Reading Activity Week #8 (due Monday)

3.3

Prior to this section I began to consider how the work of Thorndike and Pavlov has effected what we think about human behavior. I started to think about how human behaviors are often very similar to animal behaviors.

Three things I will remember:

1. I really like to eat cheese and wine. These two food items pair well. In fact, often the cheese that I choose to eat will dictate the wine that I choose to wash it down with. Therefore, there is a positive contingency between cheese and wine for me. The order of cheese precedes my decision of wine. The cheese order signals to me which wine to pair it with.

2. In my cheese example, time matters. The choice to order cheese prior to wine effects the order of wine I choose. This is a temporal relationship. Had I ordered wine first, I would choose a different array of cheese based on the wine. Thus the timing of the stimulus, in this case it is the cheese, influences the response. My wine ordering is elicited by the cheese order I emit.

3. But I didn't always have cheese with wine. I had to learn to pair cheese with wine. So one day I went to a restaurant, once I had come of age to drink. My dad ordered a cheese flight (tray of assorted cheese) and then pulled out the wine list. He then explained to me how the flavors of the cheeses would pair with different wine flavors. In this situation, it is an unconditioned stimulus that the aroma of cheese and wine is desirable. I learn how to respond to these aromas by pairing the most ideal cheeses and wines. Thus, I underwent backwards conditioning. The unconditioned stimulus of enjoying the aromas of cheese and wine preceded the process of conditioning I underwent to eventually want wine whenever I have cheese. The scent of cheese now elicits a desire for wine in me.

I really liked the diagrams in this section. Especially the conditioning diagram with the Time arrow above.

3.4

Three things I will remember:

1. I think that Watson makes a great point that humans can be conditioned similarly to animals. By observing animal behaviors, we have learned how condition them, and therefore humans too. One area that I do not agree with Watson would be his statement that he could turn any child into any thing. While I mostly agree with this, I have one thought to bring up: some people do what they do based on their genetics. For instance, I am 5 foot 8 inches and weigh about 130 pounds. In theory I could train my whole life and be an excellent basketball player. It is not entirely out of the question that I could have grown up to play in the NBA. But I believe that there are cutoffs on who would be able to be a professional sports player. An extreme example is a midget. They might really want to be a NBA player, and train their whole life for it, but that doesn't mean that they stand a chance at playing in the NBA. In this case, Watson couldn't manipulate the environment to make the midget likely to make it into the NBA.

2. I think that one thing I take from this section is that I tend to think from the lens of a behaviorist and functionalist. Functionalists look at our traits/abilities and attempt to examine how such things serve to aid in our survival. But this is not enough. There are lots of behaviors that we have that do not aid in our survival. Why would we smoke cigarettes when we know that they weaken our rate of survival? But we choose to smoke for various reasons. Therefore, I find it desirable to concede that sometimes our behaviors are based on our genetics, but there is also that element about us that is adaptable to our environments. This is the classic nature-nurture debate, which I believe is nature and nurture, not one or the other.

3. I found the section on phobias to be enjoyable. When people have phobias, we have learned to utilize systematic desensitization. This is a process in which we condition people to act contrary to how they normally act. It seems outrageous that we would force someone who has a fear of snakes to hold one. But this may be part of the process to teach the person not to fear snakes. What I like about desensitization is that we teach people to have a positive contingency with the former undesirable stimulus. When you do systematic desensitization, you start small. If the phobia is snakes, you might start by having the individual say the word "snake". Then you have them think of a snake. After a while you might get a toy snake and put it on the opposite side of the room. Eventually you can move the snake more near to the person. This process teaches the person that the snake and safety go together. Each interaction with snake-like things deconstructs the phobia of snakes. Eventually you may watch a movie with snakes in it, or go to the zoo and view a snake. Some people even eventually will handle a live snake to completely overcome their fear. This whole process is reinforcing because the number of safe interactions teach you to be more fearless towards the phobia.

I really liked the briefness of this section. While there was important information to learn, I like it when there is only a few things to learn at a time.

Terms: positive contingency, temporal relationship, stimulus, response, elicited, emit, unconditioned stimulus, backwards conditioning, conditioning, behaviors, functionalist, behaviorist, systematic desensitization, undesirable, desirable, phobia, reinforcing.

3.3
when it came to conditioned stimulous I had never thought about positive contigency or negative. I had always believed that stimulous ended after it was conditioned. But as it turns out there is always more and more things to build on. I also thought Pavlov ended his behavior conditioneding with the salivation but after further reading I found out I did not know as much as i thought about pavlov. I will remember positive contigency since it is present in our daily routen of life all the time. I am always expecting the light to turn red when it is green and am often right. I will also remember Palovs experiement of dogs and discrimeinat neurosis. I had no idea he did this expereiment and really opened my eyes to the understanding of it. Finally trace conditioning was a useful and alien term for me which I learned. Order matters and in what time. I really enjoyed the learning of palov and the eclipse expereiment. It expanded on my knowledge and even though it was suppose to be a refresher I felt that I learned somehting. I disliked all of the types of conditionings at the end. I do not understand them and needed much more time to use them in the right context let alone use them right away with the examples at the end.

3.4
I learned for one that watson believed that humans and nonhumans are in the same contigency. This suprised me and I still am unclear how he came upon that conclusion. I also now better understand what functional theolgy is. I had had questions and a roughf understanding in the past but now comprehend it better. I learned that mary Jones proved that animals/humans can be desentized, most specifically fear. I thought it was interesting how she used food to do it and am interested if this would work on a brouder scale. I really enjoyed the little albert run down even thought it was review. Mostly since the youtube clip brought to light the experiment in more depth for me. I did not dislike anything in this chapter and thought it was all very interesting.

Terms: desentized, behavior, contigency, conditioned stimulous, postive contigency, negative contigency, stimulous, discriminative neurois, trace conditioning, eclipse experiment.

Sec. 3.3

Prior to reading this section I was starting to really understand the different methods of behavior modification. I am becoming much more aware of the behaviors people emit and how we are constantly manipulating our own behaviors as well as those around us. I find it very interesting that I now have an idea of why people emit certain behaviors in specific contexts. As I continue to learn more about behavior modification, I gain a better understanding of the work that has led up to our current understanding of behavior modification as well as more specifics that can be applied and understood. At the beginning of the course, I thought it would be very difficult to use behavior modification terms in my daily language, but I now find myself using the terms I have learned in various daily situations.

Three things that I will remember from this section are; conditioning methods, trace conditioning, and taste aversion.

Conditioning methods have been done on animals as well as humans. A variety of classical conditioning methods have been used on animals in the past as well as in modern day labs. Some examples of these are the eye blink conditioning procedure for rabbits and electrical shocks being emitted to a rat placed in an operant chamber. Conditioning methods used on humans can also include eye blink and a mild electrical shock. But in humans the shock has to be of a very low intensity so that it does not cause any type of pain to the participant. Another example includes placing a person’s hands in ice cold water. Another example of a conditioning method is the conditioned emotional response (CER). This involves the presentation of a stimulus followed by a shock. Through this method, the researcher can condition the rat the fear a neutral stimulus. The neutral stimulus then becomes a conditioned stimulus and elicits the unconditioned response that had originally occurred due to the presence of the unconditioned stimulus. All of these conditioning methods elicited a remembering response because there were pictures I could look at of each one and this helped me better understand the technique being discussed. I am a very visual learner so the fact that I could see what the technique involved really helped me understand this part of the section. Also, the fact that I found these techniques interesting helped keep my attention on what I was reading and therefore allowed me to better understand and remember each technique.

The second thing that I will remember from this section is the type of conditioning known as trace conditioning. Trace conditioning is the one that I remember best just because most of the examples that I have seen in the past deal with this type of conditioning. Trace conditioning is when the conditioned stimulus is presented slightly before the unconditioned stimulus. Trace conditioning is based on a temporal relationship because it matters when the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus are presented and in what order. The concept of trace conditioning elicited a remembering response because I had to really think about what it involved while doing the examples. Although I did not like the examples in this section at all, it did get me to think about the terms and concepts a little bit more.

And the third thing that I will remember from this section is taste aversion. Taste aversion is an exception to the common belief that it takes repeated trials for a conditioned stimulus to develop from a neutral stimulus. Conditioned taste aversion occurs when a taste is associated with something toxic enough to make us sick to the extent that we become nauseous. This elicited a remembering response because as soon as I read the definition of the term I thought about a specific incidence in my life when this was true. I once became very sick after taking too many jello shots. Now the sight of a jello shot makes me feel nauseous. Having this real life example helped me to apply this term to daily situations and truly understand and remember the term.

The one think that I really liked about this section was the part on conditioning methods. I thought it was very interesting and really grabbed my attention, making the section not seem so bad.

