What I would like you to do for this homework is to have some fun and find some websites of a topic that interests you and post it here as a comment. At this point I am not as concerned with exactly how you compose the actual post for this activity. I am more concerned that you have a meaningful experience searching out and learning about your topic.
Thanks.
I have always found emotion and behavior interesting, but as I have learned from this class and other psych classes I have taken, a lot of times feeling is not included. According to Watson, behavior should be concerned with observable actions and not internal processes. Skinner also followed a similar belief. He claimed that we behave the way we do because of our surroundings, not the way we "feel". Skinner, as I found out, was a behavioral determinist. This didn't allow for internal explanations for behavior, only external. On some of the sites i looked at, I found theories supporting the idea of behavior AND emotion both having a role in the way one chooses to act. For example, on http://www.Suite101.com I found out that Watson, in later years, began to believe in the idea of emotion. He only accepted fear, rage, and love, however. This change in thought was the result of his work with Albert. Watson believed that emotion is what causes a person to react to their environment. http://www.BECOMEHEALTHY.com takes a mixed approach. They support human emotion, saying it was necessary for adaptation, but they believe the roots for emotion exist within the brain. According to C.H. Woolbert, emotions are even more connected. He believes that when we are feeling something, that feeling is the behavior. It isn't whether we are doing, OR are we feeling, but rather we are doing both. This is where the line becomes thin between what is biological and what is psychological. In a case like this there will never be an answer that is actually proven one way or the other. I almost feel that if you take emotion completely out of the behavioral equation, then you lose part of what makes us human. Like the great minds in this book,I do understand that much of what we do is the result of things such as reflex or being conditioned. I don't, however, believe we will ever truly understand behaviors if we don't look at them more internally. I believe examining private behaviors could be very helpful. For obvious reasons this would be quite difficult to measure or explain, but this type of thinking holds information other behaviors do not.
When I was growing up my sisters and I were never spanked or sent to time out. Our parents told us once not to do something and if we did it again we weren't allowed to play in that area or were taken away from the activity. We never really misbehaved because we knew the consequence.
I recently read the post on punishment and wanted to look more in-depth on time outs. I know time outs are becoming more popular for parents than spanking. I found a site on child development that explains the perfect way to handle time outs.
I've seen Super Nanny on TV and the way she handles misbehaving children to looks like it works perfectly if the parents follow through. Consistency and timing make a huge difference.
I personally believe a child can grow up without needing a spanking or time out if the consequences are present and enforced.
I see a time out as a way for parents to get their child away from a certain situation to break the bad behavior. I don't think they necessarily need to sit in a certain spot of a certain amount of minutes but they do need a break in the behavior.
This web site breaks down the "time out" to better understand a way to go about it.
http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/timeout.shtml
Up until the past few years I have played baseball. I've been a Chicago Cubs fan since I can remember. I started thinking about the year 1908. This was the last year that the Cubs won the World Series. This brought about the idea of superstitious behaviors. I started to think about the ones I have heard of, and the ones I had when I played. I would do things such as tap the front corner of the plate closest to me in between each pitch. If I did not do this I felt uncomfortable for the next pitch. Another thing I never did was touch a foul line before the game started. I always had this feeling that I would hit a ball down the line and it would land on the scuffed up line and be called foul. In my whole career I never had an incident like that happen to me. Yet, I partook in these superstitious behaviors with no reinforcements whatsoever. It almost seemed as though it turned into a soothing routine that comforted me before each game. I have heard of many other superstitions in baseball, and decided to diverge my interests to other’s point of view to find other superstitious beliefs in baseball. A rather interesting site came up that not only told routines, but also told the fascinating story of the goat from Chicago’s past. http://baseball.suite101.com/article.cfm/famous_baseball_superstitions
Positive Reinforcement, Punishment and Public Opinion about Prison Sentencing:
I remember two years ago a class discussion we had in my Psych of Law course consisted of Solitary Confinement. I had intended on finding said article and writing briefly on solitary confinement as a means of "effective punishment." While looking for the article I found a different one discussing the opinions of the Canadian public in regards to positively reinforcing prisoners to behave in a more "acceptable" manner in prison. Specifically time off for good behavior.
