Topical Blog Week #8 (Due Thursday)

Drug self administration is a hot topic in the psychological world, as people look to learn how it effects the brain. Much of what we know today comes from studies done on either animals, or people that are currently addicted to drugs. Drug addiction is a serious problem, and the more we know the better we can help people who suffer from this biopsychological disease. The brain plays a crucial role in drug addiction, and the primary focus is on dopamine production as research shows that dopamine controls pleasure in the brain. The difference between self drug administration, and intake of food is very similar; dopamine is release for both. However, the dosage of dopamine is different in someone administering drugs.
The Nucleous Incumbent is the pathway to the dopamine release nerve. If you were to take out the dopamine producing neurons, there would be no self reinforcement properties from administering the drugs. Addiction can distort survival needs, as all the addict can think about is self reinforcement. Their brain essentially becomes a system of token rewards, were the only thing they seek is the token (drug). Drugs are reinforcing because they manipulate the pleasure centers of our brain. Drug addiction or reinforcement can begin to shape behavioral plasticity, where the brain actually begins to rewire itself. The classification of drug addiction is the chronic exposure to reinforcing drugs, with an increase in drug-seeking behavior. The longer a person is a classified "drug addict" the more likely it is that their brain has adapted to the reinforcement system. People who abuse drugs do not seem to reach satiation, and they continually search for the reinforcing component. After years of increased drug addiction the subject, can begin to enter the stages of drug dependence, or a daily need for the drug to avoid withdrawal syndrome. Their bodies, and brains have become so use to the stimulant that it is now a part of the bodies daily routine, and it has become dependent on that substance to function on a daily level.
In opiate drug addiction homeostasis is adapted to maintain normal brain function. Electrophysiological and behavior disturbances begin to appear if the opiate is not introduced into the body. After prolonged used tolerance or sensitization may begin to appear, this is not the same as satiation, because these are bodily defenses to the drug, whereas satiation is a conscious choice. The body elicits these various effects to keep the neurological system balanced. Increased drug intake usually follows these effects, because the body begins to counteract the drug, therefore making it far less reinforcing. To maintain the level of satisfaction the subject will increase the amount of narcotics they are entering into their body. These long-term adaptions can be considered reinforcement-opposing. These are long term adaptations, that require years of drug abuse. The opposite of reinforcement-opposing is reinforcement-enhancing; cravings, and sensitization to drug reinforcement, could increase the drugs reinforcing properties. The reason drugs are so reinforcing is because drugs release dopaminergic transmissions into the nucleus accumbens. This suggests that dopamine might be a common neurotransmitter in opiate, psychostimulant as well as other drug reinforcement. Later findings led to the hypothesis that opiates and dopamine can act directly on separate pstsynaptic receptors in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). This means that dopamine is equivalent to opiates. However, heroin self-administration is not because that acts as a dopamine blockade, so the heroin takes on an antagonist position in the body.
That is probably a lot to take in, but If you think about it in the way that drugs seem to take over aspects of pleasure seeking, and survival skills in the brain; it should be a little easier to understand. Drug addiction appears to shape the brain so that the subject primarily focuses on finding the reinforcing properties of said drug. Survival instincts are adapted into finding new highs. Also people seem to draw comparisons between unconditioned stimuli while taking drugs. If a person normally gets there drugs in one spot, going to that spot will elicit a conditioned response of sweet, salivating, or rapid heart beat. Environment plays a role in shaping the new survival function of the addicted brain.

Sources:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ne.18.030195.002335
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/91/2/251.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de_b7k9kQp0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN7-2kGjHz8&feature=related

Terms:
Drugs Self Administration, Reinforcement, Addiction, Token Reward, Manipulate, Shape Behavior, Satiation, Emit, Elicit, Reinforcement-Opposing, Reinforcement-Enhancing,

Posted for BW:
The topic I chose was classical conditioning. This is interesting to me because I find it very cool that you can manipulate someone’s or something’s behavior to a neutral stimulus, which should usually mean nothing to them, to have a certain response. This is so cool and it is used in everyday lives of everyone around the world.
I found that, again as we learned in class, that there are four main parts to classical conditioning. There is the US (unconditioned stimulus), UR (unconditioned response), CS (conditioned stimulus), and the CR (conditioned response). The unconditioned stimulus is the object that makes a natural almost automatic response occur, that response being the unconditioned response. The conditioned stimulus is also known as a neutral stimulus and at first means absolutely nothing to the subject. After being associated with the unconditioned response the conditioned stimulus starts to become a trigger for the unconditioned response, making it now the conditioned response. As you see, the unconditioned and conditioned response turns out to be the same thing, for the most part.
This all started with Pavlov. He trained a dog to salivate at the sound of a bell by associating the bell with meat powder. These pictures should help illustrate the idea.