There were a few things that I disliked about this section. First of all the examples for positive contingencies and negative contingencies were almost impossible for me. Even after reading the part on these terms several times and looking it up online, I still do not understand the concepts. Even though I came up with some examples I am pretty sure that none of them are correct. The second thing that I disliked about this section was the examples at the end of the section. I thought that I understood what unconditioned stimulus (US), unconditioned response (UR), conditioned stimulus (CS), and conditioned response (CR) were but I obviously do not because I had a very hard time with this part and again I am sure that a lot of my answers are incorrect.

Sec. 3.4

Three things that I will remember from this section are; the difference between structuralists and functionalists, the Little Albert Study, and systematic desensitization.

Structuralism and Functionalism were two of the schools of psychology to develop during Watson’s time. Structuralists focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. The researchers used introspection to understand the basic elements of consciousness. On the other hand, Functionalists focused on the purpose of a trait/behavior. Functionalism was based on Darwin’s ideas that all traits are functional in that they help an organism survive. Functionalism also concentrated on differences between organisms. These terms elicited a remembering behavior because of the example that I had to do following the reading. Having to explain these schools in my own words really required me to fully understand what each one entailed and I thought long and hard about each. After explaining each, I understood them and now have my own little definition that I truly understand and that helps me remember the terms.

The Little Albert Study is another thing that I will remember from this section because I have covered this study in many of my other psychology courses. In this study, John Watson conditioned an infant, that he called Little Albert, to fear a white rat by pairing the presentation of the rat with a loud noise. This fear soon generalized to all objects that were either white or fluffy. This was easy to remember because it was just like a refresher for me since I have learned about this study in several other classes.

The third thing that I will remember from this section is systematic desensitization. This is a behavioral method commonly used to help people overcome phobias. Systematic desensitization uses a combination of relaxation techniques, visualization, and taking small steps towards approaching the feared object or situation. This concept elicited a remembering behavior because I have heard this technique mentioned before and found it very interesting. Also, having to come up with a way it which I would use this to overcome a phobia I listed helped me to think more about the technique and understand it a little bit more.

One thing that I really liked about this chapter was that it was brief but interesting. I learned a lot from reading it but did not become so discouraged like I did while reading section 3.3.

There was nothing that I disliked about this chapter. I learned a lot from reading it and found it very interesting.

Terms: Behavior Modification, Behaviors, Emit, Manipulating, Contexts, Conditioning Methods, Trace Conditioning, Taste Aversion, Classical Conditioning, Operant Chamber, Conditioned Emotional Response (CER), Stimulus, Neutral Stimulus, Conditioned Stimulus, Elicits, Unconditioned Stimulus, Temporal Relationship, Positive Contingencies, Negative Contingencies, Conditioned Response, Unconditioned Response, Structuralism, Functionalism, John Watson, Introspection, Consciousness, Little Albert Study, Conditioned, Generalized, Systematic Desensitization, Phobias, Relaxation Techniques, and Visualization

Section 3.3

Prior to emitting the behavior of reading this chapter I believed that the ABC's were the focus. Antecedent being before the behavior, than the behavior, and finally the consequence which occurs after the behavior is emitted. Than there's punishment which decreases a behavior and reinforcement which increases a behavior, these are from operant conditioning. Positive punishment is where something aversive is added, negative punishment is where something pleasurable is taken away. Positive reinforcement is where something pleasurable is added and negative reinforcement is where something aversive is taken away. Deprivation is where you go without a reinforcement, so it makes the reinforcer more reinforcing. Satiation is where you have too much of the reinforcement and it makes the reinforcer less reinforcing. Then there is classical conditioning, there's and unconditioned stimulous and unconditioned response, which are unlearned and natural. Then there's conditioned response and conditioned stimulus which have been learned. There's also different schedules of reinforcement such as fixed interval, set amount of time, fixed ratio, set number, variable interval, varying time with average, variable number, varying number with average, after these one is reinforced. Then there is salient where once it is functioning it creates a certain response.

I will remember positive and negative contingencies. Positive contingency happens when the CS predicts the arrival of a US. A negative contingency happens when the UR is not occuring and the likelihood of a US occuring is very unlikely. I will remember this because I liked the weatherman analogy and I also thought of people in Junior High when you would fight and how normally you'd talk to them, but then they resist the urge to talk to you and ignore you. The final thing I will remember is the Conditioned Emotional response, which is a stimulus followed by something such as shock. I will remember this because I think it could be related to how we create our fears.

I liked that there were many pictures and diagrams to follow on this worksheet. It was easy to complete with the diagrams and was easier to understand.

I did not like coming up with examples at the end of this worksheet to figure out the conditioning type. I didn't get definitions of each one and it was hard to understand how to complete it. I also didn't enjoy some of the scenarios such as the first one: When the car hit the tree it made a loud crashing noise, I had no idea what to look for, just more of an explanation would be nice.

Section 3.4

In the chapter I will remember the structuralists, the functionalists, and the behavioralists. I will remember them because it is important to know the differences behind their theories. Structuralists believe their our different parts to psychology and once you understand them that you can combine them to understand the nature of humans. Functionalists believe that humans are constantly evolving and adapting to our environment and therefore making ourselves better and live longer due to our evolution. Behavioralists, such as Watson, believe that humans and animals are all living beings and are on the same level and their behaviors can be manipulated by the environment and different manipulations of the environment.

I liked that I got to learn more about the little Albert study, and I also liked looking at systematic desensitization because I covered that a little in clinical psychology.

I didn't like that we had to give examples of phobias, I have fears, but I can touch a snake and spider, but I don't know anyone yet that had a complete phobia, so I just listed ones that I have known of.

Terms: Antecedent, behavior, consequence, emit, conditioned response, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, unconditioned stimulus, operant conditioning, classical conditioning, aversive, pleasurable, positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, deprivation, satiation, schedules of reinforcement, fixed interval, fixed ratio, variable interval, variable ratio, reinforcer, salient, structuralists, functionalists, behavioralists, systematic desensitization, postive contingency, negative contingency, conditioned emotional response

3.3
Prior to reading this chapter, what did you think about behavior modification? Prior to eliciting to read chapter 3.3 I felt really comfortable with most terms and eliciting to use them in daily life. However, I felt and still feel aversive about Unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, and conditioned response.

What are three things you will remember from what you read in the chapter? Three things I elicit remembering are 1) conditioned emotional response because I found that the example was clearly defined and was easy for me to understand. 2) I found that emitting to learn about trace conditioning made clear sense to me. I found it interesting to learn that it is the most effective when conditioning. 3) I also learned that backwards conditioning, showing the US before the CS emits very little conditioning.

What was one thing that you really liked that was in the chapter? One thing I found pleasant from this chapter and easy to emit remembering is Conditioned Emotional Response (CER). The reason I found this pleasant is because I found the example of using rats and mapping out the process of CER pleasant and easy to elicit understanding.

What was one thing that you disliked that was in the chapter? One thing that I found aversive was positive and negative contingencies. The reason I find them aversive is because I do not understand them at all.

3.4
What are three things you will remember from what you read in the chapter? Three things I elicit remembering are 1) structuralist-who believed in breaking psychology into basic elements and using the method of introspection and 2) functionalist who were influenced by Darwin, who believed the ability or trait existed then it must have something to do with enhancing our survival rate. I have heard of these two camps of psychology, but I never really understood them. 3) I will also emit to remember systematic desensitization, which is when a person is exposed to their fear in a controlled environment to slowly desensitize them from that particular phobia. For example, you may have someone that fears dogs start by entering a room that it is also in, slowly walk toward it, eventually touch it, pet it, and hold it.

What was one thing you liked from this chapter? I really found it pleasant watching the video of “Little Albert”. I feel that Watson finding that the environment of babies being shaped can clearly identify fears is so interesting. Like, for example, why do most people have a negative response to spiders? Even if they’re not going to typically harm you? There are very few poisonous spiders in America.

What was one thing you disliked from this chapter? Nothing within this chapter was aversive to me

Terms: aversive, positive contingencies, negative contingences, UR, US, CS, CR, elicit, emit, conditioned, conditioning, trace conditioning, backwards conditioning, taste aversion, negative, response, systematic desensitization.

Prior to reading this chapter I've been thinking of behavior modification more and more outside of class. I think about why I emit certain behavior and I've also been trying to elicit desirable behaviors in my roommates.

3.3

Three things that I will remember from this chapter:
1) Positive contingency occurs when the CS predicts or signals the arrival of the US. Remembering positive contingency shouldn't be too difficult, the example of lighting and thunder paints a good picture of what a positive contingency is. The lightning signals us that the thunder is coming. To further understand positive contingencies it is important to know that some contingencies are negative, they signal the US will not arrive or it has a decreased likelihood.

