Dreaming is a natural phenomenon experienced by all living creates across the globe.  Humans dream every night whether they remember it or not.  Dreaming is vital to success in life because it is speculated that dreaming has an impact on memory.  It is hypothesized that dreaming actually helps sort out and process events from that day, which leads to a much stronger long term memory.  This helps explain why studying right before going to sleep may in fact be the best time to study.  If a person studies directly before going to bed, it is likely that the mind has an easier time sorting all of the information, and processing it in a way which will allow for a more successful long term memory.  I have read articles on the internet which make all sorts of claims about dreaming and what they might mean in your life.  One thing I read was that if someone was in your dream it means they missed you; I really never believed this because it just seems like something totally random which makes no sense.  After talking in class about how little we know what dreaming actually means, it is probably safe to say this statement is a lie.  On average I would say I remember a couple of dreams every week.  I remember in class we talked about lucid dreaming and how it involves realizing you are asleep, and then proceeding to control the rest of your dream.  While I have never actually controlled my dream as I slept, I have before realized I was dreaming and then promptly woke myself up.  This would typically happen when I realized a dream was just too ridiculous to be true.  It has only happened to me a handful of times in my life, but when it does happen it’s a very awesome experience.

Taste aversion is something that almost every person goes though in their lives. For some it lasts for years or their whole lives, while others only experience it for short periods of time. Taste aversion is what happens when humans have aversion to tastes (foods) they have become sick from.  Sometime this correlation can be used for good while commonly taste aversion happens on its own.

An example in my life when taste aversion used to get a positive outcome was when I was younger (7 years old) and still sucking my thumb. My mother noticed this and to help me stop put nail polish and other bad tasting items onto my thumb at night in order for me to make the association of the bad taste every time I went to suck my thumb. This eventually was successful in getting me to stop sucking my thumb.  After a few days of going to suck my thumb and tasting the awful things on my thumb I developed a taste aversion towards doing it.  This overall process of classical conditioning with taste aversion is what led me to the end of my thumb sucking.

A classic example of taste aversion is when a person eats a bad tasting food and then decides not to eat the food again. This is a situation that I believe happens to all people more often than they realize. For example:  when I went out to eat at a Chinese buffet. When people go to a buffet for the first time they commonly try everything that looks appealing or without knowing the taste. In multiple occasions I would get something that looked interesting but turned out to be extremely bad. I automatically developed a taste aversion towards that particular food and never attempted to try it again, even every other time I would return to the restaurant I would not try it. Taste aversion is real and occurs more often they we notice.

Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. During THON I know that a lot of people became sleep deprived. I knew some of the 2014 dancers and they were not allowed to sleep for the whole 46 hours at THON. I still hear stories about what happened in the 26^th and so on hours and how people started hallucinating and became really clumsy. They described it as not being able to control their own body. Even though THON is a great organization, the dancers and some people in the stands become a whole different person after so many hours of them being there.  I remember seeing people pass out because of there symptoms from sleep deprivation and I also saw a lot of people getting really mad over absolutely nothing. I was only there for a certain amount of time and I started to feel sleep deprived. I also remember a lot of people sleeping for like twenty hours after THON was over because they were so tired. All I have to say is thank gosh most people who stay the whole time are from state college and mostly a bus or a walk away from where they live, because I couldn’t imagine how many car accidents and possible deaths there would be if most of the people had to drive themselves. I also remember how everyone was sick and had no voice for a week or so after THON and it is because sleep deprivation causes your immune system to be very low; meaning you get sick a lot faster. Luckily sleep deprivation can be cured quite quickly because it only takes a couple of days to catch back up on your sleep.

Night Terrors

Throughout the 5 stages of sleep stages three and four are where most of the wrestling around and hypnotic jerks occur. Well what also could occur in these stages are episodes called night terrors. Night terrors are terrifying episodes during sleep where a person franticly wails their arms and legs, jumps around, and screams in their sleep; half of the time not being aware they are doing this. The reason I know so much about this is because my mother suffers from night terrors. She will be dead asleep for a while and all of a sudden she will start screaming and flailing her arms and legs all over the place. When people are around her when she does this, trust me it’s beyond frightening. When you try and wake her up to see if she is okay after this happens it is hard to get her awake because during stage 3 of sleep is when it is difficult to wake people up. Also what is strange is when you do get her awake after shaking her a bit, she doesn’t remember freaking out like she did. At first my family I used to get really scared when this happened because we didn’t know what was going on, now we realized that waking her up and asking her if she’s okay isn’t going to do any good because it just freaks her out more because she doesn’t know she does this stuff. I don’t know she’s dreaming or if she just jerks around randomly but it always interested me because we never know why or how this happens.  Usually night terrors occur in children so why my 38 year old mother suffers from them also I have no idea maybe it’s from nightmares or just some weird hormone or chemical in her brain but it’s just so strange that she never remembers freaking around like that.

