Psychology Learning Essay Example for Free

Psychology Learning EssayIntroduction The following account should probably come under the heading strange but True. It describes a psychologists use of self-administered punishment to miscellanea a socially unacceptable consider. A person once knew a psychologist who, for reasons which will be discovered shortly, shall remain anonymous. For the sake of the study, this person is named Richard. Richard had a bad habit. He chewed his nails. Well, thats not actually correct he chewed his nails off and then dot them out, usually while he was lecturing. at a time in a great while, this practice was called to his attention, and it always embarrassed him. He said that he wasnt conscious(predicate) that he was doing it. It had become such an ingrained habit that he could chew off all ten nails, spit in all directions, and still be totally unconscious of what he was doing. Richard was a respected schooling theorist, and he decided that if anyone could devise a behavior-modifica tion technique to eliminate his habit, he would. The next twenty-four hour period he arrived, all smiles, and said he had a request If any of those around see him vinegarish his nails, this should be brought to his attention. It wasnt long that before individual said, Uh, Richard, youre doing it.He stopped and looked at his nails and said, So I am. Then as everyone was watched, pulled up his shirtsleeve, grabbed hold of a heavy-duty rubber band that had wrapped around his wrist, stretched it out a distance of about ten inches, and let is go. There was a vicious snap. He yelled, cursed, and shook his extend to. Everyone looked on amazement. Surely learning theorist were all a little insane. Punishment, he said. Punishment is the answer What happened to the people around Richard was interesting. Some took relish in pointing out that he was biting his snails, just to see him snap the huge rubber band around his wrist others preferred to ignore his habit, because they couldnt stand to see him in that oft pain. Happily, after two days, Richards habit had been broken. One person asked him how he thought his program worked. He said, Well, if I unconsciously unlearn it. Whenever I was grind my nails, I administered this punishment. Pretty soon my brain learned that nail chewing resulted in something very unpleasant. He said that the last time he r distributivelyed his hand up to his mouth (quite unconsciously), he got a terrible sinking feeling that something awful was about to happen. It made me aware. he said. I looked at my hand and dictum it was approaching my mouth. Somewhere deep in my brain the little gray cells were screaming, Dont do it It was reported that some days later Richard was have on rubber bands around his ankles, but nobody wanted want to ask why (Dworetzky, 1994).Discussion Learning pervades peoples lives. It is involved not completely in mastering a new skill or academic subject but also in emotional development, social interaction, and even record development. People learn what they worry, what to love, how to be polite, hoe to be intimate, and so on. Given the pervasiveness of learning in lives of people, it is not surprising that there have been instances of it how, for example, children to perceive the being around them, to identify with their own sex, and to control their behavior according to adult standards (Atkinson, 1993). However, there is a more(prenominal) systematic analysis of learning. Learning may be defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from practice behavior change that are due to maturation (rather than practice)or ephemeral conditions of the organism (such as fatigue or drug-induced states) are not included. All cases of learning are not the same though. Psychology is the study of behavior. Psychologists study learning because among most animals, especially humans, the vast majority of behavior is learned. Learning may also be defined as a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from experience (Dworetzky, 1988). Experts, however, tell that when somebody says relatively permanent change, this excludes the aftermaths of such factors as fatigue. Fatigue, which occurs because of experience, may change behavior, but only temporary, whereas learning implies a more lasting change. Learning is defined by Craig et al., as a process through which ones capacity or inclination of an orbit is changed as a result of experience. Whitaker (1972) defines it also as the process by which behavior originates or is altered through experience, while Wittig (in Bernstein et al., 1991) and Hilgard (1975) view it as behavior that occurs as a result of experience. Apparently while learning can be defined as a process and as a product, more definitions stress learning more as a process. This idea suggests that it is not the product but the process that is important since the products of learning both what one is fitted of and what one is predisposed to . Changes resulting from development and experience are emphasized changes resulting from maturation such as growing older, innate tendencies standardized reflexes and conditions ca utilise by fatigue, drugs, and diseases are stringently not considered as learned behavior.Adaptive value of Learning (Classical Conditioning)Overeating Taste-Aversion Learning Taste-aversion learning involves associating grumpy sensory cues (smells, savors, sounds or sights), with an unpleasant repartee, such as nausea or vomiting. Taste-aversion learning can also occur from overindulgence. For example, children report taste aversions to nutrition after overeating and becoming sick. Similarly, the majority of college students report taste versions after drinking too much alcohol and getting sick. In these examples, taste aversions to food or drink developed after a case-by-case trial and lasted an average of four to five years (Logue et al., 1981).Conditioned Emotional Response Why a certain Chri stmas song suck outs pleasant childhood memories. In the conditioned emotional response, one feels some positive or negative emotion, such as happiness, fear, or anxiety, when experiencing a stimulus that initially