Author Archives: kwg5272

Fun with Conditioning

Leave a reply

How does a bear learn to play trumpet and sit upright in one of your Mother’s colored lawn chairs? Or how does your dog roll over or do amusing things? Well, if you have yet to see the YouTube video I’m referring to or learned about this in a psychology class like I did, then you may be wondering what a bear is doing on a lawn chair or playing a brass instrument. These actually happened! But how you say? It was done by a form of operant conditioning called shaping and technique called successive approximations.

Let’s take this more familiar example. When I was younger I used to have a dog named Shmuffin. No typo there, actually ‘Shmuffin’. Not sure how my younger self and sister concocted that doozy of a name but muffin with a SH- as a prefix it was. He was a small little Yorkie dog with so much energy. Basically, he was the best. Well, he liked to play with all his energy. And as children, I think we had the energy to match, if not surpass his stamina after running around for hours. I really wanted to teach him something. Hm, so instead of teaching a new dog, old tricks (see what I did there), I thought I’d try something different.

I wanted see my dog spin around on his hind legs and spin around when presented with a treat. There were multiple steps involved of course. First I had to get him to stand up. Usually standing him up by holding two of his paws. Then, once he learned to stand without my assistance, I got him to spin. This was certainly more difficult but I managed to run around him while holding the treat to get him to spin. After multiple attempts he could do every motion without my assistance because he anticipated his treat. Even way before presenting the treat he would do the motions many times, even if he wasn’t getting a treat! This was all because of shaping and successive approximation.

The more common form of successive approximation. But it is theoretically possible to teach pigeons to discriminate flowers or people. Obviously there are some practical uses of training animals by way of shaping but the possibilities are endless. Maybe we could teach dogs to help disabled people get certain objects because they are immobile or bedridden. Maybe you could even teach your dog to get you a drink, even if you are capable, from the fridge. So, this isn’t practical whatsoever. I think a lazy college student on game day will beg to differ…

All in all, its pretty exciting to see the things you can do by using psychology. You can train bears to do crazy things, dogs to do funny things, or even other animals to be useful. I’m kind of surprised we do not see this more often. Maybe there will be more advancements with this type of  psychological conditioning with pets, especially dogs. Oh the things a dog will do for a treat.

Deep Processing Before Battle

Leave a reply

I want to talk about the theories behind completing an arduous task, studying for an exam. As a college student, your life, career and future depends on these three headed monsters called assessments. So what do we do? We slay those filthy creatures with whichever means possible and with whatever minimal time we have.

What is the best way to study, though? Studies have actually been conducted on studying. As much as that sounds like an inception, study-ception if you will, it is true. Every current college student, or so it appears to those pulling all nighters in the patee library (the ones napping on their books and desks), that cramming and staying up extra late is the sword to which the exam monster can be mutilated. However, the information you are “retaining” is simply and most likely just not sticking. Instead of showing up to battle the exam wielding a sword and a good looking companion, you show up with a large coffee and hefty eye baggage. It might have just been a more strategic move to bring a pillow and blanket and just sleep on the damn exam. Believe me, I’ve been there.

That lack of sleep affects your ability to perform well on the exam. I’ve done it before; many have. Although you were able to study thru all the material and it could be fresh in your mind (as fresh as those ragged pajamas you’re wearing and haven’t washed since you bought them), you will most certainly make stupid mistakes. We’re talking, screwing up two plus two on a calculus exam-stupid.

So we know now that it’s not about the quantity of studying but rather the quality of studying you participate in. We talked about many strategies in our psych class for proper studying. No, sleeping in the library wasn’t one of them… (Although sleeping on the couches in the business building should be one. Those are comfy, anyone concur?) We talked about the idea of creating visual representation of the information you’re reviewing and/or learning. Caution: this isn’t referring to some people’s ability to be “visual learners”, since this style of learning hasn’t been shown to actually exist.

Concept maps are good to help show relationships between the information you understand and others you may not. This is what we learned to be called deep processing. Think about it for a second… If you are spending hours studying flashcards and memorizing individual words and phrases, when it comes to exam slaying, your mind may be fumbling over words you may forget and may not be able to think about the context of the concept.

