving a paycheck, or getting a prize. Negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing negative stimulus. This can be seen when you fasten your seat belt to stop the annoying ding/beeping. Reinforces should be thought of as any event that strengthen the behavior it follows. Punishment is almost the opposite of reinforcement. Punishment is any adverse event that decreases the behavior it follows. Positive punishment, like spanking or a parking ticket, administers an aversive stimulus. Negative punishment, time outs from privileges and revoked drivers license, is the withdrawal of a desirable stimulus.

I can confidently say that my parents used punishments more than reinforcements. When I would get a good grade, my parents would never reward me. They would say that it is expected of my to get good grades. If I ever got a bad grade i would get a punishment. It was usually negative punishment like getting my phone taken away, or not being allowed to hang out with my friends. From my own personal experience I believe that reinforcements are just as, if not more, important than punishments.

Blog #3 | PSY 100

The importance of a psychotherapy.

I believe that life is simple. I believe that there is no reason to complicate things, but instead we should take them just the way they are.

Image result for meaning of life is just to be alive

Unfortunately, not everyone understands it. A lot of people set high expectations for themselves causing them to think that they don’t live the way they want to. For example, a lot of people struggle when they don’t find a perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, when they don’t get good grades in school or college, when they don’t receive the salary they aimed for, when they don’t have the skin that someone else has. This in turns leads to the anxiety and depression disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and dysthymia.

GAD is “a psychological disorder diagnosed in situations in which a person has been excessively worrying about money, health, work, family life, or relationships for at least 6 months, even though he or she knows that the concerns are exaggerated.” In plain English it means that if you are anxious for a long period of time and it hurts your life, it is a generalized anxiety disorder. Additionally, dysthymia is “a condition characterized by mild, but chronic, depressive symptoms that last for at least 2 years.” It is less severe than a major depressive disorder, but is still considered as a psychological disorder in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

I cannot stress enough the importance of recognizing an anxiety before it grows into something way more significant. The saddest part is that one of the most common results of anxiety disorder is a suicide.

I have been reading plenty of articles and research reports about the reasons and occasions of suicides and statistics are shocking. “The most commonly endorsed cause for the suicide attempt was experiencing a problem with parents (47.5%) followed by problems with significant other or friend (35.4%).” That was mentioned in the topic called “reasons for attempting suicide.”¹ It is horrible and sad to see that the highest number is problems with parents. Just think about it for a second. People are killing themselves because of misunderstandings with their own parents or loved ones.

The government needs to consider that everyone has their problems in lives and, by talking to professional therapists, these problems can be seen from a completely different perspective. In the “suicide prevention strategies“² article it was reported that “psychotherapy alone or in combination with some antidepressants can be an effective treatment for preventing suicide attempts.”

Psychotherapy is “the professional treatment for psychological disorder through techniques designed to encourage communication of conflicts and insight.” The reason why this method is really successful is because patients directly confront the disorder and work with a professional psychotherapists to get rid of it.

Finally, I believe that psychotherapy sessions can increase the students’ and workers’ productivity significantly. Students and employees wouldn’t have to worry about keeping all of their problems inside of them and overthinking about them throughout the day. For example, if a psychotherapist will help them to realize that they don’t have problems in their lives, people will get more time and motivation to work harder, study more and live better. Therefore, everyone will be better off.

¹Jacobson, C. , Batejan, K. , Kleinman, M. and Gould, M. (2013), Reasons for Attempting Suicide among a Community Sample of Adolescents. Suicide Life Threat Behav, 43: 646-662. doi:10.1111/sltb.12047

²Mann JJ, Apter A, Bertolote J, et al. Suicide Prevention Strategies: A Systematic Review. JAMA.2005;294(16):2064–2074. doi:10.1001/jama.294.16.2064

Living in an Authoritative Household

During lecture 12’s discussion, we learned about three styles of parenting: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Each of these styles are quite different when discussing their implementation and general philosophy. With the authoritarian practice we learned that parents tend to impose firm or strict rules on their children and expect that they obey those rules. With permissive parents, they will not say no to their kids. These types of parents will never impose any rules and most likely would tend to their children’s demands. Lastly, authoritative parents tend to be a mix of the two. Rules are set in place and expected to be followed, however, if a child is able to provide reasoning, they could negotiate and compromise with their parents. These types of parents are flexible and responsive to their kids, but they still have a general structure and set of rules that expect their kids to be obedient to.

