Author Archives: Laone M Ramodimoosi

Operant Conditioning

After our lesson on operant conditioning I recalled an incident that occurred while I was in the sixth grade. In our class there was a boy, Mason, who had a mental disability. Our teacher had us read the novel Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes as a way to learn about mental disabilities and how society treats people with mental disabilities. The novel is about Charlie Gordon, a man with a very low IQ who works as a janitor in a factory. He is selected to undergo an experimental surgical technique to increase his intelligence. The technique had already been successfully tested on Algernon, a laboratory mouse. The surgery on Charlie is also a success and his IQ triples. Charlie falls in love with his former teacher, Miss Kinnian, but as his intelligence increases, he surpasses her intellectually and they become unable to relate to each other. He also realizes that his co-workers at the factory, whom he thought were his friends, only liked him to be around so that they could make fun of him. As Charlie’s intelligence peaks, Algernon’s suddenly declines and dies  shortly afterward. Algernon was buried in a cheese box in Charlie’s backyard. Charlie discovers that his intelligence increase is also only temporary. He starts to experiment to find out the cause of the flaw in the experiment. Just when he finishes his experiments, his intelligence begins to disintegrate, to such an extent that he becomes even less intelligent than he was before the experiment. Charlie is aware of, and pained by, what is happening to him as he loses his knowledge and his ability to read and write. He tries to get his old job as a janitor back, and tries to revert to normal but he cannot stand the pity from his co-workers, landlady, and Ms. Kinnian. Charlie then decides to move to a new place. His last wish is that someone put flowers on Algernon’s grave every day.

Growing up with a disability Mason endured copious amounts of teasing from his peers and was often bullied as well. Whenever our teacher noticed Mason being teased, pitied or being treated unfairly our teacher would have whoever was treating him unfairly go out in the rose garden, cut a flower, bring it back, and stand in front of the entire class to recite the epigraph from the novel which about discouraging people from laughing at those who are “perplexed or weak of vision” while holding the flower and after reciting the epigraph apologise and present Mason with the flower. Upon your first mistreatment of Mason you had to do this task once but at your second or third time you had to do this task twice or three times respectively. Needless to say Mason was barely teased or mistreated by his peers ever again. I now realize that this task was operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which an individual’s behaviour is modified by its antecedents and consequences. The type of operant conditioning my teacher was performing was a positive punishment. A positive punishment occurs when a response is followed by a stimulus, such as the task of getting a flower and reciting the epigraph, resulting in a decrease in mistreating Mason.

Memory

As we learned in class it is uncommon and almost nearly impossible to remember things that happened to you before the age of three unless you experienced a traumatic event. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as childhood amnesia or infantile amnesia.  Childhood amnesia is the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories before the age of 2–4 years. Early memories tend to be implicit and implicit memories are difficult to bring to consciousness. Explicit memory, which are centered on verbal and conscious form of memory do not fully develop until after about age 2, when the hippocampus is more fully developed and language skills are intact.

Research has proven that certain memories from the early childhood years are more accessible than others for adults. I used to assume that not recalling a childhood memory meant that I had forgotten the event but there is a difference between accessibility and. A memory may always be available, but a person might not be able to access the memory for various reasons.1 According to a study by West and Bauer, earlier memories have less emotional content than later memories, and are less personally meaningful, unique, or intense 2 . Earlier memories also do not seem to differ greatly in perspective. For example I can remember in great detail how I celebrated my 10th and 18th birthday, each were very significant parts of my life. For my 10th birthday I can remember where it was, who was there and what it did but I can’t necessarily pinpoint how I felt at various points of that day whereas for my 18th birthday I can remember the events that occurred that day in the same detail but in addition to this I could tell you how I felt at various parts of the day, while I couldn’t tell you exactly how I felt on my 10th.

As professor Wede mentioned in class keeping a journal is useful for accessing memories that in time we won’t be able to remember as well in the future. In hindsight I would have kept a journal when I was younger so if I felt the need I could go back to read it to remember significant moments in my life that I am beginning to forget.

Citations

  1. Jack, Fiona, and Harlene Hayne. “Eliciting Adults’ Earliest Memories: Does It Matter How We Ask the Question?” Memory 15.6 (2007): 647-63. Print.
  2. West, Tiffany A., and Patricia J. Bauer. “Assumptions of Infantile Amnesia: Are There Differences Between Early and Later Memories?” Memory 7.3 (1999): 257-78. Print

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sociocultural Perspective

I was born and raised in Africa, Botswana to be more specif. In my culture seeing a psychologist is often frowned upon, those that see psychologists are stigmatized and often judged and deemed unfit. So a few weeks back during a Skype call with my gran I mentioned I was taking a psychology class. She was quick to let me know how disappointed she was “why would you waste your parents money studying mental illnesses” she said “you should have stayed here where we could make sure you are learning useful things. Psychology! Next thing you’ll be telling me people that work as psychologist make a lot of money” My immediate reaction was Gran! How could you be so ignorant? Of course I didn’t say those exact words to her, I was raised to respect my elders but that was my thought process. Later on when I was going through my notes I thought about our conversation. My gran is a well educated sophisticated woman, she isn’t ignorant. Her preposterous remarks were based on what she knew and how she was raised. Had she been raised in the United Kingdom or somewhere else I’m quite certain her opinion would be different. It’s all about the sociocultural perspective. The sociocultural perspective looks at the effect that people have on one another either individually or in a larger group such as a culture. The sociocultural perspective is important because it reminds people that the way they and others behave or even think is influenced not only by whether they are alone with friends, in a crowd, or part of a group but also by the social norms, fads, class differences and ethnic identity concerns of the particular culture in which they live.

I recently spoke to my gran again and, of course, the topic of my choice of study came up again. I explained to her that there is more to psychology than learning about mental illnesses. That it is the study of mental behaviour and processes and we study why humans behave the way that we do and even explained to her why she believes studying psychology is a waste of time. She then posed a question “so my culture and the people I am surrounded by affect how I think and behave, what does that mean for you? You haven’t lived in the same country for more than four years. How does that affect your behaviour? Maybe that’s why you are studying psychology, this constant change in environment has you confused.” Having had the opportunity to live in different parts of the world gave me a different perspective on life than that of my grandmother, our decisions and values are different and affected by the people we are surrounded by.

Ciccarelli, Saundra K., and J. Noland White. Psychology. 3rd. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012.Print.

 

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