waldentwo

       It is widely known that treatment for individuals with disabilities has not always been ethical. And some treatments today may still not be, but as a Registered Behavior Technician, I have seen first hand how Applied Behavior Analysis is very effective for individuals with intellectual disabilities and behavioral disorders. ABA therapy aims to increase the overall quality of life of those with behavioral issues by implementing behavior modification programs that are primarily based on the foundation of operant conditioning, or more specifically, positive reinforcement.      Utilizing positively reinforcing tools like token economies, verbal praise, tangible rewards, access to desired activities, etc. can really help individuals help manage and regulate their maladaptive behaviors and help turn them into adaptive behaviors. There are very clear ethical guidelines laid out by the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB), which oversees all offi...

  We have all been in elementary school with one kid who just can't seem to stay out of trouble. Maybe they always talk back to teachers, don’t complete their homework, or bully their peers. This kid comes to school already knowing that he is going to end up in the principal's office at least once that day. Maybe he has a tough home life, doesn't get a lot of sleep, isn’t eating nutritious meals, or even maybe facing adverse childhood experiences. Operant conditioning can come to save the day and help put this “bad kid” back on the right path behaviorally. Operant conditioning is a learning technique that includes one of the most important aspects of learning: positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is when you add something to help increase a behavior. When kids act up in school, they are most likely going to receive negative or positive punishment for their behavior. For example, if a student talks back to their teacher, the teacher may send them to the principal...

     Ever texted a crush? A friend who owes you money? A long-lost friend you wish to get in contact with again and never got anything more than silence? You’re just trying to continue the conversation as it slowly dies out then one day without a response becomes a week, into months then they seem to disappear which is when you stop, not because you want to but because your brain is wired to extinct the behavior. The way your brain exhibits this is that your text is the behavior, the reinforcement is the person texts you back and then the change is that the person stops responding. Your brain reacts negatively and realizes this no response affects your dopamine levels. You keep trying hoping for a response, this is called an extinction burst which is a short last desperate attempt in effort before giving up and knowing this person isn’t responding anymore. After enough time passes, your brain fully gives up and the behavior of you texting is extinguished.    ...

    Have you ever thought “I wonder what my dog thinks about my neighbor’s dog?” or at a petting zoo wondering how the goats know when to eat? It is common knowledge that any non-human species derive making use of physical resources, learning from environmental impacts, and even evolutionary changes from humans as it is taught globally in school but what about cognitive processes? Comparative cognition is evidence that non-human species can solve problems, remember solutions and exhibit different intelligences just as humans can. People believed that these processes could only be found in humans but it was never thought to also be as simple for us to use cognitive processes as it would be for non-human species. Non-human species use different aspects of ecology, ethology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and so many more fields of studies to work together to form their cognitive processes. A specific non-human species that y...

Parties and social settings often come with lots of triggers that make people want to drink, even if they don’t have a serious drinking problem. A study by Van Dyke and Fillmore (2015) showed that just seeing alcohol-related cues like, pictures or objects connected to drinking can make social drinkers work harder to get alcohol. When exposed to these cues, people responded more strongly to earn drinks compared to neutral cues like food. Plus, those who regularly drank more were even more influenced by these reminders. This is a clear example of classical conditioning: the party environment (a neutral stimulus) becomes linked with alcohol use (the unconditioned stimulus), causing a conditioned response, craving or wanting to drink, whenever the cues are present. Knowing this helps explain why breaking habits around drinking can be so tough and highlights the importance of managing environmental triggers. Source: Van Dyke, N., & Fillmore, M.T. (2015). Operant Responding for Alcohol F...

    Daily, we all make more mistakes than we can even count on our fingers. Something as simple as saying the wrong answer in class, touching the hot stove after being told not to, misplacing your wallet, and tons more! This can make us all feel embarrassed in the moment, but your brain is built to learn from these mistakes. Using operant conditioning, mistakes provide negative feedback, allowing for adjustments to initial faults. In the operant process, the initial fault is not rewarded but can be slightly punished by having some points deducted from the answer, being burned after touching the stove, or losing an item you misplaced. The outcome from making a mistake and there being no reward shown can help prevent this mistake from happening again. Along with this, mistakes provide corrective feedback, which means the person making the mistake uses constructive feedback they receive to allow the right answer/reasoning to be drilled into their brains.      ...