waldentwo

    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.      ...

 When at war there is no time for error or hesitation that is commonly found in human behavior. There is no room to freeze when being shot at. When someone starts attacking you it is pertinent that you automatically find out what is going on and begin your plan of attack. Because this is not normally how one would respond, this behavior has to be trained. The military uses a role model, I.E. the drill Sergeant that all recruits look up to and aspire to be. They will begin to mimic his movements and behaviors that will make them better suited in war. They also train in highly stimulating environments with life like targets. For example they may train with lots of screaming, gunshots, explosions, etc. and have to shot at human shaped targets so that they become desensitize to the noise and are able to think under pressure. This training rewires their brain and the soldier no longer has normal responses to these types of situations. They now perform better under pressure and are more ...

Dr. Matthew Israel, Director of the Judge Rotenberg Center, has a different method of teaching. He deals with problem chidren with a variety of issues, many needed some sort of behavior modification. The specific therapy that he uses with about half of his students is shock therapy. Students are hooked up to a backpack from different points of their body, and when their aggressive behavior emerges, a buzzer sounds and they are shocked as a consequence to their actions. The doctor's belief is that this is helping the students learn that aggressive, violent behavior is not tolerated, and eventually they begin to act differently to avoid the shock. His beliefs are based on work that he did with B.F. Skinner. Many protest this, feeling that it is inhumane and unethical, to the point where the UN has stepped in debating whether or not this is a form of torture. Many parents back the Center up, claiming that their children have benefited from this type of treatment. I personally feel tha...

Operant conditioning begins early in childhood in one form or another. Parents choose to discipline their children in a multitude of ways, the most popular being "time out." I first began using time out when my twins were two years old. As a new mom, I was unsure that it was possible for it to influence their behavior, especially at such a young age. Then I realized that being consistent with it was the only way that they would learn. They needed to know that every time they behaved badly they would get one warning, usually something like, "I'm going to count and if I get to three...," and any negative behavior after that would warrant a time out. Time out meant that they would sit by themselves for one minute for every year that they were. So my two year olds were sitting for two minutes. The more consistent I was, the more there bad behavior waned. Now, at three years old, when they are doing something that they shouldn't be, which is still often, ...