He did this with many animals. Pavlov’s experiments and findings interested Watson and he went on with more classical conditioning ideas. He not only did this with behaviors like emotional response like hunger, but also even things like speech. He completely got rid of the idea of the mind and consciousness. He believed all behavior to have been classically conditioned into existence.
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/classcond.htm
http://www.simplypsychology.org/classical-conditioning.html
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=classical+conditioning&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=876&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=lV908HlpSCjR7M:&imgrefurl=http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/behavior/classcnd.html&docid=k_-matkFu4tWGM&imgurl=http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/images/clscndbe.gif&w=521&h=588&ei=IyJzUKHCHYjTyAHSs4HYDQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=251&sig=105809257944296624415&page=1&tbnh=154&tbnw=136&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0,i:148&tx=88&ty=75
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=classical+conditioning&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=876&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=G5ypXq3bQKxetM:&imgrefurl=http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/behavior/classcnd.html&docid=k_-matkFu4tWGM&imgurl=http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/images/clscndaf.gif&w=521&h=387&ei=IyJzUKHCHYjTyAHSs4HYDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=667&vpy=194&dur=413&hovh=193&hovw=261&tx=193&ty=118&sig=105809257944296624415&page=1&tbnh=154&tbnw=207&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:145
Terms: classical conditioning, neutral stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, Pavlov, Watson

Extinction is related to the principle of reinforcement. Extinction takes place when something previously reinforcing is removed. It is useful to us when we are trying to stop a behavior that is being reinforced or to make the reinforcement stronger next time. I chose this topic because it is highly applicable to real life and knowing a little more about the topic will make it easier to understand when I see it.

Like I stated before extinction is when a response is no longer followed by the previous reinforcer. This eventually leads to a weakening of the response. This concept can apply to both animals and humans. Both respond the same way when reinforcers are removed from the situation. Extinction is possible in both classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In classical condition extinction occurs when the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli are no longer paired together and eventually the conditioned stimulus doesn't elicit the previous behavior. Extinction can occur in operant conditioning when the reinforcer given is no longer reinforcing such as the case of satiation or deprivation. Satiation is when the organism has had enough and the reinforcer is not reinforcing (eating too much)and deprivation is withholding something reinforcing (starving).

While extinction is being administered an organism will go through a process of extinction bursts. This is when they try everything they can think of to get the reinforcement again. It can lead to frustration and anxiety. Take for example the video provided. It is about a vending machine that is not working. The boys try putting their money in and don't get reinforced when they push the button. They usually are reinforced by pushing the button and receiving a soda. When they don't get their soda they engage in extinction burst activities. They continuously push the button and even push or hit the machine. After none of these work they give up and walk away and the extinction has no occurred.

After extinction processes have been administered it is possible for the behavior to return with spontaneous recovery. This is when something had been reinforced and then extinction occurred but later in the future the reinforcer was apparent again and without conditioning the previous unwanted behavior occurs again. There is no need to condition the behavior again it just comes naturally in spontaneous recovery so if a person is seeking to remove the behavior for good they need to make sure that they are shown the stimuli eliciting the behavior from time to time so they can be conditioned to elicit no response to the previously reinforcing stimuli.

http://animalbehaviour.net/Extintion.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/eindex/g/extinction.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeW6rTHUWOA

Terms: Extinction, reinforcement, spontaneous recovery, response, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, elicit, satiation, deprivation, extinction burts

The term I am researching is from section 1 chapter 1.4. The term is satiation. This term means that introducing any additional reinforcement to an organism will not alter the frequency of the behavior which is being reinforced. This sounds complicated but it really is simple. It means that if that any reinforcement given at this point won’t have any effect on the behavior. For example, if you are doing math problems with a child and for every answer they get right they get a cookie, they will try hard to get that answer right. Once they become satiated (have their fill) of the cookie stimulus they don’t care about getting answers right because they are full. There needs to be a new type of reinforcement emitted. I looked at 3 different websites that discussed satiation further and here is what I have found.

There are different types of satiation. Economic satiation, where increasing the amount of a good reduces the worth of each individual unit of it, Predator satiation, at which anti-predator adaptation involving high population densities of the prey, and Semantic satiation where repetition of a word or phrase causes it to temporarily lose meaning. These all indicate that too much of something can be an undesirable thing. Once you have become satiated all of your needs and desires have been accounted for and you are left feeling satisfied. The aversive part with satiation is the person who desires a certain behavior from the reinforcement that was satiated will have to find new reinforcement. This can sometimes be challenging. A lot of people think that satiation only deals with food. This is not true, it is the easiest example to us describing satiation but it is not the only. When someone wants to go play basketball and the individual keeps shooting and making points for the team, although this is reinforcing at some point the individual will have had enough and quit playing. Scoring points has lost its reinforcement ability and the player has become satiated.

Terms: satiation, need, reinforcement, economic satiation, semantic satiation, predator satiation, stimulus, behavior, undesirable, aversive

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Satiation.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiation
http://education.purduecal.edu/Vockell/EdPsyBook/Edpsy11/edpsy11additional.htm