When discussing these practices, I was caught reminiscing about my childhood and how I was raised. One thing I remember during my childhood was getting punished a lot. Now I know that sounds bad at first, but I will admit I was quite the troublemaker growing up. Along with that, I also remember that my parents, mostly my mother, had many rules, in which they expected us to follow. I believe that my parents imposed many rules on us because they had three kids (each a year apart) to look after and raise at the same time. Some rules that I remember pertained to curfews and time limits for things and since the three of us either enjoyed playing outside with friends, or play video games and toys, it makes sense that curfews and time limits had to be put in place. For example, my brother and I were forbidden to play Wii at all during the weekday, and we were limited to 1 hour on Saturday and 1 hour on Sunday. We even had a small white timer in front of the television in which as soon as the timer went off, we had to stop playing and do something else. If we didn’t stop playing after an hour, we would get grounded for an hour and sent to our room. For the most part, we obeyed those rules until we reached adolescence and after that it was the end of time limits. Another rule I remember was put in place whenever me or my siblings hung out with friends outside or over their house. If my memory serves me right, I think we had to come home around 8pm. We had the freedom of going anywhere around our neighborhood but as long as we told our parents where we were and we got back home before 8, we had no problems.

In general, our parents never let us stay past 8, play excessively, and respect one another. If we did not follow any of these rules, we usually got grounded for an hour or more, or if we really misbehaved, would get hit with a belt. Typical Hispanic parents would punish their kids by hitting them with belts and such, and I remember, just getting threatened to get hit with the belt was enough to get us to behave.

With that in mind, I would say that my parents used authoritarian practices when raising us. My parents were never lenient and willing to negotiate with the three of us and these authoritative practices really show because during adolescence we became more obedient, even if our parents didn’t threaten us with punishment.

Living through Piagets Theory

Learning about Piaget”s Theory really hit home for me. I am the oldest child of three and have witnessed all the stages that Piaget describes. The first stage from birth to two years of age is considered the Sensory Motor Stage. At this point in time children take in the world through their senses along with gaining object permanence. Object permanence is the knowledge that things exist even when they can not be seen. I can remember my brother always wanting to play with the pendant on my moms necklace. To get him to stop she would just put the pendant inside her shirt so he couldn’t see it. Even though my brother saw her tuck it away, since it was no longer visible he completely forgot about it. As time went on and he got older this stopped working, because he gained object permanence, so she would have to take it off completely. The second stage from ages two to seven is called the Pre-Operational Stage. In this time period children learn language but do not understand logic. They are also starting to form a theory of mind but lack concept of conservation. Concept of conversation is the understanding that quantity remains the same despite the change in shape. At this time in my brothers life  i can remember unevenly splitting candy with my brother and lying about the quantities (so I could have more) and he would believe me. The third stage is called Concrete Operational Stage which is during ages seven to eleven. At this stage children can now think logistically and understand conservation. This was the turning point in brothers life where i could no longer trick or lie to him because he could now independently think about if i was being fair to him. The last stage called the Formal Operational Stage is from ages eleven and up. During this time period children can think logically about abstract concepts. This stage is thought to being earlier than Piaget believed. Piaget’s Theory is still very influential today and holds a lot of empirical support.

Blog #2 | PSY 100

How to raise a child and have some fun?

Childhood is one of the best times in our lives. Even if I can’t recall a lot of memories from back then, I am still sure that I was happy and I enjoyed every second of it, because I didn’t have any responsibilities in my life and I was a “free man”. Additionally, I think that childhood is a perfect period in our lives because this is the time when kids grow physically, develop different skills, mature, learn how to talk, walk, and manipulate their parents. While being the happiest period, it is also one of the saddest ones, because sometimes these changes occur too quickly and you don’t understand how this little cute alien became a real human with its own life, opinions, and manners.

But this doesn’t happen overnight. As we learned in class, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget realized that there are some patterns in kids’ behaviors. It was more of a pattern of what kids can and can’t do during certain ages. Therefore, Piaget came up to a conclusion that kids gain their cognitive ability in a developmental order, which basically means that kids at different ages think in fundamentally different ways. This led Piaget to create a Stage Model of Cognitive Development.

The first development stage in his model is the Sensorimotor Stage. It begins at birth and lasts until around the age of two. Kids at this stage explore the world by the direct physical interactions and through the fundamental senses of seeing, hearing, and tasting. That’s the reason why kids at this age are putting everything in their mouths. During this stage, kids’ use of their senses to explore the world is central, and that’s why whenever kids don’t directly see or feel objects, the objects don’t exist for them. You can use it to have a little fun – play peek-a-boo with a child. I don’t have to tell you what a peek-a-boo is, but now you know how it works. Simply, because a kid doesn’t see you behind your hands he thinks that you disappeared, and as soon as you reveal your face, you back again. If it’s not magic, then I don’t know what is!

Can You tell the Difference between when the Sympathetic vs Parasympathetic Nervous System is Working?