There are two, seemingly very controversial issues at hand when discussing this topic. On one end, you can offer prison inmates a positive motivation for obeying behavioral standards set by the prison warden. On the other hand, you have the perceived safety of the public and their concerns about the whereabouts of convicted felons.
I don't particularly disagree with the fact that prison inmates should be rewarded in some way, shape or form for abiding by these rules; but I'm not necessarily convinced that shortening their court appointed sentences is always the best course of action.
I can look at solitary confinement in a perspective I didn't have when taking Psychology of Law the first time. In theory, solitary confinement is a highly effective form of punishment. It brings an immediate halt to the behavioral deviation caused by the inmate. However, the emotional and social risks of solitary confinement seem to far outweigh the benefits.
My apologies, here is the link corresponding to my previous post.
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cbs/24/4/442.pdf
Two of my favorite shows are "Cops" and "Police Women of Broward County." I have always been interested in k-9 units detecting drugs. I decided to do some reasearch on how reliable it is and how to train your dog to detect narcotics/drugs.
Here is a study called "Information-seeking behaviour of sniffer dogs during match-to-sample training in the scent lineup."
http://versita.metapress.com/content/834004jl6342477x/fulltext.pdf
Here is the abstract (I will let you read the conclusion)
Qualitative and quantitative changes in dogs’ information-seeking behaviours during the subsequent phases of operant conditioning training using a scent lineup, were investigated. Particular interest was paid to behaviours which may have an impact on errors committed by dogs at work in a scent lineup and thus on the reliability of the canine identification of
humans on the base of scent. Significant individual differences were found in dogs’ performance in operant conditioning during match-to-sample trials. The style and time of sniffing the pattern scent sample as well as the searching time and number of stations sniffed in the lineup were found to influence the percentage of errors (false positive and false negative
indications) made by dogs. The effects of the dogs’ routine e.g. omitting stations, using other cues than olfactory ones (visual) and effects of the non-verbal communications between handler and dog have been discussed.
Here are some articles on how to train your dog to detect drugs and bombs
http://leerburg.com/scentlogix.htm
http://www.k9crimefighters.com/narcotics.html
I ran across this news article that I thought was quite funny. This mom thought she should rent a drug-sniffing canine for $200 an hour to sniff her 3 kids bedrooms. Here is the link:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/dogs-sniff-scent-drugs-teens/story?id=6087872
Here is the video to that article:
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6091960
So I know that this first web divergence was supposed to be somehting we kind of researched on the internet but I just had to put this up. Since the first day of class I have been reminded of this clip. One of my favorite shows is The office and I thought of the perfect one to go with this class. It is one of many pranks that Jim pulls on Dwight. It is a spin off of the pavlov experiment.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1079423/the_pavlov_altoid_theory/
I got to thinking about pavlov and his experiment. I always thought that it was something that you could do but it would take a lot of time and training but then I started to think of real life things that it could be true. For instance in my small town at home the town siren goes off 3 times a day. At 7 to start breakfast 8 to go to work 12 to start lunch 1 to go back to work 6 to start supper and 7 to end it. I got to thinking how there are times when I wasn't even hungry but after the dinner siren rang I was. I bet we all have examples of this in our everyday lives we just don't realize it!
I have to say I enjoyed the clip from The Office. You are right, it does fit in perfectly with some of the things we are talking about. I have to say it doesn't always feel good when you realize you have been conditioned. Poor Dwight.
I have always been intrigued by the various cultural traditions that take place around the world. The United States is often known as the “melting pot”. We take the beliefs of various cultures around the world and blend them to make our unique society. However, many of the traditions that are brought into our country are not of the extremes. Through my research I was able to find a few old rituals/traditions that put me in shock. Though many of these are due to religious beliefs and few are practiced today, they are still part of our history.
Sati is an old Hindu ritual in which the widow, following the death of her husband, would commit suicide by throwing herself on the fire of her husband’s body at the funeral. Foot binding was a common practice among young Chinese girls in the early 20th century – a tradition that has left many women today with deformed, mutilated feet. Many of these traditions have recently been banned or outlawed by the various countries within which they are practiced. However, it still shocks me that many of these rituals were even allowed to begin with – let alone highly respected.