Thursday Week 8
I examined some more information regarding the life and work of Mary Cover Jones. These articles and reports include mention of behavior therapy. Behavior therapy is at times mentioned along with Behavior Modification, but it appears to be different somehow. The dictionary in 4th floor library art and music section describes modification as changing and altering. The same dictionary defines therapy as healing and treatment.
From reading up on some reviews about Mary Cover Jones and reading some of her research articles directly, I found that she seemed to care about the individuals involved in the studies such as young Peter. It seems to me that she felt that what was beneficial for the health of the individual study participant would be good for other individuals as well. Many of her studies were longitudinal which communicates to me that she felt inspiration can elicit behavior by individuals emitting throughout one’s entire lifespan. I love this.
I felt that Mary Cover Jones was careful not to begin communicating as if she had found absolute or officially proved any of her attempts, and that there was still plenty of caring to share on these topics. I am confident that the individual participants she worked with in study were treated with dignity and respect that would benefit them as individuals beyond the experiment. She is my hero as of now! I am so happy she and her efforts were mentioned in our class text in relation to systematic desensitization, which included trials of relaxation techniques, visualization techniques, in clinical case study, longitudinal studies along with statistical information and the employment of different forms biofeedback. Thanks!! –ebs- 10/11/12 @ 1430hrs. CentricTime

Sources

http://www.psych.yorku.ca/femhop/Cover%20Jones.htm

Jones, M.C. (1926). The development of early behavior patterns in young children. Pedagogical Seminary, 33, 537-585.

Jones, M.C. (1974). Albert, Peter, and John B. Watson. American Psychologist, 29, 581-583.

term% behavior modifation, behavioral therapy, Mary Cover Jones, Peter, systematic desensitization, visualization, biofeedback, relaxion techniques. clinical case study, longitudinal

Punishment has always been a trendy topic not just in the United States, but throughout the world. Humans and animals are punished all the time, we use this tool almost every day without even realizing it. There has always been a huge controversy on whether to use punishment on your child or to use reinforcement. There are different kinds of punishment and when to use them. I do believe in reinforcement because I have studied it and know it works better. However, I do believe that when a child has done something wrong you should punish them. My mother did it to me by spanking me and I am actually happy she did. It made me respect her more because I knew I had to listen. I have no resentment to her punishing me; we have a great relationship today. So, should you punish your child or reinforce them?
These articles are written by psychologists and their opinions on whether a child should be punished or reinforced. Punishment implies aggressive behavior on the part of an adult, the very behavior we oppose in children. We don't want our children to be aggressive when they are older. It breeds resentment, and often leads to increased violence and serious abuse. This is true in most cases, but in mine I do not resent my mom for spanking me. There are different kinds of punishment. You can put your child in time out or use violent towards them. It all depends on the parent or maybe even what the child did wrong. These psychologists are all saying that if you are going to use punishment let it be non-aggressive so the child does not have ill-willed feelings towards you. Also, reinforcement is the best tool to use. I think appropriate parenting skills for young children you should use diversion, structure, limits and withdrawal of attention. For older children, you will set expectations and spell out the rewards or consequences. If you do this, the children (young or old) will know what is expected of them and elicit good behaviors.
This topic has always been controversial and depends on who you are talking to. I enjoyed reading and learning about the different opinions of psychologists from the American Psychologist Association.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200109/should-you-punish-your-child

Terms used: Punishment, reinforcement, behavior, diversion, consequence, elicit, APA.

A topic that we have covered so far in class that I am interested in is deprivation, which, according to the textbook, means withholding any stimulus that serves as reinforcement to an organism. We learned about deprivation all the way back in reading section 1.4, which was all about different behavioral terms that are often used. It fits into the chapter by playing a role in reinforcement procedures. For example, if you are withholding a certain amount of food from someone, food will quickly become a definite reinforcer, which means that the subject will behave in whatever desirable manner necessary to receive the reinforcement (food) from which it has been deprived. I am interested in the concept of deprivation because I think it is neat that you can manipulate a subject to behave in the way that you want it to by depriving it of a certain reinforcer. It is wild to me that this is possible, and I want to learn more about it from sources other than our textbook.

When I searched the web, I found it to be somewhat difficult to find much information on my topic. Yet, from the sources I did find, I was able to gather a lot of great insight on deprivation and what it entails. The main ideas that my sources presented were: maternal deprivation studies, separation, and deprivation versus privation.

The information on maternal deprivation studies and the effects that they elicited were very interesting indeed. John Bowlby’s theory of attachment led him to believe that there was a critical period for attachment formation, and that if separation happens between mother and infant during the critical period, the bond will be irreversibly broken. This is said to lead to severe emotional consequences for the infant later in life, and this entire concept came to be known as maternal deprivation. There have been many studies conducted on maternal deprivation that have been funded largely by federal grants. Harry Harlow did most of these studies. Harlow separated infant monkeys from their mothers at birth and put them in either partial or total isolation. After two years, Harlow found that these monkeys had developed into non-functioning adults and did not have any socialization instincts, so were therefore unable to care for infants. In a different series of studies, Harlow gave the infants surrogate mothers made of cloth and would then scare the infants to see whether or not they would cling to their surrogate mothers, and they did. The neglect that was suffered by Harlow’s monkeys was unimaginably severe, and the evidence from these animal studies has to be interpreted very carefully when applied to humans, but Harlow’s research did help Bowlby out with his presented theory on attachment.

