Topics in the News?
What I would like you to do is to start applying what we are learning in class to real world matters. Some might ask, "What good is learning psychology if we can't apply it to real world matters?" So that is what we are going to do with this topical blog assignment.
What I would like you to do is to either go to NPR (http://www.npr.org/ ), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ ) or any news site listed at the bottom of this page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ listed in their news sources) and read, watch, or listen to something that is interesting to you and relates to what we have been learning in the class.
Please respond the blog by BRIEFLY telling us in essay format:
What your topic is and what the piece you chose was. Why you picked it (what made it interesting for you) and what did you expect to see. What did you find most interesting about the piece
Next discuss IN DETAIL how it relates to the class using terms, terminology, and concepts that we have learned so far in class. Include definitions.
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
My topical blog is on Conditioned Emotional Responses. A conditioned emotional response is simply a learned emotional reaction that occurs due to being a response to some predictive cue or experience. When a person or animal experiences something and there is a consistent consequence associated with that experience, then we can predict that we will respond in a particular way to that experience. When the emotion is a negative one to the experience, then the response is stronger and has a greater effect on people. Even though there is a large continuum of emotions, negative emotions seem to have a stronger impact on conditioning behaviors. Organisms learn to correlate negative emotions better to experiences than the positive emotions. Two of the biggest emotions that are correlated to experiences are happiness and anxiety. Emotional conditioned responses are highly associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety or phobias. Conditioned emotional responses in the sympathetic nervous system are known to be responsible for such things as panic attacks and associated responses to phobias. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the “fight or flight” response, which emotional responses can be highly created from that experience.
Terms: Conditioned Emotional Response, Fight or Flight response,
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05_conditioning/conditional_emotional_responses.html
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm
http://www.perilouslyprecocious.com/conditioned-emotional-responses
The topic I chose for this week is differential reinforcement. Differential reinforcement is the process by which the frequency of a desirable behavior is increased while the undesirable alternative behaviors are eliminated. It is used when the desired behavior already occurs occasionally and when there is an available reinforcer.
Differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior (DRI) and differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) are similar forms. In DRI, the practitioner reinforces a response that is physically incompatible with the target problem behavior. The DRA practitioner reinforces a response that is an appropriate alternative to problem behavior but is not necessarily incompatible with the target problem behavior.
The different types of differential reinforcement include DRO, DRL, DRH, DRA, DRC, and DRI.
DRO: (other)positive reinforcement is periodically delivered only if the participant does something other than the target response. (reinforcing clapping to reduce nose picking)
DRL: (low)used to encourage low rates of responding, like an interval schedule-reinforce when target behavior reaches low level of responding. (kids ask mom and dad to take them to McD’s time after time. They say no many times because of the begging. Next time kids ask nicely one time and parents let them go to McD’s)
DRH: (high)used to increase high rates of responding-reinforce when appropriate behavior is at high levels. (Student doesn’t participate during class, student contributes a few times, gets free time)
DRA: (alternate)reinforce alternate behavior to the inappropriate behavior(student keeps getting out of seat, teacher ignores student when it happens, when student stays sitting he gets praised)
DRI: (incompatible)reinforce an incompatible behavior with appropriate behavior (student tap desk because bored, given ball to manipulate, gets praised when fidgets quietly)
DRC: (communicative) Ignore inappropriate behavior and reinforce communication behavior (child throws fit instead of asking for something, when child speaks and asks he/she is given what asked for)
http://www.allsands.com/science/differentialrei_tmy_gn.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement
http://www.autismnetwork.org/modules/behavior/dr/lecture05.html
The article I read was about tantrums in children. It Specifically why they emit these behaviors, and how to effectively solve the problem. I thought the topic would be interesting because this class has opened my eyes to how to effectively handle and change people’s behaviors, so this article seemed right up my alley. It was more or less just what I expected, but every article adds something new to the learning process.
The article explains how young children are biologically prone to tantrum outbursts because that’s how they express their emotion and frustration. Technically, it’s got to be stressful being that age because they don’t effectively know how to tell what in life is dangerous, and vice versa. They are constantly being barraged by impending dangers—bathtub drains, scary small household pets, that it must be incredibly frustrating for them on a day to day basis.
