Thorndike and Skinner

Edward Thorndike:

1. Explain Thorndike's puzzle-box experiment.

It was a box specially made for cats so that the cats would get out of the box through trial and error. He saw that every time that cats made it more times they would get out easier.

2. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Effect".

The Law of effect says that responses closely followed by satisfaction will become firmly attached to the situation and therefore more likely to reoccur when the situation is repeated.

3. Explain Thorndike's "Law of Exercise".

It states that stimulus-response associations are strengthened through repetition.
B.F. Skinner:

1. Explain Skinner's concept of Operant Conditioning

Operant Conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior.

2. What does reinforcement always do?

Every time the mice would push the pulley he would give him food.

3. What does a punishment always do?

He at the bottom had electricity and every time the mouse would try to do something else to get food they would electrocute him.

4. Explain the difference between "positive" and "negative" as they are used in operant conditioning.

Positive is when the animal gets a reward for doing something, and negative is when the animal gets punished for doing something wrong.

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov:

1) He wanted to make a dog salivate without food, by conditioning the dog.

2) He gave the dog at first food, then he gave the dog food and rang a bell, when he conditioned the dog with this for a few weeks, he could make the dog salivate onl with ringing the bell, and not giving the dog food.

3) The conditioned stimulus was the bell or the light turned on, the unconditioned stimulus was the food, and the conditioned response was the dog salivating.

4) Extinction is a gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the conditioned response tendency, this extinction occurs by many presentation of conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus.

5) It is a response to a specific stimulus becomes associated to other stimuli (similar stimuli) and now occurs to those similar stimuli.

6) Is learning to respond to one stimulus and not another.

7)  A) He had to re-route the salivary glands.

B) And the results with humans could be different than the ones with dogs.

8) That we learn through association.

John B. Watson:

1)  Watson chose Albert from a hospital, Little Albert was the name of the experiment, he was 9 months. At first Watson gave Little Albert, monkeys, white rat, a dog and a rabbit, even a furry mask, at first Little Albert showed no fear, then Watson gave Little Albert a small rat, he played with the rat, and didn’t show fear, but then everytime Little Albert had the rat, Watson rung a loud and annoying noise that made Little Albert cry, and doing that for a couple of months, every time little Albert had the rat he would cry.

2) The CS was the white rat, the US was the loud noise and the CR was Little Albert crying.

3) The limitations were that the experiment was unethical that it couldn’t be done again.

4) The Law of frequency says that the most times the events are linked the most strong the response will be.

5) The law of recency says that the response that has most recently occurred is the reponse most likely to be associated with that stimulus.

6) He thought that he could turn someone into whatever he wished to if he could controlled the behavior. He also believed it was all psychological.

-Rodrigo Estevez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment

http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~Lynda_abbot/Behaviorism.html

Article 3, Performing under Sleep Deprivation: It´s in your genes

This study was made by, Cell Press, Antione Viola, and Derk Jan-Djik. The method of this study was the following; scientists applied the two different types of genes to two different groups of people, the short gene and the longer gene. At first they were allowed to sleep, then they were only granted to 4 hours of sleep, then they asked questions to both groups and recorded the answers and made many observations. The result of this study was that the group with the longer gene did worst than the short gene in all the tests. This was a very interesting article, although I had to read it 2 times so that I could get the theme and what the article was talking about, but it was a good fact to know about, and I enjoyed it a lot.

-Rodrigo Estevez

Article 2, Being a Night Owl In High School is Linked with Lower GPA scores

One of the persons who lead these experiments was Jennifer Peszka from and American Academy of Sleep Medicine. This study was made by comparing 89 students, some that were going to start their freshman year in an art college, and others that were ending freshman year, 17-20 years. The results of these studies were that if you don’t sleep enough your GPA is most likely to be below a B and those who have good sleep are over a B. This is a very interesting article, that it could really move students a lot, I think that if every student read this article they would sleep more and have better sleep, because what every High School and College student want is good grades.