The next topic that my sources go in-depth about is separation, which is the parting of an infant and caregiver that is not necessarily harmful. Apparently, separation can also be considered short-term deprivation, and Robertson and Bowlby (1952) researched its effects on young children that were separated from their mothers. What they found was that the distress felt by the children could be placed into three categories known as the protest-despair-detachment model. In this model, protest means that the child expresses and emits its emotions, such as crying, screaming, kicking, or clinging. Despair means that the child calms down and appears to be somewhat unresponsive and lacking interest. Detachment means the child’s interaction with others superficially increases and there is little initial interest in its mother’s return. Not all children go through these different stages because there is such a wide variety in individual differences and how children respond to separation.

Finally, the last main focus of my sources is on deprivation and privation. Deprivation means the loss of or separation from an attachment figure, such as a mother, whereas privation means the failure to establish an attachment. Bowlby was influential in this particular area, stating that long-term intellectual, social, and emotional damage can follow the deprivation of an attachment during a critical period in the child’s life. Rutter, on the other hand, suggested that it is more important to look at the cause of the separation rather than separation itself being responsible for behavior. He argued that family discord rather than separation was a contributory factor in antisocial behavior, possibly because of the fact that it prevented the form of attachments, or in other words, privation. Privation is expected to have damaging consequences for the child later on in life due to the inability to form relationships, a lack of guilt, and antisocial behavior like delinquency. There is little evidence to show that early childhood experiences of privation can be overcome later in life. Both deprivation and privation can be harmful to the child.

All in all, the sources that I found taught me a lot about different things that I had not learned in class or from the textbook. The information that I found was not necessarily what I expected it to be about, but I was definitely happy to gain more insight on the topics of maternal deprivation studies, separation, and deprivation and privation. All of it was pretty neat to learn about!

Sources:
http://www.neavs.org/research/cbt
http://www.s-cool.co.uk/a-level/psychology/attachments/revise-it/effects-of-deprivation-and-privation
http://as-psychology.pbworks.com/w/page/9174253/DeprivationPrivation

Terms: deprivation, stimulus, reinforcement, reinforcer, behavior, manipulate, maternal deprivation, separation, privation, elicit, John Bowlby, theory of attachment, critical period, Harry Harlow, isolation, short-term deprivation, Robertson, protest-despair-detachment model, Rutter, antisocial behavior

I chose to do some research on the psychology behind the behavior of using twitter. Social media is very big right now and I was curious about some of the contingencies driving these behaviors.

The first concept I learned about was neuro-adrenaline reinforcement. There have been studies on kids playing computer games, as the game gets really exciting the kid blinks less frequently. Blinking slower is a result of getting an adrenaline type of reinforcement. The author said that a good way to predict if the computer game was going to sell was by slow blinking of kids testing the game. The author encountered the slow blinking on himself when completely engulfed in fast paced conversations on twitter. When people use twitter they encounter positive reinforcement that elicits further use of twitter.

The second concept is twitter narcissism. Twitter is an avenue that people can talk about themselves and feel the satisfaction of people listening. The author tied this to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When somebody emits a behavior of responding to one of your tweets it act as a positive reinforcement feeding the hunger for people listening to you. If people respond to a tweet every 2-5 tweets then it starts to become a schedule of reinforcement.

The most interesting thing I learned about the behavior of using twitter is something called twoosh. Twoosh is a word that describes writing a tweet that was exactly 140 characters long. When you do this there is a sound effect that goes off. This acts as a reinforcer to the people writing tweets. Since this doesn't happen every time you send a tweet, it uses schedules of reinforcement. The most powerful part of this schedule of reinforcement is the fact that the more tweets you send the better you get, as you get better you will exponentially increase your chances of getting the reinforcement. This is almost like a exponential schedule of reinforcement. Think about lottery advertising, the more you play the more you win. One of the websites even made a game out of it, seeing who could emit the most twooshes.

Terms: behavior, contingencies, reinforcement, positive reinforcement, elicit, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, schedule of reinforcement, emit, reinforcer.

Sources:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-tao-innovation/200904/more-the-psychology-twitter
http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/08/twitter-10-psychological-insights.php
http://twooshes.com/

Reinforcement

As defined, reinforcement is used in operant conditioning referring to anything that increases the likelihood that a response will occur. Sometimes reinforcement strengthens and increases the behavior, so this term depends on the effect of that behavior. Reinforcement might involve presenting praise (which is the reinforcer) right of way after telling a child to put their plate or dishes away (which is the response). There are types of reinforcement which includes praise, token rewards, candy, and extra and play time. This reinforcement also has categories and they are primary reinforcement and secondary reinforcement. Primary reinforcement does not require learning in order to work but aids in the survival of the species. An example of reinforcers includes food, air, sleep, water and sex. Secondary reinforcement involves two stimuli to pair together such as that which was already rewarding. An example includes when training your dog, the clicks and claps used to reinforce your dog are an example of secondary reinforcement. There are also positive (involves the addition of something to increase a response, such as giving a candy to a child after being a quite for awhile), and negative reinforcement (involves removing something in order to increase a behavior, such as canceling a quiz if students did their required assignment for the week). The third link at the bottom shows Family Guy displaying the positive and negative reinforcement. The positive is that, the kid with the bike was given bear to not report whatever the situation was. By giving him bear, reinforce him to be quiet. The negative reinforcement in the video is Lois removing the TV increasing Brian behavior to do his homework. Just key some points; in class we talked about different forms of reinforcements, such as general reinforcer which includes money because, you can acquire something easily with money. We also talked about B. F. Skinner how he used experiments for us to better understand these terms. All of these above were discussed in class. My links are below!!!

