Month: November 2019

The topic I decided to cover for this assignment is observational learning. Observational learning is when animals, especially higher intelligent animals such as humans, learn strictly through observation. Observational learning is an important factor for human’s survival and daily life due to the fact that there is no direct experience needed in order to learn something. There are 4 elements that make up observational learning that include attention, memory, imitation and motivation. It has been found that there is a correlation between TV and observational learning, even though it may primarily just be correlational. Examples of this correlation can be how when there is more media violence there is more fights in school.

I can personally say that I have experienced the effects of observational learning throughout my childhood. Growing up, I had an older sister who was only two years older than me that was not the most obedient child growing up. She was very outgoing and sometimes impulsive with her decisions, which would lead her to not think of the outcome to her decisions. One night she decided to have her whole group of friends over while my parents were out to eat and my parents were not happy about this decision. I always wanted to have friends over while my parents were away, but was always concerned about how they would react if they found this out. After seeing the reaction my parents had after she decided to have her friends over, I learned it wouldn’t be a smart idea.

This personal experience I had from this situation can be related to what we learned about in class about observational learning. In class, we learned how observational learning is strictly learned without the need of direct experience. In the situation I explained above, I quickly learned it would not be a smart idea to have friends over while my parents were away due to their reaction when my sister decided to have her friends over. This learning experience required no direct experience on my part and was strictly learned through observation, which was also discussed in class.

Depression results from a combination of genetic, biochemical, environmental, and psychological factors. Researchers have said that when an MRI is taken, parts of the brain that are responsible for sleep, hunger, behavior, etc. show up more abnormal when someone is depressed versus when someone isn’t. Unfortunately, I witnessed my friend Carter go through depression recently, however it wasn’t for a long period. Jake was Carter’s best friend from back home. They did everything together as a kid; Jake was basically a brother to Carter. Saying goodbye and leaving to go to college was one of the hardest things he has ever had to do. Before he left to go to college, Carter and his long-term girlfriend, Maddy, broke up. This made his adjustment to college hard at first, but thankfully he was able to get over it and start to move on. However, 4 weeks ago, he got a call from Jake, who attends the University of Virginia. Jake called to tell him that he had been seeing Maddy for the last few weeks. He also told him that they (Jake and Maddy) are going to start dating. Carter was shaken- his lifelong best friend, who his family had done so much for, was now dating the girl he had fallen in love with all throughout high school. For 2 weeks after that call, Carter was sleeping all the time, rarely wanted to go out, never ate, and “felt homesick”. We hung out with him a lot in the dorms, but finally forced him to come get food and go out with us. We wanted to help reset his mind and convince him that there is so much more to life than this situation. He is in a new place where he will meet so many people, and he should put that in the past and just focus on the future, his future here at Penn State. I thought this anecdote gave a pretty clear example to our lecture about moods, depression, and how they can start and evolve.

Positive reinforcement and negative punishment are ways of getting the behavior that you want out of an individual. Reinforcers are commonly used in the training of animals, and the parenting of a child. Positive reinforcement is defined and was described in class as a way increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli. This type of reinforcement is used a lot in training animals, like giving a dog a treat after they do a trick or behave well. Negative punishment works on taking away something that is desirable to the individual, so that the individual’s unwanted behavior is prevented in the future. I believe that these types of reinforcers are successful when used correctly and are very effective.

Both of the types of reinforcement and punishment were used in my household growing up, and still are used today. They are very common ways  that parents use to raise their children in order to get their children to behave how the parents desire. When me and my siblings trained our dogs when they were young, positive and negative reinforcement were used because of how effectively you can teach a dog to do certain things by rewarding and taking away. My parents used negative punishment a lot while raising me and my 4 siblings because it would get us to learn and not do whatever we did to get punished again. An example of negative punishment in my household is when my mom would take away my brothers’ Xbox remotes when they were punished because that is what they desired the most. Also, a lot of parents will take away a teenager’s cellphone or driving privileges because that is what they most desire at the time. I believe that negative punishment works most effectively because when something that you like is taken away from you, you will do anything to get it back or not get it taken away again.

