martes, 30 de noviembre de 2010


John B. Watson


Explain (in detail) how Watson's "Little Albert" study was conducted.

Watson put in his experiment a baby called Little Albert. He showed a white rat to Little Albert and afterward slammed two metal pipes together behind Little Albert’s head. This occasioned to Little Albert cry because the metal pipes made a loud noise. Watson continued smashing the metal pipes, Little Albert cried when the white rat was around him. So the fear generalized because Little Albert became afraid of people or animals with white beards and hair.




Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Watson's study.

The conditioned stimulus was the white rat, unconditioned Stimulus was the loud noise, the conditioned response was the fear little Albert had.




Explain at least two limitations of this study.
  • This was unethical
  • He only used a baby



Explain Watson's law of frequency.

The law of frequency states that when 2 things or events are connected, the stronger will be that association.




Explain Watson's law of recency.

Watson’s law of recency states that responds occur immediately after the stimulus.





Explain the basic assumptions of behaviorism according to Watson.

John Watson says everything basically depends on the environment.

Ivan Pavlov


What was Pavlov actually studying when he developed his theory of classical conditioning?
Pavlov was studying the digestive system when he developed his theory of classical conditioning.




Explain (in detail) how Pavlov's experiment was conducted.
Pavlov would measure the saliva the dog put out when seeing the food and hearing the bell.




Identify the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned response from Pavlov's experiment.
Pavlov concentrated on investigating how conditioning responses are acquired. He used food on his new experiment as the unconditioned stimulus. He elect the sound of a metronome to be the neutral stimulus. The dogs listen the sound of the metronome, and then the food was rapidly in front of them. The food was the unconditioned stimulus , then the metronome which was chosen to be the neutral stimulus had become as the dog associates the metronome with food, to be the conditioned stimulus that provoked the conditioned response which was the salivation of the dog.



Explain what extinction means in relation to classical conditioning.
Extinction occurs when the classical conditioning or response decreases until it disappears.



Explain what stimulus generalization means in relation to classical conditioning. Stimulus generalization is when a reaction to a specific stimulus is connected to other stimuli and occurs to the other stimulus.




Explain what stimulus discrimination means in relation to classical conditioning.

Stimulus discrimination is about the learning response to one stimulus and not the other one.




Explain at least two limitations of this experiment.
  • Dogs can salivate when doing any types of efforts
  • These are dogs not humans, this could be different on human



Explain what Pavlov theorized about how we learn.

He makes me to understand with his experiment that we learn threw classical conditioning. Also that we will give a response when we relate to things together.

martes, 2 de noviembre de 2010


Starting High School One Hour Later May Reduce Teen Traffic Accidents

Science Daily (Dec. 17, 2008) — A new study shows that after a one-hour delay of school start times, teens increased their average nightly hours of sleep and decreased their "catch-up sleep" on the weekends, and they were involved in fewer auto accidents.


- Name of people/institution responsible for conducting the study

Barbara Phillips, MD, director of the UK Healthcare Good Samaritan Sleep Center in Lexington, KY.


- Thoroughly explain the method of the study

The method consisted of two surveys, one administer in 1998 and the other one, one year later in 1999. 72.8 percent filled out the questionnaire before and after changing school start times with the difference of one hour later. The second part of the experiment was computing separated crash rates before and after school start times were changed concerning teen drivers.


- Describe the findings or results

Students sleeping at least 8 hours increased significantly from 35.7 percent to 50 percent.

Students who got at least nine hours of sleep also increased from 6.3 percent to 10.8 percent.

The average amount of "catch-up sleep," decreased from 1.9 hours to 1.1 hours.

Daytime sleepiness decreased, as reported by students using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.

Average crash rates for teen drivers in the study dropped 16.5 percent compared to the two years prior to the change, while teen crash rates for the rest of the state increased 7.8 percent over the same time period.


- State your opinion on what you think of the article

I think that sleeping one more hour and decreasing the rate of accidents by 16.5 percent is good outcome of starting school one hour later, considering that for the rest of the county the rate of accidents increase by 7.8 percent. I would like it if we could start school one hour later.

martes, 28 de septiembre de 2010

How Our Brain Works????




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

The two sides of the brain.

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

Differences: 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.

3. What is the corpus callasum?


The Corpus Collasum is a broad transverse nerve tract connecting the two cerebral hemispheres.

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


Pierre Paul Broca was a French surgeon that studied the brain of a a patient with a speech impairment alter his death. He concluded that there is an specific part of the brain in charge of speech production which was called Broca’s Area.





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

Roger sperry was the one who started the whole idea of brain lateralization. Roger Sperry
won nobel prizes after developing this idea.

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


He found
about the temporal lobe. In his study he studied the comprehension of a person.

7. Which lobe is most responsible for vision?


Occipital Lobe.

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


Temperal Lobe.

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

Parental Lobe.

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

Th
e Frontal Lobe.

Who Was Phineas Gage???


Phineas Gage was born July 9 , 1823 and died in May 21, 1860 in San Francisco American railroad construction foreman, is probably the most famous person to have survived severe damage to the brain. One of its functions was to place explosive charges in holes drilled into the rock. To do that, he had to fill the hole with gunpowder, placed a detonator, and finally covered her with sand and crushed sand with a heavy metal bar. But he forgot throw the sand before hitting the bar, so when he did it there was an explosion that make the bar went to his head, the bar had a measure of 3 cm of diameter, and 1 meter of large.

Lateralization is the idea that the two halves of the brain's cerebral cortex,helps us to understand our behavior, our personality, our creativity, and our ability to use the proper mode of thinking when performing particular tasks. The real concept of Brain Lateralization is a longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. The sides resemble each other and each hemisphere's structure is generally mirrored by the other side. The brain lateralization research showed that many of these negative avoidance and emotional tendencies were mediated by the right, non-dominant, unconscious hemisphere. The term brain lateralization refers to the fact that the two halves of the human brain are not exactly alike. Each hemisphere has funcitonal specializations: some function whose neural mechanisms are localized primarily in one half of the brain.

miércoles, 8 de septiembre de 2010

Nature VS Nurture...............



Nature VS Nurture Means.......

Basically an expression that is shorthand appearance for debates about the relative significance of a person's inborn individuality, which is considered as "nature" versus individual experiences, which is "nurture" in shaping or causing personage differences in physical and behavioural character.




This Term was used by........

Francis Galton. Some sources claim that it could also be a reference to the words of Shakespeare's Prospero in orientation to Caliban.



My Opinion......

I personally think that nurture does play a huge part in forming personality, its very much like manners, someone with no manners can be perceived as rude yet no-one can be born with manners. It is something that has to be learnt.

viernes, 27 de agosto de 2010

Charles Darwin



Who was Charles Darwin?
Charles Darwin was................. born in Shrewsburry, Shropshire , England on 12 February 1809 at his family home,the mount. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and Susannah Darwin. He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side. Also was an English Naturalist who established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.





What was the Theory of Natural Selection?
Natural selection is a natural law by which geneticallyheritable traits become more or less common in a population over successive generations. This selection in interaction with the production of variation, the possible genetic fixation process and possibly, in several cases, with little epigenetic process determine the evolution of the species.