Reinforcement
Operant conditioning
Primary reinforcement
Secondary reinforcement
Stimuli
Reinforces
Reinforcers
Negative reinforcement
Positive reinforcement
General Reinforcement
B.F. Skinner

http://psychology.about.com/od/operantconditioning/f/reinforcement.htm
http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/faculty/wasserman/glossary/reinforcement.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_9ZZaPDtPk

I decided to look more into the concept of systematic desensitization because I find it very intriguing. I want to have it done to me so I'm no longer scared of the dark. Plus, I do not want to have panic attacks from just the mere thought of going through a new situation.

Systematic desensitization is type of behavioral therapy based on the principles of classical conditioning. It uses a combination of relaxation techniques, visualization, and taking small systematic steps towards approaching the object an individual fears. This type of therapy is often used by counselors, with clients who have anxiety, fears and phobias. All sources agree upon a hierarchy of fear where the fears (conditioned stimuli) are ranked from least fearful to most fearful. The hierarchy of fear breaks down the feared situation into manageable components. The client will work their way up starting at the least aversive to the most aversive. This makes sense to me because my small fears do not affect me as much as my top rated fears. It would take less time to condition me to not have an anxiety of getting on a motorcycle than to condition me to stop panicking over new situations. The sources explained that systematic desensitization usually begins with imaginary exposure or in-vito to fearful situations and using relaxation techniques to compete with anxiety. Once an individual can successfully manage their anxiety while imagining them, he/she can use the techniques in real life situations. Before that individual can expose himself/herself to his/her feared situations, he/she must learn and practice relaxation techniques that commonly include: deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and visualization. One of my sources mentioned three steps in systematic desensitization therapy. The first step involves the learning and practicing of the progressive relaxation techniques. Step two involves the construction of the hierarchy of fear or anxiety hierarchy. Lastly, the third step is combining the relaxation techniques with a mental image. The goal of the process is to become gradually desensitized to the triggers causing the distress. Though this process is highly effective for learned anxieties of specific conditioned stimuli, it is not effective in treating serious mental disorders like schizophrenia or depression. Also, systematic desensitization is a slow process and the number of sessions depends on the severity of the fear or phobia. I believe it would take a long time to condition me to associate the dark with pleasant conditions. I am that afraid... Plus, new situations that bring me into a panic are varied and would be hard to separate out into manageable parts. This information explained this type of behavioral therapy to me more thoroughly and helped me understand how much goes into the process.

Sources:
1.) http://www.stressaffect.com/systematic-desensitization.html
2.) http://www.simplypsychology.org/Systematic-Desensitisation.html
3.) http://panicdisorder.about.com/od/treatments/a/SystemDesen.htm

Terms: Behavior, Aversive, Conditioned Stimulus, Hierarchy of Fear, In-Vito, Classical Conditioning, and Progressive Relaxation

I chose to do some more research on systematic desensitization. Systematic Desensitization involves using behavior modification techniques to help people overcome phobias. It involves the gradual exposure to a stimulus that represents the phobia. It is kind of like facing your fears to get over them. In therapy they try to get people to associate target behaviors with reinforcement or things that carry a positive valence. In doing this, the anxiety and fear you feel when emitting the target behavior, will hopefully be transformed into more positive feelings. There are steps like breathing heavily and relaxation techniques that are said to help alleviate some of the aversive aspects of the target behavior. If these techniques are continued over a period of time, it is the hope that extinction will occur, and your association of the target behavior and fear should begin to gradually subside. This can be done either through therapy and the help of professionals, or by yourself in what is known as self administered systematic desensitization. I think that the idea is about making someone comfortable with the things that tend to do the opposite. Somewhere along the way they have been conditioned to fear the stimulus. What systematic desensitization attempts to accomplish is to elicit positive feelings when the target behavior is present. Another term I stumbled upon when reading was another behavior modification technique that we haven't learned about in class. Flooding is kind of like systematic desensitization in it's functionality, but it's topography is much more extreme. Flooding involves dropping the subject right smack dab in the middle of the target behavior (fearful situation). By making the subject confront the fear face to face at it's most extreme, the person realizes that they are wrong in the way they perceive the target behavior. It's not so much a method of classical conditioning, in that you are not trying to gain association, just understanding.