2) Conditioned Emotional Response presents a stimulus which is followed by a shock. CER is similar to conditioning the rabbit to blink. A tone is presented then a shock to a rat, after an effective amount of training sessions the rat will associate the tone with the shock making the tone the CS which elicits the reflex behavior.

3) Taste Aversion is an exception to classical conditioning. It does not take repeated trails to learn the association of the particular food with getting sick. I have learned about taste aversion in other classes and I know that it is evolutionary, meaning that we have taste aversion because it helps for our survival.

I liked that the chapter talked a little bit about conditioning methods in humans. There wasn't much details about conditioning methods with humans but i'm sure there are some interesting ways that humans have been conditioned to emit certain behaviors.

I disliked the part in the chapter where we we're asked to name examples of positive contingency's and negative contingency's. I just could not think of any examples which is aversive to me.

3.4

Three things that I will remember from this chapter:
1) I found it interesting that Watson found no relationship between a rat's ability to learn and the degree of myelinization. From Bio-psychology class I learned that myelinization makes the electrical impulse on the axon travel faster and that as humans develop they get increased myelinzation on their neurons. With more myelinization I figured the better adapt that person would be at learning which still may be the case in humans but apparently not in rats.

2) Watson's Little Albert study must have given him a lot of confidence judging by his 12 infants quote. I think he makes a good point with that quote and I believe he could make the majority of infants into whichever kind of specialist he wanted.

3) Systematic desensitization is used to help people overcome their phobias. Psychologists have an individuals do relaxation techniques and then have them visualize whatever it is that the person fears in a relaxing way. I like when behavior modification topics can be applied directly to helping people.

I found the part in the chapter about systematic desensitization to be pleasurable. I just wish there were more relaxation techniques, I've always wanted to be able to meditate.

Terms: positive contingency, negative contingency, emit, elicit, taste aversion, conditioned emotional response, conditioned stimulus, aversive, unconditioned stimulus, pleasurable, systematic desensitization, desirable

3.3
Prior to emitting the behavior of reading the chapter I had thought that behavior modification was simpler than it is turning out to be. This is because all the different types of condition seem quite similar and I am becoming confused.

I will remember positive contingencies because that is the principle behind something becoming conditioned, as I understand it. A conditioned response occurs only if there is a positive contingency between the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned response. I remember the conditioned emotional response because I had been wondering about how and when emotional figured into behavior modification and when they would be mentioned. I will also remember all the animal experiments because they are simple examples of the ideas, and because I feel bad for the animals.

I found completing the examples and filling in the Ur Cr, US, UC pleasurable because it let me know I was understanding the reading, and getting somewhere.

I found trying to figure out which type of conditioning it was aversive because I became confused after a few of them because they all seemed like the same one and I started to second guess myself.

3.4
I learned more about history of psychology. I learned all about the baby Albert study, and will remember it because of the attached video, and because I looked it up previously for blog. I also learned more about functional uses for bmod (I don’t mean functionalism) which was interesting because it hinted at how it could be used to help people. I will also remember desensitizing method because it was one of the things used to cure fear and its meaning is it’s normal meaning.

I found it pleasurable that the Peter study was mentioned because it shows how a fear can be unconditioned and is an example of desentisizing. It also shows that people where interested in reversing the affects of little Albert study.

I found it aversive that Watson felt he could “improve the human condition through the use of science, psychological science.” and then he goes and conditions a happy and unfearing infant to have intense fear to something that is harmless. That is not improving the human condition. Why couldn’t he have tried to condition something useful into baby Albert. Or maybe a fear of the burning fire, which would at least be useful because then he wouldn’t touch it and be burned.

I now think that behavior modification has relied to heavily on animal testing. I like that it says it wants to help people with phobias. I also think that Watson is a hypocrite and probably largely responsible for advertising psychology , the manipulation of people to make them want what they don’t need. See problem America.

emit, positive contingency, conditioned emotional response, unconditioned response, conditioned response, Neutral stimulus, pleasurable, aversive, desensitize

3.3
Prior to this chapter, we have been going over Pavlov and Skinner and their contributions to condiotioning. Ivan Pavlov had a dog that he used classical conditioning on and used the US, UR, CS and CR. B.F. Skinner used operant conditioning and built of Edward Thorndike's laws and theories.
Three things I learned from this chapter were positive contingency, negative congtingency and going into detail over all the different types of conditioning. I remembered these because they were new, and hard to come up with examples. Also in the section where we had to tell the different types of conditioning apart was a little hard because there were so many and I could see many of the examples being more than one. The examples were also very situational.
One thing I liked from this chapter was reading about discrimination training for the dog that could tell the circle and elipse apart. That is pretty impressive that a circle can make a dog think of food, but try to have no response to an elipse because they are so simular.
One thing I disliked was trying to sort out the differences between the different conditionings because the examples were not specific enough I feel like. They were more of behavior classes instead of specific examples like "going to bed" does that mean laying down or changing into your PJs, getting a midnight snack ect.
3.4
Three things I remember from this chapter are sorting out structalists and functionalists along with Little Albert. I think I remembered these specific three things because I am currently talking about structalists and functionalists in another class, and I have learned about Little Albert for a couple of years now.
One thing I liked about this chapter was watching the video of Little Albert even though it was kind of sad seeing him cry and thinking about how his life would have been since he was never desensitized to furry objects. I did learn however that it was all furry things Little Albert was conditioned to have aversive feelings for instead of furry white things like I have been taught before.
One thing I disliked was talking about extinction of phobias. I hate needles and everytime I think about them or see one, I get scared and have a physical reactions like sweaty palms and my heart starts racing. When I go to the doctor, one of my first questions is always "Am I going to get a shot today?" Hopefully we will go over more about relaxing and phobias in theh future so I can learn more about it.

terms:conditioning, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, US , UR, CS, CR, positive contingency, neagtive congtingency, discrimination training, structalists, functionalists, desensitization, aversive, extinction, phobia

3.3
Before this reading I really thought of behavior modification as a school subject that involved a lot of terminology and concepts on how to elicit target behaviors from your audience.
Three things I will remember from this chapter are:
1. Inhibitory Conditioning is not emitted very often in behavior modification and discrimination is an example of Inhibitory Conditioning and Inhibitory Conditioning is the same concept as negative contingences.
2. Experimental nerosis was used by Pavlov and it is very similar to the process of learning how to discriminate between different stimuli.
3. There are different "schedules" of conditioning if you will, similar to reinforcement in the fact that it refers to when you administer the aversive or pleasurable stimulus, in conjunction with the time that you administer the unconditioned stimulus.
One thing I liked about this chapter was that there is more historical assessment about how the idea came to be, as well as the random historical facts that will make this chapter solid in my memory.
One thing that I disliked about the chapter was the question at the beginning that didn't actually have an answer, it was an aversive exercise.

3.4

Three things I will remember from this chapter are:
1. When Watson emitted saying his quote about modifying babies, eliciting a very aversive response from most of his audience. This quote will help solidify what Watson thought and how behaviorists view the world.
2. That Little Albert, while I knew about the experiment, that they never actually distinguished the conditioned behavior of being afraid of all animals.
3. Systematic Desenitization is commonly used for phobias by taking the fear and breaking it down into basic elements (like structuralism). You are systematically emitting behaviors that are similar and similar to the target behavior, most of the emitted behaviors are aversive and cause a lot of stress.
One thing I really liked about this chapter was the stories it had to tell. They elicited a more personal response in me that triggered me to remember things more clearly and I feel will help me in the future.
One thing I don't like about this chapter was the length, I thought it was a bit long and there wasn't a clear picture of any other behaviorist other then Watson because he seemed to be the extreme of behaviorists.

Terms: audience, behavior modification, elicit, target behaviors, inhibitory conditioning, discriminative, negative contingences, experimental nerosis, stimuli, conditioning, schedules of reinforcement, unconditioned stimulus, aversive, behaviorists, systematic desensitization, structuralism

3.3
Prior to emitting this chapter on behavior, I felt pretty comfortable with most of the terms and theories from the previous chapters. I believed the main focus was on the ABC's of behavior. To me those have been the most important so far in reading and blogging. I am really enjoying reading about the different studies and experiments so far in these chapters.

One thing I will remember from this chapter is positive and negative contingencies. Both contingencies were a little difficult to understand at first because I can't picture while I'm reading about the different stimuli and responses that go with each term. But after reading about the examples I understand them a lot better, like the dog example and the one about blinking. I came up with my own examples but I'm not quite sure if they're correct. It was harder than I thought to come up with my own examples.