accompanied a painful or pleasant event. For example, many couples have a special song that becomes emotionally associated with their relationship. When one in the absence of the other hears this song, it can elicit strong emotional and romantic feelings. In other cases, conditioned emotional responses may develop into irrational fears that are called phobias. A phobia is an anxiety malady characterized by an intense and irrational fear that is out of all proportion to the danger elicited by the object or situation. In comparison, a fear is a realistic response to a threatening situation (Bernstein, 1991). About 73 percent of people with phobias were able to trace the start of their phobias to fearful, painful, or traumatic situations that involved classical conditionin g (Atkinson et al., 1993 in Kleinknecht, 1994 and Kuch et al., 1994). For example, about 5 victims involved in moving car accidents had developed fears of sitting or riding in cars, and another third developed the corresponding phobias (Kuch et al., 1994). Just as classical conditioning can result in fears and phobias, however, it can also be used to reduce them.Prejudice In the mid-1940s, psychologist Kenneth Clark held a black boo and a livid doll in his hands and asked the following questions of young white children life in the South Which doll looks like you? Now tell me which doll is the good doll? Which doll is the bad doll?These children knew that the white doll looked like them. most children also indicated that the white doll was the good doll and the black doll was dirty or ugly ( Clark and Clark, 1947). How had these southern white children learned to shew such association? During the decades of racial prejudices that had come before, darer skins had become associated with poverty and with being inferior, not just in the South, but generally throughout the United States. The white children had learned to attribute these characteristics to black people. The racist attitude is what the white children had been taught it is also what the black children had been taught. The black had been raised in the same general environment, the same country. They, too, had seen that the whites had pause and they had worse. And, as the Clarks discovered in further research, a majority of black children also chose the white doll as the good one and the black doll as the bad one. A conditioning experiment conducted by researcher Staats (1958 in Atkinson et al., 1993) helped to show how association process could be responsible for the prejudice, Dr. Clark observed. In their experiment, college students were asked to look at one word while pronouncing another. Without being aware of the purpose of the experiment, the students were manoeuvred into pairing pleasant wor ds or unpleasant words with a particular name (Tom or Bill) or a certain nationality (Swedish or Dutch). In short, subjects revealed obvious differences in attitudes towards these names and nationalities, simply because those words had been paired with positive or negative words.Advertisers, politicians, movie makers, and just about everyone else try to use this kind of conditioning to affect peoples emotions. Then a politician associates himself with a positive symbol such as the flag, or when a movie maker uses dramatic music, or when someone dresses well for a job interview, distributively is invoking the same process Each is attempting to render something the politician, the movie maker, or the job seeker more appealing through association with positive stimuli. What appears to be occurring in the instances of association, like those just described, is a kind of higher order conditioning (Dworetzky, 1998).Conclusion In classical conditioning, the conditioned response often re sembles the normal response to the unconditioned stimulus salivation, for example, is a dogs normal response to food. But when you want to teach an organism something novel such as education a dog new trick you cannot use classical conditioning. What unconditioned stimulus would make a dog sit up or put over? To train the dog, you must first persuade it to do the trick (Bernstein et al., 1991). Much of the real-life behavior is like this responses are learned because they operate on, or effect the environment. Referred to as an operant conditioning, this kind of learning occurs in human individuals, as well as in animals. Alone in a crib, a bollocks up may kick and twist and coo spontaneously. When left by itself, a dog may pad back and forth, sniff, or perhaps pick up a ball, drop it, and play with it. Neither organism is responding to the onset or offset of a specific external stimulus. Rather, they are operating on their environment. Once the organism performs a certain beha vior, however, the likelihood that the action will be repeated depends on its consequences. The baby will coo more often if each such occurrence is followed by parental attention, and the dog will pick up the ball more often if petting or a food reward follows this action. If we think of the baby as having a gaol of parental attention, and the dog as having the goal of food, then operant conditioning amounts to learning that a particular behavior leads to attaining a particular goal (Rescorla, 1987).ReferenceAtkinson, R.L., R.C. Atkinson, E.E. Smith, D.J. Bem, and S. Nolen-Hoeksema, 1993. Introduction to Psychology, 13th ed. New York Harcourt College Publishers.Bernstein, D.A., E.J. Roy, T.K. Srull, and C.D. Wickens, 1991. Psychology. New Jersey Houghton Mifflin Company.Bootzin, R.R. 1991. Psychology. New York Gilford Press.Clark, L., A.D. Watson, and S. Reynolds, 1995. Diagnosis and classification of psychological medicine Challenges to the current system and future directions. Annual review of Psychology 46 121-53.Dworetzky, J.P. 1988. Psychology.3rd Ed. Mew York West Publishing Company.Logue, A.W., I.Ophir, and K.E. Strauss. 1981. The Acquisition of taste aversions in humans. Behavior enquiry and Therapy,19319-35.Morgan, Clifford T. 1977. A Brief Introduction to Psychology. 2nd ed. New York McGraw-Hill Book Company.Rescorla, R.A. 1987. A Pavlovian analysis of goal-directed behavior. American Psychologist 42119-129, 265.