Monthly Archives: March 2014

Operant Conditioning

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Being a part of the Women’s Volleyball team is an incredible experience and opportunity. However it also can be very hard. The beauty about the way Coach Rose runs the program is that he accepts, encourages and appreciates all of the different playing styles that individuals bring to the team. Yet, being a stickler for tradition, there are many behaviors that you quickly are forced to learn and do. So in a way, I am trying to relate our volleyball program and learning process to operant conditioning. When talking about shaping with the dog, I somehow spin it in my head to relate to my training. With the dog, the reinforce guides behavior closer towards a desired behavior. So if you want to dog to roll over you have to teach him in steps; give him the treat when he sits, then when he lays down and finally when he rolls over. Similar to training, you can’t spike a ball without first learning the footwork, and arm swing. For myself, I am a backrow player. When I first got to college all I wanted to do was jump in and play with the big girls… until I realized my skill level wasn’t quite at their speed. It was kind of like asking a puppy to run before it knew how to walk. So I had to start with the puppy training. I started with doing floor work and moving without the ball, practicing sprawls, dives, rolls and etc each and every way. Next came working in the ball off a toss with a partner, then off a hit ball, then a live approach to finally a live game. The only way these stages progressively worked however was by performing each step the desired way. I would get a compliment or be allowed to move onto the next step of the process if I did it right (my doggie treat), and would stay at the same level, most likely getting yelled at or corrected until I did it the right way.

As for the team, coach holds a couple cardinal traditional rules that you don’t want to break. One of them being always go for a ball with two hands. “ God gave you two for a reason, USE THEM” hell say; the other being, never let a ball drop without going to the floor with it, if you miss a serve, you hit the floor and roll, if somebody passes your serve with your hands you do pushups, if the ball goes between your legs you do a suicide and so on. Coming in as a freshman, is kind of a “ figure it out yourself” kind of thing; it’s what makes us so tough. So similar to the dog analogy, you can tell the dog don’t do this, don’t do that but do this, yet words don’t always get through to them as much as the actions that follow each behavior. There were no written rules about the ones my coach holds you accountable for anywhere but I quickly figured them out when I was continually punished for breaking each one of them. Then, you could say there was always negative reinforcement being used where by removing going with one hand, missing serves and serving easy balls (decreasing inappropriate behavior and increasing the desired behavior), the negative stimuli (doing suicides, running, or holding defensive position for 40 minutes was removed.

Although we train like dogs, WE still ARE….. Nittany Lions.

Flashbulb Memory

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In August of 2010 my family and I threw my Granna, my grandmother, a surprise 75th birthday. Her birthday was actually in July, but I was not in the country at the time, and also we thought that it would be even more surprising if we were to have the party a month later, because she would not suspect anything to be happening. Anyway we tell my Granna that there is going to be an award ceremony for me for my trip to Australia, and that my mom couldn’t make it so we wanted her to come instead. That is how we got her there and I remember clearly she was in the car telling my dad how she was going to call my mom when we got home and yell at her for not being able to make it. We pull up to the banquet hall and we walk in and I can see as clear as day the surprise look on my Granna’s face when she sees her whole family standing there yelling surprise. She was completely shock.

I related this story to the theory of flashbulb memory because the definition is types of automatic encoding that occurs because an unexpected event has strong emotional associations for the person remembering it. Know I knew that I would be happy that my Granna was surprised and had a great birthday, but I never expected to be able to recall the whole night as if it was happening all over again. I was expecting to feel happy, but I did not expect to feel excited, emotional, happy, and a whole bunch of other emotions that are to hard to describe. I did not expect it to be emotional because it was suppose to be a happy time and, at the time, my Granna was having a rough time with her chemotherapy treatments, and the emotions that over took my at the fact that she was still here and able to celebrate a 75th birthday was something that I did not expect to be thinking about or feeling when she walked into the room and starting hugging people, kissing people, and singing her favorite song at the time.

So basically I knew the night would be memorable, but I never thought that I would be able to remember everything that went on throughout the night.

Sports and Short Term Memory

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From the time I was five years old until I was 18, sports had always been a huge part of my life. I played on every team I could and enjoyed my time on the field or in the pool. But it was contact sports like soccer that not only took a physical toll on my body, but also a mental. This past unit focused a great deal on various aspects of memory and how our brain processes different injuries and consequences that follow.

