Topics in the News?
What I would like you to do is to start applying what we are learning in class to real world matters. Some might ask, "What good is learning psychology if we can't apply it to real world matters?" So that is what we are going to do with this topical blog assignment.
What I would like you to do is to either go to NPR (http://www.npr.org/ ), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ ) or any news site listed at the bottom of this page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ listed in their news sources) and read, watch, or listen to something that is interesting to you and relates to what we have been learning in the class.
Please respond the blog by BRIEFLY telling us in essay format:
What your topic is and what the piece you chose was. Why you picked it (what made it interesting for you) and what did you expect to see. What did you find most interesting about the piece
Next discuss IN DETAIL how it relates to the class using terms, terminology, and concepts that we have learned so far in class. Include definitions.
Please make sure you use the terms, terminology and concepts you have learned so far in the class. It should be apparent from reading your post that you are a college student well underway in a course in psychology.
Make a list of key terms and concepts you used in your post.
Let me know if you have any questions.
--Dr. M
I decided to obtain more information about Systematic Desensitization. The main purpose of Systematic Desensitization is to help reduce the stress and learn how to cope with such things as phobias, fears, and taught how to increase relaxation in people. It is a type of therapy that helps patients overcome major phobias or anxiety disorders. Systematic Desensitization is a type of counterconditioning. In counterconditioning, the attempt is to reduce the intensity of the conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus. The first step to Systematic Desensitization is to teach clients how to used relaxation skills. They need to be taught how to create relaxation within their bodies. Clients are taught skills in contrasting between initial tension and feelings of relaxation. There first job was to tighten and relax muscles within their bodies. This helped them to contrast those feelings and see what it feels like when muscles are relaxed and the good feelings it brings. Then the clients need to learn how to deal with and overcome situations that cause anxiety. The clients first establish a hierarchy of fears or an anxiety hierarchy. The hierarchy rates the clients most anxiety producing situations that are ranked least to most distressing situations. The client starts at the bottom and learns to overcome the simplest fear or anxiety and then continues to go up the hierarchy till they learn to deal with and overcome the greatest fear and anxiety. This is also referred to as gradual desensitization. In the end the hope is to help clients completely overcome their fears or simply learn excellent ways in how to deal with their fears and anxieties so it won’t affect their lives anymore.
A=seeing a snake
B=muscles tense, but change it to a relaxing feeling
C=fear is gone over snake
Terms: Counterconditioning, Systematic Desenitization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sysden.htm
http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Systematic-desensitization.html
I also found this subject very interesting due to the fact that it was something new. Also that one could become not afraid anymore!
My topical blog is going to be about the schedule of reinforcement called fixed interval. I am Catholic and the church season of Lent just started yesterday for the Catholic church. If you do not know what the season of Lent is, in a nutshell, it is when Catholics do not eat meat on Fridays and try and give up something for the length of the church season, which is 40 days and 40 nights. I thought that this time period would be a good time to also practice what I have been learning in Behavior Modification. I am going to try and change my behavior of soda drinking. I will gradually ween myself off of Diet Pepsi during the 40 day period by using a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement. I will break this 40 day period up into phases. Each Phase will consist of a 3 week period. Currently, I drink around 4 or 5 Diet Pepsis a day. I would like to change this behavior to little or no pop at all.
Phase 1: 2 Diet Pepsis over a 1 week span
Phase 2: 2 Diet Pepsis during this Phase time span
Phase 3: 1 Diet Pepsi during this Phase time span (End of Lent)
Phase 4: 1 Diet Pepsi every month
***Trying to replace soda with water, juice, tea, or carbonated water.
Antecedent-Stop drinking so much soda
Behavior- Using a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement to change my soda drinking habits
Consequence- Changing the behavior to drinking more water, tea, or carbonated water.
TERMS: schedule of reinforcement, fixed interval, antecedent, behavior, consequence, behavior
http://brembs.net/operant/
http://allpsych.com/psychology101/reinforcement.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement
I think this is an interesting way of looking at fixed intervals!! I tried this once and it didn't last long but good luck!!
In my blog I've decided to discuss positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the introduction of a desirable stimulus contingent upon emitting a target behavior, with the goal of increasing the frequency of the response. The article I chose for this is "A Shrinking City Knocks Down Neighborhoods" by Chana Jofee-Walt. I chose this article because I found it interesting and it can relate to behavior modification in many ways, one of those being positive reinforcement.
