Psychology Case Studies

To Sleep, Do Doubt To Dream The phenomenon of sleeping, as well as dreaming, has been an area of interest to psychology for many years. One scientist that took an interest in the study of sleep and dreaming was Eugene Aserinsky. During an early experiment of his, Aserinsky observed periods of active eye movements that he theorized might be associated with dreaming. He conducted a study to test his theory, using adults whose eye muscles were connected to electrodes while they slept. During periods of eye activity and little/no eye activity, the subjects were awakened and interrogated to determine if they were dreaming. Through this experiment, Aserinsky discovered REM sleep, or dreaming sleep, which in turn, prompted the experiments and theories of another scientist named William Dement. Dement was interested in the basic function and significance of dreaming. What struck him as the most significant, however, was the discovery that dreaming occurs every night in everyone. Dement wondered if dreaming is in some way a necessary and vital part of our existence. To answer his many questions, he conducted an experiment that was in many ways similar to that of Aserinsky’s. However, Dement went a step farther, depriving his subjects of REM sleep and observing the results. After phases of deprivation and recovery, Dement concluded that when we are not allowed to dream, there is a pressure to dream that increases during deprivation. This process came to be known as the REM rebound effect.

Little Emotional Albert Where does emotion come from? At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical view of human behavior, which was based on the idea that we are motivated by unconscious instincts and repressed conflicts from early childhood, was the most popular explanation for emotion. However, a new psychology known a behaviorism started to overtake Freud’s views in the 1920’s. Behaviorists believed that behavior is generated outside the person through various environmental or situational stimuli. Watson, one of the founders of behaviorism, theorized that we have been conditioned to respond emotionally, and therefore, emotion is something we learn. Not an idea accepted by many, Watson set out to test his theory with his most famous experiment involving a subject named “Little Albert B.” By presenting Albert with an array of various items, Watson determined that the child has neutral stimuli to all the objects. To produce fear in Albert, they made a loud noise, an unconditional stimulus, which caused him to cry. They then presented Albert with a white rat (the same one he was not scared of before) while making the same loud noise. Albert started crying, now associating the rat with the noise, and therefore, fear. After several of the same pairings, the rat was presented without the noise, still causing fear in Albert. When presented with similar objects, Albert showed the same fear that the rat invoked. After time, Albert was still afraid of the same objects. Through this experiment, although controversial, Watson was able to disprove the Freudian conception of psychology and prove that all human behavior stems from learning and conditioning.

Just How Are You Intelligent? There are many types of intelligence that exist in humans. For many years, however, it was believed that humans have a single general intelligence. Intelligence tests developed over the last century were created to produce a single score known as person’s IQ, or intelligence quotient. This score was used to generalize mental ability as a single unit, which in turn led to the popular belief of the single general intelligence. In the late twentieth century, researchers began to question the validity of this singular approach to human intelligence. A new view on human intelligence began to make its way into the psychology community. Pioneered by Howard Gardner, the idea that there are multiple intelligences that create a complete “free-standing” intelligence is now the most popular and referred to view of human intelligence. In 1983, Gardner wrote his most famous book, Frames of Mind. In his book, Gardner outlined the eight indicators or “signs” that define an intelligence, which he developed from a large group of unrelated human sources. Using the eight tests he developed, Gardner came up with the eight intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. In addition, he described the core operations, a specific set of mental processes, that each intelligence must involve. Gardner’s created his theory based on biology and his study of the brain. Now referred to as MI theory, Gardner’s research has changed how the world views learning, teaching, and intelligence, even though some of his ideas are still believed not to demonstrate the validity of intelligence.