It goes on to how to effectively handle and deal with the tantrums, additionally. The best way to handle a tantrum is to ignore it if at all possible—which may be hard to do especially in a public setting, but it is effective because you are not reinforcing the bad behavior with any attention at all, so eventually they’ll have to stop. It’s tough to ignore someone or something when you too are frusterated, but this is still the best way to handle it. If you must acknowledge the tantrum, another better alternative would be to briefly say something like “I’ll give you a hug and we can talk to this after you calm down and relax” and then just leave it at that. –But this still isn’t the best way to handle it because you’re still providing a small amount of reinforcement for the tantrum.
In addition—the average tantrum only lasts about 3 minutes. So if we can hold off and not reinforce the behavior for that long, we’re in good shape. Afterall, it’s not all THAT long.
Terms: reinforcement, emit
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/02/21/toddlers.temper.tantrums.parenting/index.html
I used to throw tantrums daily when I was a child!! I bet my mom wished she learned more about behavior modification !
For my topical I decided to explore the Premack Principle a bit closer. David Premack started his primate research in 1954 at Yerkes Primate Biology Laboratory. Premack's first publication in 1959 was a new theory of reinforcement that he developed which is now known as the Premack Principle. It argued that the more probably response in any pair of responses could reinforce the less probably response. This demonstrated that reinforcement can be related to each other is not just a individual or absolute property. Furthermore, the theory predicts six conditions, all of which have been supported by evidence. (Some information taken from Wikipedia Article)
1. Reinforcement is a relative property
2. Reinforcement can also be a reversible property, the Wikipedia article gives the example of running and drinking in saying that "when drinking is more probable than running, drinking reinforces running. When the probabilities are reversed, running reinforces drinking".
3. Consummatory responses, in other words, drinking and eating, have served exclusively as reinforcers to humans, but they can also be subject to reinforcement.
4. Reinforcement and punishment are traditionally viewed as opposites when actually are equivalent except for sign. This is true because the major contrast is not between the subjects of reward and punishment but between reward and punishment as contrasted with freedom. Also stated in the Wikipedia article, "Freedom is the condition in which stimuli are freely (not contingently) available to the individual".
5. When Premack studied the primates, he noticed that when motorized running is more probable than lever pressing but less probably than drinking, then running in turn reinforces lever pressing and punishes drinking. In other words, the same response can be both a reinforcer and a punisher- at the same time and for the same individual.
6. Ultimately, rats are either sensitive to both reinforcement and punishment or insensitive to both, they can never be sensative to one and not the other.
A common example of the Premack Principle used in parenting is that if the child does not like broccoli, then to get the child to eat the broccoli, the parent would say that if they child did finish eating all of their broccoli, then the child could get desert. The act of eating the broccoli (unwanted behavior) would in turn bring about the preferred behavior of getting to eat dessert.
TERMS:Premack Principle, reinforcement, punishment,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Premack
http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05_conditioning/premack_principle.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcB1zttZmdY
The article I chose is about a relatively new program, called CeaseFire, in Chicago that is aimed at reducing violence among youth. While the effectiveness of the program has yet to be determined in a long-run scenario, I think it could do some good based on what I've learned about behavior modification thus far.
We all have learned by now that punishment can do a lot more harm than good. The organism could overgeneralize the punished behavior and change the behavior across all contexts, the punishment might not be swift enough for the organism to understand why they are being punished, the behavior could be emitted in different contexts, there are tons of reasons I could go on listing.
This program takes the focus away from punishment like jail time or stricter regulations and employs a differential reinforcement technique, specifically differential reinforcement of an incompatible behavior. The purpose of the program is to find jobs for the kids. Jobs reinforce the kids with money and, for some, being at work is self-fulfilling in that they have a purpose. It can also alleviate the boredom that leads to kids wandering around the streets because nobody is home and they have nothing to do. This differential reinforcement is of al incompatible behavior because while these kids are at work, they can't be starting gang fights. It's also differential reinforcement of an alternative behavior. Working for their money is the target behavior and stealing for their money is what is trying to be decreased. Going to work is an alternative to mugging. This isn't an incompatible behavior because the kids could steal from their jobs if they really wanted to. It's simply reinforcing working instead.
Obviously, this has some setbacks. Some kids might not find anything about a job reinforcing. They could make more money from robbery, and the feelings of power and camaraderie gotten from belonging to a gang could far outweigh the feelings of productivity sometimes found at work. Individual differences have to be accounted for. I'm sure CeaseFire's mission statement and methods have accounted for some or all of the possible setbacks, but the article didn't really talk specifics.