When I first looked at this piece I didn't expect it to be so heartbreaking. I can't believe a town would just agree to let it's self be totally extinguished. However, with the economic crises they had no chance. I also find it interesting because I didn't know towns could just decide to not be towns anymore and stop expanding.
I think that this relates to bmod because the town just decided that it didn't want to work anymore, which made me think of extinction. The reason I correlate extinction with this is because the town tried to instill so many positive reinforcers (adding businesses, NASCAR, etc) however none of these ideas actually worked so the addition of these things was most likely to cause a positive punishment. The city would have suffered more than gained with these new additions because they would have wasted a lot of money and time building these things. To tie this all in with extinction, it's like they got so many postitive/negative punishments/reinforcers that, in the end, they weren't as affected by them because they were just going to 'give up'.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/03/11/134432054/a-shrinking-city-knocks-down-neighborhoods
This is really sad that an entire town could just give up. At least they tried to save it through adding positive things to it. It's sad that they didn't make it.
The title of the article is "Just talking with your doctor could help you lose weight". The title in itself presents A=being sick set the occasion for you to B=talk to a doctor which results in C=you lose weight. Of couse this is not possible nor is it technically what the article is saying. It is how the title would register in our behavior modification brains!
When wanting to lose weight you need to both increase(reinforcement) certain behaviors(exercise, eat healthy) and decrease(punishment) others(eat unhealthy, inactive). The article doesn't suggest any ways in which to lose weight or what the doctor is saying to help them lose weight. So we are left to assume. The article touches on the the fact that some doctors do not tell patients that they are overweight or fat, because they are afraid of offending them. COuld this be because there is no reinforcer or punishment in place for them to do so? I would assume that since they became a doctor and took the hypocratic oath there would be reinforcement for them in the fact that they could possibly change and save a life. ANyway, doctors are using words carefully to not offend patients. Perhaps offending them will be punishment enough for them to reduce their lifestyle choices and behaviors causing them to be fat. By talking to a doctor who tells you you need to lose wieght and why you do will probably fall under punishment. It may be effective because depending on what he/she says about the state of your health, the possible diseases you get can be abrupt(scare you into changing behaviors quickly) or intense. Fear of hearth disease, diabities, or other diseases resulting from obesity can be a huge influence to change behaviors. You could look at gross pictures in order to stop you from emitting bad weight manangement heaviors. This would be positive punishment.
If you begin to increase certain behaviors to lose weight you are being reinforced by feeling more energized, feeling and looking better, maybe you are even getting complements. The reinforcers that come from losing weight will have both intrinsic(to you) and extrinsic(to society) value. It will also have broad value because it is useful beyond the immediate reinforcement of looking and feeling better! It will help prevent those diseases and possibly increase the length of your life.
At the end of the article baron stressed that there are wrong messages telling us to do all these wrong things. When I read this it immediately brought to mind dicriminative stimuli. Seeing a big juicy cheeseburger sign near a drive through when you are incredibly hungry and only have a few moments for lunch will be a discriminative stimuli which determines the likelihood of a behavior occuring. If we had eaten breakfast and packed our own lunch, or we hadn't seen that sign it would be less likely that we would have partaken in the cheeseburger which does nothing to help us reduce that weight.
In the comments for this article someone wrote, "to me it makes perfect sense. If you're talking to your doctor, then you can't be shoving something in your mouth." Differential reinforcement of the Incompatible came to mind here. Unfortunately, we cannot constantly be talking in order to not be eating, but I laughed a little when I read the comment.
Terms: reinforcement/punishment/effective punishment:abruptness,intense/intrisic value/extrinsic value/broad value/positive punishment/discriminative stimuli/differential reinforment incompatible.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/11/134211284/just-talking-with-your-doctor-could-help-you-lose-weight
My article was The Very Hungry Caterpillar: A Dubious Weapon in the War on Childhood Obesity. I first thought it would look interesting because I remember reading this author’s book’s when I was in grade school—so much so that one of my most lucid memories of first grade was creating tissue paper art to mimic his. I’m not sure what I expected from the article, because I haven’t read any of his stuff since I was in grade school, obviously but once I read it I guess it made a lot of sense.
