jueves, 2 de diciembre de 2010

Edward Thorndike : B.F. Skinner

Edward Thorndike:

1. Explain Thorndike's puzzle-box experiment.
- It basically is putting a cat in the puzzle box, and watch the cat's behavior towards getting the food.

2. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Effect".
- The law of effect basically consists in a satisfactory result, when the individual demonstrates good respons toward a positive behavior that turns out to be a regular behavior to the individual, after repeating it several time over and over. In the other hand if this situation is followed, by a negative response it means that it will be much harder each time to condition the individual from a weak behavior to a strong, confident, and regular behavior.

3. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Exercise".
- Basically the law of excercise applies to all individuals in earth, because it states that each individual should practice, in other to get good at something in specific. "Practice makes perfect."

B.F. Skinner:

1. Explain Skinner's concept of Operant Conditioning
- What Skinner basically though about was that learning was an actual function of change in our behavior. Whe the individual changes in his or her behavior, it means that the enviorment around has made the subject to learn new things that are very important, and this changes its acting functions on certain things.

2. What does reinforcement always do?
- Basically what reinfocrcement is, to making the animal or person want to repeat the action they did because they were rewarded for the thing they did.


3. What does a punishment alsways do?
- Basically what punishment does, is that it reinforces the side on the individual that tells him not to like what he or he did, because she was punished in a certain way that it was not enjoyed, so little by little the animal or baby probably will stop acting that way, until he or she does not do it anymore.

4. Explain the difference between "postive" and "negative" as they are used in opernat conditioning.
- Basically positive and negative are better described as two sides that can balace the behavior of the animal or human being. As there are positive ways to change behavior there are also negative ways. A positive influence to a bad behavior would probably be to punish the individual. A negative influence to a good behavior would be not reinforcing, by gifting a treat or food or something that the individual enjoys.

martes, 23 de noviembre de 2010

John B. Watson

1. Explain (in detail) how Watson's "Little Albert" study was conducted.
-Watson conducted a baby that was named, "Little Albert". He was shown a white and scary rat, they afterwards slammed two metal pipes at the back part of his head. Suddenly Little Albert was crying because the two metal pipes produced a loud and annoying noise. Watson continued to slamm the metal pipes to Little Albert everytime he was together with the white rat, But Little Albert always cried when he was together with the white rat. After this the fear generalized, this was a (stimulus generalization), because Little Albert is afraid of animals/people with white hair/beard, all this because the rat had white hair.

2. Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Watson's study.
-Conditioned Stimulus: White rat.
-Unconditioned Stimulus: The loud noise, of the slamming metal pipes.
-Conditioned Response: Little Albert Crying.

3. Explain at least two limitations of this study.
-One of the limitations was that Little Albert was hurt, while the two metal pipes slammed at the back of his head. Little Albert suffered from a animal fobia, becuase the white rat evoked him fear. It was heard that the mother of Little Albert didnt know about the way they were treating his baby.

4. Explain Watson's law of frequency.
-Law of frequency: is about, that the most often two things are connected with one another, the more powerful the association will be.

5. Explain Watson's law of recency.
-Law of recency: Is about the how was the reaction of the stimulus that had just occured.

6. Explain the basic assumptions of behaviorism according to Watson.
-Watson approved that psycology has nothing to do with the mind or the humans, but, with behaviors, This way people could be studied.

Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson

1. What was Pavlov actually studying when he developed his theory of classical conditioning?
- Ivan was born in Russia. He started his higher education at the Ryazan Ecclesiastical Seminary, later on his years he dropped out of here and enrolled in the University of Saint Petersburg to study the natural sciences and became a physiologist.

2. Explain (in detail) how Pavlov's experiment was conducted.
- Pavlow experimented on animals and mostly on dogs. He had a couple of dogs which he has been testing on. He tested the dogs salivation each time the dog knew that the food was aproching the dog started to salivate more and more.

3. Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Pavlov's experiment.
- The neutral stimulus that would never alter the dog is known as condition stimulus.

4. Explain what extinction means in relation to classical conditioning.
- Extinction occurs when a conditioned response decrease or disappear. This happens when a conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with an unconditioned stimulus.