There’s a “world” out there in which there aren’t any professors, there’s no books or instruction manuals; it’s a world where everyone learns specific tasks through observation, remember and repeating. While we may not specifically remember this world, or understand the world in which I speak of, each and every one of us have lived in the world of Observational Learning.

While growing up, every child wants to “fit in” with the other children and most, are willing to put themselves out there in hopes to do so. To better help explain picture the game of kickball. When growing up in Southern California, we would typically play sports such as basketball and soccer, however when my family moved to Connecticut, kickball was the main activity that the children would play. While I was unfamiliar with the game, I went up to the plate and kicked the ball – fouling out each and every time. I didn’t understand why the other children made me go back to the end of the line. While I was in the line, I watched the other children play in order to help me understand the rules. Ultimately, by doing so, I was able to remember how the children played and was able to repeat the tasks throughout the remainder of the game. Although my personal kickball experience was a very specific example of a task, observational learning also comes into play when we learn our basic moral and ethical values.

Observing others throughout your early development typically helps you learn and portray moral and ethical values. If you were to grow up in a household in which the parents used vulgar language or watched violent movies in front of you as a child, chances are you’re going to think that its ok for you to use them as well. Now, when using the vulgar words consistently in front of your friends, they too will start to use them. The Bodo Doll Experiment, an experiment done by Albert Bandura, helps portray this form of observational learning. A Bodo Doll is an inflatable toy in which children would play with either aggressively or passively depending on the group they were within. The children who observed the others in the experiment “beat up” the Bodo doll, would most likely beat the doll up themselves, whereas the others who were in the more passive group, tended to show non-aggressive behavior.

In conclusion, Observational learning is a part of our everyday life and is key to learning the life skills required to become a mature adult. Without observational learning, we would have to “study” or understand absolutely everything we do by listening to an instructor.

With simply dogs, food, and a bell Pavlov discovered classical conditioning. Classical Conditioning occurs when a conditioned stimulus, CS, is paired with an unconditioned stimulus, US. The CS in classical conditioning is something neutral, for pavlov the ringing of a bell, and the US is usually something connected to the senses, food, pain, so on, in Pavlov’s experiment food. The subject of the experiment, Pavlov’s dogs, have an unconditioned response, UR, to the US, salivating when food is presented, and when the CS is presented before and there predicts the arrival of the US, subjects will eventually have a conditioned response, CR to the CS which would be the same as the response to the US, the dogs would salivate at the sound of the bell even if no food was being presented.
During the summers I work as a swim coach and this past summer I did something to try to help my ten and under swimmers drop their times in their 50 yard freestyles. For this experiment, I has a CS of playing a certain song before their practices of their 50s. After the two laps, I would reward the fastest swimmer with getting out and calling starts for a few minutes. After a while the kids would get very competitive whenever they heard this song and eventually they had all dropped seconds off their race time and sometimes I would play the song and they would all jump out of the pool as fast as they could and line up behind the blocks ready to race. In this experiment, the US was the race/practice, the CS was the song, the UR was the swimming and the CR was ravin as fast as they could possibly go. This showed me the power of classical conditioning and the results it can produce. To this day I could play that song and have a dozen little kids run up to the lap pool goggles on and ready to win, all thanks to Pavlov and his dogs.

“Do as I say, not as I do.” Quite a contradictory statement, isn’t it? In grade school, my best friend’s mother always used to use this phrase. If my friend, Maeve, would say a bad word or do something wrong, she would say, “But mommy, you do it!” and her mother’s response would always be that silly quote. Therefore, Maeve never learned that the behaviors were bad, because although her mom told her not to do or say bad things, watching her mother do it made it seem okay.

A reason that this phrase is not a credible way to teach children between wrong and right is because of Albert Bandura‘s theory of observational learning. Observational learning refers to the process of watching and imitating others. It is a form of learning indirectly, and is especially strong for children, who cannot yet distinguish between wrong and right. It is one of the strongest influencers on children’s behavior, because they like to replicate individuals whom they admire, like their parents and older siblings.

A famous study that illustrates this effect is Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment. In this study, children ranging in age from three to six years old were separated into groups. One group watched adults be violent with toys, specifically a Bobo doll. The second group watched adults act non-violently towards the toys. A third group watched nothing. Overall, the children who were exposed to violent adults were also violent towards the toys, especially the Bobo doll, which they hit and kicked almost exactly the same way as the adults they watched did. This study is just one of many proofs of how strong observational learning can be.

Because of researchers like Bandura, people have become more aware of how detrimentally or positively their actions can influence people. Although most research in this field primarily relates to children, observational learning can affect teenagers and even adults. Never underestimate how your actions can affect other people, and never use the excuse to “do as I say, not as I do.”

Sources

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html

http://psychology.about.com/od/oindex/fl/What-Is-Observational-Learning.htm

Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment on Social Learning

Haley Hendel

I am sure many if not all of us have seen the news for today about the Franklin Regional High School stabbings. (Article: 24 Injured in Stabbing at Franklin Regional High School http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2014/04/09/multiple-students-reported-stabbed-at-franklin-regional-high-school/) Thankfully, no fatalities were reported, though a few of the victims are in critical condition. And the question becomes, “Why? Why did he do it?” The attacker, a sophomore student at the high school, was perceived as a nice guy to his peers.