Another thing I will remember after reading this chapter are the examples of conditioning. I don't like the idea of the rats being shocked in order to do a behavior the way they want it to be done. But I think it's a brilliant idea that they could do that in order for the rats to know what they were supposed to be doing. This idea helped me better understand conditioning as well.

The last thing I will remember from this chapter is the term Conditioned Emotional Response. It presents a stimulus and is followed by a shock. At first I was a little confused when I read this, but then I kept reading it and understood it better and better. Reading the definition was a little confusing because it's hard to picture the US, UR, and US by going off of these terms. It makes the term seem harder to figure out because I have to process through all of the abbreviations.

I really enjoyed the pictures and diagrams throughout the chapter. It was easier to understand because I could actually look at the pictures. I also really liked the different examples for each term because it's easier to understand when there's a real everyday example that I can relate to. One thing that I didn't like about this chapter was the many abbreviations for each term. It was hard to understand each one because they each had a different letter abbreviation so I had to stop and think about each term individually.

3.4
One thing I will remember after reading this chapter was learning about the Little Albert experiment. Watson seemed to have been pretty confident with the study because he thought of his study as being accurate and working. I felt bad when I learned about this experiment in my earlier psychology classes because I think it is cruel to do that to a baby. He doesn't know any better and to scare him is just cruel.

Another thing I will remember after reading this chapter is the Mary Cover Jone's study. I thought this was really interesting because I didn't know that people aren't afraid when they're eating. I think this is just a theory and could be tested however. I liked this study because they experimented with a toddler and animals to see if either of them were afraid while eating.

The last thing I will remember from this chapter is the different groups called structuralists and functionalists. The structuralists were interesting in breaking psychology into basic elements while the functionalists were influenced by Darwin. They believed that if an ability or trait existed, then it must have something to do with enhancing our survival rate.

One thing I really liked about this chapter was the length and and the experiments. I find it easier to read and enjoy the chapter if it is shorter and has lots of information about experiments or examples instead of just reading about terms. There wasn't anything in particular I really disliked about this chapter. I found myself understanding most of the things that I read without reading them twice.

Terms: behavior, positive contingency, conditioned emotional response, emit, conditioned stimulus, classical conditioning, conditioning.

3.3
I continue to learn just how complicated behavioral terminology is. It’s not just a conditioned stimulus and response but now they can have either positive or negative contingency. I also didn’t know much about Watson before reading 3.4 I mean I’ve heard of him but I didn’t know too much.
3.3 introduced me to the idea that after many parings of a stimulus and response, a contingent relationship develops. This relationship can either have positive contingency or Excitatory Conditioning, where the US is more likely to occur or it can have negative contingency or Inhibitory Conditioning, where the US is less likely to occur. The colored explosion of a firework comes before the big boom sound making the contingency positive. When you meet someone who lies, the relationship between their stories and the actual events has a negative contingency. The more stories they tell, the less likely they are to have occurred.
I was also introduced to various methods of animal conditioning methods including conditioned emotional response conditioning where a neutral stimulus is paired with a negative stimulus in order to elicit negative emotion when the neutral stimulus is presented. For example if a smoker is going through this conditioning, a shock may be administered when they make the smoking motion. After a significant number of pairings, the smoker will start to associate the smoking motion with a negative emotion or feeling.
One form of human conditioning that was covered in the chapter was conditioned taste aversion when a taste is associated with something toxic enough to make us become physically ill or puke. So if someone eats popcorn when they have the flu and throw up a few minutes later, they may avoid popcorn because the taste is associated with tossing their cookies.
I really liked the conditioning examples we were asked to do. I was confused by them and I’m pretty sure my answers are wrong but they challenged me and that’s always fun.
I didn’t like how vague the definition of negative contingencies was. At the end of the chapter I still was unclear on that concept.
3.4
This chapter enlightened me on the difference between the structuralist and functionalist views of psychology. Structuralists believed that psychology could be broken down into base elements and through introspection, we could use these elements to explain human nature. Functionalists believed that human nature was designed through natural selection and that everything we do is based on increasing our survival rate.
This chapter also gave me more information on John Watson, a figure that I have heard of but never really studied. He was a ground breaking behaviorist who became famous in part by the popularization of his Little Albert study. In this study, he used a baby to test his hypothesis. He presented neutral stimuli to the baby, Albert, and the baby didn’t respond. He would then pair the neutral stimuli with an aversive stimulus to elicit a negative emotion. After a number of pairings, Albert began to be frightened by the neutral stimuli or now conditioned stimuli and this became the basis for Watson’s argument that our fears are conditioned through experience not innate. He also cheated on his wife.
The other big concept I am beginning to grasp after reading the chapter is the concept of desensitization or more specifically systematic desensitization where a patient with a phobia is slowly desensitized to the target of their phobia. For example, someone with arachnophobia might try visualizing a spider being in the same room as them at first. Then they might visualize a spider being close to them or touching them and they might try to feel a spider on them even though one is not. Then they might be exposed to a spider in a cage in the same room as them and then outside the cage. Then they might try holding a spider and using breathing techniques while doing this or meditating while doing this. The idea is to slowly expose the patient to their fear in the hopes that the fear will eventually diminish.
I liked the section on the personal life of John Watson. It lets me know that even highly respected legends have their faults.
I didn’t like the Albert study. This guy had such a big ego that he HAD to prove his point by scaring the bejeezus out of a baby repeatedly? Find another way.
Terms: Systematic Desensitization, Elicit, Behaviorist, Behavior, Neutral Stimulus, Conditioned Stimulus, Conditioning, Structuralist, Functionalist, Introspection, Positive Contingency, Negative Contingency, Negative Stimulus, Conditioned Emotional Response, Excitatory Conditioning, Inhibitory Conditioning, Taste Aversion

prior to this chapter I was becoming a little confused about behavior modification. Talking about Skinner and Pavlov and the UR US CS CR. These things started to jumble together for me and I it was just not clicking for me like I wanted it to.
3.3

Three things I learned from this section
1. Discriminative Stimulus. the is a procedure of using two different stimuli to signal difference contingencies. The example that was used in the section was Pavlov and his experiments with dogs. Once the dog was able to tell the difference or discriminate between the conditioned stimulus Pavlov would make the stimulus more difficult for the dogs. As it got more difficult, the dog would get confused whether it should salivate or inhibit salivation.

2. The second thing that I learned was Taste Aversion. This is when you associate food with something aversive. Such as getting sick after eating something or having stomach pains. This could also relate to getting sick after a night full of drinking.

3.The last thing I learned in this section was Positive Contengencies. This could also be called Excitatory Conditioning. This is when the controlled stimulus predicts or signals the arrival of the uncontrolled stimulus. An example of this would be lightening and thunder. The light of the lightening will tell us that the thunder is coming next.

One thing that I liked in this chapter was the examples with the positive contengencies. I liked the example with the lightening and thunder, also the example with the mailman and the weather and being right and telling us that we need to carry an umberrella. This made the concept much more relatable and easier to understand.

3.4
Three things that I learned from this chapter.
1. structuralists, they believed that if we understand the basic elements of behavior they can be used as building blocks to construct the complex nature of humans.

2. Functionalists, Fucntionalists behaviorists were heavily influenced by Darwin. They believe that behavior is the ability or trait that we need to adapt or survive or to enhance our survival rate.

3. Something that I had learned before but elicited a memory response in this chapter was the little Albert study. This was Watsons study of a child named Albert and conditioning him to be fearful of all fuzzy or furry animals, especially white rabbits. I have learned about this many times before but learning it over again emits remembering.

One thing that I really liked about his chapter was learning the difference from structuralists and functionalists of behaviorists. I really like behaviorism and I like learning about it. Another thing that I really liked reading about is Phobias. I didnt like thinking about my phobia, but it was interesting to read about helping others manage their phobias with systematic desensitization.

There was nothing that I really disliked about this section of the chapter. It was an easy part to understand and easy to apply to other areas.

Discriminative Stimulus conditioned stimulus Taste Aversion Positive Contengencies Excitatory Conditioning structuralists Functionalists

Section 3.3 – Advanced principles of classical conditioning.

I have been thinking that behavior modification is about manipulating people in small ways - like stop talking during a movie - and in big ways -like allowing a high rise to be built on a pristine island.
In this chapter, three things I will remember are:
Rescorla’s contingency theory involves the pairing of an unconditioned stimulus with a very predictable conditioned stimulus;
A positive contingency, a/k/a excitatory conditioning, signals an increased likelihood that the unconditioned stimulus will occur while a negative contingency, a/k/a inhibitory conditioning, signals a decreased likelihood that the unconditioned stimulus will occur;
Discrimination training involves using two different stimuli to signal different contingencies, circle stimulates saliva; ellipse inhibits saliva.
The Conditioned Emotional Response diagrams were useful, and hopefully will help me remember that the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus.
The temporal diagrams were confusing, and I did not like them.