It was about how it could possibly be sending mixed messages to our children about proper eating habits. According to the story, the caterpillar eats through numerous different fruits before he makes his way into about five different types of sweets—like cakes and candies, and only then has he consumed enough to actually make the transformation into a butterfly. This obviously gives a few different types of messages to the children—1, eating fruits and veggies is not a bad idea; 2, eating sweets may or may not be a BETTER idea; 3, you should probably gorge yourself with as much food as possible. So, all in all, it may be coming across as an incentive to eat everything we want, and as much as we’d like.
This story could relate into the ABC’s of behavior modification in a few ways—A) Organism is hungry, B)Organism eats fruit C)Organism is not satisfied—which also starts another chain of A)Organism is not satisfied with just fruit; B)Organism eats sweets and C)Organism is satiated.
Or possibly A)Organism is hungry; B)Organism binges on a number of different things to eat and C)Organism is satisfied after eating copious amounts of food.
The article then goes on to explain how parents should discuss this book with their children so that they know that the eating habits of the caterpillar are not preferable for a child by explaining the physical punishments that they may endure by eliciting these behaviors. For instance, the children might be introduced to positive punishment after eating the sweets by having a stomach ache or feeling uncomfortable or jittery, and perhaps gaining weight. Or, by eating very large amounts of food in one sitting will also lead to similar positive punishment, by the addition of a stomach ache and discomfort from eating so much food.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/11/the-very-hungry-caterpillar-a-dubious-weapon-in-the-war-on-childhood-obesity/#more-27878
This week for my topical blog I decided to focus on positive punishment which, as a reminder, is the introduction or addition of an aversive stimulus, contingent upon emitting an undesirable behavior, with a goal of decreasing the frequency of such a response. The article I chose to read is “Wis. Assembly Cuts Public Worker Bargaining Rights” about how the state of Wisconsin is passing a bill against unions by not allowing collective bargaining.
This can be related to behavior modification is many ways. First I should explain that while this was being debated there was large protesting over it. This article is about how they passed the bill and that they are going to sign it as soon as legally possible. There has been a large increase in protesting since. So I decided to relate this process to positive punishment base on the behavior of the politicians. I put it in to the ABCs to help relate it.
Antecedent: taking away collective bargaining from unions
Behavior: Signing the bill quicker (many believe this is aversive)- but this will, believing by politicians to…
Consequence: decrease the protesting that is occurring in Madison, Wisconsin.
You have an introduction to an aversive stimulus (signing quicker) in hopes to decrease an undesirable behavior (protesting) with a goal to decrease the frequency of such a response (if they sign quicker to move it along and start applying it, they might believe people will not protest so much on another bill if this one works out). The passing the bill of ridding collective bargaining elicits a protesting behavior from unhappy union workers and other who are not happy with this passing. This is how the article relates to behavior modification.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/11/134419331/protests-swell-after-wis-senate-curbs-union-rights
“Cigarette Displays – To Be Banned In England”
Cigarette displays are piled high on England superstore counters and shelves. A new law that’s effective beginning in April 2012 will force store owners to store cigarettes under the counter and out of sight. Finland is also addressing the problem of advertisement by banning over the counter advertisement. The article even has introduced the idea of banning imitation tobacco products like chocolate cigarette’s and licorice pipes. The article addressed the issue of people seeing the tobacco products, which acts as a stimulus eliciting a response from consumers to purchase cigarette’s or tobacco products. The article also stated that some places are putting aversive pictures on cigarette labels such as tumors and corpses. The article has also proposed a generic labeling idea, which would take away from the advertisement of cigarette companies who try and target teens. The article relates to the concept of discriminative stimuli, which is an antecedent that acts as a signal for a certain behavior to occur in response to stimuli. Discriminative stimuli also tell whether you will be reinforced or punished for the behavior. I thought the topic of discriminative stimuli was interesting because I find it amazing how signs and pictures can have some an impact on our behavior. The article addresses the issue of children and tobacco users seeing cigarettes or cigarette advertisement eliciting a buying response from consumers. The article expresses their belief that by forcing convenient stores to store cigarettes under the counter, the discriminative stimulus will be hidden from view, reducing cigarette purchases and will decrease the likelihood that non-smokers will start smoking. The aversive pictures that are placed on the packs of cigarettes also serve as a discriminative stimulus because they signal a non-buying behavior and signal that you will be punished if you start smoking cigarettes due to the negative health effects of cigarettes. Also by possibly enforcing a generic label law, tobacco companies would not be allowed to use colorful advertisement or murals that target teens. The colorful advertisement’s act as discriminative stimuli because they draw attention and elicit a buying behavior from consumers. Discriminative stimuli are powerful signals that elicit responses from individuals and are present in our daily lives.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/cigarette-displays-to-be-_n_833440.html
Terms: stimulus, elicits, aversive, discriminative stimuli, antecedent, reinforce, punish.