5. Explain what stimulus generalization means in relation to classical conditioning.
-when the tendency for the conditioned stimulus to suggest similar responds for the ones who have been conditioned, this is the stimulus generalization, in a classical condition.

6. Explain what sstimulus discrimination means in relation to classical conditioning.
- Discrimination is being able to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that are similar to it.

7. Explain at least two limitations of this experiment.
- The limitations are that he did the experiment only with dogs and it required a surgical procedure.

8. Explain what Pavlov theorized about how we learn.
-Pavlov theory was that when a neutral stimulus is connected with a neutral, the neutral is learned by providing the natural stimulus that causes the responds of the neutral.

Sleeping Article 2

BEING A NIGHT OWL IN HIGH SCHOOL IS LINKED WITH A LOWER COLLEGE GPA:

During the highschool years of a teenager many of them have expirienced deterioration is sleeping hygiene. When we are in highschool we should sleep a lot, because the amount of work that we have to accomplish during the daytime is very heavy to just take out of the way without even taking good care of them. We should sleep a lot, because when we sleep during the day time we take the risks of getting a low GPA in school and in the future this will affect your possibilities of getting into a good college with high standards in requirments. We need to sleep alot before midnight.



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Students who have a delayed start if 40 minutes demosntrated alot better concentration in school and mush less sleeping during day time.
Whe the human brain rests enough to act at its 100% of its energetic capacity, we obviosly tend to show better behavior resulots during the day, this making it that we dont sleep durinng the day time. After some analyzis and test, students demonstrated to show much better results at daytime activities, such as school and extracurricular activities in the after noon. It was raised at an 83% percent of our energetic capacity to move foward and it benefited humans in alot of different ways in the fields of study. It is recomended that highschool students get to sleep at least 9 hours for better capacity, and better envolvement during the day and also into the activities. In my opinion, people should take advantage of these stydies, and actually take them in consideration and do them, to be benefited by more time of sleep or sleep earlier it the school start is not delayed.

lunes, 15 de noviembre de 2010

Under sleep deprivation is in your genes





This next study presented was performed by Antoine Viola, Derk-Jan Dijk, and colleagues at University of Surrey’s Sleep Research Center. The purpose of the study was to know if the two variants (short or long) of the gene PERIOD3 influenced in morning and evening activity levels. This can later be connected to the influences these genes might have on performance by unrested individuals. The results of the study were that during the early hours of the morning individuals with the longer variant performed poorly on tests for attention and working memory. Also, only those possessing the longer variant of the gene had 50% more deep sleep than the rest. I believe that these findings are very interesting and important to have fewer accidents during the night shift workers. With these results companies can choose their night shift workers correctly.

domingo, 3 de octubre de 2010

The Teenage Brain




Many adults seem to forget how their lives were when they were teenagers. Teenagers think that adults don’t understand their problems and situations, and probably in many occasions it’s true. Teenagers go through different changes in their lives, such as physical changes, and emotional changes.

Adolescents’ changes are not many times understood by adults, and this is why constant arguments are being held mostly at home. Parents and their adolescents are constantly arguing, because adults have trouble adapting to the teenagers personality and actions. During the teenage years many parts of your brain are still growing and developing. The more you exercise a task the more you will develop those cells in your brain, and if you hardly ever do something such as reading your brain will not adapt to the activity and little by little the area in your brain which is uncharged of it, will deactivate until you decide to engage it again as a part of your routine. We can compare this to building muscles, if you are a person you hardly ever does muscle activities, don’t expect your muscles to be like ARNOLD'S, so the same way it works with brain cells that have not been yet used.

As the Frontal lobe and the pre frontal cortex are still developing, you learn stuff day by day. During our teenage years we take many of the decisions of our future, such as our career, learning to smoke and drink, and many similar things. As we adapt to new things we are also adapting to good things, but at the same time as teenagers we are also adapting to bad things such as grabing a cigar for the first time, or grabbing our first beer. These are some bad examples that teenagers often get involved in, and this is why our parents always try to avoid us from going to places where we can be taught such things.