No dividing line between man and animal:
I disagree with that, although I recognize that infants and young children respond and react in predictable ways like an animal. They respond to stimuli that involve food, warmth – biological needs. But as humans gain knowledge and experience, their responses cannot be compared to animals.

Section 3.4 – John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)

Three things I will remember about this chapter are:
Watson believed that humans and animals act through habit and three basic reflexes, fear, rage and love;
Little Albert was only afraid of loud noises, which was his conditioned emotional response, not animals;
Jones’s study of 3 year old Peter involved making him unafraid by showing him scary things while he was eating, called systematic desensitization.
I liked the systematic desensitization discussion because it can be important to try to eliminate a stressful situation for a person. I do not believe and did not like the idea that humans and animals can be conditioned equally. There are times when this might happen, but the older the humans get, the more sophisticated the conditioning needs to be.
Behavior modification seems trickier and can be harder to understand due to the ethical issues involved in experimenting on both humans and animals.
Terms: Rescorla’s contingency theory, positive contingency a/k/a excitatory conditioning. Negative contingency, a/k/a inhibitory conditioning, discrimination training, conditioned emotional response, neutral stimulus, temporal relationship, systematic desensitization.

After reading section 3.3
1. Prior to reading the chapter I had begun to take into consideration the works that Pavlov and Thorndike have done and how it influences behavioral psychology. This also got me thinking how their studies with animals have gotten me to think how alike we as humans are to animals, and that we can learn a lot from studying animals as well.
2.) Three things that I will remember from this chapter are as follows:
a. I will find it easy to emit the behavior of remembering what positive and negative contingencies mean because with positive contingency it’s when something reinforcing happens, like with the rain, if the weatherman says it’s going to Ryan he will elicit a behavior to me to carry an umbrella. If It does rain than his predications become reinforcing, if it doesn’t rain I personally will find the man aversive because I carried an umbrella for no reason. Yes, this has obviously happened in the past.
b. I will emit the behavior of remembering what discrimination training because I can relate it to my own life. I babysit a 2 year old and I use to fool him by giving him half of a snack that he requested ( such as a cookie) but as he got older and saw me emitting the behavior of giving his older siblings getting a whole cookie he realized he was getting ripped off and found that aversive so and started demanding that he get the same amount.
c. I will emit the behavior of remember conditioned taste aversion because it elicited the memory of the previous weekend in which I celebrated one of my friends 21st birthday, although I did not emit the behavior of throwing up the next morning, I was aversive to the orange juice at the baby shower I had to attend because it elicited the idea of vodka being mixed in with it.
3. Something I really enjoyed from this chapter was, was the section on taste aversion because I had also thought a sickness towards something had to do with because you didn’t like that food or beverage or it just didn’t agree with you, but after reading the chapter it makes sense that it can actually be mental and that, that can elicit the behavior of finding something aversive.
4. Something I found aversive from this chapter would have been the beginning about contingencies because I felt like it took me awhile to adjust to what I was reading and it was a little difficult to get the concept at first. Also, I thought the chart on types of condition was a little confusing.
Terms: aversive emit, emitted, elicit, eliciting, positive and negative contingencies, conditioned taste aversion, taste aversion, averse.

Chapter 3.4
What are three things you will remember from what you read in the chapter? Why? What was one thing that you really liked that was in the chapter? Why? What was one thing that you disliked that was in the chapter? Why?
1. Three things I will emit the behavior of remember from that chapter are as follows:
a. Something I will emit the behavior of remembering from the chapter was the behaviorist manifesto because prior to this chapter I had said that animals and humans have more in common than what we think, and I believe that the Behaviorist Manifesto is somewhat eliciting the point that humans and animals are in fact very much alike.
b. also based on my own life I find the Little Albert video very interesting because the child was not afraid of the animals until a loud noise was introduced along with them. Therefore the loud noise soon began to elicit the child to become scared, I have noticed emitted behaviors like this happening with the 2 year old I babysit and I found it helpful to now understand why.
c. I also enjoyed the section on behaviorist and functionalist, I personally would say I was maybe a functionalist, but now I am realizing the importance of behaviorism and I am now realizing that although we need to look at our traits and abilities in our aid to survive, there is more to survival and the human race and I believe behavioral helps shape that view.
2. Something I really enjoyed from the chapter was the video on the Little Albert Study, I feel like when videos are thrown into a learning environment it elicits an unconditioned learning behavior because a video grabs your attention just because it’s something besides reading and doing examples.
3. Something I found aversive from the chapter was the fact we had to rewrite the manifesto in our own words and to be honest I had no idea what I was talking about, complete guess but I guess that’s the point.
Terms: emit, behaviorist manifesto, eliciting, elicit, emitted, behaviorist, functionalist

Prior to reading these sections I thought of behavior modification as a complex technique involving much terminology that is essential to know to understand it.

Section 3.3
I had already emitted the behavior of knowing classical conditioning but I will remember the types from this section. I was unaware of excitatory conditioning and inhibitory conditioning and positive and negative contingency signals. The section about CER elicited a learning response in me because it was easy to understand and I could think of many examples to further my understanding. The final thing I will remember from this section is the different types of conditioning. I was unaware of trace, backwards, and simultaneous conditioning but the chart and its simplicity made it easy to understand.

One thing I liked about this section was the part about conditioning methods. I found the different devises interesting as well as the methodology used.
There was nothing I found aversive about this chapter.

Section 3.4
I have talked about structuralism and functionalism in other classes but this class explained it better than the other ones. Because of this I was able to emit the target behavior of learning the differences between the two. Another topic that elicited interest in me was systematic desensitization. This was also briefly covered in another psych class and I found it interesting again. The idea of fear being a learned reaction elicited a remembrance response from me because I'm interested in knowing if it's true.

I really liked the section about the Little Albert and Mary Cover Jones's Study. They interested me greatly and I am interesting in finding out more about it. As in the previous section I did not find anything aversive about this section.

Terms:emit, elicit, target behavior, aversive, remembrance response, CER, systematic desensitization, structuralism, functionalism, conditioning methods, trace conditioning, simultaneous conditioning, backwards conditioning, excitatory conditioning, inhibitory conditioning, positive, and negative contingency signals

Section 3.3.

Before reading this section I wasn't sure who was more receptive to conditioning: humans or animals. Both have interesting characteristics that make it harder and easier to use for conditioning. I have been trying to elicit certain behaviors from my family in order to get them to do something that I want. I have fun that it is hard to get them to emit the behaviors that I desire because the types of conditioning techniques I am using are not using. Before reading this, I really thought it would be easier to elicit these behavior from the people around me.

The three things I will remember from this chapter are:
1. The difference between positive and negative contingencies. Positive contingencies happen when the it is likely for the action to occur, while negative contingencies are when the action is not likely to occur based upon the unconditioned stimulus.
2. The different types of conditioning. I particularly found interesting backward conditioning. I can't quiet understand how you can get a response before a stimulus is even present. i was not surprised to learn that it was a very rare kind of conditioning.
3. Conditioned emotional response is completely interesting, especially with humans. Made my mind instantly think of Stanley Milgram and his experiment, even though he did not shock the people, he is by far the most important psychologist related to shock treatment. I found it interesting that they paired the tone with the shock and when the shock is removed the rat still freezes up.

I thought it was interesting to learn about humans and conditioning. Most often we don't use the same techniques over and over again to try to elicit a behavior from someone, so it was interesting to learn about the way that conditioning his used on humans to make then emit a behavior.

I disliked the lack of explanation of the different types of conditioning. I would have like to learn more about short delayed and long delayed conditioning.

Section 3.4.

The three things I will remember from this chapter are:
1. "No dividing line between man and brute." I don't agree with this at all. As humans we are far more complex than animals. I believe we are both instinctual and important to the circle of life, but human lives are far more important than animals. Some people may disagree because their pet is their best friend, but over all I think most people are more attached to other human beings because we give and reciprocate feelings mutually.
2. Behaviorism. I do agree that we are constantly learning and adjusting to our environments. Many times as children we are a product of our environment and we do what we see. If we see caring behaviors, we often emit caring behaviors ourselves, as that is what we have learned from our parents and have experience in our lives.
3. Little Albert. It was interesting to learn about an infant that was not afraid of anything because everything he encountered was a neutral stimuli to him, but loud noises scared him. It's strange that an infant would not be frightened by fire or a mask, but is startled by noises. Ultimately, it was interesting to read about Albert fearing furry things.