My topic is reinforcement because this story and video go hand in hand with this topic. It is interesting because I remember learning a little about self reinforcement and how it is only important for one’s self to be reinforced if they are continuing to commit that act. In this case the comedian is naturally funny and although I am sure he has a lot of self reinforcement, he receives a lot of positive reinforcement as well. The self reinforcement is not really necessary for this comedian to feel in this case because he knows the audience is happy with the material he is presenting. It is positive reinforcement because when he tells something that he as well as the audience thinks is funny, they clap and whistle to tell him they think it was funny. I find most interesting about this piece that the comedian does not need self reinforcement because he gets positive feedback from his viewers. If no one in the audience was clapping or laughing, but he thought he was still funny, self reinforcement may play a bigger role in what he is doing. He elicits a funny behavior to the audience and in return they emit a laughing response because they think he is a good comedian. A situation can be looked at with the ABC’s in a comedian act quite easily:
A: on stage under lights
B: tell funny joke or story
C: people laugh and comedian receives positive reinforcement
Terms: self reinforcement, positive reinforcement, emit, elicit, ABC’s, response,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/13/snl-zach-galifianakis-monologue_n_835079.html
I found an article entitled, “Hitting the pause button is good for your health,” which really intrigued my interest. The article had to do with taking random times in life to just relax and not think about anything stressful for a little while. It also went on to talk about how we as people have the fight flight response to stress in which are bodies go through stages to help deal with stress, but the thing is our bodies are suppose to be in this stage constantly. If our always in this stage it can reduce are immune system and cause many problems mentally and physically. So the main objective the article is trying to say is that we should take time out of our busy schedule and just relax and calm our bodies so we aren’t constantly in a stress mode.
This article really speaks to me because as a college student I’m constantly stressing about something. I’m constantly trying to balance work, class, school, friends, family, money, and my future and this can really be stressful to deal with all at once. So learning that having my body constantly stressed is not healthy for my life. I found it very interesting that just taking a moment to just relax and breathe for a bit can help stop my stress and help me focus more on the work at hand than just going at it nonstop.
I believe this article can really relate to our behavior modification class in many ways. Reliving our bodies from stress can have such broad value because it can help us stay healthy, and focus more on things. Reduced stress levels can also have intrinsic and extrinsic values on a person. Feeling good about one’s self and having a positive outlook can be very intrinsic. This can radiate off of a person which can be seen by others and have extrinsic outcome come from it (Ex. Looking and acting healthy can help you get along with people more which can lead to many possibilities like jobs or relationships). I think the main reason we have so much stress is because we have reinforced the behaviors of our everyday life so much. We thing we have to be constantly doing something or otherwise we might fail at something. We think that if we constantly do something which is stressful we will be reinforced with a feeling of completing it, but really we are being punished at the same time with the deterioration of our health. So we need to reinforce the positive behaviors of balancing stress. An example maybe not trying to tackle so many projects at once, don’t take a full load of class if you have to work during college, talking time to focus on yourself and relax a little. If the behaviors of avoiding stressful situations are reinforced, than stress itself will not occur as much. We control the behaviors that we endorse or accept so we can change our behaviors to be either good or bad. I believe that is the main reason this article is works with behavior modification so much, we can control what behaviors we partake in, so we can control are stress using the techniques we have learned in behavior modification.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcelle-pick-rnc/unplug-and-recharge_b_834621.html
Reinforcement, broad value, extrinsic, intrinsic, punishment.