So here’s the gameplay. We need to create concept maps all the time with our course material. Professor Wede even suggested doing this while note taking as well, which gives the nod to pencil and paper note taking. We draw nodes with certain information or terms and connect them to other things we’ve learned. For note taking, many of this unconsciously do this, but draws arrows to notes referring to something else you have written previously. This is also another form of a concept map. I found that even relating course material with another course I did well in, and was able to actually recall information, aided my deep processing ability and allowed me to put things into perspective.

Concept maps are an ingenious idea and have proven to work. They may change from rendition to rendition but it allows one to look at information in a different light and understand the graphical and hierarchical representations of information. Rather than slaving away hours upon hours down to the last minutes of studying, periodically make concept maps throughout your learning and all throughout your studies. Put your learning into context and in such a way that your complex, unique human brain can understand it. We learned this in class but I can attest, generating concept maps is actually effective. You’ll be on your way to kicking the ass of that three headed monster we call exams.

Happy battles,

Kenny G.

Very Superstitious

4 Replies

It is exceptionally interesting how the brain tries to make sense of every little thing in life. You may eat Cheerios one night, have a snow day on an exam day the following day and have things rescheduled. Your brain will think something’s up. So the next five exam days you eat Cheerios the night before expecting the same results, but nothing comes of it. Maybe it was obvious that last attempt in July would not work… It happens to the best of us to varying degrees: superstition.

Now, picture this scenario. You go to a country concert, only because your best friend pulled your leg to come with them. You, being the classical, Tchaikovsky listening music buff you are, have no interest in Martina McBride or any sort of ‘twang’ in music for that matter. So what do you do? You observe the crowd and start generalizing and stereotyping the people around you. You now go home thinking that every country music listener rides tractors, drinks cold beer on Friday nights and likes perfectly fitting blue jeans and cutoff tees. (On a side note, country artists ought to start writing about different topics, but that’s beside the point.) You may have done this many times in your life: stereotyping.

The psychological reasoning behind both superstitions and stereotyping is known in the science world as illusory correlation (‘’Illusory’’ which comes from ‘’illusions’’ and correlations as in a relationship). This is the idea that our brain tries to create correlations or relationships between things, people, behaviors, or events that are not even associated with each other. That bowl of Cheerios on your study session night or the tractor loving, country music listening stranger walking passed you are simply perceptions of an illusion that your mind has created for you and in which you believe in. It’s almost like a mirage.

Personally every Sunday in the fall and early winter months, I give into illusory correlation big time. During the NFL season when I’m either at a Baltimore Ravens game when they’re home or watching it with family and friends in the comfort of my living room, superstition engulfs my environment. That’s right. We’re talking about assigned seats in the living room, only high fives on scoring drives, and bobbleheads that are placed just right. Sometimes we do things as a parody of ourselves… But yet we still perceive that our nonsense affects the game, or think it is funny to believe it affects the game.

One instance that shrill gets me today is when my neighbor would wear his Ngata jersey who is a defensive lineman for the Ravens. For five straight games he would wear this jersey to find out that each time he would wear it, the Ravens would win! The following week, his jersey was getting washed and wasn’t dry, so he wore a Ray Lewis jersey to our house for game day. What do you know, the Ravens lost. The following year, we started to test this theory that his jersey affected the outcome of the football games. Although not 100% effective, the Ravens ended up into the playoffs and became super bowl champions, all because of the Ngata jersey. Okay, actually not.

We like to perceive that our actions had affected the season but in reality, if the actual illusory correlation was true, the Ravens would be super bowl champions every year. As happy as that’d make me, it’s not happening. And I can say as a diehard Ravens fan who bleeds purple, the next super bowl win for the Ravens won’t be coming very soon. At any rate, illusory correlation in my life is here to stay. Whether you are extremely superstitious, giving into stereotypes or think you are none of the above, you have most likely had experience with illusory correlation at least once in your life. This is one psychological aspect that is difficult to explain sometimes, but is very apparent in all human beings. Go Ravens! But don’t take my seat during gameday…