I really enjoyed reading about was systematic desensitization. I have heard of people assisting people with their phobias of flying with setting them up in these types of situations. For example, they would sit in an airport for several days, then purchase a ticket one day, and then walk down the walk way to the plane several times, then sit on a plane a few times, then actually fly another day with their psychologist, then their final step was flying by them selves. It is interesting how people can actually face their fears after long periods of time desensitizing themselves from their fear.

As interesting as it is to learn about Little Albert, I was really sad to hear about the story. It is sad that we learn things from the past by using unethical measures on humans to learn about conditioning to human race.

Terminology: conditioning, elicit, emit, positive contingencies, negative contingencies, unconditioned stimulus, backwards conditioning, response, stimulus, short delayed conditioning, long delayed conditioning, brute, instinctual, humans, behaviorism, Little Albert, neutral stimuli, systematic desensitization, phobias, and unethical.

3.3
After emitting a reading response, there are three things that I will remember from this chapter. The first thing I will remember is what positive contingencies are. It is when the conditioned stimulus predicts the arrival of the unconditioned stimulus. An example of this would be thunder and lightning. The light precedes the thunder. The light tells us that the thunder will soon arrive. The second thing I will remember is the section on discrimination training. I found this interesting. I think it is really cool that dogs can discriminate between the different shapes. The third thing I will remember is the different conditioning methods. For example the ones for animals, the rabbit restrainer and the rat operant chamber. I don’t necessarily think these are the most humane, but they were interesting. I don’t think I would have known what the rabbit restrainer was if there hadn’t have been a picture of it with the actual rabbit in it.

One thing I liked about this chapter were the pictures. I thought they made the terms a little easier to understand and I liked seeing the different conditioning methods.

One thing I didn’t like about this chapter was the order of the CS and US presentations; that section. For some reason I didn’t understand this section at all and it was frustrating trying to come up with items when I didn’t understand it. I didn’t like that there weren’t answers to these. If there were, then maybe I would have understood it better.

3.4
The first thing I will remember from this chapter is the difference between the structuralists and the functionalists. The structuralists believed in breaking things down into basic elements. If you could understand that, then you could understand the complexity of the human. Functionalists believed that if a trait existed, it served some function for us to compete for survival. The second thing I will remember is the Little Albert study. This study was done with an infant. Watson conditioned Albert to become scared of a rat by making a loud clang when the rat was presented. Albert eventually learned to fear all fury things. Watson believed that most behaviors are learned and you could shape behaviors. The third thing I will remember is the Mary Cover Jones’s study. She did a study to remove a fear from a boy named Peter. She presented Peter with food and he would eat as she presented him with a rabbit (which elicited fear). Since the rabbit was paired with food (which doesn’t elicit fear), he soon could be calm around the rabbit and wasn’t scared anymore.

One thing I liked about this chapter was how much easier it was compared to the other one. This one was just straight forward a lot easier to understand. Much of this was review, but I still liked it.

One thing I didn’t like about this chapter was figuring out what Watson was trying to say in his passage. I didn’t really get what he was saying. Other than that, everything else was alright.

Terms: emitting, response, positive contingencies, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, discrimination training, structuralists, functionalists, elicit

3.3

Prior to emitting the behavior of reading these chapters I figured we had pretty much covered every term that could possibly be used in behavior modification. Boy was I wrong. We were introduced to a whole slew of new vocab words and concepts in this chapter. There were some that I really don’t understand such as the difference between the different types of conditioning.

Three things I will remember:

1. Positive vs Negative Contingencies, although it was really hard to come up with examples for each, I feel like the weatherman example was really helpful and would be helpful in helping me to discern the difference between positive and negative contingencies.
2. Excitatory vs. Inhibitory Contingencies, I had to google this because the text didn’t really explain this very well but it is my understanding that these concepts are very similar to positive and negative contingencies in the sense that basically positive and excitatory will elicit a specific target response and negative and inhibitory will not.
3. I also feel like I will be able to remember the Unconditioned stimulus, Unconditioned response, Conditioned stimulus, and Conditioned response although I did have a really tough time choose the conditioning type, in fact even as I’m writing this I don’t really understand the differences between them and hope we’ll go over them in class tomorrow.

I really liked the new and fresh topics and examples. I felt this chapter was also nice because it covered the information without a lot of fluff, fanfare, or unnecessary examples and information. One thing I didn’t like is I felt like the chapter did a really poor job of explaining the differences between the types of conditioning. After conferencing with another student, neither of us really understand what the differences are and how to classify them for the homework assignment.

3.4

Three things I will remember:

1. I was really interested in the Little Albert study because it’s such a prominent study and is a ground breaking study even by today’s standards. I think it’s important for anyone studying behavior modification to understand the implications of this study.
2. Another thing I think I will remember is the differences between Structuralism and Functionalism. I’ve taken History and Systems of Psychology here at UNI and we obviously spent quite a bit of time on these two schools of thought and I feel as if I have had them drilled into my head. Fortunately, the names of the schools also lend a certain level of common sense thinking and allows for people to make an educated guess.
3. The third thing I think I’ll remember is the relaxation techniques I found on the internet.

I suffer from chronic and debilitating migraines so my doctors and physical therapists have recommended various relaxation techniques to try and soothe these migraines because reactive medication has little effect. Therefore it’s important for me to have alternative pain control methods.

I’m personally really interested in phobias, I find them to be fascinating because they are one piece of psychology that has no real basis in hormones and biological implications, in my opinion. There is no known biological link between phobias and our bodies, just that our brains tell us to deeply fear these things. I personally fear snakes deeply to the point of a picture of a snake will cause me to cringe and feel nauseous.

There wasn’t anything specific in this chapter that I disliked. I thought it was all very interesting and relevant information and I especially like the use of a youtube video in the text.

Terms: emitting, behavior, behavior modification, positive contingencies, negative contingencies, excitatory contingencies, inhibitory contingencies, elicit, US, UC, CS, CR, conditioning type, structuralism, functionalism, relaxation techniques, phobias

Prior to reading this section I was trying to apply the terms and concepts we have learned so far and looking out for situations were these concepts are being emitted in my everyday life. I tend to see these behaviors a lot in my dog and I like manipulating the situation to see how I can change her behavior.
Section 3.3
The things I will remember in this section are how they did there researched. It was a little aversive reading what the animals had to go through in order for the researcher to get what they wanted out of the animal. The taste aversion was very interesting to me because it is a behavior everyone emits and now I gained a further understanding of the term. Conditioned emotional response because it is how we respond to something followed by something aversive.
What I liked the most about this section was reading about the CER it is something we see a lot in our everyday lives and this was a easy concept to understand out of the section. What I didn’t like was the experiments, it was aversive to me and was very hard to read about but that must be because I am a animal lover. Also I felt really confused at times with a lot of the terms and using it with last weeks sections we had to read.

3.4

What I will remember from this section is what Watson had to say about studying on animals and non-animals, how it is ok to do so when studying behaviors. Also how psychology was getting divided up in Watson’s time into structuralists and functionalists, structuralist I can relate to how you would break something down to generalize it to help gain a better understanding of a behavior in broader terms, then work at making it more complex. A functionalist is something internal, that we are born with that help us survive. Putting the two together Watson studied how animals adjust to environments thought habit or reflex, in which he mentions how it can be applied to humans and animals. Albert study called the “Little Albert study” which he studies the emotions we are born with and how it evolves with situations related to our survival. He conditioned a Albert not to fear because he was a child and not conditioned to something aversive, this is something that is very interesting to me.
I really liked the “Little Albert study”, it describes classical conditioning on a infant, that something is only aversive based on the type of discriminative stimuli’s environment that baby was in.
There was not anything is this section that I did not find interesting and useful this section had a lot of history behind behaviors and It was interesting.

Terms: classical conditioning, structuralist, functionalists, aversive, discriminative stimuli, emit, conditional emotional response, taste aversion,

Section 3.3 Classical Conditioning

Prior to reading this chapter, I had learned a lot about Pavlov from the prior section however this section really helped me to see into how his work further impacts psychology. It was interesting to see all the different kinds of conditioning as I had not earlier thought about them or even recognized that they existed. I had thought of conditioning on a much more basic level than I think that there is now reading this section.

Three things I remember most from this section are:

1.) Positive Contingencies: The very first thing that this section goes into detail about is the positive and negative contingencies. I find this something that I remember because of having to do the example about rain predictions. I found this example to be very useful because it was so straightforward and helped me to come up with my own examples afterwards.

2.) Conditioning Humans and non-humans: I thought that the listings of the various ways we do examples of conditioning with humans and non-humans was a notable portion of the section also. For instance, the fact that some conditioning methods are used with animals and not with humans is quite interesting. The examples done and graphics about the rabbits was something I also remember from this section.