For my topic, I looked into the story about "Less Than Human- The Psychology of Cruelty." This story is very much related to the topic of punishment and reinforcement. Soldiers were treating people like they were not actually people just because they were put in a position of hierarchy. They would go to the point of posing with the dead Afgans and taking pictures. Although this seems really sick to all of us, these people had it implanted in their brains that these people were inhuman. They were constantly positively reinforced for how they were treating them--sometimes by the photos taken, or by the laughs of the other soldiers. This topic is very interesting to me because it gives me a sense of understanding of why naturally good people turn into such monsters in certain circumstances. The piece related how we treat people today to the way the Nazis treated the Jews. The Nazis committed even more vile crimes than what happened today because to the reinforcement they received for it. Positive in that they were praised for honoring what is right and negatively because they were not being put in the same category as the Jew and other minorities.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-less-than-human
reinforcement, positive, negative
The topic I chose for this assignment was positive reinforcement and I used an article from NPR titled “Gamifying the system to create better behavior.” I chose this article because I am a strong believer in using reinforcement instead of punishment to change behavior. This article was exactly what I expected to see. The idea of using cameras on highways to send people speeding tickets has been around for a while and the only real change in behavior is when the person sees the camera, they slow down. However, this gamifying idea is to use positive reinforcement intermittently, by when the camera catches someone going the speed limit or under, they are entered into a lottery to win money. This idea is to elicit people to emit the speed limit driving behavior continuously, rather than slowing down when they see the camera, because it has already caught them speeding by the time they slow down anyways. I like this idea because it is more reinforcing to go the speed limit when there is a chance of intermittent reinforcement for doing so, otherwise people just take the chance of the camera not catching them and hope to not receive a ticket ofpunishment. This is done on a schedule of reinforcement, but because it is money they will be winning, they are more likely to do it.
Terms used: Intermittent reinforcement, emit, elicit, punishment
My topic was about the Republicans wanting to stop federal funding to the planned parenthood program and how they don’t want the funding going there because they promote and provide abortion in some of their clinics (Federal funding has for abortions has been banned since the 70’s). I chose this topic simply because I do not agree with the proposal at all, I think Planned Parenthood has provided great services for communities everywhere and abortion is not a huge percent of what they spend their time or money focusing on. I know the republicans for all for anti-abortion, prolife bullshit, but it should be the last thing they should be focusing on, I find it interesting how they make it such a big deal when we are fighting a war we shouldn’t, or people are losing their jobs and homes everywhere, and abortion is such a huge deal for them to focus on!
They are trying to provide punishment to the foundation for assisting in abortions by cutting federal funding, it’s an undesirable (behavior) service to the republicans and they want to cut funding because of their beliefs on the issue of abortions. By cutting the funding to them because of their association with abortion clinics they are trying to elicit those to stop with abortions to be able to be funding by title X.
A-Proving federal funding
B- Stop providing federal funding for Planned Parenthood
C- Less federal funding in hopes to stop the services for abortions
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/13/135354952/planned-parenthood-makes-abortion-foes-see-red
terms: punishment, elicit
For this blog post, I decided to write about a political battle in Oklahoma over Planned Parenthood and that state's WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program. WIC hands out vouchers for low-income parents so that they can more easily afford food and formula. The controversy in Oklahoma is that there are 9 independent contractors besides the state who administer these vouchers, and one of the big ones is Planned Parenthood. Some politicians in Oklahoma want to ban Planned Parenthood from the WIC program because it provides abortion referrals.
I apologize if this sounds like a soap box rant, but this is nuts. Abortion has nothing to do with the WIC program, and by taking the program away from Planned Parenthood, the legislature in Oklahoma would be forcing the 9300 low-income women and children who rely on Planned Parenthood for this service every year to go somewhere else for their food aid. For many of them, that somewhere else would probably be a food pantry.
Political rants aside, let's look at the ABCs of this behavior:
The antecedent is probably party devotion/campaign promises to oppose abortion in general and Planned Parenthood in particular. Promise-keeping behavior is very similar to the rule-governed behavior we've talked about in this class (in fact it might even be a subset of that behavior). I think having a more black and white, good vs. evil mentality that seems to be more common among conservatives probably contributes to this as well, because no one is denying that Planned Parenthood is doing a good thing by helping administer WIC. The logic is that this other bad thing that they do makes them bad altogether.
The behavior itself is trying to bar the independent contractors from handing out WIC vouchers, and we don't know the consequences yet, since this battle is still going on. I think it's reasonable to speculate that in next year's elections the candidates who opposed Planned Parenthood on this will be likely to be reinforced for that behavior by getting re-elected, especially considering the fact that Oklahoma is traditionally a red state.
Terms: antecedent, rule-governed behavior, consequence, reinforce