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CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

            STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 

Conscious Experience

            Daydreaming and Fantasy

            Daydreaming is imagination dream that shift attention away from real life and into a private world of make-believe.

            Daydreaming is nothing more than fulfill that every one of us want to be. It is again nothing more than a retreat from the real world and refresh from a stressful day, build problem, interpersonal skills and encourage creativity. Daydreaming and fantasy provide relief from unpleasant reality and reduce internal tension and external aggression.

            Sleep is necessary thing as food as water that every one of us needs it.

            Sleep is called circadian cycles. Circadian rhythms are 24-hour solar cycle of light and dark, found in human being and animal and even one-celled organisms. Neurons in the hypothalamus release epinephrine help us alert at day time, at night time, melatonin hormones are released make us feel sleep. Biological clocks as melatonin recognize when it is night time. Therefore, blind people sometimes have trouble to go sleep ontime because melatonin are not sure whether it is day time or night time.

            Going to sleep means losing awareness and failing to respond to a stimulus that would produce a response in the waking state.

            There are 4 stages of sleep. Stage 1 is the slowing of the pulse, muscle relaxation, and side to side rollong movements of eyes. Stages 2-3 are hard to awaken and do not respond to stimuli such as noise or lights. Rapid eye movement stage is a deeply asleep. It is incapable of moving, body’s voluntary muscles are essentially paralyzed.

            Inadequate sleep will make difficult for people to pay attention and to remember things, reaction time slows down, behavior becomes unpredictable, and accidents and errors in judgement increase.

            Sleep disorders: sleeptalking, sleepwalking and night terrors, insomnia, apnea, and narcolepsy.

Dreams

            Dreams are visual and auditory experiences that our minds create during sleep.

            Dreams as unconscious wishes. Dreams as information processing.

Depressants: Alcohol, Barbiturates, and the Opiates.

            Depressants are chemicals that retard behavior and thinking by either speeding up or slowing down nerve impulses.

            Alcohol psychoactive drug.

            Barbiturates are similar to alcohol. If taken on an empty stomach, a small does will cause light-headedness, silliness, and poor motor coordination.

            Opiates reduces feelings of euphoria, well-being, and relaxation.

Stimulants: Caffeine, Nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine

            Caffeine reduces the total number of sleep minutes and increases the time it takes to fall asleep, cause headaches, lethargy, depression.

            Nicotine  like cocaine, amphetamines, morphine as cause heart rate increases and blood vessels constrict, dull skin and cold hands, accelerating process of wrinkling and aging.

            Amphetamines are stimulant drugs  that can cause sweating, tremors, heart palpitations, anxiety and insomnia.

            Cocaine produce a sense of euphoria by stimulating the sympathetic nervous system, also leads to anxiety, depression and addictive cravings.

Hallucinogens and Marijuana

Hallucinogens include LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), mescaline, peyote, and psilocybin. Hallucinogens cause memory loss, paranoia, panic attacks, nightmares, and aggression.

Marijuana is less powerful effect than hallucinogens. It causes suspicious, anxious and depressed.

Meditation and Hypnosis

            Meditation has been used to treat certain medical problems. While meditation, muscle tension release, heart rate release and increases time of well-being.

            Hypnosis is used to treat certain form of mental illness

 

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CHAPTER 5

            LEARNING

 

Classical Condition

Classical condition is the type of learning in which a response naturally elicited by one stimulus comes to be elicited by a different, formerly neutral stimulus.

Elements of Classical Condition

Unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus that invariably causes an organism to respond in a specific way.

Unconditioned response is a response that takes place in an organism whenever an unconditioned stimulus occurs.

Conditioned stimulus is an originally neutral stimulus that is paired with an unconditioned stimulus and eventually produces the desired response in an organism when presented alone

Conditioned response is after conditioning, the response an organism produces when a conditioned stimulus is presented.

Intermittent pairing is pairing the learning trials of conditional stimulus and unconditional stimulus.

Pavlov discovered above classical conditioning almost by accident.

Mary Cover Jones, Joseph Wolpe has continuous developing the theory of classical conditioning of Parlov to now.

Psychologist Martin Seligman has offered an answer why people fear of snake instead of flower. He said because we had experience snake is harmful subject because of classical conditioning we has learned.

Operant Conditioning

            This learning is to learn rewards or avoid punishment.

            The first essential element in operant conditioning is emitted behavior. Operant conditioning involves operant behavior, which spontaneously respond “operating” on the environment.

            The second essential element is consequence following a behavior. The consequences that behavior will be repeated are called reinforcers. In contrast the consequence that decrease the chances are behavior will be repeated is called punishers.

            Edward Lee Thorndile discovered above classical conditioning.

            There are 2 kinds of reinforcers. Positive reinforcers are food, prase, money or something rewarding to a situation. Negative reinforcers are aversive noise or something unpleasant.

