Many of you have heard about Pavlov’s dog experiment, a very famous example of classical conditioning we learned about in class. Classical conditioning is a learning process in which two unrelated stimuli are repeatedly paired, and over time a reaction to the second stimulus can be achieved by the first stimulus alone. In Pavlov’s experiment, he paired the two stimuli of ringing a bell, and then giving food to a dog. After several times of first ringing a bell and then feeding the dog, eventually when Pavlov rung the bell the dog would start to salivate without the presence of the food. With only the first stimulus (the bell), the reaction of the second stimulus (salivating to the food) was achieved.

It’s amazing how simple it can be to condition someone or something in this way. I while back, a saw an interesting YouTube video where a student at BGSU “trained” his roommate through classical conditioning for his Psychology class. Over the course of a couple days, while his roommate was unexpectedly studying, the student would hit a Staple’s ‘That was Easy’ button (audibly saying this phrase), and then shoot his roommate with an airsoft gun. After a few times doing this, whenever the student hit the button, his roommate would violently flinch, without being shot at.

Examples of classical conditioning can furthermore be seen in our everyday lives. A simple example for me would be for my dogs, Dazy and Bella. Whenever my dad gets home from work, he opens the garage door making an audible sound heard throughout the house. Over time, they associated the noise of the garage opening with his arrival, and would stop anything and everything they were doing to greet him excitedly at to door. Now whenever the garage door is activated, whether or not someone is arriving at the house, Dazy and Bella excitedly crowd the front door and are more times than not disappointed with the presence of no one.

As a child grows up, they typically begin to do things and become familiar with them based on watching others. They may watch a baseball player on television and see the basic fundamentals that are displayed when it comes to swinging a baseball bat. Another example would be if a child is learning how to swim. That is when the idea immediately comes to my mind. Learning how to swim is not something we are born knowing how to do. It takes a little bit of time and practice in order to be successful and safe to be in a pool without some sort of floaties, noodles, or a grownup to hold onto.

Looking back, I laugh at the first time I learned how to swim. A few days before this happened; I was walking around the edge of my pool without my floaties on. I felt daring and rebellious being four years old and taking a step closer to be in the pool area without something to keep me safe. However, when I fell in, I realized it was time to learn how to swim if I want to be that rebellious again. Over the next few days, my older brothers and all of their friends were in my pool swimming. As I sat on the deck, dipping my feet in with my mom, I began to gain a basic concept of what it takes to be able to swim, or atleast hold you up in the pool without drowning. Of course it did not immediately come to me once I got in the water. With motivation and being rewarded ice cream when I could swim without holding onto my mom, I was able to complete such a rewarding task.

Children are constantly watching the people around them, and we are the ones they look up to. Our actions are what provide them with basic understanding of what it takes to do certain things in life, no matter how big or basic. This is extremely important in the early stages of development in a child. The mirror neurons cause us to copy what we see, allowing us to reenact the action for ourselves. Observational learning is extremely important, always be conscious that someone around you may be watching what you are doing.

Watson proved that fears do not always have to be elicited from birth; people can be trained to be afraid of things. In his experiment called “Little Albert,” Watson used his son, Albert, to prove that fear is not always an innate reaction. For a couple of days, Watson would let Albert play with a white mouse, which Albert seemed to really enjoy, then recorded his results. After a certain amount of days, Watson would still let Albert play this white mouse, but he would then make a loud banging noise. Immediately after Albert heard this noise, he would start to cry. After more days had passed, Watson would simply show Albert the white mouse, and Albert would start crying. By conducting this experiment, Watson was able to determine that the banging noise was considered the unconditioned stimulus, the white mouse was the conditioned stimulus, and crying was both the unconditioned and conditioned stimulus.

When I was younger, I would always wait anxiously for my parents to come home. I would always be downstairs playing with my babysitter, and every time I heard the door open, my parents would be right there. With that being said, I would immediately run to the door to greet them. Keep in mind, this happened on weekdays, the days my parents worked, and on weekend when I would hear the door, I would still run to the door because I would think that it would be one of my parents coming home. I can relate to Watson’s experiment because I experienced these different stimuli and responses like Albert did. In my case, the unconditioned stimulus was the noise of the door opening, the conditioned stimulus was my parents actually walking through the door, and the unconditioned and conditioned responses were me being extremely enthralled every time I heard the door opening.

Humans are amazing organisms that have evolved and over come an incredible amount of adversity. When considering all the plagues, famines, droughts, and wars it truly is incredible that our population has grown to more than seven billion people. As a human race in the last two hundred years we have gotten better at helping those in need, particularly those with psychological disorders. Just think about how rudimentary the procedures were that people used in early societies. The Hebrews believed it was punishment from God for the parent’s wrongdoing. Catholics believed that they could heal people by exorcising demons. Some believed blindly drilling holes in the skull of the disabled would alleviate the psychological symptoms observed.  Today we have much more reasonable methods to deal with and understand these issues.

It is thought that there is a great deal of things that can influence and contribute to a psychological disorder. Everything from where you grow up to who your parents are may play a role in the existence of a disorder. Generally psychologists group them together into three categories: biological, psychological, and socio-cultural influences. Biological influences are things that are directly related to the genetic make up and development, things like evolution, genes, and brain structure. Psychological influence are things like stress, trauma, learned helplessness, mood related perceptions and memories. Most believe that most of these are encountered first at an early age and continue to recur throughout childhood into adulthood. Social-cultural influences are things like the roles, expectations, and definitions of normality the culture holds. Beyond the influences there are three models that we learned about in class: the biomedical model, psychological model, and the biopsychosocial model.

The biomedical model treats disorders as if they are regular sicknesses. The doctor would diagnose a disorder after a series of regulated tests and observations. After diagnoses a prescription for the corresponding medicine and dosage would be given to the patient.  Although there were significant leaps in knowledge of disorder throughout the biomedical phase, it has been found that it isn’t always that simple. The simple nature of the disorder makes it hard to prescribe a medicine, because every patient is different and may require a different dosage or even a different drug.  Even after figuring out the correct drug and dosage, which can be frustrating, the patient may have an experience that triggers the disorder. Patients with anxiety often experience this phenomenon.

The psychological method is one that looks at disorders as a result of psychological influences. As mentioned above, it often looks at events that happened in the patient’s childhood that have become repressed and unconscious.  These experiences may give the psychologist a clue as to what the disorder is. It also looks at the way the patient has learned, for clues that may point towards a certain disorder. For example, if the mother of a child is extremely scared of spiders and screams loudly every time she sees one, the child may learn a phobia of spiders.

The biopsychosocial approach mixes all three of the influences to try to pinpoint a disorder. This model assumes that biological, psychological, and socio-cultural influences all combine to form a disorder. Some evidence for this method lies in the demographics of disorders. Depression and schizophrenia are both found worldwide dating back hundreds of years. This shows that there is some kind of gene for the disorder, but because not everyone has it there must be something that triggers it, perhaps an experience during childhood or a learned behavior from the culture. Regardless the biopsychosocial method is backed by most psychologists today