Author Archives: Miranda Mae Wack

Operant Conditioning- How I Taught My Dog to Bark

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Operant conditioning is a learning technique used by many psychologists and is a little different than classical conditioning. While classical conditioning is a type of learning where an organism learns to associate stimuli and therefore elicits a conditioned response, operant conditioning is where the organism forms an association between behaviors and resulting events. This tool is not only used by psychologists, but also anyone who decides to teach their pet how to perform a trick. Shaping is used in order to guide the animal to perform a desired behavior. This ultimate behavior might be the dog rolling over. However, it would probably take a lot of time and would be extremely frustrating to teach a dog by simply instructing it to “roll over” without any other assistance. By just saying “roll over”, the dog isn’t going to know what the means or what you want them to do. Teaching through successive approximations can help guide the dog from a standing position to the rolling over motion through multiple steps.

Positive reinforcement is another tool that can be used to get an animal to perform a desired behavior. When the dog exhibits a desired behavior, you give it a treat. Since dogs love treats, this is considered a positive stimulus. Now the dog has associated the action her or she performed with getting a treat, it will increase that behavior to continue getting more treats. Now, let’s get back to how successive approximations would work. In order to get your dog from a standing position to rolling over, the first step to take is to instruct it to sit. Once the dog sits, you can give it a treat. Then, you can work on getting your dog to lie down. Once it does, give it another treat. Now, you can work on teaching it to roll over, giving it a treat after it lies on its back and then again after it fully rolls over. Now, when you tell the dog to roll over, it will know the behavior you want it to exhibit.

I used a similar process as I explained above when I was teaching my dog to speak. Ever since she was 8 weeks old, she didn’t bark at all unless she was scared. It was crucial that I taught her to speak whenever she needed to go to the bathroom. She would simply stand or sit at the door. On occasion, she would bark or growl softly, but it wasn’t loud enough that I could hear from very far away. You can imagine that we had a few accidents when she was a puppy when I wasn’t paying attention to her and didn’t know she had to go out.

Once I knew she barked a little when she was waiting at the door, I was constantly watching her. Whenever she would walk over to the door, I would wait to see if she’d bark. When she did softly, I would give her a treat, praise her, and take her outside. I did this a few times and her bark grew a little louder. After a day or two, she would begin to bark when I was no longer standing right there at the door with her. I’d give her a treat for barking and take her outside. Then, her barks got louder, to the point where I could hear them when I wasn’t even in the same room. Since I rewarded her after she barked and then took her outside, she associated the barking behavior with the event of me taking her out and then rewarding her afterward. Now I know when she needs to go out wherever I am in the house. She hasn’t begun to bark in response to anything else so now I know exactly what she needs and when she needs it. Operant conditioning was a very easy process, especially since my dog picked up on it so quickly.

Vision and Cataracts

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One of the ways that we gather information about the world around us and interpret that information is through sight. Light can have an array of wavelengths and amplitudes. Different wavelengths correspond to different colors and different amplitudes determine the perceived brightness. Light rays enter the eye through a transparent tissue called the cornea and through an opening called the pupil. The pupil is surrounded by the colored muscle called the iris which contracts to adjust the size of the pupil. The light then travels through the transparent lens which focuses the light on the retina. The retina consists of two types of light receptors called rods and cones. Cones detect color and rods help us see when little light rays are present. Images that we see are focused on the fovea at the back of the retina. The retina also contains numerous types of neurons such as ganglion cells and bipolar cells. These cells process the light energy into neural impulses. The impulses are transported to the brain via the optic nerve which is located at the back of each eye. The optic nerve leads to the thalamus in the center of the brain. The information then travels from the thalamus to the visual cortex at the back of the brain. This is the location where the neural impulses are interpreted. Without vision, we would not be able to perceive and interpret the information around us.