            Biofeedback has become well-established treatment for a number of medical problems by B.F. Skinner

            Punishment is something  that removes unpleasant from the environment or add something unpleasant to the environment.

Factors Shared by Classical and Operant Conditioning

Classical and operant have something in common as both involve the learning of association. Classical condition is between stimulus and another. Operant condition is between action and consequence.

            Contingency is a reliable “if-then” relationship between two events such as a CS and a US.

            Stimulus control occurs in both classical and operant conditioning. Under classical conditioning, the conditioned respond is under the control of the conditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning, under the control of stimulus is associated with reward or punishment.

            Stimulus discrimination is learning to respond to only one stimulus and to inhibit the response to all other stimuli.

            Response generalization is giving a response that is somewhat different from the response originally learned to that stimulus.

New learning based on original learning.

            Primary reinforcer is reinforcer that is rewarding in itself, such as food, water and sex

            Secondary reinforcer is reinforcer whose value is acquired through association with other primary or secondary reinforcers.

Cognitive Learning

            Cognitive learning is learning that depends on mental processes that are not directly observable.

            Latent learning is not immediately reflected in a behavior change.

            Learning by observation.

1

PartA

 

  1. By the 1920s a new definition of psychology had gained favor. Psychology was said to be the science of...

 

  1. A cognitive psychologist is most likely to be interested in...

      3. Operational definitions are

            definitions which tell how to collect data

 

 

       4.What does it mean to say a definition is valid?

 

it measures what you think it measures, as shown by using a different method to measure the same variable

 

       5. What does it mean to say a definition is reliable?

 

you can measure the same thing again and get the same results

 

        6. Replication...

 

is essentially repetition of research in all its details

 

         7. In observational research there are no...

experimental manipulations

 

 

        8. What is the independent variable, in experimental research?

 

. the variable which is manipulated in an experiment

 

       9. A single-blind design should be sufficient to eliminate -------------------- as a confounded variable

 

placebo effect

 

       10. How are experimenter effects eliminated

 

with a double blind design

 

 

Part B

1.

  1. Hypotheses: soldiers with higher AFET scores have high ratings on combat effectiveness.
  2. Independent variable: higher I Qs
  3.  Dependent variable: effective in combat.
  4. Control: Dr. Panglos will test soldiers by the Armed Forces Entry Test.
  5. Ethic: this research is to find the effective soldier ratings.

 

2.

1.      Hypotheses: people who drink drugged lemonade will less remember than people who drink plain lemonade.

2.      Independent variable: repression

3.      Dependent variable: unpleasant memories

4.      Control: Dr. Morgan test on the participant by requiring them to have a tasteless chemical lemonade.

5.      Ethic: this research is to help people be aware on drinking drugged chemical because it will affect on their memories.

 

3.

1.      Hypotheses: people who have depression will get rid of it if they have been treated (helped) in certain time.

2.      Independent variable: depression

3.      Dependent variable: better have cognitive behavioral therapy.

4.      Control: the result of the first test is given to each group is the control group.

5.      Ethic: this research is to find the better treatment for people who have depression.

 

4.

1.      Hypotheses: Yellow warm bodied toy will be played with most by the three year olds.

2.      Independent variable: designing of toy

3.      Dependent variable: ElectriCAT

4.      Control: Children are tested on playing with different toys.

5.      Ethic: this research is to find the better toy for children.

 

5.

1.      Hypotheses: A large dose of Lysine will not reduce women patients for “conversion disorder”

2.      Independent variable: taking a large dose of Lysine

3.      Dependent variable: “conversion disorder” treatment.

4.      Control: private test after they received their medication.

5.      Ethic: this research is to help female patients understand more about “conversion disorder”

           

 

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Definition of Psychology:

            Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.

The fields of Psychology

            Developmental Psychology: study human mental and physical growth from the prenatal period through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.

            Physiological Psychology: investigate the biological basis of human behavior, thoughts, and emotions.

            Experimental Psychology: conduct research on basic psychological processes, including learning, memory, sensation, perception, cognition, motivation, and emotion.

            Personality Psychology: study the differences among individuals in such traits as anxiety, sociability, self-esteem, need for achievement, and aggressiveness.

            Clinical and Counseling Psychology: Clinical psychologists are interested primarily in the diagnosis, cause, and treatment of psychological disorders. Counseling psychologists are concerned primarily with normal problems of adjustment that most of us face at some point.

            Social Psychology: study how people influence one another.

            Industrial and Organizational Psychology: concerned with such practical issues as selecting and training personnel, improving productivity and working conditions, and the impact of computerization and automation on workers.

There are five enduring issues that all psychologists share in common interest: Person-Situation, Nature-Nurture, Stability-Change, Diversity-Universality, Mind-Body.

What is Scientific method: Scientific method is defined when psychologists seek to answer questions. For example, many people believe that males are naturally more aggressive than females because of society and culture encourages that indeed requires males to be combative, even violent. Perhaps girls and women make nasty remarks or yell, but boys and men are far more likely to fight.