If you are or at one point played a contact sport, the probability of you experiencing or have experienced a concussion is high. I have personally had five concussions, four of which came from playing soccer. According to my doctors, concussions make up 2-3% of all injuries in soccer. Each time I had to get them checked out by my trainer and then the hospital because I either lost consciousness or had other symptoms at each incident. The concussions resulted from hard impact from striking the head of another player or when the ball was kicked from close range, allowing no time to react.

Short team memory loss is a typical thing that results from concussions and I have experienced this more times than I care to admit. One of my first concussions was a result of clashing heads with another player in order to head the ball. This knocked me completely to the ground, unconscious. The next thing I remember is waking up lying on the field with my coaches, trainers and team members around me saying my name. I was having trouble focusing and I remember hardly being able to open my eyes because it was too bright. It was 5 in the evening and the sun was setting. I didn’t remember going up to head the ball, falling, hitting the ground, or even the score of the game.

Later that night my parents took me to the hospital where I got a CT scan, and they referred me to a CHOP concussion doctor the following day. This doctor put me through a series of tests to measure the extent of damage caused by this incident. He asked me detailed questions about my injury and then performed a neurological exam, which checked my memory and concentration, vision, hearing, balance, strength and sensation, coordination, and reflexes. The doctor told me I did have a concussion and that short-term memory loss was and would be a continual problem for the next few weeks. He was right and I had trouble remembering if I had brushed my teeth in the morning, or if I had taken my medicine, the simplest things you think are second nature to yourself by now. It would drive me crazy but I did recover and by the time the next concussion happened, I knew what to expect and how to cope with it.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as fortunate as I was to recover with minimal or no permanent damage to my brain. Our brains are very fragile and we have to take extreme care of them. A blow to the head or upper body can lead to bleeding in or around your brain and this bleeding can be fatal. That’s why it is critical that anyone who experiences an injury to the head is monitored right away and goes to the hospital if symptoms of a concussion get worse.

Conservation – Younger Siblings

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The other day, I found myself in a heated discussion with my 4 year old sister and my 5 year old cousin. My sister, Sydney, is a huge fan of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My cousin, Will, is not as big a fan, but that is all I felt like making him while I babysat the two. Sydney requested that I cut her sandwich into two halves. William, being the clever and competitive older cousin, wanted four quarters, because four is more than two.

I knew nothing of this little competition and thought nothing of it until I left them with their lunches. Not a moment after placing the plates on the table in front of them, I overhear Will chuckle and whisper to Sydney, “I got more than you.” Sydney, who doesn’t take anything from anyone, immediately hurls Will’s four sandwich pieces across the room. “Now you have none.”, she scoffed. Will burst into tears and hit Sydney, which caused her to begin crying. Still unaware that any of this happened, I continued to make my own lunch. From the kitchen I hurried back to the dining room to see what was amiss. Sydney remarked that I caused all of this by giving Will more than her. I insisted that they were both given the same amount, just cut differently. A spark must have went off in their heads because the crying ceased.

I sat down and explained the situation to the both of them. Without directly using the word “conservation”, I explained that even though Will had more pieces, both came from the same whole slices of bread. Will insisted that he still had more and Sydney agreed. After 20 minutes of explaining and using examples with new slices of bread, they came to an understanding… They would both like their sandwiches cut into four pieces…

The First Memory

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In class there was a clicker question that had asked what our first memory was. I took AP Psych in high school so I knew that memory before the age of at least 3 is very rare so when people had said they remembered being babies I just laughed. The reasoning we cannot remember memories from before 3 years old is due to infantile amnesia. We cannot remember before the age of 3 and also what we do remember, our first memory, is usually a traumatic event.

I can distinctly remember my first memory from when i was 4. Until the age of 5 my family had lived at my Nanie’s house, which was in the same neighborhood as where a lot of my cousins lived. It was a summer night and we were all playing at my neighbor’s house when all of a sudden my cousin drove over my big toe with his big wheel. I can distinctly remember my toe nail being shattered and crying. My mom carried me to our house and I called my aunt who is a nurse and she wrapped my toe. I even remember in the morning losing the wrapping and waking up without it on my toe. I can distinctly remember this memory because it was traumatic and left an impact on me.

In addition to learning about infantile amnesia, I enjoyed learning about memory and how it works. It really all made sense when I had to visit an old person’s home for my HDFS class. It was for aging adults who had memory problems. It was amazing to hear what some could remember, and sad to realize what others could not remember. While some had long term memory still, others did not have short term memory.  The trip to the home made me realize just how complex memory is.