Terms: DRI, DRA, organism, elicit, reinforcement, punishment, target behavior, self-reinforcer.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/132633966/chicago-youth-program-aims-to-decrease-violence
Woopie Goldberg explodes at Donald Trump About Obama’s Birth Certificate During the View
Woopie called out Trump during the view after Trump stated that he wanted to know why Obama never showed his birth certificate and stated that he believed Obama had something to hide, after no one from Obama’s child hood can remember him. Woopie exploded, asking Trump if he was making the assumptions because Obama is black. Trump denies his concerns steming from Obama’s race/ethnicity. Woopie responds to Trump by saying that Trump’s accusations are the “biggest dog mess” that she’s ever heard. The article ties into a few of the concepts that we have learned in behavior modification. The article can first be applied to the ABC’s of behavior modification. The antecedent in the article is Obama doesn’t show his birth certificate, the behavior is Trump states that Obama has something to hide on his birth certificate; the consequence is that Woopie explodes accusing Trump’s accusations to be the “biggest dog mess” she has ever heard. In the article Trump’s aversive accusations acted as discriminative stimulus (signals a certain behavior to occur in response to a stimulus), eliciting a response for Woopie to emit a defensive behavior. Trump also displayed operant behavior when he made the aversive accusations about Obama because his behavior set the occasion for punishment. The punishment that Trump received was Woopie’s aversive reaction, which was positive punishment. Apparently, the birth certificate held intrinsic value for Trump, which deals with the value an individual places on something.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/24/whoopi-goldberg-donald-trump-obama-birth-certificate_n_839927.html
Terms: antecedent, behavior, consequence, discriminative stimulus, operant behavior, aversive, punishment, positive punishment, intrinsic value
For my topical blong I wanted to look at conditioned emotional responses in children. CER is an emotional response that has been acquired by conditioning (pretty self explainitory). Many people, more famously Watson, have used CER in children. The most prime example is Little Albert. Little Albert was a young boy whom Watson ran an experiment on. Watson wanted to classically condition fear into Little Albert, he did this by standing behind the boy and banging things together to make a loud noise. After a few times of doing this, Little Albert came to fear the noises. After fear of loud noises was conditioned into Little Albert, Watson then introduced small animals (such as rats and bunnies)that Little Albert wasn't previously afraid of. When Little Albert would reach out for these items, Waston would bang things together to create a loud noise. Little Albert then learned to correlate the two together, and everytime a small animal was shown, Albert would then emit a fear behavior. This proves that Waston did classically condition Little Albert to fear things that he was once not afraid of. The antecendent would be the bar being hit, the behavior would be leaning towards the amimal, and the consequence would be fear!
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Little%20Albert.htmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI
terms: emit, conditioned emoitional response, antecendent, behavior, consequence
Even though we were supposed to find something in the news for our topical blogs, I wanted to focus on the Premack Principle because I did not fully understand it during our class discussion. The Premack Principle is that someone will emit a less desirable activity in order to accomplish a more desirable activity. An example given during class was eating your vegetables in order to have ice cream. In this example, eating vegetables would be a low frequency behavior, and having ice cream would be the high frequency behavior. Many children do not like vegetables, but love ice cream, and therefore, will eat the vegetables to receive the more desirable thing.
A behavioral chain can be applied to the Premack Principle. A behavior chain has many behaviors to it. An easy way for me to think about this is: behavior 1--behavior 2--behavior 3--and so on. This means that behavior 1 is reinforced by behavior 2, behavior 2 is reinforced by behavior 3 and so on. Based on the Premack Principle, you will do a less desirable behavior to accomplish a more desirable behavior, so in the case of the behavior chain, behavior 3 is less desirable than behavior 2, and behavior 2 is less desirable than behavior 1. But in order to achieve behavior 1, you are willing to do the less desirable behaviors. In order to achieve a behavior change, you have to identify all of the response-stimulus components.
I have a big problem with procrastination, and I can use the Premack Principle to help this problem. I would need to do the unpleasant things first and then I can do the pleasant thing. An example: I do not like reading one of the books that I have been assigned in one of my classes. This would be the unpleasant thing that I need to do. A pleasant thing could be if I read a chapter in the book I do not like, then I can watch an episode of my favorite TV show. Watching the episode would be a reinforcer, so by doing something that I do not enjoy first, would make that even more reinforcing and I would read the book more.
terms used: Premack Principle, emit, behavioral chain, reinforcement
http://gettingstronger.org/2010/12/stop-procrastinating-use-the-premack-principle/
http://www.allsands.com/health/behavioralchain_vyl_gn.htm
http://www.nofreelunchdogs.com/premack_principle.html
The behavioral topic I chose is punishment, and how some aspects of punishment are actually not punishment in the behavioral sense. The article I wanted to tie this into is a piece in the Huffington Post about the disenfranchisement of ex-felons in Florida and here in Iowa.
