Operant Conditioning

Sense receptors are located in the sense organs like, the eyes, ears and mouth. When a sense receptor is stimulated from touch, smell or sight, it is converted into energy and travels through nerves to the brain. The sensory nerves all use neural impulses to communicate, but the nervous system encodes the messages, so we are able to experience different sensations. Researchers have been studding sensory substitution that would train a blind person to use other sensory impulses to interpret them in the brain as an image and allow them to make out objects. Researchers have also studied how sensitive our senses are by using an absolute threshold and difference threshold. Absolute threshold testes how we can detect the smallest amount of energy, like a flashing light while difference threshold tests how we are able to detect if there is a difference in two objects. We are able to adapt to certain sensory like, wearing clothes, the stimulus signal is
repetitive so the sensory fades causing the sensory system to fire less frequently. There is also sensory depravation, it is found that on a voluntary basis it can help to clear the mind and be relaxing. It is used as a punishment in prisons because the brain requires a minimum amount of sensory stimulation to function normally.

The researchers have found that converting images to electrical impulses that are sent to an electrode on the tongue of a congenitally blind person, they were able to make out shapes. This type of procedure could improve the quality of a person’s life by creating independence or higher self esteem. The study of the different sensory and how each person is affected by different environments could help explain how some people react to certain situations. There is sensory deprivation that some people might experience willingly or unwillingly. A person put in prison solitaire unwillingly is going to have a negative response as compared to a person who voluntarily secludes themselves for a period of time. For the person in prison solitaire they will become scared and edgy, as for the person who voluntarily secludes themselves, there intellectual abilities improved. If we didn’t have sensory adaption we might not be able to endure the weight of our own hair or shoes on our feet. Being able to adapt is beneficial in those cases, but not when we become used to a smell that might be harmful. Having a sensory that can adapt could explain how we deal with stressful situations.

At an early age we are conditioned.
There are many different influences we are subjected to that have a determining factor on how we respond, emotionally or physically. With classic conditioning, we respond to our environment and it stimulates a physical response. Like, when a child hears an ice cream truck, they become very excited. If the child does not get to go to the ice cream truck, the response might become extinct from not being able to get ice cream when they hear the truck. Operant conditioning is different than classic conditioning because with operant, a consequence follows the action put forth. If a child rides their bike down a hill and falls from going to fast, the next time the child will know that they might have the same result on the hill and try to avoid it. Animals are usually use in operant studies, they have found that using a reward when they use a button or lever to get food out, each time it takes them less time to figure out what the results will be by using the button or lever to get
food.

Classic conditioning plays a roll with people when it comes to the medical field. Some patients seem to anticipate and become uneasy if they are being treated. Some knowing that they are going to be treated offers a sense of relief of their symptoms. Understanding the different sensory we have, helped the medical field and treating patients by understanding they might just be reacting to a sensory. A person’s reaction might also depend on the consequence of their actions. A phobia is a fear of an object or situation that interferes with normal activities, might have been conditioned in early childhood. Understanding phobias can help people to overcome and deal with their fears, if they were conditioned as a child they could be counterconditioned as an adult. Counterconditioning could help with so many different psychological problems a person might have learned throughout life.

Memory is one of the most valuable things in our life. The easiest example for why memory is such an important thing humanity has is: Without memory, it would have been impossible to preserve knowledge. If early man had not been able to remember what their own writings meant, we could have lost entire millennia of our history. We wouldn’t be able to remember what Socrates spoke of or why President Roosevelt told us that we Americans having nothing to fear but fear itself. The effect of memory, when it comes to the preservation of knowledge, is just the easiest example to explain the value of memory. However, after reading through various theories about memory and then how they relate to things in our day to day, there is a clear relation between the way memory works and how humanity behaves. If humans remembered everything they ever experienced, the mind would become so overloaded with information that the overall mental state of the individual would become more stress when trying to recall how to do simple tasks. Even on the opposite side of that example, if humanity could barely remember how to do simple tasks, society would have never have even made it off the ground. Due to the immense complexities society demands on each individuals memories on how to act and think properly, without the system of memory humanity has today everything would collapse.
As various theories would explain, the way the mind can store memories, recall memories and sometimes dump memories is fascinating. The process of memory starting as a short term, being encoded for longer term recollection, and then the recollection process at a later date makes this astronomically simple. Yet, as wonderfully simple this system seems, when you get down to a microscopic level and study the neural patterns and activity, you see how intricate the mind really is. To be able to decipher between what is real memory and what is suggestive can help with dealing with psychiatric patients. Being able to recall how a certain event happened or what a person looked liked that was involved, the person will have to reconstruct the memory. Psychologists have been able to help children when they have been involved in a case or molested. They are able to help recall their memory and understand how to talk to children in this situation.

Learning more about the sensory system help me understand how people might see, feel or react to different situations. A sensory process and a decision process is different in each person, it might depend on motivation, alertness and expectations. Assessing a person will help to determine how they might handle each sensory, from adaptation to overload. Studding the conditioning chapter helped enhance the way I understand how we are conditioned as children to have fears or pleasure. We have predisposed fears as humans, but some might come from and outside influence, like a parent who has a fear of spiders. Operant conditioning enhanced my understanding of how a person’s behavior is dependant on a consequence that might follow their action. I feel, our memory is almost as important as our main functioning organs in our body. We are able to have long term memory by rehearsing information, meanwhile we tend to forget short term memories if there is no further processing of the information.