Chunks of Pi

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I remember it all too clearly. Eighth grade. Pi day (3/14). Every year, the teacher who teaches the 8th grade math class I was in had the students do three things. First, we all had to come in sporting some sort of shirt which had its own Pi day reference. Second, each student was assigned to do a poster on the history of pi. Lastly, all students of her class participated in a memory contest to see who could recite the most digits of pi. Was I about to go home and study, hours on end, memorizing the many digits of the endless irrational number known as pi? Heck no. So what did I do? Instead of paying attention in all my classes before math (which was all of my classes besides gym), I managed to memorize over one hundred digits of pi. I am baffled by the thought of it to this day, but how did I do it?

With the help of my hippocampus which allowed me to create a huge pile-up of short-term memories, I used the memorization technique known as chunking to achieve first place in this contest. Chunking is used almost daily in everyone’s lives. If you look at a simple telephone number such as 123-456-7890, the ten digit sequence is split up into three “chunks” in order to make the number easier to remember. If you look at the number without the dashes, 1234567890, it seems a little bit harder to remember (besides the fact that the number IS just 1234567890). Back to the memory contest; throughout the day, I created numerous chunks of pi (still talking about the number pi), each consisting of ten digits. I would study the first chunk of ten, saying them in order in my head multiple times over, then move on to the next chunk. As I continued from chunk to chunk, I would eventually start back at the beginning, but combine each chunk to create my huge string of memorized digits of pi.

By the time I stepped in the door of my math class, this technique had allowed me to memorize just over one hundred digits of pi. To my surprise, I was able to recite them perfectly, as though I had been practicing for this contest for ages. The next day though, when I tried to remember them again to impress the girls sitting at my lunch table (such a skill is so impressive I know), I only made it to about sixty. Before I knew it (meaning within a week), I had absolutely no recollection of pi. I was astonished by how quickly I lost my newfound ability, but the pi contest was over, so whatever. The usefulness of chunking remains great to this day, and I’m sure that for all of you readers, the feeling is mutual.

Remember me? Remember me not?

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My first day of college orientation was the day that my youngest cousin was born; he will turn four years old this upcoming July. I was only able to spend one month with him before move in day. During that one month, I grew very close to him, there was not one day that we did not spend together, and after he was done eating I would always play with him and kept him company until he fell asleep. My cousin could go food shopping or run errands and he was completely fine as long as she was back before he was hungry again. When I moved away for college, everything drastically changed. I clearly was not home as often, perhaps every two months or just on school breaks. During the course of this time, I became a stranger to my baby cousin. When I went back for Thanksgiving break, he was a little over four months; I want to believe that he still recognized me. I remember at first her was a little “stand offish” but then he became comfortable around me again.  The same thing happened around December break, at first he didn’t really know who I was but after a day or two from being home, he finally did not panic. Everything changed when I went back home for spring break, he was then almost eight months.

I remember being so excited to finally be home for an entire week so I could spend some time with my cousin. Unfortunately, it did not turn out as I expected. Using what we have recently learned in class, my little cousin developed stranger anxiety, which makes sense because it starts to arise around eight months. He wanted nothing to do with me, I could not be in a room alone with him, he would instantly freak out and a waterfall would come running down his face. I was completely confused, it seemed so odd that just only two months before when I was home for spring break he was able to recognize me. I didn’t think that the two months I was gone, were going to make such a big impact on who he remembered or not. I simply thought that because he remembered me two months ago, he would remember me then. During our lectures, we have learned that “60% of children display secure detachment.” For example, whenever his mother was in the room, he would have a blast, he would crawl everywhere and playfully interact with me, as soon as my cousin left to check on something, he became hysterical, there was absolutely nothing I could do to soothe him. When we returned, he immediately stopped crying and our play date resumed, it was quite comical.

Short Term Memory Loss

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This unit has focussed a lot on different aspects of memory, how our brain encodes info., etc. I think this aspect of psychology is very interesting. I thought I’d share one of my own experiences with short term memory loss and how it affected me.

Throughout my life, I have had 3 or 4 concussions, two diagnosed by doctors and at least one or two that I never got around to getting checked out. I played football in high school and middle school, which is where most of them came from. It seems like concussions have raised quite a bit of interest over the last few years, especially in sports, so I’d like to relate some of my first hand experiences with my concussions.

