Conditioned taste aversion is defined as the development of a nausea or aversive response to a particular taste because that rase was followed by a nausea reaction, occurring after only one association. Taste aversion is a type of classical conditioning where it compares the taste of food with the act of throwing up. Professor Wede had a great example in class where he told of how wolves were eating the sheep population. To stop this act, psychologists poisoned one of the sheep’s meat and when the  wolves ate their particular sheep, they got ill, which led them not to kill the sheep anymore. When learning about taste aversion I immediately thought of my sister and “cheesesteak mondays” at my house. During high school my mom worked a lot but always managed to make great dinners. To make her life a little easier she came up with “cheesesteak mondays” where every monday she would make our family cheesesteaks. One monday my sister ate her cheesesteak and later in the night became very ill. She was up for most of the night because she felt so sick and even had to take off from work the next day. From then on she never participated in cheesesteak mondays and still to this day have never eaten a cheesesteak. In throwing up her whole cheesesteak, my sister developed a taste aversion for cheesesteaks even though it could have possibly been from her acquirement of becoming lactose intolerant and the cheese that was on the cheesesteak.  In living in Philly, the home to the best cheesesteaks in the world, I hope eventually my sister can eat participate in cheesesteak mondays again and have a cheesesteak from Genos.

Conditioned taste aversion is defined as the development of a nausea or aversive response to a particular taste because that rase was followed by a nausea reaction, occurring after only one association. Taste aversion is a type of classical conditioning where it compares the taste of food with the act of throwing up. Professor Wede had a great example in class where he told of how wolves were eating the sheep population. To stop this act, psychologists poisoned one of the sheep’s meat and when the  wolves ate their particular sheep, they got ill, which led them not to kill the sheep anymore. When learning about taste aversion I immediately thought of my sister and “cheesesteak mondays” at my house. During high school my mom worked a lot but always managed to make great dinners. To make her life a little easier she came up with “cheesesteak mondays” where every monday she would make our family cheesesteaks. One monday my sister ate her cheesesteak and later in the night became very ill. She was up for most of the night because she felt so sick and even had to take off from work the next day. From then on she never participated in cheesesteak mondays and still to this day have never eaten a cheesesteak. In throwing up her whole cheesesteak, my sister developed a taste aversion for cheesesteaks even though it could have possibly been from her acquirement of becoming lactose intolerant and the cheese that was on the cheesesteak.  In living in Philly, the home to the best cheesesteaks in the world, I hope eventually my sister can eat participate in cheesesteak mondays again and have a cheesesteak from Genos.

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.

In class we learned about behaviorism, which is one of the roots of psychology. Behaviorism focuses on the observable behavior- something that can be seen and taken note of.  Behaviorism does not focus on the unconscious, but rather what physically goes on and what one physically does. The science of behavior often focuses on learned behaviors.

In class we learned about behaviorism through the eye’s of Pavlov, a famous behaviorist who is known for his work with the salivating dog. After learning about Pavlov we watched a clip from the show The Office in which a co-worker taught his co-worker a behavior through repetition.  The clip proved Pavlov’s discoveries to be true- that in which a behavior can be learned. Pavlov proved to the fullest extent that through behaviorism, much can be observed and learned.

When it comes to my experience with behaviorism, my puppies immediately come to mind. My family got two puppies, Turk and Bentley, in September. We immediately potty trained them but soon realized that Turk would only stand by the door to go out and would not bark, resulting in many accidents because no one knew he was by the door. My mom thought to put a bell on the floor next to the door. Every time the puppies stood by the door to go out, my mom would ring the bell then let them out. Soon my mom would take one of their paws, tap the bell, then let them out. After some time the puppies soon realized that if they rang the bell they would immediately be let outside to go to the bathroom.

The behavior of the bell by the door is directly linked to behaviorism in that the behavior of ringing the bell results in a reward of being let out. Over time the puppies observed the behavior of the bell being ran and being let out that they learned that ringing the bell resulted in the reward of being let out.  Ringing the bell took time and was a learned behavior by the puppies.