Systematic Desensitization, Classical Conditioning, Elicit/Emit, Topography, Functionality, Target Behavior, Reinforcement, Positive Valence, Aversive,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL2WP2HxDOU
http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/Desensit.htm
http://suite101.com/article/systematic-desensitization-vs-flooding-a141909

The term I chose to research more was desenseitizing because after reading section 3.4 and learning more about Lil Albert in today's lecture, I kept asking myself what would have happened to Lil Albert if he was desensitized? I know he died at age six, but when you asked the question would Lil Albert be afraid of fuzzy animlas to this day, I in my head, was thinking yes. He didn't get a chance to be desenseitzed since his mother took him out of the study, so without that, I think his fear would still be strong for furry animals.
The first source I found was an article from Killology and it was called Trained to Kill. It first talked about how our soilders are taken to boot camp and trained to fight and kill the enemy through brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling/observation. It says in the end, they are desensitized to violence and accept it as normal. The main focus of the article, however, was how children who watch violent tv shows and play violent video games have the same effect. They accept violence as normal and therefore part take in it. They are desensitized to the fact that it isn't normal. Once thing that stuck out in this article was the fact that they predicted there would be over less than 10,000 homocides, 70,000 less rapes, and 700,000 fewer injuries if kids weren't watching violent shows growing up. That is crazy to me!
The next source I found was called How to Desensitize Your Horse. Basically this article talked about how horses have a flight or fight repsonse when dealing with stimuli,especially when they feel threatened. It mainly focused on horses that fear large objects and loud noises. This article suggested presenting the animal with the loud noise, in a calm and comfortable setting, until the horse becomes used to it and sees that it is no longer a threat. I think Lil Albert would have been desensitized in a similar manner.
The last source I found was Desensitization on Wiki. It talked about Mary Cover Jones and how it was founded by her. It kind of surprised me that Wiki said that desensitiztion was the favored method for getting over phobias and anxieties. I mean it makes sense to me, after learning about it in class, but I think most people turn to medications and other alternatives before even trying the desensitization process. Wiki also went over the two topics my other two sources went over, so it reassures me that they are valid as well.

Sources
http://www.killology.com/art_trained_methods.htm
http://voices.yahoo.com/how-desensitize-horse-464413.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)

Terms used: desensitization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, stimuli, Lil Albert, observation, fight or flight response.

The topic that I wanted to learn more about was extinction. It is interesting to me because it is when a reinforcement behavior is suddenly no longer reinforced. So, the previously reinforced behavior is reduced, which kind of confused me because punishment causes the frequency of a target behavior to decrease. I also wanted to learn more about extinction burst, because if a person is no longer reinforced for a target behavior that has been reinforcing in the past, they try tons of variations of the previously reinforced behavior to receive reinforcement. We talked about this concept in section 2.4 of the book.
My first source that I found was an article on an educational psychology website. The article I read was all about extinction in the classroom context and which factors contribute to the efficiency of extinction behaviors. Bascially, the article stated that interjecting extinction will prove more effective if the target behavior had been continuously reinforced, required a lot of effort, and combining extinction with other techniques like modeling, reinforcement of an alternative behavior, or punishment. These greatly improve the success of extinguishing problem behaviors. So, by understanding other behavioral concepts like deprivation and schedules of reinforcement, parents and teachers will be able to better use modeling and alternative tactics to elicit the desire in their children to emit positive behaviors in order to receive reinforcement, rather than having to turn to punishment to deal with aversive and undesirable behaviors.
A second source that I found was an extinction article on a website that discussed all the psychological and behavioral theories that can affect animal behavior. During the process of unlearning a previously reinforced behavior, if a novel stimulus is presented before a the conditioned stimulus, that technique is called 'disinhibition' because it accelerates the extinction process. Also, there is a sometimes accidental recurrence of a previously extinguished behavior that is caused by conditioned cues after a long interval of time has passed that allowed the animal to 'rest.' This behavioral response is called 'spontaneous recovery.' When this happens, the previously extinguished behavior not only comes back, but it is stronger and more prominent than it was previous to its extinction. Animals can provide great examples of extinction because they are used for conditioning and can have their US and UR conditioned and extinguished to further investigate the effectiveness of extinction.
Finally, my third source to examine is a youtube clip from a Road runner and Wile Coyote cartoon. Even though the clip I chose is a brief example, Wile Coyote is constantly participating in extinction burst. Sometimes at the end of his cartoons, the coyote decides to give up his goal of catching the roadrunner. But, after some time has passed, he is always hungry and starts to contemplate how good the roadrunner would taste if he could just catch him. So, he tries hundreds of attempts to catch the roadrunner, and even though he succeeds only a couple times, he can never satisfy his obsession. To break it down, the unconditioned stimulus is feeling hungry, the unconditioned response is to chase the roadrunner, then eventually, the conditioned stimuli are the sound of a car horn, daydreaming, or the sight of garbage as a food source, and the conditioned response is to return to chasing the roadrunner. These examples all helped me to better understand extinction and extinciton burst.

Sources:
http://education.purduecal.edu/Vockell/EdPsyBook/Edpsy11/edpsy11extinction.htm
http://animalbehaviour.net/Extintion.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ieibnh01vM

Terminology: extinction, reinforcement, behavior, punishment, target behavior, extinction burst, modeling, extinguish, deprivation, schedules of reinforcement, elicit, emit, aversive, novel stimulus, conditioned stimulus, disinhibition, spontaneous recovery, conditioning, US, UR, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response