The first concussion that I was diagnosed with happened during 7th grade football from a helmet to helmet tackle. I was not sure what exactly happened at first. As the impact happened, I saw a flash of light and then everything went black for a few seconds. I was dazed afterward for a few minutes, not knowing where I was or why I was there. My coach had no idea what happened and just sent me in for the next play without a second thought. As the play began, I just stood there and didn’t cover the tight end like I was supposed to, just slowly wandering in his direction as he caught the ball and ran for about ten yards. The coach was furious at me. He took me out and talked to me and finally realized something was wrong.

The next day I went in to see a UPMC concussion doctor. They gave me some memory tests to see what the damage was. They would show me a series of words and then ask me if certain words were part of the series. I had no idea which were there and which weren’t. My short term memory was nonexistent. For a few weeks, I found myself forgetting the simplest things throughout the day, not remembering even what I had for breakfast that day. It was scary, but kind of interesting at the same time. Just proves how delicate our brains are and how careful we have to be. A split second impact can change your brain for weeks, or even permanently.

 

Memories

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In class we discussed how it is very possible to implement a memory into someone else’s mind simply by suggesting that the event occurred. The example given was that of a young boy being lost in a mall and getting help from an old man. When the discussion of the event came up in conversation AFTER the false memory was fed, the subject began recalling details of the event such as what store he got lost in, what the old man was wearing, even adding in that he wore glasses and was balding on top.

This phenomenon is known as memory implementing, I was so fascinated to learn about this in class and finally put a name to what I know I have been a part of. I’m not sure if dreams apply to this concept or not but I also sometimes personally dream of memories that seem so real and later in the future I tend to confuse the memory of the dream with whether I was recalling a dream or an actual event that occurred in my life.

Anyways back to memory implementing… I wanted to give this a try over spring break on my little sister she is 16. I recruited the help of my brother on this one and we began to reminisce about vacations we took growing up my sister chimed in on all the places we were remembering such as going to OC in the summer for a week with just my mom, traveling to Miami by car from Maryland and to NYC over Christmas time to see the lighting of the tree in Times Square in the city. When we brought up the false memory of going to Kings Dominion and witnessing a fight go down between another patron and someone working at the 3d theatre my sister looked puzzled. I told her she was probably about 7 at the time and that I walked her out of the theatre to protect her when all this started to happen…

On my last day home yesterday I was talking to my best friend Emily in my room while my sister was around to see if she “remembered” the time when we went to Kings Dominion. Emily started laughing with me and my sister came into the room from the hall giggling too and saying how she remembered seeing the lady from the audience “jump up and cuss” at the lady who worked there, lol my sister said she remembered the lady calling the other lady a “bitch” out loud and that my sister looked at me scared which was when she said she recalls me standing up and taking her by the hand and escorting her out to where she would feel safe. My sister even added details like that the show we were trying to see that we ultimately missed out on was Spongebob in 3d!

Thats when the laughter really started and I showed her my psychology notes and assignment for the blog, she was intrigued and thought I was silly nonetheless. It was a success

Springsteen

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When I was little, I would always listen to Bruce Springsteen. I was a Bruce fan basically out of the womb. Growing up to the music of Bruce always put me in a positive and excited mood. Because of Bruce, I feel that my personality has altered and made me a better person. This relates to the idea of a mood dependent memory. A mood dependent memory depends on outside sources to change a mood. The playing of Bruce’s music is an example of a mood inducement. My mother always used to tell me that when I was a baby and when I was crying, she would play “growing up” by Bruce and the crying and tears would come to an almost immediate halt. My mother compared Bruce as a saint for this reason. As I grew up, I would always play Bruce Springsteen to calm me down or get in a better mood. I remember during my state finals field hockey game, it was tied 1-1 and it was my turn as a player and a captain to get everyone in a better mood for the game. It was the start before over time and it was my job to make everyone, including myself, in a better mood. I pulled out my iPhone and began to play Bruce. My immediate reaction was positive; I was getting in the mood, a positive mood. This enabled me to inspire my teammates the same way. Slowly the entire teams mood and energy rose positively and we were ready to finish the game proudly. And indeed we did. Being somewhat mood dependent on Bruce Springsteen has some benefits I guess. When having a mood dependent memory an individual might become to reliant on this song, smell, or sound. Because I only listen to Bruce for certain events, like my field hockey game, I am not completely dependent on it. Growing up to Bruce caused my memory to remember positive memories, making me in a better mood as a result.