As teenager we always try to setup risky dares on our self’s, and it is when we first experience new things. I can put as an example of myself starting to go with my friends and try learning motocross. It is obvious that this sport is very risky and that my parents do not want be to keep riding motorcycles, because they are too dangerous. But all the teenagers and I always try challenging ourselves to many risky circumstances.




As teenagers we should get at least 9 hours of sleep each day. Our brains and bodies need this time to recover from all the activities we do during the time we are awake. Brain cells get forced to work more then what they are able to when we start sleeping less and working more, so little by little they die and we will not work the same as if we got the complete 9 hours of sleep. The hours of sleep you get before midnight double up, and are much better than the ones past midnight.



In conclusion, children all over the world often become lazier or inclined to other stuff as they grow up and get to experience new things. Generally kids change when they become teenagers, and start going to parties and thinking that they are doing everything as it’s supposed to be done. At this stage of our lives many of us feel and think that our parents start to hate us, and that everything they tell us is wrong, and it is because they don’t want us to have fun or something like that. But parents have to understand that teenagers go through many problems day by day for this reason our emotions are random and vary rapidly.

lunes, 27 de septiembre de 2010

The Brain




1. What does the word "hemisphere" refer to when talking about the brain?
The brain is divided in to two different hemispheres known as the right brain, and the left brain. One of the ways to learn someone’s styles is to understand there hemispheric dominance. ARE YOU A LEFT BRAINED OR A RIGHT BRAINED? The hemispheres are connected by a thick band or unions of nerve fibers. The left side of the brain is the seat of language and processes in a logical and sequential order. The right side is more visual and processes intuitively, holistically, and randomly. Most people seem to incline to one or the other.

2. What are the major differences between the left and right sides of the brain?

Right Brain
Random
Intuitive
Holistic
Synthesizing
Subjective
Looks at wholes
Left Brain
Logical
Sequential
Rational
Analytical
Objective
Looks at parts



3. What is the corpus collasum?
The corpus collasum is a huge bundle of nerve fibers found only in mammalian brains. These connect both’ hemispheres on the brain, and is responsible for the communication and the synchronization of both on the actions that we make, for example playing Nintendo, typing a paper, hitting someone, using our phones, reading books, playing sports such as basketball, soccer, ping pong, and all of them that are known of. It is self-possessed of white matter, that is, militated nerve cells, or axons, whose key task is to bond grey areas collectively with neural impulses.


4. Explain the study performed by Paul Broca in which he discovered "Broca's Area."
Broca's area is the area of the brain in charge for verbal communication construction, verbal communication dispensation, and speech understanding, as well as scheming facial neurons. First exposed in 1861, Broca's area was named after Pierre Paul Broca. He revealed the area after studying the brain of patience with a speech mutilation after his bereavement.
Broca's area is associated to the Wernick’s area of the brain by the arcuate fasciculus, which is a pathway made of neurons. It is bring into being in the frontal lobe of the cortex, within the inferior frontal gyrus. It is comprised of two primary parts: the Pars triangularis and the Pars opercularis.






5. Explain the study conducted by Roger Sperry in regard to "split brain."
Roger Sperry was a famous neuropsychologist and neurobiologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine due to the “split-brain” studies he did in the year 1981. Roger attended people who had no corpus collasum, meaning that they had it cut off. He worked with a method of a screen; the patient was to look into the center of the screen he was using. Progressively a word appeared on the left side of the patient’s visual side. The patients were not able to tell what they saw, because he or she was not capable because of the information received from the non-verbal right hemisphere of the brain. Later on the patience was asked to grab an object that was located behind the screen using his or her left hand that asserted with the word that was being flashed on the screen. Each hemisphere in the body controls the actions of the opposite side of the body.


6. Explain the study conducted by Karl Wernicke which led to the discovery of Wernicke's Area."






7. Which lobe is most responsible for vision?
The lobe in charged for vision is the occipital lobe.

8. Which lobe is most responsible for hearing and language?
The lobe in charge of the hearing and language is the temporal lobe.


9. Which lobe is most responsible for performing math calculations, and which lobe is most responsible for judgment, reasoning and impulse control?

For performance of math calculations, and responsibility for judgments, reasoning and impulse control are being taken care off in the frontal lobe.