In class during this module 3, we learned about operant conditioning. This type of conditioning forms associations between behaviors and resulting events. Within operant conditioning, Thorndike’s Experiment explains this association. During this experiment, the Law of Effect displays that rewarded behavior is likely to recur. One thing that operant conditioning can show an example of is training animals how to behave to their owners’ standards. This is done through shaping. Shaping is the process by which reinforcers guide certain behavior closer towards a desired behavior. This is also known as successive approximations. This can be done through several techniques. One way is through reinforcement. Positive reinforcement increases desired behavior by presenting positive stimuli, and negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing negative stimuli. Another way of shaping is through punishment. Positive punishment administers an aversive stimulus and negative punishment withdraws a desirable stimulus.

Learning about operant conditioning reminded me of training my puppy around five years ago. When we first got my puppy, she basically did whatever she wanted and was no where near being properly trained. However, we knew that in order to raise a calm, obedient dog, we had to start training as soon as possible. The way we trained my dog was through operant conditioning. My dog then gradually began to make the connection between performing desired behaviors and receiving positive feedback. When teaching her to relieve herself outside instead of in the house, we used positive reinforcement. Every time she went outside to relieve herself, she was given a treat. And she loves treats. So eventually, her brain made the connection that going outside instead of inside would result in a treat. After a while, my dog developed a cognitive process in which she developed an expectation that a response will be reinforced or punished. Additionally, she began to associate good behaviors all by herself through latent learning, which is done without reinforcement.

Warning: This post briefly mentions suicide. It doesn’t go in-depth, but if you are triggered by the mention of it, then please don’t read further. Thank you!

Bipolar disorder, also known as “manic-depressive disorder” is a mood disorder that is characterized by alternating depressive and manic states, with each one often lasting for weeks at a time. These dramatic, and sometimes dangerous, mood swings are due to abnormal chemical activity in the brain. During the depressive state, people with bipolar have reduced levels of norepinephrine and serotonin activity in their brains, similar to people with major depressive disorders. Symptoms of this include being withdrawn and gloomy, tiredness, an inability to make decisions, and slowness of thought. On the contrary, the manic state is caused by excess norepinephrine activity in the brain. Symptoms of mania include elation, extreme euphoria, hyperactivity, having excessive thoughts (as opposed to the slowness of thought demonstrated in the depressive state), and a desire for action. The manic state can often be dangerous and can lead to people taking extremely dangerous risks as a result of the euphoria.

My grandpa was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Growing up, my mom remembers watching him struggle with the mood shifts between depression and mania. She remembers being scared of what he was going through, and even sometimes of him and what the disorder made him do, including getting excessively and irrationally angry at her and her brother as a result of his condition. Eventually, he committed suicide, likely due to extreme depression during the depressive state of the disorder. Even though I never got to know him personally, I’ve heard stories about him and what he went through from my mom and my uncle.  (Sorry, that got kinda sad.)

As humans, we learn through association. This means our minds connect events that occur in sequence. That is why classical conditioning is a direct correlation to this statement. It is a type of learning in which an organism learns to associate stimuli. The most well known example of this would be Pavlov’s experiments. Pavlov started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn, such as salivating whenever they see food. In this experiment, before conditioning, food, or the unconditioned stimulus, produces salivation which is the unconditioned response. The tone, or neutral stimulus, does not. In his experiment, Pavlov used a metronome as his neutral stimulus. Just by itself the metronome did not produce a response from the dogs. Pavlov then began the conditioning procedure, in which the clicking metronome was introduced just before he gave food to his dogs. After a number of trials of this procedure he presented the metronome on its own. Eventually, the sound of the clicking metronome on its own caused an increase in salivation.