Recently in class, we have been discussing psychological disorders and what constitutes abnormal behavior. Abnormal behavior is defined as actions that are statistically rare, deviate from the social norm, and/or cause danger to themselves/others, subjective discomfort, or an inability to function. In the last decade, it seems that unexpected (and sometimes unwarranted) violence especially in schools (Sandy Hook) and colleges (Virginia Tech) against others has become more and more prevalent. And this increase in random violent acts is making it seem like less of a deviance from the social norm, and we as a society are becoming desensitized to it. It seems as though any unstable or psychologically disturbed person can only act out their frustrations in a violent manner. Then, in the eyes of the law if they claim to be or are found by a medical professional to be “mentally unfit”, they no longer have to take responsibility for their actions (i.e. serve a prison sentence or other punishment).

There are some rare exceptions, but most people know whether their actions are right or wrong. Specifically in the cases of school violence, many of the perpetrators planned these acts( see Columbine in 1999 to Sandy Hook in 2012). These attacks took at least some amount of rational thought. If a person suffered from a psychotic break, typically a very sudden thing, it would follow that the violent reaction was triggered by some extremely adverse event and the person would react immediately. But in many of these cases that is not what is happening. In the Franklin Regional story, the attacker was described by one student (who had his face slashed) as having “the same expression on his face that he has every day, which was the freakiest part.” No rage, no anger, just blankness. To me, and I am in no way a medical or psychiatric/psychological professional, his behavior matches more with Antisocial Personality Disorder (formerly psycho- or socio-path). In this disorder, the person shows no remorse, and is often emotionless when describing their crimes. This is not some front they are putting up because they actually don’t even excrete the same level of hormones during what a “normal” person would find to be a distressing event. Nothing phases them. And while this is still a psychological disorder, it is not valid as a “get-out-of-jail-free” card, so the person can still be tried (see the Ice Man, Richard Kuklinski).

While I do feel it is necessary for people who are truly suffering to receive treatment, I think that in these cases, a psychological disorder just provides an excuse, and in my opinion a wholly unacceptable excuse. In an article discussing how people with mental illness deal with the stigma of having a mental illness, the author who suffers from chronic depression states how mentally ill people can still be almost completely “normal” functioning human beings and take responsibility for their actions. At the end, the author even states that the man who shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona (and others), though he was disturbed in some sense, was still a murderer. (Article: Mental Illness and Responsibility http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/01/10/mental-illness-and-responsibility/)

So, even though the answer to “Why did they do it?” may be a psychological disturbance, I feel that pleading “insanity” is a terribly insulting way to excuse murder that only sets a precedence for not so innocent parties that you can hide behind a sickness. In the future, I think that a solution is needed to separate the mentally ill seeking treatment to get better from the mentally ill murderers trying to hide from their actions.

*** Note: I do not mean to offend. I only mean to point out a serious problem that has only gotten worse in recent years. ***

Often clinical patients are formally diagnosed for the purpose of developing a treatment plan and for monetary reimbursement from insurance companies.

The DMS, a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disordered rendered by the American Psychiatric Association, is a symptom-based manual that classifies and described over 400 psychological conditions. Psychiatric and psychological practitioners utilize the DMS in order to diagnose patients whose symptoms may pertain to criteria of a disorder listed in the manual. While the DMS can often lead to specific and reliable classification, misdiagnosis is still commonplace.

Kirk and Kutchins, in an article called Deliberate Misdiagnosis in Mental Health Practice, discussed the deficiencies in the structure of the diagnosis system used in the DSM-III. These authors said a reason contributing to misdiagnosis is “the unreliability of the of diagnostic classification system.” The rigid classification system leaves little room for “uncertainty and ambiguity of individual cases”, according to Kirk and Kutchins. There are many other reasons why a patient might be misdiagnosed, but misdiagnosis can hinder the progress of the patient.

My mom is a therapist who works primarily with patients from failed treatment who were previously misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Because of the complicated the symptoms that accompany unresolved trauma, it is very difficult for clinicians to classify. She said that most of her patients have dissociate disorders associated with trauma, but previous practitioners have diagnosed them with depressive disorders or borderline personality disorders, which blame the victim instead of looking at the trauma and the real root of the problem. She then said that treatments for each disorder are different, and misdiagnosing patients will miss a huge piece of the problem and the patient will not get well.

So, in conclusion, I would like to say that while the DSM has many advantages, it forces many practitioners to classify their patients into rigid disorders, which then leads the practitioner to adopt a treatment plan that may not work if the patient was misdiagnosed.

Kirk, Stuart A., and Herb Kutchins. Deliberate Misdiagnosis in Mental Health Practice. 2nd ed. Vol. 62. N.p.: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. 225-28. JSTOR. JSTOR. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30011964>