waldentwo

     This year I have realized a lot about how the world views different areas of life. When you look around, people interact differently, react differently, and hold different moral values. These changes are hard to navigate, especially since things used to seem much simpler. If this is how adults are feeling, I can't help but wonder about the impact on children while maintaining their thoughts. Unlike adults, children do not have the same networking skills, which means they require more guidance throughout their years of growing up. In saying this, looking at school districts, I can see they are not doing a good job of directing the children down the path they should. Mental health rates are worse than ever, and the stigma behind it will not change unless the minds of the youth are constructed better. In addition, they should be able to freely construct their views on different topics where school districts and the public shove down their thoughts. The confusion in the ...

                                              When one thinks of animal use in the sciences, the first animal that comes to mind is often a rat. Although it is true that rats are used, there are an array of different animals used in scientific research. Why is this? Animal use for research dates back to as far as 500 B.C. There is evidence of ancient Greeks dissecting live animals to learn not only the anatomy but the psychology of the animal. In this course we specifically learned about Bruce the Kea and his journey of using innovative tool use for preening. Humans share about 90% of their genes with other mammals making them the perfect candidate for research subjects. But before a researcher can use an animal they must acquire three separate licenses; a personal license, project license, and an establishment license.     Animals have been used for groundbr...

Dieting is difficult for many individuals to not only start but be consistent with for a duration of time that will insight results. Many people believe that they must completely eliminate certain foods or behaviors in order to achieve the desired goals they have set for themselves. As both a former athlete and someone who constantly goes to the gym multiple times a week, having a "cheat day" or rewarding yourself after a long week's work is important in lasting long enough to see the results you want.  By putting yourself on a fixed duration or fixed interval schedule, you can set boundaries and circumstances around both the cost and rewards involved in your dieting. For example, for someone who is just starting off, being able to have your favorite food after working out 3 days is a reward centered around completing a challenging task. As a few weeks go by, push your limits to every 4 days, then 5 days, etc. so your body will still be able to cut calories and fats out o...

A fundamental theory in educational psychology, operant conditioning holds that rewards and penalties have an impact on behavior. This theory is implemented in classrooms by using strategies like rewarding good actions and discouraging undesired ones. Operant conditioning has drawbacks even if it works well in some situations. It may overlook intrinsic motivation and cognitive processes that are essential for deep learning because it oversimplifies the complex factors influencing student behavior. Over-reliance on outside rewards can eventually erode inner motivation as well, raising ethical questions for the educational system. Instructors need to incorporate cognitive theories and operant conditioning to accommodate individual variances and a range of learning styles. Developing more successful teaching tactics is aided by an understanding of the differences in students' motivations and learning preferences. Teachers can design environments that support deeper knowledge and lifel...

Chapter nine of the text discusses escape, avoidance, and punishment. These are aspects of behavior reinforcement that can be manipulated, instinctual, or modernized. The introduction of this chapter follows the general understanding of reinforcement. This specific chapter, however, focuses on the termination of an unwanted entity that creates a habit, otherwise known as negative reinforcement. Historically, psychologists have used simple matters to understand this behavioral technique. Most commonly there were experiments done on rats with different aspects of environmental manipulation--shocks, lights, loud noises, food, etc. In a modernized sense, negative reinforcement can be understood through the myopic lens of mental health crises.  I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder at sixteen years old. This did not come as a shock to anybody around me. I was described as a "cautious child," who was sensitive, hyper-aware of social interactions, and, at times, volatile...

OCD is a disorder marked by repeating ideas, feelings, or visions (obsessions) and conventional, repeated behaviors (compulsions) that come out in reaction to the obsessions (Powell, p. 343).  Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder that displays a person's inability to maintain a reasonably healthy weight for their height or their inability to eat enough food. There has previously been evidence linking OCD and anorexia nervosa to one another. OCD appears in 35–44% of patients with anorexia nervosa while anorexia nervosa is present in 10% of female patients with OCD. A study produced by HHS Public Access examined 732 women with current anorexia nervosa or recovered from anorexia nervosa who participated in the study to discover if there is a connection between OCD and anorexia nervosa among these participants. The research concluded that obsessions were heavily and positively constructed by cognitive impulsivity  (ß = 0.16, p < .001) and that compulsive tendencies were ...

  The reason behind avoidance behavior is that an individual experiences an initial trigger that causes them to become fearful, and they then avoid that trigger completely.  Past studies have shown that avoidance behavior is linked to variables that are related to impaired driving abilities, such as a lack of confidence and driving experience. The study's participants demonstrated that increased avoidance behavior was moderately associated with more severe on-road driving skills and that the female sex was also moderately associated with greater avoidance behavior (rpb = −.27, p = 0.2). Exposure therapy could possibly improve poor driving skills among the female sex participants.  Philipp Schulz, Thomas Beblo, Stefan Spannhorst, Kirsten Labudda, Thomas Wagner, Volkmar Bertke, Sebastian Boedeker, Martin Driessen, Stefan H Kreisel, Max Toepper, Avoidance Behavior Is an Independent Indicator of Poorer On-road Driving Skills in Older Adults,  The Journals of Gerontology:...