My dad has had a job in the city since my brother and I were little, so he takes the train to work everyday and needs change to pay the meter to park his car at the train station. He would arrive home from work at about 5:30pm everyday, and there is a bell on the mudroom door that rings when it’s swung open, so when my brother and I were little, we would hear the bell and know dad was home. At one point, my dad began giving us the change left in his pocket from the parking meter for us to put in our piggy banks. We loved getting change for our piggy banks because that meant that we would eventually be able to take it to the bank and put it in a machine that would spit out cash. Soon enough, every time my brother and I heard the bell from the door swinging open, we equated that to dad giving us change for our piggy banks. We would run out to the kitchen were he came in from the mudroom to collect our change, even if it wasn’t actually dad or he didn’t have change. This is an example of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a phenomenon that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired and the response elected by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone. The ring of the bell by the door swinging caused my brother and I to run into the kitchen thinking we were getting change for our piggy banks, no matter if that was actually the case or not. The idea of classical conditioning was mostly developed by Ivan Pavlov, who did experiments on the physiology of digestion in dogs. Dogs would salivate simply from seeing the technician who typically fed them, rather than just from food itself. Just like the dogs in Pavlov’s experiment, my brother and I would get excited at the sound of the bell ringing, rather than just the change we would receive for our piggy banks, indicating classical conditioning.
Tag: experiment
Blog Post 1 for Su Wanyi: Brain Function—–Split Brain Patients
Topic: Brain Function —— Split Brain Patients
- Concept Description:
Our brain are divided into left hemisphere and right hemisphere. They work together to help people living, doing works, speaking, and so on. The concept is that left hemisphere is responsible for logical issues like languages, analysis, classification, and right hemisphere is responsible for emotional issues like art, music, recognition of face and shapes. Also, left brain controls right side of body and right brain controls left side of body. The two parts of brain are connected by corpus callosum, so they work together through the help of it.
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- Real World Experiences:
In order to make clear the corresponding function of different parts of the brain, people did an Split Brain Experiment, which is to conduct the consequences of functions from brain without corpus callosum. Here I want to notice that it is illegal to use alive people to do the experiment so the scientists did not really cut the corpus callosum. They use volunteers who had already had problems with their brain. For example, people who has injured with epilepsy need to be cured by cutting their corpus callosum.
Roger Sperry in 1981 did an experiment with split brain patients. In daily life, the patient seemed usual. He could walk, speak, write, hold things, and so on. The patient was presented with a row of horizontal lights flashed across the visual field. The patient was only able to say out when the lights flashed on the right side, not the left side. Surprisingly, when asking the patient to point at the lights when they flashed, rather than spoke it out, the patient could also accurately identify all the lights.
Sperry did another experiment to test the right hemisphere. The patient placed their left hand in a box but cannot see the objects. Then a picture of one of the subject in the box was shown to the patient’s left visual field. The patient’s left hand picked up the object corresponding to the picture. However, the patient claimed that he had no idea why holding the object.
- How the experience and concept related
In the first experiment, the patient could only see the lights on the right side means that only the left hemisphere works to see something. However, he cannot report lights appeared on the left side of the view means that right hemisphere do not have language ability. While both brain hemispheres are capable of perceiving the lights, only the left hemisphere is capable of translating this knowledge into speech. Therefore we can say that the left hemisphere controls language and speech.
In the second example, the picture was shown in the left visual field, so the right brain had recognized the word and told the left hand to pick it up. However, because the right side of the brain do not have language ability and the left side of the brain cannot see the picture, the patient could not explain why they picked up the corresponding object. Therefore, we can say that the right hemisphere controls recognition of shapes.
- References
Bryan, N. (2015). “What were the split brain experiments?” [Online]. Available from: https://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/what-were-the-split-brain-experiments [Accessed 16 September 2019]
Lienhard, Dina A., “Roger Sperry’s Split Brain Experiments (1959–1968)”. Embryo Project Encyclopedia (2017-12-27). [Online]. Available from: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968 [Accessed 16 September 2019]
MLA style: “The Split Brain Experiments”. Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. [Online]. Abailable from: https://educationalgames.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background.html [Accessed 16 September 2019]
l Appendix
There is a link of a video for the split brain experiment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo
Behavioral Conditioning: “Little Albert” Experiment
Behavioral psychology is one of the modern perspectives of psychology and as defined by our class; has a focus on operant conditioning, punishment and reinforcement. Anybody that has a pet can easily relate a basic concept of behavioral conditioning to their life. Say your dog likes to beg for food. If you cave and decide to appease your dog, the dog will continue to beg as now it knows that it will get what it wants. You don’t typically want to reinforce bad behavior, or else the unfavorable behavior will continue due. As I stated, this is basic conditioning that just about anybody can witness and attest to. The concept of conditioning brought a more unethical question though; can a phobia be conditioned into a young child?
John Watson performed an experiment in 1920 that would be known as the “Little Albert” experiment. He along with his assistant Rosalie Rayner set out to answer the question. They would take a 9-month baby and have him play with a white rat. By default, Albert had no problem with the rat and showed no fear of it, even enjoying his time with it. They would then make a loud, unexpected noise behind the child, scaring the life out of him. After repeating this multiple times, the child grew terrified of the rat, even when no noise was made. The repeated trials held during this experiment conditioned “Albert” to associate rats with loud scary noises, and caused him to be terrified by them as a result. This experiment, though quite useful to the progression of psychology as a science, has been deemed horribly unethical. The fact that Watson never de-conditioned the child only serves to make it worse.
Sources used:
DeAngelis, T. “’Little Albert’ Regains His Identity.” Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association, Jan. 2010, www.apa.org/monitor/2010/01/little-albert.