The topic that I chose to learn more about was the Little Albert study. The study is very interesting to me and seems very important to the topic of classical conditioning. There was some disagreement between my sources with the age of Little Albert at the time of the study being conducted. Two of the websites agreed with what our book said; that Albert was around 9 months old. One of the websites claimed that he was around 11 months old. During the study, Watson and his assistant, Rosalie Raynor, presented various stimuli to Little Albert. The stimuli consisted of things such as a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks, burning paper and more. Little Albert wasn’t initially frightened by any of these stimuli and actually enjoyed things such as the rabbit and the white rat. Albert never showed fear of any of the various stimuli, making him a good candidate for the next part of the study. Albert particularly liked the white rat, in comparison with the other stimuli. Watson and Raynor decided to pair the presentation of the white rat with a loud, frightening noise. Once Albert was given the rat and reached for it, Watson banged on a metal pipe with a hammer. This frightened Albert and after repeated instances of this pairing, Albert began to fear the white rat because he associated it with the loud noise. This fear also became generalized with the other stimuli that were similar with the rat, making Albert who wasn’t afraid of anything, afraid of almost every stimulus. This showed that an experimenter could condition a fear response in a person, even without any prior indication of fear for the specific stimulus. This study brought about great debate over many things: the possible implications of the findings, criticism of the experimental design, ethical concerns, and more. Even though the study wasn’t the most ethical and it most likely has negative repercussions on Little Albert, I still feel that it was important to be done. This study had a large impact on the understanding of conditioning and contributed much to the advancement of psychology.

Terms: classical conditioning, stimuli, pairing, generalized, condition, response, ethics
http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/little-albert-experiment.htm
http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Little%20Albert.htm
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI

The subject I decided to learn more about is aversion therapy. Aversion therapy is a form of behavior modification where by pairing a behavior with a aversive stimulus you bring the selected behavior into extinction (hopefully anyway), this is usually done so with negative behaviors like a drinking problem, smoking, etc.. The first source comes from the Shadel hospital, named after Sahadel who of course popularized this form of therapy. As stated in my summary of Aversion therapy they hope that by pairing an addiction that would once bring pleasure, instead bring aversive feelings and lead to an emmitted response of avoidance. The next source again details how the therapy works but goes into some of the ethical questions brought up from this therapy. One being the adding of something so aversive that the client would lose out on something vitally related to one of their main senses. The other is that relapse rates are increadibly high due. This is due to from the fact that you can't avoid anything forever. The final source actually details a hierarchy of steps in treatment via desensitazation/ aversion therapy. Lets say you're afraid of puppies. You would start with a picture of a puppy. Then the pup would be paired with something positive. At each following step you increase the severity of pairing (go to a stuffed animal or video of puppies) until you finally get to interaction with a live puppy. I found this fascinating that by just breaking a fear down into step you can essentially bring it into extinction!

http://www.schickshadel.com/programs/aversion_therapy_treatment.php
http://www.simplypsychology.org/aversion-therapy.html
http://nursingplanet.com/pn/behaviour_therapy.html
Terms: Aversion, punishment, extinction, behavior, emit, stimulus, negative behavior.

Some television commercials simply give information about a product or place of business. Others attempt to classically condition the viewer to form a positive association. While watching TV this week, I noticed that more frequently than not, classical conditioning is used in commercials. Then, I did a youtube search and found two solid examples of a commercial that demonstrated the use of classical conditioning.

Of the 17 commercials I watched, 12 were obviously using classical conditioning as a form of marketing, for an average of about 71% of the time. Commercials that didn’t strike me as containing classical conditioning were movies/TV show advertisements.

I found that the majority of the commercials containing classical conditioning were advertising new models of cars. A youtube example I found was a commercial during the 2012 Super Bowl. The commercial was advertising Chrysler in Detroit.

The commercial starts with a narrator explaining that although most people, especially those who have never been to Detroit, wouldn’t expect luxurious things to come out of the city, through “hard work, conviction, and know-how,” Chrysler has been known to continuously produce luxurious cars. Throughout the advertisement, beautiful aspects of the city are shown from the viewpoint of someone driving a vehicle, along with strong, successful, motivated citizens, and finally with Eminem driving a beautiful, black Chrysler car.

Viewers wouldn’t necessarily know that the commercial was advertising Chrysler vehicles if they didn’t know they were manufactured in Detroit, however, they would most likely be able to tell that the product being advertised was some sort of vehicle right away. Within the first 30 seconds, a rearview mirror is shown, and then a full scan of the side of the car. Most of the commercial is from the viewpoint of a driver while showing the cues (beautiful aspects/hard work in Detroit).

US: successful people, nice aspects of Detroit
UR: feelings of accomplishment, proud to be in America where people can overcome hardships and succeed even in places like Detroit
CS: Chrysler vehicle (car in this case)
CR: pleasant feeling, reassured that the car is of good quality, sense of nationalism in knowing that the car was manufactured in Detroit, these feelings motivate viewers to buy Chrysler vehicles

Although most of the commercials seemed to be relating to cars, I was able to find examples of classical conditioning in other products like certain foods or in this example: Sketcher sneakers. There were cues of sex appeal with the beautiful celebrity, Kim Kardashian, and some attractive man she was with. Both people were nearly naked and sweaty. Kim was ending things with the man because things weren’t “working out” and then she moved into a room with exercise machines. When Kim walks up to the exercise machines, the product is finally introduced. She is wearing Sketcher Shape Ups sneakers that are supposed to make you burn extra calories while you walk.