3.) Various Principles of Conditioning: I now know that there are different types of conditioning and that they are different based upon time the unconditioned and conditioned stimulus are presented. I find it vital to remember this because some are more effective than others. I did not know before reading this chapter that these actually existed so I think that will help them maintain in my memory even more.

I think the thing I liked most about this chapter was learning about positive and negative contingencies. The examples provided helped; especially the one about rain prediction. It was a clear-cut example that helped me realize what the terms actually meant and it helped me to think of my own examples afterwards when it was requested of us. I think this will help me to retain it much more.

The one thing I disliked about this chapter is that there was not much about ethics in relation to how we do conditioning with humans versus non-humans. I think the debate Is quite relevant in today’s psychology and especially in this topic since some of the conditioning we do with animals like rabbits we cannot do with humans.

What I learned from this chapter and will take with me is that there are different types of conditioning and that the principles are much more deep than I had originally anticipated. It was quite interesting to note that there are such different conditioning types like Trace, simultaneous, and backwards conditioning. It was important for me to note also that each varies on effectiveness too.

Section 3.3: Watson

Prior to reading this chapter, I hadn’t thought much about Watson and his ‘Little Albert’ study. Sure, I remember studying it back in other psychology courses, but I hadn’t really actively thought about the study in behavior modification terms. Though, I do find his work and that study in particular to be a very strong support and example of behavior modification.

Three things I remember most from this section are:

1.) Little Albert: I remember reading about Little Albert in other classes but I really liked how this section gave the history of the study and also gave us the opportunity to watch videos from the internet of the study. I think that this study is very important to behavior modification and that Watson’s work in general is key to behavioral psychology.

2.) Systematic Desensitization: Systematic desensitization is used with people
with phobias and is something I would like to use if I get the chance to go into career with working with people with phobias. The section went into great detail about how to use it and I found this information interesting and perhaps quite useful in the future.

3.) 3 basic reflex emotions: I hadn’t considered this finding from Watson’s study of Little Albert before, but he came to believe that people are born with “Fear, Rage, and Love” as the three simple emotions. I think that this seems somewhat valid and does seem to support his opinion on there being no divide between man and brute when it is kept this simple.

I liked how the section covered Little Albert and also went into detail about Systematic desensitization because they are important in behavior modification; especially with people who have phobias. If I were to work with behavior modification I would love to do it with phobias and I think that this section is extremely important in that sense.

I didn’t’ necessarily like that there wasn’t much history behind Watson as there was with Pavlov in prior sections. I would have liked to see more history about him since he is so often referred to as the father of behavioral psychology.

After reading this section I was able to think about behavior modification in more of a career sense than I ever have in the time of the course. I really enjoy the course and would love to be able to use it in a career working with individuals with phobias and such.

Terms:
Classical Conditioning, Pavlov, behavior modification, positive contingencies, negative contingencies, conditioning humans and non-humans, trace conditioning, simultaneous conditioning, Little Albert, Watson, behavioral psychology, phobias, systematic desensitization,

Section 3.3
Prior to emitting the behavior of reading the section I feel I have a strong understanding of the behavior modification principles. I really like the ideas of Thorndike and Pavlov and the experiments they conducted in their respective field.
The first thing I will remember from this section will be what positive contingency is. Positive contingency occurs when an association develops to the extent where the Conditioned Stimulus predicts the onset of the Unconditioned Stimulus. The second thing I will remember will be that positive contingency also means excitatory contingency and negative contingency also means inhibitory contingency. isThe third thing I will remember is that there is a variety of different sorts of conditioning training.
One thing that I really liked from this chapter is the comparison of testing these theories on animals and humans because the difference really intrigues me. One thing I didn't like was the different forms of conditioning because that really confused me.

Section 3.4
One thing that I will remember from this section will be the baby Albert experiment because that is a very prominent and interesting experiment. The second thing I will remember is the definition of functionalism. Functionalism believes we posses traits and ability for their survival value. The third thing I will remember is the definition of structuralism. Structuralism breaks down the psychological experience
into small units.
One thing I really liked was learning about the experiment with baby Albert because that was really interesting. One thing I didn't like was all the terms in this section because they kind of confused me.

Terms: Emit, Positive contingency, negative contingency, excitatory contingency, inhibitory contingency, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, functionalism, structuralism

Section 3.3

Prior to being elicited to read this chapter, I am beginning to see people emit behaviors and can sometimes classify them into terms that we've learned thus far. I am also realizing that everything we do has been conditioned in some sort of way and I find that very interesting. I also knew that behavior modification had lots of different aspects to it and was expecting to learn something new in this chapter.

One of the three things that I will remember from this section is the concept of a positive contingency. A positive contingency is when the likelihood of the unconditioned stimulus to occur. In the section it used the example of the accurate weather station. A positive contingency is when everytime it rains, the weather man predicts it. It also has the stipulation that it must be accurate more often than not. For example, the weather man has to more often correctly predict whether or not it will rain. If it does not, then this is considered a negative contingency

The second thing I will remember is the information about conditioned emotional response. The example in the section discussed how the presentation of a stimulus is usually followed by a shock in this particular type of conditioning. In this case, they used the example of the rat and the tone. They would play the tone (conditioned response) which would be followed by the shock ( unconditioned stimulus) and would cause the rat to freeze up (unconditioned response). Eventually, the tone will serve as a conditioned stimulus for the rat.

The last thing I will remember about the chapter is the information about taste aversion. I learned that taste aversion is a type of conditioning that does not necessarily need repeated trials. A classic example of this is getting sick from too much alcohol. It probably isn't necessary for you to drink too much alcohol and get sick six times before you start to experience taste aversion. Chances are that after one time of throwing up from drinking, even the sight of liquor will make you nauseous.

One thing that I liked about this section was the examples of the different kinds of conditioning. It was obvious that there are many different kinds, but as far as I can recall, I've never had them presented to me before.

The only thing I didn't like about this section was the same as the thing I liked! I liked that they stated the different kinds of conditioning, but I wish it gave some examples that I could refer back to when trying to associate them with different situations.

Section 3.4

One thing that I will remember about the section would be the difference between the structuralist and the functionalist psychologists. The structural psychologist would look at the basics of what we know in psychology and use those to try to further understand the human brain in its complexity. A functional psychologist would look at behaviors only existed because it would increase our likelihood of survival. The functionalist were very much influenced by Darwin.

The second thing that I will remember would be the Little Albert study. I had briefly heard of the experiment before but hadn't actually learned the full extent of it. The study conditioned a 9 month old baby that originally feared almost nothing to fear everything furry. They found that one of the only things Albert was afraid of was loud noises. Using CER they started placing a rat with the loud noises. Eventually the baby learned to be afraid of the presence of the rat, which is likely because of the loud noise that was associated with it.

The last thing that I will remember from the chapter would be systematic desensitization. I liked the experiment that was presented with the term. Jones used a baby that was practically scared of everything to see if she could desensitize him. She found that people were rarely scared when they were eating. She would present an animal that scared him while he was eating to gradually reduce the fear in the child. Eventually the child began to become calm around the things that once scared him a lot.

One thing I liked about this section was the various examples. I like to have things to compare to and this section did very well in that.

There wasn't really anything from this section that I didn't like. It was all useful information and proved to be very interesting.

Terms: elicit, emit, behavior, conditioning, positive contingency, negative contingency, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned response, conditional emotional response, structural psychologist, functional psychologist, systematic desensitization.

3.3
Before reading this chapter i had much less technical knowledge about the specific branches of behavior modification than I do now. This section covered some of the advanced principals and history of classical conditioning that i was not aware of before, and i now feel more confident in my understanding of classical conditioning and my ability to discuss it in more detail.
One thing that i will remember about this section is the concept of positive and negative contingencies. I learned in this section that a positive contingency occurs when an association develops to the extent where the the conditioned stimulus predicts the onset of the unconditioned stimulus, and that negative contingencies are also known as inhibitory conditioning. The second thing that I will remember from reading this chapter is Pavlov's use of discrimination training in studying the experimental neuroses experienced by his animals (some would rip at their harnesses on a fit of madness while others would become too passive to use in experimentation. This was interesting to me because I would have imagined that once these behaviors were emitted by a given animal, that individual would no longer be useful for study in the lab. A third thing that I will remember from reading this chapter is that there are many different types of conditioning. I was not familiar with the types of conditioning listed in this chapter such as simultaneous, short-delayed, and backward conditioning. As these types of conditioning were new to me, i found them very interesting. One thing that I really liked about the chapter was learning about the human studies that involved aversive stimulus; it is pretty cool to learn about this kind of research as it is much easier for me to draw parallels from human research than it is for most animal studies. One thing that i disliked from the chapter was the section that covered taste aversion. I like to learn about it, but it tends to remind me of taste aversions that I have experienced myself.