I chose this piece because I think the public policy it covers displays a profound lack of understanding of behavioral principles, and because I wanted to write about something that is relevant to the class as well as our everyday lives.
Here's the gist of the article: Florida and Iowa have newly enacted harsher penalties/punishers for felons in the form of disenfranchisement; while every state (to my knowledge) takes away voting rights while a convicted felon is serving his/her sentence, the new law in Florida extends the disenfranchisement to 5-7 years after completion of the sentence, while here in Iowa felons have to reapply for voting rights (under the old law their rights were automatically restored upon completion of their sentences).
First of all, this exacerbates an already-existing social problem: institutionalized racism. Nation-wide, the average ratio of black-white arrests is 9-1. Iowa has the highest ratio in the union at 13-1 (so when you think racism, don't think Mississippi, look no further than our own backyard). In both states, this effectively decreases the nonwhite voting block, biasing our political process.
In addition to being an important social issue, this demonstrates a misapplication of punishment. The goal of punishment is to decrease a target behavior: prison is supposed to either deter or reform criminals (although high recidivism rates suggest it effectively does neither), either of which would alter the antecedants that elicit the target behavior of law-breaking.
Here's the larger point, and the aspect that I find the most enfuriating about this issue: an extension of disenfranchisement after the completion of a prison sentence is not intended to reduce target behaviors. If it is, then this policy is an admission that the prison system is in need of significant reform. If it is not, then it is the application of aversive conditions for reasons not related to behavior modification. This function as a definition of sadism, in my opinion.
The author of the article alludes to this misunderstanding of punishment on the part of public policymakers: "many criminologists believe giving people real stakes in their communities is an effective crime-fighting strategy in and of itself". This is a recognition that differential reinforcement of an incompatible behavior is a better strategy for modifying behavior than punishment. By giving at-risk individuals some stake in their community, we could alter the antecedants to ensure that any action taken by these individuals to help the community would be self-reinforcing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sasha-abramsky/americas-disenfranchiseme_b_842046.html
Terms: Punishment, target behavior, antecedants, elicit, aversive, differential reinforcement of an incompatible behavior, reinforcing
The article I read that interested me the was of how the FDA has found a link between food dyes and kids behavior. As a future teaching this article was very appealing to me. In the article it mentioned how children’s behavior changing in the classroom as well at home. They children were not able to focus as well as acting reckless compared to what they used to act like. Because of the diet with so much dyes the child’s behavior changed, however in this article it mentioned that the child was given medicine for ADHD.
The problems with children having these diets is what was mentioned previously, which is a miss diagnosis of ADHD because of acting out in the classroom. The children may be unfairly punished. This is important to me as I have taken a focus on the types of reinforcement, punishment, and target behaviors. While reading this article I became interested in miss diagnosis of children and them in turn being over medicated. I had previously in my last posts focused on just understanding which type of punishment or reinforcement to use in certain situation, however this article made me want to focus on more of the higher mental process that Wundt studied, mainly that of culture and personal environment have on it.
Terms: punishment, reinforcement, higher mental process, target behaviorhttp://www.npr.org/2011/03/30/134962888/fda-probes-link-between-food-dyes-kids-behavior
I chose to research a little about successive approximation. This technique used in Shaping to condition animals and people is very intriguing to me because it is something that most people do without knowing it. Now that I know the actual term it makes it that much more interesting to look for and point out when people use it unknowingly. Successive approximations are reinforcers that slowly increase each time they are used to achieve the target behavior. The reinforcers used in this technique are usually positive reinforcers because it usually adds something to the situation. For example, Skinner used food as the positive reinforcers in his study. He was trying to train the rats or birds that pushing the lever (target behavior) would bring food. In order for them to understand what the levers purpose was, the technique successive approximation was created. Instead of rewarding the animals for pushing the lever, they would reward the animals for just walking towards the lever. Eventually they would only reward the animal for hitting the lever, and then they would make things more difficult by adding schedules of reinforcement. Using fixed ratios meant that the animals would only be rewarded when they hit the lever 5 times, they would slowly increase the fixed ratio (FR) to 25 times before the animal was rewarded (FR25). Successive approximation is similar to differential reinforcement, which is defined as a technique for increasing the strength of selected responses that are members of a response class.
