Author: aas6144

Reinforcement is any event that strengthens the behavior it follows and it can either be positive or negative. Many people believe positive and negative reinforcement to mean it is either good or bad, but that is not true. Positive reinforcement is increasing the behavior by presenting positive stimuli, so you can think of it by adding something. Negative reinforcement on the other hand is increasing behaviors by removing negative stimuli, so as to remove or take away something. This process is used in many different scenarios. Human beings and animals alike learn to adjust their behavior based on the type of reinforcement their behaviors receive.

Ten years ago, I got two yellow Labrador Retrievers and while I was training them I used positive and negative reinforcement to teach them when they were puppies. I would tell the dogs the commands that I wanted them to do, starting off simple with sit and shake. To reinforce the behavior that I wanted them to do I would reward them with a treat. So if they sat after I gave the command they would get a reward. This process was positive reinforcement. When I would give them a command and they did not listen I would not give them a treat. This taught them that they were not doing the correct thing. By using this process I was able to train my dogs to listen to the commands that I told them because their behavior was either getting positively or negatively enforced.

These concepts are related because my dogs were able to learn by their behaviors were correct by getting rewarded with a treat, positive reinforcement, or not getting a treat when they did not follow the command, negative reinforcement. Throughout the process of training my dogs with this tactic I was able to teach them many different things and reward them for doing the correct task.

 

While learning about memory in lecture 11, I was very interested in learning about source amnesia. Memory is such a complex topic because there are so many different components to how we remember things and how our brain works. I found the topic of source amnesia very interesting because I had experienced this myself. Source amnesia is attributing an event to the wrong source. It is mistaking experiences, things we have heard or read, dreamt, or imagined to the wrong source so either it happened or it did not. This topic is related to the misinformation effect which is when a persons memory becomes less accurate because of information gained after the event. Throughout my life I have told stories to my mom and sister that had never happened, and it became a joke that I would make the stories up. However, I was certain that I had experienced it. In actuality I was thinking that my dreams or things I had thought about in my head. When I would tell the stories I was attributing the story to the wrong source. It happens so often that I normally start by telling stories of my memories by saying “I may have made this up” and then continue telling the story. A distinct time that I remember attributing a memory to the wrong source was when I was recalling a time when my family and I were driving to South Carolina from New Jersey. I asked my mom if she remembered this trip, but more specifically if she remembered when it started raining really badly and thundering and lightening. We were driving on the road and lightening struck right next to our car, and I fully recall this happening. However, my mom knows for a fact that this did not happen. The more I thought about this and how I could think that something happened when it simply did not, I thought the only probable explanation was that either I dreamt of a similar situation or thought about how bizarre it would be if lightening struck near our car. I never knew what this was or why I believed that this event happened until we covered the topic of source amnesia in lecture.

In psychology we have learned about many different things. Many of these concepts can be applied to real life. While learning about the nervous systems, it was very interesting to see how and why thing worked the way they did. I learned that the autonomic nervous system is composed of two subdivisions, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous systems gets the body ready for “fight or flight”. It is the response the body has when a person experiences performance stress. The sympathetic nervous system increases a persons heart rate and breathing, slows down digestion, increases blood flow to the skeletal muscles, and releases energizing sugar and fat from storage deposits. 

An example of a real life experience I had when the sympathetic nervous system took over was when I was training to become a whitewater rafting river guide. I had never done anything like this before, and it was extensive training to get the job. I was very nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. Before we got into our rafts and on the river, I was very nervous and did not know how well I was going to do in this type of training. We were going down a 12 mile section of the river. I also did not know any of the people I was with so that was also nerve-racking. 

Now I know that this response my body had was my sympathetic nervous system. My breathing and heart rate increased. I was able to perform well because of the adrenaline that was released in my body. This situation was very stressful for me and my body was put into “fight or flight”. I was nervous about how well I was going to, and the performance stress that I was under triggered the response of my sympathetic nervous system.