Chapter 7: Learning

--Original published at Jessica K's College Blog

Learning is everything people do to get on with their lives in the world, that learning helps them grow into the personalities and mindsets they have now. And no matter what, there is always something new for people young and old to know and recognize that goes outside of the educational system.

However, people can learn how to approach new information, mostly on a combination of senses (reaction to a stimulus or classical conditioning) or correlations of one item relating to another (operant conditioning).

The difference between these conditions all relates to how a person’s experience is defined by the initial interaction. For example, if a child eats a vegetable for the first time, they would most likely be disgusted by it based on taste, sight, and smell, thus avoiding anything related to vegetables.

On the contrary, with operant conditioning relates to when a child observing their parent for different stimuli, like mannerisms, daily habits, and language. With the information in hand, a child will then learn how to interact with others if it relates to a reward.

The points in learning mostly correlates to how the end result will either benefit or hinder the person when faced with a new situation, the same being said for animals as well.

For those studies made by Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and many other psychologists of the time, people can greatly rely on the understanding of how they react to new stimuli, and how they have adapted and grown to adjust to such situations.

Chapter 2: Biology in Behavior

--Original published at Jessica K's College Blog

This week, I will learn about the biological standpoint on emotions, daily functions of the body, and anything that relates to the brain.

Even if the lesson will be reasonably short, and even if I’m not too much of a science person, learning the multiple sections and functions of the brain will be tiring enough. However, it would be a more scientific take on how we all work through every day, from everything as simple as breathing and walking, to even more complex actions, I will then learn everything the brain will transmit and perform to be the supercomputer of people all over the globe.

Chapter 4: Developing Through The Life Span

--Original published at Jessica K's College Blog

First Impression

Everyone knows that life can lead to many things, for different emotions, cultures, and activities being formed to give people more understanding of the world around them.

For the lesson I am currently learning, it will be about the lifestyle of people and how their actions and emotions predict their lives in the future. One of the aspects of the chapter that I am interested in is the theory of nature vs. nurture. Though it has changed its theoretical viewpoint on how humans can grow based on either their genes or support from a family, it gave psychologists an growing understanding of the way we perceive a proper childhood and how it will affect the child as they grew up.

However, by the end of the chapter I want to know the path that was taken in understanding how the child’s mind work based on the situations present, the interactions they faced, and to prove whether or not that will give psychologists a near accurate description of the person’s future personality and actions based on their earlier years.

First Impression- Is Yawning Contagious?

--Original published at Jessica K's College Blog

A study made by the popular television series MythBusters tries to decipher the puzzling circumstances around yawning, and to prove whether or not yawning can easily be passed from one person to the next. Throughout the ages, yawning is perhaps one of the more known mysteries of human nature, letting the action be linked to a tiring atmosphere, boredom, or an evolutionary trait, the circumstances behind yawning has proven to be an anomaly.

From the episode, the group forms the hypothesis that yawning can be contagious, and build an isolated waiting room with recording devices, a two-way mirror, and a hidden camera to monitor the test. Then, they gather an audience of nine strangers (independent variable), and one of the testers places themselves in the room, purposefully spreading the “yawning sickness” (dependent variable).

The control, or the independent variable of the test, is the group sitting patiently in the room, and while they are not allowed to talk, are measured on the the times they yawn. However, ten minutes passed, and not a single yawn was recorded.

Then the dependent variable was introduced, the group is given a clipboard with tax laws, letting ten minutes pass once again to record the results. Eight and a half were recorded from one person, while five and a half yawns were shown in the rest.

While the results were promising, the variables between the amount of volunteers and the studied time were constant, it can perhaps be a weakness to the test. If the stimuli and the allotted time within the studies could be changed, then they could get a more accurate set of results.

However, with the dependent variable proven successful, MythBusters made the logical conclusion to confirm that yawning is contagious. In conclusion, yawning in of itself is relatively unpredictable, and even if the group was able to record a reasonable amount of yawns, many people can assume that yawning will still remain a mystery, waiting to be properly studied and solved.

Psychology Introduction

--Original published at Jessica K's College Blog

Hello, this is Jessica Klinedinst and I am a freshman in Elizabethtown College. Even if I am a major in Professional Writing, I believed that going into the study of Psychology will help me broaden my understanding of the world, with the different quirks and habits that every person will have throughout their life, I hope that it will let me learn how to write in the more realistic side of personalities.

In all honesty, I understand more to psychology than the general mindset of just studying different mental conditions and addictions. It is all about the working of both the biological standpoint and the human standpoint, trying to understand and analyze the way people interact with the world around them.

In this class, everything about human understanding will open up to us, and I am more than interested on learning the later subjects of attachment theory, observational learning, and how to cope with stress. In my opinion, I would like to know more about how people interact on a daily scale based on the audience they have lived with, and how that would shape their personality and view of the world around them.

However, the least interesting subjects that don’t seem to pique my interest for now would be stereotype & discrimination, the medications used for psychiatric disorders, and the study of the subcortical brain. To the classification of the brain and the intertwining functions that come to the development of psychological disorders seem relatively complex if you were to look at it in a distance, including the many tropes that shaped our society in the form of racism and harmful tropes.

By the end of the day, it is only the start on how to create a more simplistic and understandable view of the world and how it has come to function as the way it has. Perhaps it can solve the one question I have on my mind. If more people are able to learn the functions of the brain and human ideology in psychology, can the world change to make everything equal as the way everything perceives it without discrimination, without any backlash on the individual opposition that creates hatred? Perhaps once everything is said and done, and until May comes along to finish another semester, perhaps I will learn the answer I desire.