This technique could be used in multiple situations such as getting a drug addict to quit, teaching a baby to talk or crawl, and of course teaching your animals to behave and understand their owners commands. Also, this technique can be used in various ways of social learning, particularly in infants and the separation of their mother.
Overall, shaping with successive approximation uses differential reinforcement to strengthen the target behavior and is used to develop a new behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaping_%28psychology%29#Successive_approximatio
http://books.google.com/books?id=GNtp3xtSGC8C&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69dq=successive+approximation+in+shaping+humans
http://books.google.com/books?id=-q6Z5ed9n5AC&pg=PA25&dq=successive+approximation+in+shaping+infants&hl=en&ei=7fCZTfHPEvSO0QGk_bmBDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false
Shaping, differential reinforcement, Successive approximation, Target behavior,positive reinforcers, Schedules of reinforcement,Fixed ratio
I chose to look look at an article that talks about us being over in Afghanistan. I'd like to relate this back to our soldiers and the topic of reinforcement and extinction burst. When these people are abroad fighting for our country, they are constantly being reinforced for taking the lives of many innocent people. They are also destroying some of their land, their property, and their homes. I feel like it would be very difficult for anyone to be in a situation like that and then just be taken out of it and be thrown back into a home life. You wouldn't really know what to do with yourself. The behaviors you once were told to emit are no longer relevant and if you chose to elict a behavior that was once a part of your duty, you may be punished by the law or negatively punished by your family distancing themselves from you. Also, they could get the feeling of extinction burst when they are no longer being reinforced for the duties they had to do overseas.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/12/09/131934285/u-s-is-gearing-up-for-even-heavier-civilian-presence-in-afghanistan
reinforce extinction burst punishment elict emit
I found an article on Huffpost about a 7 year getting plastic surgery to have her ears pinned back to avoid bullying, because children and adults teased her about having big ears. I associated this with conditioned emotional responses (emotional response that has become classically conditioned to occur to learned stimulus). I chose this because the child has an emotional response to the bullying, because of her eyes, the consequence is the constant bullying, and this is a negative emotion for the child to experience. We learned about this in my applied class, about the “fight or flight” response to certain situations, where emotions play a huge role. I’d like to apply conditioned emotional response to my own life, when I experience a confrontation with a friend or loved one, I have a high anxiety level about the situation and always become a total bitch, cannot be dealt with in a calm manner when having the argument, I am conditioned to become heartless and irrational.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/7-year-old-plastic-surgery_n_849156.html
http://www.perilouslyprecocious.com/conditioned-emotional-responses
I found a very sad article but unfortunately a very relevant topic, bullying. In this case it was a cyber bully who would send an enormous amount of threatening and disgusting text messages to a young girl who has recently overcome cancer. It was later discovered that the bully was her "best friend" from school. After this was uncovered the bully recieved therapy, community service, and was ordered to write a letter of apology to the victims family, this was all the punishment she recieved. The family of the victim feels that the punishment for these aversive behaviors emitted by the bully was far too leniant.
If you want to make behaviors like bullying extinct then we must apply positive punishment to cases that involve bullying. Positive punishment and the fact that you are actually standing up and making bullying a criminal act, only then will the punishment be able to act as a deterant. For some reason the bully feels reinforced for their bullying behavior. In order to determine why a bully is bullying we must impliment a funtional assessment of the behavior and hypothesis' as to why the aversive behavior is taking place, we can either use direct or indirect assessment to assess the behavior. Once we have determined why they are bullying we can then change the antecedent to set the occasion for a non bullying behavior to occur. This is where the therapy will come in very handy for this young individual. Perhaps the family is right and this bully should face more criminal punishment other that a simple slap on the wrist as she/he ultimately received. Positive punishment should be used to make sure the behavior does not continue. Kids will be kids and there is always going to be a "bully" trying to prove themselves. Knowing what we know about modifying behaviors we should be able to work with both the bully to get them to treat others better, and with the victim to train them to not allow others to get under their skin.
Terms: Punishment, aversive, emit, extinct, positive punishment, reinforced, functional assessment, direct/indirect assessment, antecedents
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/justine-williams-bullying_n_851723.html