Location: Home
Last month I acquired a pet puppy, small and lovely. Every night after dinner, I would clean the utensils, pick the puppy and sit on the couch with it as I watched a movie. For the one and a half hours that I watch, I would stroke him as he sat on my lap until he went to sleep. Today as I finished dinner and proceeded to wash the utensils, my puppy rushed off to the couch, on the exact position that I sit and intently looked at me as he waited for me on the couch.
Psychological application:
In the above situation, my puppy learned from repetitive activity over time to know when I would be on the couch holding him. This is in line with the conditional stimulus as indicated by Wyrwicka (2000). This is where an individual learns to respond in a given way when a stimulus is presented. In this case, my puppy takes washing utensils as the stimulus meaning that I would then go to the couch.
Observation 2
Location: Train Station
My father always drops my kid brother to his kindergarten classes. Every time as the young boy heads off to the class, my father always gives him a peck on the cheek and says, “Be a good boy.” Today, my brother and I saw my father off to the train station as he was leaving on a business trip. As the train approached, my father gave him a peck, winked and repeated the same words. My kid brother looked around and said, “But daddy, the teacher is not here.”
Psychological Application:
In this case, my kid brother had learnt that my father always pecked him and asked him to be good when he went to school. This is a form of conditioned stimulus that the boy had learned to associate with going to class. This is just as explained about conditioned stimulus by Wyrwicka (2000).
Complete Reference:
Wyrwicka, W. (2000). Conditioning: Situation versus Intermittent Stimulus. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