You could say I performed my own experiment with my dog when he was 5 months old. This means he had been using a leash to walk for this amount of time. Obviously walking a dog every day is recommended so they (and you) get an adequate amount of daily exercise. I started out by just using the leash, which was the unconditioned stimulus, and he would get super excited, which was the unconditioned response. In this case the neutral stimulus was the term “walk.” I started to say “walk” right before producing the leash, which at first didn’t do anything. After about a week and a half (not sure if thats too long maybe my dog is dumb) he started responding to just the command “walk.” So now in this case the conditioned stimulus is the word “walk” and therefore the conditioned response is him getting excited. Now we have to be careful because if we loosely use the term around him, he will expect to go on a walk and sprint over ready to go.

There are other components of classical conditioning. Acquisition associates a neutral stimulus with a US, and the neutral stimulus has to come before the unconditioned stimulus. Extinction is the diminishing of a conditioned response, or when the US no longer follows CS. This would be like my dog not understanding what was going on when I first started saying “walk” without showing the leash. Also, spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of an extinguished response after a break but then becomes extinct again.

Throughout the semester, I have begun to understand and acknowledge behaviors and concepts surrounding topics learned in class. A lecture previously covered in Psych 100 is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, commonly addressed as “OCD”. This disorder is defined and diagnosed as the “persistence of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and urges to engage in senseless rituals (compulsions)” and is categorized a behavioral disorder. (Wede). Although some individuals have certain rituals, they prefer to do daily, there is a psychological difference between a person with a diagnosed compulsive disorder and an individual with certain preferences. Obsessive compulsive disorder is identified and diagnosed when rituals and compulsions are used as a necessary method to reduce anxiety, seeing rituals as reinforcements.  The abnormalities in which individuals are diagnosed is when individuals become very dependent on their rituals to reduce anxiety, interfering with their daily life.  

Within the past few months of being on campus, I have become very close friends with an individual who has been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. Due to having OCD, my friend frequently preforms rituals throughout the day, reducing her anxiety. My friend tends to get anxiety due to repetitive thoughts (obsessions) that leads to the need for repetitive actions (compulsions). Although every individual diagnosed could have different rituals, my friends include “tapping” an object a specific amount of times or moving her body a certain type of way a certain amount of times. I have spoken to my friend in regard to her compulsive disorder and has explained to me that her actions of “tapping” and body movement, which are categorized as compulsions, is in fact a way she copes with and reduces her anxiety.  

The lecture teaching about Obsessive Compulsion Disorder and my friend go hand in hand with one another. Before sitting through and learning this lecture, I was not sure what exactly was the difference between individual with preferences and individuals who have and are diagnosed with a disorder. Personally, knowing someone who has been diagnosed with OCD has given me a true insight into the disorder and the behaviors connected with this disorder and type of behavior.  

Something that really caught my attention in class was the method of observational learning. Observational learning is the method that consists of one watching another one’s behavior or attitude towards something. I personally have experienced observational learning plenty of times throughout my life. I remember when I was a little kid I would watch football with my dad and we would watch all the Eagles games together. When I first started watching the games I would notice the passion that my dad had when he would watch and his reactions were visibly noticeable. I picked up on why it meant so much to him and I was starting to get the same passion inside me as well. Now whenever I watch the Eagles play I become a different person and I have all this passion grow inside of me and I let it out depending on what had just occurred in the game.

Another example of observational learning that occurred in my life would have to be by watching my mother. She would always have great manner towards people and knew what words to say and how to say them. It made her come off as someone who was polite and respects others and that is exactly who she is. By being with her and growing with her as someone to look up to, I began to develop a great sense of how to act towards others and to make sure my manners are polite. It is very important to give off a good persona and by being respectful and showing that you care really helps you out in the long run.

Overall, Observational learning is a natural method that is experienced in many children throughout their lives and it helps them become the person that they are today. It is really interesting and makes you really think about how you became the person you are now.