Ivan Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia, in the year of 1849, in the family of the Orthodox priest. In 1875, he graduated from the University in St. Petersburg with the Life Sciences degree. After graduation, Pavlov studied medicine and was admitted to the Institute which specialized in Veterinary. He was in Germany and Belarus. There he was making experiments in the laboratories, researching digestion. But after coming back to Russia he began to study glandular secretions. His experiment animal was the dog. Pavlov applies surgical techniques to those dogs that is why it was difficult to make the dog healthy and alive. Thirty dogs had died before he performed the operation right. Street thieves were stealing dogs for him both with collars and without them (Blumenfeld, 2008, n.p.).
Blumenfeld states that Pavlov’s discovery demonstrated the relationship between glandular secretion and the work of a reflex action or actions (2008, n.p.). Pavlov recognized conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. Reflexes are responses to stimuli. These responses can be either innate or learned. According to Pavlov, unconditioned reflexes are innate responses to stimuli; consequently, conditioned reflexes are learned responses to stimuli (Blumenfeld, 2008, n.p.). Ivan Pavlov discovered the form of learning called classical conditioning. Thus, experience and learning resulted in a change in behavior. Classical conditioning helps animals to develop the relationships between the events in the environment. Pavlov named the first event the conditioned stimulus, and the second event got name unconditioned stimulus. Pavlov also discovered the notion of stimulus generalization. When his dogs were accustomed to one bell sound, they also responded to other similar sounds. On Pavlov’s record there is also the discovery of the conditional response extinction (Learning: Lecture 2, 2004, n.p.). In 1917, Russian government began to support Pavlov’s experiments and investigations. At that time he was working in the field of Experimental Psychology. In 1920 he switched from discovering animals’ reflexes to the investigation of the humans’ disorganization, in order to find the possibility to control human behavior. Actually, Pavlov and his colleagues were finding the ways to make people go mad. The power to influence and control human minds was highly beneficial to the authorities of the USSR, as they wanted their country to be the world leader (Blumenfeld, 2008, n.p.).
Not everybody appreciate Pavlov’s work. Daniel P. Todes, for instance, wrote a new biography of Ivan Pavlov. Todes investigated his biography and all his works, evaluating the contribution Pavlov made to the world. Todes, the history of medicine professor, states that many Pavlov’s achievements are overestimated because of bad translation. In fact, the Russian scientist never used the term conditioned reflex, though he got the world fame due to this idea. Todes also notes, that his discovery comes down to simply inaccurate translation of the Russian word uslovnyi, which means conditional, but not conditioned as everybody used to think. He believed other reflexes to be of greater importance. In his experiments, Pavlov developed “the system of sham feeding”. As a result, dog’s drool proved more valid than he could have supposed. Actually, Pavlov’s research originally was slightly related to psychology. The primary focus was on the salivary secretions and on collecting data referring to this research. The Soviet Union regarded Pavlov as a scientific variant of Marx (Specter, 2014, n.p.).
Console Gaming Behavior
Burrhus Frederic Skinner, known as B.F. Skinner, offered new form of learning, as opposed to the classical conditioning. Skinner believed that human mind and human behavior are too complex to be explained by classical conditioning. He found absolutely new approach, according to which the understanding of behavior consists in looking at an action itself, its causes and consequences. Skinner called that the operant conditioning. Within operant conditioning such notion as operant is used. Operants are actions that have specific intentions and influence the surrounding environment. The work of Thorndike, who studied animals learning, namely the law of effect, was a basis for Skinner’s theory. Thanks to Skinner the law of effect got a new term – reinforcement. This term is used along with the behavior. Generally speaking, reinforced behavior is repeated, not reinforced behavior weakens with the time. Skinner also operated with the term of punishers in his work. Punishers are responses that reduce the frequency of behavior. Reinforces, according to Skinner, are environmental responses, that increase the likely frequency of behavior and can be either positive or negative (McLeod, 2016, n.p.).
Skinner investigated positive and negative reinforcement making experiments on a hungry rat. The results showed that hungry rats would repeat the same action that is expected from them for many times in order to receive food. Skinner showed the effect of negative reinforcement on the rats as well (McLeod, 2016, n.p.).
Reinforces and punishers certainly affect person’s behavior. People behave in a specific manner and learn from the consequences of their actions. Both negative and positive reinforcements may be an effective tool in managing people’s behavior (McLeod, 2016, n.p.). There are many addictive behaviors such as smoking, drinking, shopping, chocolate addiction. Console gaming is also a kind of addictive behavior. Not only children and teenagers suffer from it but also adults. This is really a serious problem in the world of the 21st century. This problem has to be solved as soon as possible in order to prevent a number of negative consequences.