US: beautiful people, Kim Kardashian-celebrity
UR: Seeing Kim elicits feelings of arousal and motivation to get fit
CS: Sketcher Shape Up sneakers
CR: feel motivated to buy the shoes because buying them would make you fit like Kim Kardashian

Gerald J. Gorn (1982/1985) studied the effect of background music on choice behavior in advertising, finding significant results, suggesting that background music in advertising is classically conditioning. Kellaris and Cox (2001) attempted to replicate the research. Participants were directed to read a cover story and afterwards, they could choose either a white or yellow pen as a gift for their participation. While reading the story, either appealing or unappealing background music was playing. Their results were not as conclusive as Gorn’s,

Also taking a spin off of research by Gorn (1982), N. Carole Macklin (1986) looked at how product/character pairing can cause children to create associations. She presented children with images of Smurf characters and brightly colored pencils. After three exposures, it was hypothesized that children would be classically conditioned to associate specific colored pencils with the Smurf image. Results were relatively inconclusive, however, Macklin expects that this study could help future research on the effectiveness of classical conditioning in marketing.

Although research on the effectiveness of classical conditioning in advertising seems limited, it is still frequently used as a marketing scheme as I found in many of the television commercials. Further research would be beneficial to see if pairing things like sex appeal and alcohol products really does elicit positive associations, causing viewers to emit the behavioral response of purchasing the product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PE5V4Uzobc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY0BCIgEQTk

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:nOkSqHu871wJ:www.unc.edu/~bwilder/inls180/backgrd%2520music.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShKsC4zhBIG7sJ1ym81jGNAsGIqS4mgPWFEjim3iw7uZgnV3Ncn4AYeAtml5Po6gs_LkUHrHSUm_YTp2ipLPpuh6oKRHQ2LapZONxKXsYplfSGIiGRLZU-9n9AfnMBzFNrzpwxT&sig=AHIEtbQ46gFpJ5JyiEZYuVsNpdqXR9JpQw

http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=6466

Terms used: classically condition, positive association, US, UR, CS, CR, elicit, behavioral response, emit

The topic I am interested in this week is reinforcement vs punishment. Punishment is seen as a faster way to decrease an aversive behavior. However, in most societies it is frowned upon but regardless is still used. Reinforcement can be just as effective, and it is a more postive way to decrease an aversive behavior. Or to increase a desired behavior. So why does our society continue to prefer to use punishment?

One article I found stated that punishment lasts longer and is stronger that reinforcement. Punishment severity and the affects can be a big issue. The article used test taking as an example. If a child is punished for failing a test by taking away their allowance for a week it will more than likely increase their test anxiety. Meaning that the anxiety will affect their test taking skills and increase the likihood of failing the test again. It would be more affective if reinforcement were to be used. No, I don't think a child should be praised for failing a test however you could say that you will help them study for the next so they will perform better. By emitting the behavior of helping them study not only are you helping them elicit a better grade you are also spending time with the child. A better grade in itself is reinforcing. Spending time with the child can also be reinforcing. The child may think okay mom or dad is spending more time with me because I failed that test, so now they will continue to spend time with me to make sure I don't fail again.

Another article discussed the use of punishment in schools. Expulsion, suspension and removing the child fromt he classroom are all forms of punishment. However, they have little to no affect on actually helping the children to learn socially accepted behaviors. The article argued that schools should use positive reinforcement to increase and to teach appropriate behaviors.

After reading these argues and from what I've learned in class I have decided that our society uses punishment because it is faster and easier. Kicking kids out of school is easier than taking the time to help them learn what is acceptable and what isn't. Getting kicked out of school isn't necesarily a punishment. Most kids who act out anyway don't want to be in school. If they are going to be punished why not punish them by making them stay in school and show them behaviors that are socially acceptable. As for punishment for failing a test, a class, or just failing in general it would be best for the child if they were reinforced rather then punished. Society shouldn't use punishment simply because it is easier and faster to get the response they want.

Terms: Positive reinforcement, reinforcement, punishment, aversive behavior, behavior, emit, elicit, response.

http://www.essortment.com/positive-reinforcement-vs-punishment-12116.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Exceptional-Children/69697627.html

posted for SS:
I chose to do further research on operant conditioning. We have learned about different aspects of operant conditioning throughout many parts of the book so far. I chose this topic because it can be observed in everyday life.
B.F. Skinner can be considered the father of operant conditioning. Thorndike also made contributions. Operant conditioning can be defined as learning behavior through punishment and reinforcement. There is positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement. If it starts with positive it means there is something being added. If it starts with negative its something being taken away. Reinforcement means make a behavior more likely to happen, and punishment decreases the odds of the behavior being repeated.
There are different reinforcement schedules that can be used to modify behavior. Fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, and variable interval schedules are some that are used. All different types foster a different type of learning but if you are trying to get them to learn something quickly fixed ratio would be the best route to take.
Some examples of positive reinforcement would be if you are trying to get your roommate to put away the dishes. Whenever your roommate puts the dishes away take her out for ice cream...she will then start to associate if she puts the dishes away she will get ice cream and therefore making this behavior more likely to be emitted again.

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Operant-Conditioning.topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25346.html
http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/a/introopcond.htm

Terms: operant conditioning, punishment reinforcement, positive, negative, fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval, emit.