3.4
One thing that I will remember from this section is the Little Albert study. I will remember it because I am familiar with this study from earlier psych courses. The Little Albert study, while interesting, i have always found the study unethical and so any new information that i learn about it has a tendency to stick with me. Another thing that I will remember from this section is systematic desensitization and its use in phobias. One recent example i saw of this was an NPR special called This Emotional Life, and one of the segments featured was a Harvard freshman who underwent a process of systematic desensitization in attempts to overcome her fear of flying. A third thing that I will remember from this section that Watson is best known for his behaviorist manifesto; I had only previously covered Watson's work in the context of the Little Albert study. One thing that I really liked about the section is the depth to which systematic desensitization was explained; prior to reading this section I was not very familiar with the process. One thing that i disliked about the chapter was watching the video of the Little Albert study, it has always made me somewhat uncomfortable to watch.

Terms: classical conditioning, positive/negative contingencies, conditioned stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, inhibitory conditioning, discrimination training, emit, experimental neuroses, aversive stimulus, taste aversion, simultaneous/short-delayed/backward conditioning, systematic desensitization, phobia, behavior

3.3

Prior to reading this chapter, I expected on learning about behaviors, feelings, a little bit of history to back information up. However, I wouldn't of guessed that we would be learning about US, CS, Postive and negative contingencies. These are way beyond what I figured on learning about. They are very complexed.

Three things I will remember in this chapter was positive contingencies, negative contingencies and the diagrams. First of all, I definitely desired the diagrams. They made the concepts easier to understand, especially if you are a visual learner. I desired positive contingency and negative contingency it was interesting on how Pavlov can form an animal into emitting a certain behavior just by showing or emitting a sound.

I desired the diagrams and examples in this chapter. The diagrams always make things easier to understand. One thing I thought was unpleasant in this chapter was how in-depth we get with using different stimulus and outcomes. Sometimes they are confusing.

3.4

I actually thought this section was interesting, maybe because I have heard about little alberts experiment before. I think Watson and his experiment was genius, obviously we have taken what he has found and emit it to what we have found out. It's like building blocks. Three things I will remember one the experiment little albert, systematic desensitization and the videos.

I desired learning about little albert, Watson emitting loud noises and eliciting different furry creatures. This emitted an aversive experience for Albert. I actually wonder how they could possibly put a child through such confusion and fear...but I got to say it has benefited us today. I also, thought learning about systematic desensitization was pleasant. You can elicit a childs fear in something, but now Mary Cover Jones found away to get ride of aversive behaviors and fears.

One thing I thought was undesirable to learn about was structuralist and functionalist. But, we didn't spend so much time on those terms...so I didn't make my experience aversive.

Terms: Aversive, systematic desensitization, emitting, eliciting, pleasant, undesirable, structualist, functionalist, Unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, positive contingency, negative contingency, desirable, unpleasant

Section 3.3

Prior to reading these sections my perceptions of behavior modification have been slowly growing to be more respectful of the study in general. When I first started this course I thought this class would be easy and the concepts we would learn would be simple. However, after reading this section, especially, I am reminded that behavior modification concepts are more complex than I thought. Also, I am reminded that Classical Conditioning, no matter how many times I learn it, is always going to be tricky for me.

Three things I will remember from this section are as follows:
1. Positive contingencies are also known as excitatory conditioning, while negative contingencies are also known as inhibitory conditioning. A good example of a positive contingency is lightning and thunder, because light travels faster than sound, therefore always preceding the thunder. An example of a negative contingency is a news station or a radio station that often provides in accurate weather forecast.
2. In classical conditioning, the unconditioned response and conditioned response will always be the same thing. This will be easy to remember because it is helpful identifying the other parts, the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.
3. In classical conditioning, time order matters a lot. Whether the stimulus or the response occurs first, or at the same time, time order matters. This can be demonstrated well with the charts in the text.

One thing I liked about this chapter were the activities where we had to define the US, UR, CS, and CR. Usually, I don’t care for the activities we are forced to do but I enjoyed these one because I appreciate the opportunity to practice identifying the parts of classical conditioning.

In general, I do not like the subject of classical conditioning so this section was a struggle for me. I have learned about classical conditioning so many times, but no matter how many times I’ve learned it, as I stated earlier, I always struggle with it at first.

Section 3.4

Three things I will remember from Section 3.4 are as follows:
1. Watson believed that psychology should be known as an objective subject rather than subjective. He also believed there was no line, or at least a very fine line, between humans and non-humans. Essentially, Watson saw humans as just another animal group.
2. Structuralism breaks down concepts and psychology into smaller units, analyzing things in more complex manner. Functionalists’ view things as possessing traits that are most desirable and useful to function and for their survival value.
3. When curing phobias, systematic desensitization can be used and has proven to be fairly successful. This process involves several things like relaxation techniques, visualization, and taking small steps towards curing your phobia. Mary Cover Jones was the first to demonstrate that removing fears was possible through systematic desensitization.

One thing I liked about Section 3.4 was the discussion about fear/phobias. I always think talking about phobias is interesting and, right now, this topic relates to another class I am taking. I think it is interesting that phobias are often formed through prepared learning, as in, as children, we are taught to fear certain things (like spiders) for no apparent reason at all. If you think about It, there is little difference between spiders and butterflies, yet most people are not scared of butterflies. This is definitely due to prepared learning.

What I did not like about this chapter was the material regarding the Little Albert study. Although I know it is kind of important to know the processes and techniques used in this study, it always makes me feel a little bad. Clearly, the Little Albert experiment is extremely unethical and I would rather not be reminded of it.

Terms Used: Classical conditioning, excitatory conditioning, positive contingencies, inhibitory conditioning, negative contingencies, UR, CR, US, CS, stimulus, response, functionalism, structuralism, prepared learning, phobias/fear, objective, subjective.

3-3
Before reading this chapter, i thought that behavior modification was jjust a simple style to manipulate others behaviors but i haven't really had a change of opinion or anything after reading.three things i will remember are conditioning type because i before i just figured there was only one basic type of conditioning; positive contingencies because they are basically just behaviors that occur in response to a stimulus;and finally how time can determine the type of conditionging. There honestly wasn't anything in this section that i liked but im not a big fan of this specific section because i don't fully understand the the whole conditioning type and the conditioned/unconditioned response/stimulus.

3-4
Three things i will remember from this chapter are, the video of james watson and him discussing how much of an effect environment has on any organism ( specifically a child); systematice desensitization because i personally find it very intriguing; and the segment about the air bed because i couldn't imagine how anyone could ever come up with such a device. I really like James watsons idea of environment overpowering biology for behavior because it is an interseting way to explain behavior. I didn't really like the structured versus function section because i still don't have a full grasp on it.

Terms: Organism, Stimulus, Condidioned stimulus, Unconditioned stimulus, Conditioned response, Unconditioned response.

Section 3.1

Three things from this section that I will remember are shaping, stimulus control, and Skinner's air bed.
Shaping was interesting to me because of how easy it was to shape the rat into emitting the desired bar pressing behavior. The shaping method could be used in multiple other antecedents as well as just this one. This is why it is so interesting to me and makes me wonder how else people might use the shaping method in their every day lives.
Stimulus control is also another thing that was interesting to me again because I was wondering how stimulus control affects are every day lives. With out us knowing it we could easily be under stimulus control. The open sign at the bank drive thru or the sold out sign a nearby vending machine of the item we were so looking forward to eating.
The air bed was something that really interested me in which that the initial idea was a little moronic to me. Who would want to put their child in a box? was all I could think. To me parenting involves sacrifices: sacrificing free time to take care of the child, sacrificing sleep so that you can make sure they are doing alright and have every thing they need, and so on. So to me this box seemed like laziness. But after reading a little more I saw that it was also benefiting the child as well. That made things a little less moronic. I would I personally put my child in an air bed? Definitely not. But do I Think that the child benefitted from the bed, sure. There was nothing wrong with her once she grew up so it must have not have been so bad in there.

Something that I liked from the section was just reading about Skinner in general. It was interesting to see the different personas he had and to read about his books and experiments.

There was nothing in this section that I did not like.

Out of the four figures we read about B.F. Skinner was my favorite. I've always had an interest in his work and reading about his experiments only interested me further.

The figure I would like to learn more about is Thorndike. I don't really know about a whole lot of his work outside of what we have discussed in class and I would definitely like to change that.
I think that Pavlov's contributions were important because without his experimenting we may not have understood the conditioning concept at all. Maybe not know about it at all. And conditioning is import, parenting specifically. Even if we don't know we're doing it we are using it every day.

Terms: shaping, stimulus control, Skinner's air bed, emitting, desired, behavior, antecedents,