Author Archives: Andrew Joseph Radick

My Sister: A Classical Conditioning Demon (who I still love)

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My sister and I have a “special” relationship. I, being the older brother, purposely give her a hard time with general life. Example: It’s funny to tell her that her make-up is messed up cause then she spends countless minutes looking at a mirror, attempting to fix what doesn’t need to be fixed. This usually bothers her for the whole day. On the other hand, she enjoys to give me a hard time with life in small bursts. Example: I take a shower before school every morning, and one day, she woke up extra early and decided to place her Justin Bieber life-size cardboard cutout(which now creepily has a picture of Channing Tatum’s face taped onto it) in the shower, curtain closed. You can only guess my reaction to this shadowy human-like figure awaiting me in the shower at 5:30 in the morning. I thought that was the end of it, but the next day, instead, she decided to put herself in the shower (about the same height as Channing Bieber) and scare the absolute hell out of me. If there is one thing I don’t enjoy and am easily frightened by in the morning, it’s loud noises. Eventually, this gave root to a problem. Every time I woke up to take a shower before school, I would open the shower curtain and immediately jump back in fear of a noisy sister or the life-size cardboard cutout of Channing Bieber, even if they weren’t there.

Classical conditioning occurs when two stimuli are paired to result in an unconditioned response. One stimulus is labeled the unconditioned stimulus, while the other is labeled the neutral stimulus. Soon enough, the continual pairing of the unconditioned and neutral stimulus to create this unconditioned response will lead to the response (now known as the conditioned response) being triggered by only the conditioned stimulus (the former unconditioned stimulus). In my situation, the unconditioned stimulus was my opening of the shower curtain, while the neutral stimulus was my sister or Channing Bieber, to create the unconditioned response of me becoming frightened. After my sister repeated her devious practical jokes enough, the act of opening the shower curtain became the conditioned stimulus. This became clear when I displayed the conditioned response of being frightened after opening the curtain even if neither my sister or Channing Bieber lie awaiting my arrival. Although my sister’s mischief has caused me much grief throughout my past high school years, her acts still managed to help me out with a blog idea.

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.

Daily Psychology

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Through many years of studying and analyzing the brain, psychologists have discovered that the brain is made up of many parts which control the functional aspects of daily life. Each structure functions in different ways, some controlling the ways we think while others controlling the ways we act. Rather than referring to one single experience which pertains to a few of the main structures of the brain, I’ll lay out a series of examples of how they have been at work today.

 

To start off my day like any other, I first had to wake up. If I didn’t, that would be bad. My thalamus, which plays a significant role in arousal, wakefulness, and alertness, gets me up and about like an internal alarm clock. Another structure of the brain, the hippocampus, is known for converting short term memory into more permanent memory. At this very moment, it is allowing me to remember that I am typing a blog assignment for my Psych 100 class which I must finish soon, rather than letting me sidetrack off to something else in a matter of minutes while forgetting that this assignment was due in less than a day’s time. Stumbling out of bed to go take a shower this morning, I may have ran into a few more walls than usual, had my cerebellum not been on the job. Being one of the most important structures of the brain, the cerebellum is associated with the regulation and coordination of balance, movement, and posture. Luckily, the hypothalamus is there to tell me that I should probably eat something for breakfast, otherwise I would have to wait to hear my stomach practicing whale calls before I got myself some food. Some of the functions which this structure of the brain relates to include thirst, hunger, and emotion. Lastly, my amygdala allowed me to scream like a little girl when I found some weird looking bug that escaped the cold weather by latching on to me, crawling down my arm. The amygdala is most often associated with fear and emotion. Besides the last part, I could say it had been quite a normal day. It is true that I only described a few of the main structures of the brain and their roles in my daily life, but it matters not. The functions of the brain and all of its parts are innumerable, with even more new discoveries being revealed to this day.

 

“Brain Structures and their Functions.” Serendip. Serendip, 1994-2014. Web. 4
Feb. 2014. <http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/kinser/Structure1.html>.