Sunday, July 11, 2010

Final Post

Overview
This course addressed the workings of some of the most well known psychologist such as Albert Bandura, B.F. Skinner, Freud, Darwin, and Watson. We touched base with a bunch of different topics and received a lot of insight pertaining to each of them. The breakdown of vocabulary was very helpful also because in order to completely understand the material you had to know what certain words meant such as convert behavior, functional relationships, appetitive stimulus, contiguity, and the list continues. Also abbreviated words that were introduced, US, CS, UCS, CR. The different chapters went in depth with information but I really enjoyed the chapter that covered operant conditioning. Operant conditioning was mainly proposed by B.F. Skinner and the use of his Skinner box. He had an experiment with a bird that should learn that certain stimuli and reactions result in a positive outcome (being fed). Reinforces then took place, being positive or negative, and primary or secondary. There was then the breakdown schedules of reinforcement, and how they are classified as continuous or intermittent. There were different type’s schedules which included fixed duration (FD), variable duration (VD), three types of response rate schedules, and two types of noncontingent schedules.
I Liked
There were many chapters that I enjoyed but the one that interest me the most was about punishments because as a child I was familiar with if I did something good I was rewarded (positive reinforcement "consists of the presentation of a stimulus following a response, which then leads to an increase in the future strength of that response"). If I did something bad I had a negative punishment (negative reinforcement is the removal of an unpleasant stimulus that leads to an increase in the future response). Another chapter that interest me was high order conditioning. High order conditioning is defined as when a stimulus is associated with a conditioned stimulus, it can become a conditioned stimulus itself. My parents used these tactics to keep me away from things that they foreseen to be dangerous or simply didn’t want me near.

Life is all about operant conditioning from everything around us. From the time we wake up from the sound of an alarm clock makes us wake up, to the point where we are driving down the road waiting for a read light to turn green we are conditioned to these aspects as to where we have to wait to proceed. This is a simple video of teaching your dog behavior.

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