So this brings up the question of what behavior is considered acceptable and who decides what “acceptable” is. Here in the United States we consider the practice of genital mutilation to be cruel and unrighteous. However, for the cultures that practice it (primarily in South America), genital mutilation is a step in the process of becoming a man or woman. Without it, the individuals do not feel they have achieved an adult status. Are we right in judging these rituals? And even if we are, are we right in our attempt to stop them?
I included a few websites that show the various customs and rituals that have been present throughout history. FYI, some can be somewhat disturbing.
http://listverse.com/2007/08/12/top-10-bizarre-traditions/
http://www.neatorama.com/2009/09/15/6-strangest-coming-of-age-rituals-in-the-world/
This site includes many of the “coming of age” rituals that can be found throughout the world…
http://trifter.com/africa/strange-traditions-of-the-world-you-probably-didnt-know-about/
This one focuses on unique wedding traditions from various cultures..
http://traditionscustoms.com/wedding-traditions/strange-wedding-traditions
I have always had an interest in aggression, especially aggression in children. Working at a middle school, I often see students who tend to be more aggressive than others. The website I found stated that several factors can cause a child to fight or to be more aggressive towards people. Some of the environmental factors were poor parenting skills and low socioeconomic status households. Some of the genetic factors associated with aggression are tobacco use and stress during pregnancy. I was not suprised by the factors listed but I did learn that clearly, both genetics and the environment interact together to cause more physical aggression in children. I also found it very interesting that children usually learn to control their aggressive behavior by the end of middle school. Here is the link...
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/en-ca/child-aggression/how-important-is-it.html?gclid=CMH3tpGMsZ8CFREMDQod4RJ80w
Also, here is a link to a video that I found on ways to deal with an aggressive child. The individual discusses punishment and the proper way to punish a child following an aggressive act.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQfzwh_hb5A
I agree with the woman's suggestions but I think they would be most useful to parents in a household. At our afterschool program, we often find it difficult to enforce rules or punishments because it is mainly for low socioeconomic status students and it is optional for them. Coming to our program is often a much better environment than them being at home and if we enforce too many rules or punishments they won't come back... it makes for a difficult situation.
I found an article that correlates adolescent "burn-out" in school with parental work "burn-out." The study showed that the experience of burn-out is shared most by the parent sharing the same gender with the adolescent. this issue relates directly to shaping and modeling. Parents are the prime influence in their children's lives, and in a sense, they program their children's future behaviors with current behaviors. This relates quite directly to the idea of allostatic load, which refers to the physiological cost of repeated and heightened neuroendocrine response that comes from repeated stress. If the parents are unable to cope with the weight of their allostatic load at work, then similar behaviors will result in their children. A more positive upbringing and more attentive parenting style should be enough to model proper coping styles for children and reduce the stress of allostatic load at home and work.
Here's the article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100119074754.htm
I listened to a lot of NPR over the summer and came across this story one day. It intrigued me and has led me to do more research in the area of praise and its effects on children.
Our society often feels that we should use praise to encourage others and increase their self-esteem. But as Po Bronson explains in this interview, praise can have negative effects on children as it is often used too much and in the wrong situations. Research has shown praise to have both positive and negative effects on motivation and self-esteem. There are multiple kinds of praise and all of them have different effects on children depending on their age and gender. Most children don't respond well to what's called person praise, or statements like, "you're really good at this." Instead, they respond well to praise that focuses on the process or the product of one's efforts, which is a more specific type of praise. For children and adults to receive the positive effects of praise it must be specific, sincere, and realistic.
As I read different articles about the types of praise and when and when not to use them, I continue to be intrigued. So few people know about the differences in praise and the detrimental effects it can have, and yet, we use it on a regular basis for positive reinforcement.
Here are links to the NPR story as well as an article for parents describing the effects of praise and the 'correct' way to praise kids:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112292248
http://www.parentingscience.com/effects-of-praise.html