Many people may not believe in lucid dreaming and if I told someone that I could do that, many would not believe me. Lucid dreaming is when you are aware that you are dreaming and you may even be able to manipulate what happens in the dream. This is not scientifically proven to be true or false because there is so little evidence other than the reports that people make who can lucid dream. Well let me add to the list of reports.

I cannot tell you how often I lucid dream, but I know that it is not all the time. I remember at least one dream a night, sometimes more. So if I was aware that I was dreaming, I would remember, I always do. For me, when I first start to go to sleep I shut my eyes and lay down. As soon as I shut my eyes I start to create a story that I didn’t think of to start dreaming about but usually I am ok with it. Sometimes I don’t like the story and I try to change the story to something else. By then I am not awake, my boyfriend knows when I am sleeping by the way I breathe and sometimes twitch. The dreams at the beginning of the night are the easiest to manipulate to suit what I want to think about. Now, I don’t control every movement or detail, but I can change who is in the dream, and what major events happen, and even the location. For an example one of my dreams started out as a picnic on a grassy hill and to every side you could not see anything but grass, the horizon was half grass and half sky. Then the weather changed to a storm with no shelter and a boss from a video game appeared. I didn’t like this so I changed it to another location, a rocky mountain and I was holding a sword. That was my change because I was aware of what was happening, I needed better ground and a weapon to defeat the boss, but then without me changing it, someone else appeared. A little girl was behind the boss and the only way to get to her was to kill the boss. The boss was huge, and I recognized him as the first boss Valus from Shadow of the Colossus, he was a giant Minotaur made of stone and has grassy patches on him. Again I manipulated the dream by making myself the same size as him. I have had many other dreams that I was able to manipulate, many of them at the beginning of the night, but also quite a few in the morning before I woke up. I am usually aware of the dreams that happen about an hour to two hours before I wake up. I think I remember them because I was aware of them, I don’t seem to forget them like other dreams. I don’t always lucid dream, that would not be something I would like.

If you want to know what it is like, watch Divergent the movie about a girl who can manipulate simulations. It is basically the same concept.

The concept of psychology that I would like to share is operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is the use of reinforcement or punishment to increase or decrease a certain behavior. This forms an association between the reward or punishment with that behavior and the person or animal being taught will learn to do or not do that specific behavior. This can be easily confused with classical conditioning, which is that there already is an association between two things. A good example of classical conditioning is Pavlov’s dogs, who would salivate to the sound of a bell after being fed every time the bell rang. The salivation was caused by the food initially, but after the association was made, the dogs would salivate by just hearing the bell.

I have tried this myself by using operant conditioning on my fish Bruce. Bruce is a betta fish and recently I have been training him to come to the front wall of his tank every time I feed him.  The reason that this is operant conditioning and not classical conditioning is that I will feed him only when he is at the front wall and I will not feed him when he is not at the front of the tank. Lately I have noticed that when I stand in front of the fish tank, he will swim up to the front wall and swim there eagerly, waiting to be fed. This is then classified as classical conditioning, because he has already associated that if he swims to the front wall of the tank he will get fed, and so now he will swim to the front expecting to be fed. The operant conditioning led to the classical conditioning due to the association that was made during the operant conditioning phase.  Other examples are also apparent in cases with teaching children new things. Operant conditioning is often used when a child uses bad behavior and so is punished when they display that behavior which makes them decrease that behavior in order not to be punished. This also works with reinforcement as well. There are many ways to learn, and this is just one way we can do so.

Behaviorism was a concept from the 1920’s which emphasized the scientific analysis of observable behaviors by saying that mental events are triggered by external stimuli which lead to behavior. This theory of stimulus and response then lead to the reward and punishment method. Even now that method is used. My mother recently finished her master’s degree in psychology with an emphasis on applied behavioral analysis. She works for an agency that provides services for children with behavioral issues. Some of these kids include developmentally delayed kids, and autism. My brother has high functioning autism, which means that he seems like a normal kid until you turn on a vacuum cleaner, or put him into a crowd of people.

My mother writes behavioral plans for students at several schools in Vermont, and with that she is also teaching me how to work with my brother better. She uses the reward system, because it has been statistically shown that it is more effective and less damaging in the long run. The punishment method may work temporarily, but it also leaves the possibility of traumatizing that child. Behavior isn’t only subject to change by punishment and reward, though. It can change through visual aids and other positive stimuli. My mother’s thesis is about using visual aids as an intervention to train a child with a severe disability to complete daily living skills and maintaining these skills with the visuals in place. (for further information:http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1458439106.html?FMT=AI&pubnum=1546517) I have seen this type of plan, combined with a reward system work. The summer  of 2012, my mother created a table that had Velcro on it and then there were small pictures that could be attached to this table. We would put pictures in order like so: a picture of brushing teeth, then a picture of putting on clothes, then a  picture of putting on shoes, then a picture of going to school. These pictures helped him know what to do, at what time. After each task was completed, he would receive a fake laminated dollar. At the end he could “cash in” these fake dollars for a reward like a toy or time to play a video game.

My mother and I have worked together to help my brother, and she is teaching me new ways of approach every day. Since I have two other brothers, I would sometimes forget that I cannot talk or play the same way with them as I can with John (real names will not be disclosed). Many times, you can just explain to a child why running in the road is not okay and then they will understand and not do that again, but with children who need support with their behavior, sometimes it takes more than sitting them down and explaining something. With John we have gotten to the point where most things can be explained to him, which is good, but sometimes other methods must be used. The point of all this, is that the reward method of behaviorism is the most effective and that it actually works, but there are also other methods that can be used to change behavior.