Have you ever stopped and thought about how our bodies and brain just know what to do in certain situations? Well you can thank your autonomic nervous system for playing a large role in allowing our body to work in the way it does. The autonomic nervous system is a control system that regulates many bodily functions like heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, and pupillary action. There are two main components of the autonomic system called the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system controls homeostasis and the bodies rest and digest response. This means that it controls the body’s response while at rest. These neurological pathways are longer and slower. The sympathetic nervous system’s main purpose is to mobilize the body’s fight-or-flight response. This system prepares the body to react to stressful environmental factors. When the sympathetic nervous system is active it results in muscle contraction, increase in heart rate, and pupils to dilate. These two systems do not usually function at the same time. This is because when each system is in action it requires more blood for the organs it has control over. When scared the body will divert blood from the digestive tract to sympathetic nerve functions to be able to carry out muscle contractions or run.

You can probably recall moments that you remember you sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system in action. I can recall a moment last week when my roommate scared me. I walked into my apartment very late at night and did not think she was there. It was very dark and quite as I walked into my room. Once I was in my room, I heard the floor boards creaking and movements in the other room. I got so scared that my palms turned sweaty and I could feel my heartbeat racing. I thought a burglar was in my home. She then called my name and I immediately felt relief. My heart stopped beating hard in my chest and I all my tense muscles immediately relaxed. When I was scared my sympathetic nervous system kicked in which resulted in sweating, increased heart rate, and muscle contraction. Once I realized I was no longer in danger my parasympathetic nervous system took control. This explained why I felt more relaxed and stopped sweating.

This is just one simple example of the parasympathetic vs sympathetic nervous system. If you pay attention to your body throughout your daily life and can probably be able to tell when your sympathetic vs parasympathetic system is working.

Bibliography

Low, P. (n.d.). Overview of the Autonomic Nervous System – Brain, Spinal Cord, and Nerve Disorders. Retrieved from https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/brain,-spinal-cord,-and-nerve-disorders/autonomic-nervous-system-disorders/overview-of-the-autonomic-nervous-system
Parasympathetic vs Sympathetic Nervous System. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.diffen.com/difference/Parasympathetic_nervous_system_vs_Sympathetic_nervous_system
Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.softschools.com/difference/sympathetic_vs_parasympathetic/143/

Blog #1 | PSY 100

Importance of “attention” in our lives.

Hey guys, my name is Sultan, and this is my first blog for Psychology class. I’m currently a rising sophomore at Penn State, double majoring in Psychology and Finance (not the typical mix, I know). I’m currently involved in the Psychology 100 course. So far, it has been a great experience and I love how the topics we learn in class can actually affect our real day-to-day lives. Our professor, Dr. Wede, does an amazing job by giving us real examples and showing videos to help us understand that this course is not only theoretical but practical, as well. Today in class we learned about Psychophysics. This fancy word just describes our relationship with the outside world and how we react to physical events. Furthermore, we talked about the Sensory Adaptation and how we are getting used to different things even if we hate them at the beginning. This led us to one of the most interesting topics in this course, which is Attention. The easiest way to understand this is to realize that the world contains more information that we can fully interpret or process, and, therefore, we need to focus on something specific, something that we are interested in. That’s where attention comes into play. Attention is a powerful force. It can make you experience an “inattentional blindness”, which is when you are failing to detect visible objects when your attention directed somewhere else. All of you probably had this problem when you lost something like your phone, but it was actually right in front of you or even in your hands. “When you are busy doing something else, you can fail to observe even really significant things”. This is how Selective Attention works, and by learning it you can understand how people “look” but don’t “see”. This is why it is really dangerous to drive and text at the same time, and you might even forget that you are driving a car at some point. But sometimes this might be pretty handy for us. Whenever you need to process information that is really important, Selective Attention will help you with that. Most of you have this friend that can do work without hearing any noises around, like loud music or people screaming. These kind of people can’t get easily distracted and it helps them a lot in their professional/school life. While others get distracted by every little thing and can never finish their work, because there is always something else you can do. I’m more like a second type of guy (it can take me the whole day just to finish one task). But after attending today’s class, I realized that our attention and vision are really inefficient, because we can be tricked so easily and there are so many different kind of illusions out there (literally just google “visual illusions” and you will be shocked). So, I thought that if we can trick it then we can improve it. I was right. There are so many different methods to improve your attention span, such as meditating (my favorite one), exercising, staying hydrated, etc. After that, I was shocked how easy it is to concentrate your attention on something for a long period of time. It helps me everyday now in all kind of tasks and it’s all started because of the lecture in my Psychology class. That’s why I believe that PSY100 is the best class in college. Thank you.