-Rodrigo Estevez

Article 1, Starting school 1 hour later reduces teen car crashes

The people that are responsible of making this study is Science Daily and American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The process of making this study was a long process; it took many students to enroll in the experiment, and 2 years of observations. This first started in 1998, were above 6,000 students made a survey in Kansas, telling how much they slept in school and non school nights, the next year above 10,000 students made the survey again. After this second survey school in Kansas was delayed one hour. So this experiment was practically just observing how students drove when school´s start was delayed one hour. The results of all of these observations were that students drove well with more sleep, and this would reduce all of the teen car crashes. When I opened this article and read the title, I found it really interesting, it only took for me to read the title so I could read the entire article; honestly this was a very interesting article and a very interesting fact to know about.

-Rodrigo Estevez 

Teenage Brain

As said in the video, the teenage brain is a very complex brain, although it has the same parts as an adult brain, all the functions work in a different form, and the last part of the brain to develop in a teenager is the frontal lobe, and this lobe is the one who controls emotions, mood etc. That’s the reason that teenagers are really confused about what they are feeling, love? They think they are in love when they are not, they feel happiness when they are not supposed too, or humor when they are not supposed too, and sadness when they are not supposed to feel sadness. Teenagers are really difficult when it comes to their mood, they may be very bipolar because of the frontal lobe that is not fully developed. Teenagers don’t use their brain at the level they are supposed because they are thinking in things they are not supposed to think while they are in school etc, that’s why teenagers need a lot of sleep, and less work, because if teenagers don’t sleep much, they are making lots damage to their brain. In conclusion, the use of the teenage brain, is as tricky to understand as a baby brain, the only difference is that it is more developed.

-Rodrigo Estevez



How Do Our Brains Work?

1.       What does the word "hemisphere" refer to when talking about the brain?

When you talk about hemispheres referring to brains, it talks about the sides of the brain, like the right hemisphere and left hemisphere.

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

There are many functions that both sides of the brain do, for example the left brain does reading skills, and right brain controls emotions and recognizing family. In general the left side does skills like reading writing, and remembering vocabulary, and the right brain stores experiences and feelings and your emotions.

3.      What is the corpus collasum?

It’s a tissue that connects the two hemispheres of your brain. It also functions as a way of communication for both hemispheres.

4.      Explain the study performed by Paul Broca in which he discovered "Broca's Area."

This study made Paul Broca famous, the discovery of Broca’s Area, this is a part of the front lobe that gives the human body the ability to talk, he discovered this part of the front lobe by studying the people that were incapable of talking.

5.      Explain the study conducted by Roger Sperry in regard to "split brain."

Roger Sperry discovered the different kind of functions of both hemispheres of the brain. There was no cure for a kind of epilepsy, just by surgery and cutting off the connection of the hemispheres (Corpus Callosum). When they cut this connection they studied their different behavior and the brain in general. This studies demonstrated that both parts of the brain are very different and that they both have very different jobs. For example the left hemisphere job is the analytical and verbal jobs, the right hemisphere takes care about music, space, and perception.

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

Wernicke’s Area is one of the parts of the “Cerebral Cortex”. The other part is the Broca’s Area, this area is responsible for audition, and speech. Wernicke saw that brain damage also caused language problems.

7.       Which lobe is most responsible for vision?

Right Hemisphere

8.       Which lobe is most responsible for hearing and language?

Left Hemisphere

9.       Which lobe is most responsible for performing math calculations?

Left Hemisphere

10.   Which lobe is most responsible for judgment, reasoning and impulse control?

The Frontal Lobe

 Works Cited:

http://www.sosimplesightwords.com/faqs.html

http://www.ask.com/bar?q=brain+hemisphere&page=1&qsrc=2891&dm=all&ab=0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbrain.web-us.com%2Fbrain%2FLRBrain.html&sg=esq3jwfW2NavEmQTLokSz0s5v9gIYx83NXX%2BMnaQ8c%3D%0D%0A&tsp=1285097155327

http://www.ansf wers.com/topic/corpus-callosum

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Broca

http://nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/split-brain/background.html

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/split.html  

                http://psychology.about.com/od/windex/g/def_wernickesar.htm

-Rodrigo Estevez