Speaking about console gaming in particular, I would modify it using the principles of operant conditioning such as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, schedules of reinforcement. Positive reinforcement provides consequences when people have rewards for their behavior. In the case of console gaming, parents could apply to their children money reward. For example, if children do not play for a week, they get a reward of $5. If children receive $5 after each week without playing games, they will be more likely to repeat such behavior in the future and to get the reward. On the other hand, negative reinforcement may also have great effect on the child’s behavior. For example, the withdrawal of the unpleasant reinforcement can also have positive effect. If children spend a week with console gaming, they will have to pay their parents $5. The essence of negative reinforcement lies in removing the unpleasant experience. Punishment is sometimes difficult to be distinguished from negative reinforcement and there are problems with using it. Besides, it is not effective as it only tells you what you are not allowed to do(McLeod, 2016, n.p.). So, it is better to use both positive and negative reinforcements, than some kinds of punishment.
Problems of eye-witness
Human memory is a difficult process having been discovered for centuries by many psychologists and which still has something unknown. Memory is defined as “the ability to store and retrieve information over time”; while another important notion referring to memory is cognition, which is “the processes of acquiring and using knowledge”("Saylor Academy Open Textbooks | Saylor Academy", 2016, n.p.). So, as we can see, these two are totally different notions, though interrelated. They both help us to understand the environments. Cognitive psychology is a field of psychology that studies memory and cognition. Our memory allows us to form either simple or complex memories. Actually, we would not have a normal life without these memories, because such things as remembering where you have parked a car or how to drive it really matter a lot ("Saylor Academy Open Textbooks | Saylor Academy", 2016, n.p.).
One more interesting aspect of our memory is remembering things and judging. Speaking about eye-witnesses, there were many cases with victims being sure that they clearly remembered their offenders, but in fact their memories were inaccurate. Such situation occurred to Jennifer Thompson, after being raped. A 22 year old student tried her best to memorize her offender’s face. Actually, she was sure she did, when came to the police the same day. Several days after the incident, she identified one man as rapist and testified against him. The man, Ronald Cotton, was imprisoned for 11 years, when later he took DNA testing which proved his innocence. Her memory was inaccurate, though she did not have even the slightest doubt that it was Ronald Cotton who raped her. This situation demonstrates that our memory is far from being perfect. There are many factors that influence the storage and retrieving the stored information. They are setting of the event and cognitive processes. Cognitive biases have influence on human memory. They are errors that occur because of the invalid use of cognitive processes ("Saylor Academy Open Textbooks | Saylor Academy", 2016, n.p.).
Elizabeth Loftus is a psychologist, whose investigation was based on the issues that can affect eyewitness. Loftus suggests that when testifying, eyewitnesses’ memory is rather flexible. The original information on the event may be modified or even changed with the course of time. In fact, it can be greatly influenced by the leading questions at trial, thus this information is unreliable. A leading question suggests what the answer should be (McLeod, 2010, n.p.).
Loftus, together with Palmer made a psychology study in 1974 aimed at testing their suggestions about altered memory during eyewitnesses’ testimony and that these distorted testimony accounts are due to the leading questions. The study was called Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction. To carry out that study, they asked people to evaluate the speed of vehicles, so that many did not know much about and could switch on the imagination. These people were 45 American students. They were shown a short film which presented traffic accidents and later were asked to describe one accident as if they were close to the place of that accident and had to testify. They were then asked similar questions about the accident but with different verbs used. The results showed that the verb choice influenced the participants’ responses. There are two reasons for this: the information conveyed in the question led to the inaccurate answer but not to the change in memory; the verb conveyed in the question led to the change in eyewitnesses’ perception of the event (McLeod, 2010, n.p.).
References
Blumenfeld, S. (2016). Pavlov's dogs andAmericaneducation. Thenewamerican.com. Retrieved 3 May 2016, from http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4731-pavlovs-dogs-and-american-education
McLeod, S. (2010). LoftusandPalmer. Retrievedfrom http://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html
McLeod, S. (2016). B.F. Skinner | OperantConditioning | SimplyPsychology. Simplypsychology.org. Retrieved 3 May 2016, from http://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html
SaylorAcademyOpenTextbooks | SaylorAcademy. (2016). Saylor.org. Retrieved 3 May 2016, from http://www.saylor.org/books/http://www.saylor.org/books/