In order for vision to occur, all of the parts of the eye must be functioning correctly. As people age, it is very possible that cataracts form in the eyes. A cataract is a clouding of the lens of the eye. It is described as looking through frosty glass; everything is fuzzy and unclear. There are different stages of cataracts, but if left untreated, they can cause blindness. My great grandma had cataracts and they were so bad that she could not see to drive, sew, or even cook dinner. Today, there are corrective laser surgeries available that can shave off parts of the lens that are affected. Whenever she had cataracts, there were cataract surgeries, but they were done with a knife and not a laser beam. These surgeries were extremely dangerous. During her surgery, both of her corneas got damaged. The doctors had to cut around the cornea to get to the lens, but they did it incorrectly. Even though her lenses were fixed, the damage to the corneas affected her vision immensely. Even after the cataract surgery, she was still considered legally blind. The cornea is not easily fixed; she waited on the organ transplant list for months until a man who had similarly shaped corneas died in a car crash. After she got new corneas, her vision was restored and she could go back to her normal daily activities (including reading the newspaper!). Without fully functional parts in the eye, it is obvious that there are extreme side effects. We now know that most eye cataracts are caused by the effects of sun damage over time. We have polarized and ultraviolet lenses in sunglasses now to protect from damage to all parts of the eye.

Surveys and how to correctly create them

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A very common tool used in descriptive research is a survey. Throughout our lives, it’s certain that we have taken at least one survey for one purpose or another. Whether it was at school, over the phone, for an interview, or just for fun, it asked a series of questions. The answers to those questions were either analyzed and you received a score or were used by a researcher to help accept or reject a hypothesis. The purpose of a survey is to capture and analyze attitudes, opinions, or behaviors of people. This may seem simple, but there are numerous conditions that need to be meet before conducting a survey. First of all, the people chosen must be a representative sample of the population of people that is to be studied. For example, if a survey is asking questions intended for adults (over the age of 18) in the United States, it would be inaccurate to administer the survey to only females ages 18-20 in the state of Pennsylvania. All males, females over the age of 20, and adults in the other 49 states are not being equally represented and therefore the results can be skewed. Similar to that idea, there must be random sampling. Each member of a population needs to have the same chance of being selected to take the survey. It would not be a good idea to administer a survey over only land line telephones since many people in the United States no longer have them. People that use only cell phones would not have an equal chance of being selected.

In my lifetime, I have had to create and administer two different surveys in order to analyze feedback. In high school, as part of my senior project, I performed a science project presentation to promote an elementary school science fair. Later in the year, I also had to attend the student science fair, help set up stations, and walk around to ask the students questions about their own projects. In order to see how much the students enjoyed our presentations and how well the parents thought we set up the fair and interacted with the children, I created two different surveys. One survey was specifically targeted toward the students and asked questions such as what their favorite experiment was and how well did they understand the experiments (rating 1-5). All answer choices were printed on the survey so they didn’t have to write anything in, just circle their answer choice. I made sure the questions all had words in which the children could understand. Since I wanted to have a high sample size, I administered the survey to all children participating in the science fair. I then referenced the names on the surveys to the list of students to ensure everyone had participated. My results were definitely representative of the student population since all students participated.

I made a different survey for the parents that asked questions like how well we interacted with the students, if all of their technical needs were satisfied, and how likely they were to have their kids participate in future science fairs (all rating questions 1-5). At the bottom of the survey, I also asked open ended questions such as what they thought we could improve on for next year. One survey was given out to the parents of each child, but only one parent could complete the survey. This ensured that each child’s family was represented, and more importantly, represented equally. It wouldn’t have been fair if two parents of one child completed the survey and no parent of another child answered it. That could have affected the outcome of the results.

Overall, the surveys were administered to a representative sample of the population and random sampling occurred among the parents. It was made sure that all terms on the survey were either simple enough for the different age groups or fully explained. The wording of the questions was also checked to ensure they had only one meaning. Since all of the frequent problems with surveys were taken care of, it was safe to say that the results were accurate. In psychological research, a survey is a quick and easy way to gather attitudes, opinions, or behaviors as long as there is equal representation, random sampling, proper wording, and clear questions.