Theory is systematic explanation of a phenomenon.

Hypotheses are specific, testable predictions derived from a theory.

The growth of Psychology    

            Beside the established psychologists Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Bradford Titchener about “Structuralism” and William James about “Functionalism” were mentioned in the growth of psychology, we can not forget to mention about Sigmund Freud, psychodynamic Psychologist. Sigmund Freud is the best known so far or the father of psychology.

            Psychodynamic theory is to study about personality theories that interact within the individual, often outside conscious awareness.

            John Watson’s view of psychology knew as behaviorism. Behaviorism is to study about psychology that only by observable and measurable behavior. Addition, Skinner believed on the view of Watson but she added a new element to the behaviorist repertoire was reinforcement.

Psychology developed to study the mental processes in the broadest sense is called Cognitive psychology.

Human Diversity

            We need to learn about human diversity because we will be tomorrow’s citizens of the world. We will face with diversity of people sooner or later in future who have different backgrounds from different countries. It is essential to understand other cultures because our purposes to live in the earth is to bring the happiness to each other.

            Race and Ethnicity: race’s definition is only based on the skin color and facial features but also believe to racial categories such as people’s social identities, their sense of self, their experiences in their own and other societies and even their health. Ethnicity is based on cultural characteristics

            Culture is a people’s “design for living”. A culture shows itself a mode of thinking, acting, communicating to share about its own belief and ideals

Research methods in Psychology

            Naturalistic Observation is study of animal or human behavior in natural settings rather than in the laboratory.

            Case study: detailed description of one person or a few individual that provide valuable insights but also have significant drawbacks

            Surveys: carefully selected group of people is asked a set of predetermined questions in face-to-face interviews or in questionnaires.

            Correlational research: based on the naturally occurring relationship between two or more variables.

            Experimental research: investigator deliberately manipulates selected events or circumstances and then measures the effects of those manipulations on subsequent behavior.

                        Independent variable is manipulated to test its effects on the other, dependent variables.

                        Dependent variable is measured to see how it is changed by manipulations in the independent variable.

                        Control group is the group not subjected to a change in the independent variable, used for comparison with the experimental group.

                                                                                   

Neurons:

Neurons

The brain contains 100 billions neurons or nerve cells. Neurons’ purpose is receiving and transmitting information for the brain. Each neuron includes cell body and axon. The short fibers branching out around the cell body are dendrites. Their role is to pick up incoming messages from other neurons and transmit them to the cell body. The rest extending from the cell body is an axon. Axon’s purpose is to carry outgoing messages neighboring neurons or to a muscle or gland. The axon is surrounded by a white, fatty covering called a myelin sheath. The myelin sheath’s purpose is to prevent signal from adjacent neurons with each other and increase the speed of which signal is transmitted.

Sensory or afferent neurons collect messages and carry those messages to the spinal cord or the brain. Motor or efferent neurons carry messages from the spinal cord or the brain to muscles or glands.

The Neural Impulse

There are more negative ions inside the neuron than outside that is called resting potential or polarization as resting neuron.

Depolarization occurs cell membrane is stimulated by an income message and the positive charge inside come out and relative to outside. The more sodium ions flow inside the neuron, the neuron depolarize along the entire length of the neuron. An action potential occurs when a neuron sends information down an axon, away from the cell body. The range during action potential is –70 to +30. When the depolarization reaches about -55 mV a neuron will fire an action potential. There are more sodium outside and sodium channels open most of the time it is called depolarization. When inside is stimulated by income message, potassium turns to go out and sodium channels close and action potential back to –70mV it is called depolarization. Action potential has the all-or-none law which is neither reach the threshold nor full action potential.

 

Synapse

Synapse is a tiny gap where the axon terminals of one neuron almost touch the dendrites or cell body of other neurons. There is synaptic knob contain a number of tiny oval sacs called synaptic vesicles. When the neural impulse reaches the end of the terminals, it causes these vesicles to release varying amounts of chemicals called neurotransmtters into the synaptic space.

Neurotransmitters are chemicals released by the synaptic vesicles that travel across the synaptic space and affect adjacent neurons. There are few brain chemicals:

            Acetylcholine plays a role in arousal, memory, and motivations and movement. Alzheimer’s disease involves this chemical

            Dopamine associated with voluntary movement, learning, memory and emotions. It causes Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia.

            Serotonin “the mood molecule” will be released when depression occurs

            Cendorphin: chemical painkiller release during exercise.

            People who use drug frequently have natural painkiller slow down that is why an addict needs more of artificial drug to feel “normal”

Neural Plasticity and Neurogenesis

            Neural plasticity is the ability of the brain to change in response to experience.

            Neurogenesis: the production of new brain cells.

The Central Nervous System

            CNS includes the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system consists of nerves that connect the brain and spinal cord to every other part of the body, carry message back and forth between the central nervous system and the sense organs, muscles and glands.

            Peripheral nervous system is subdivided into the somatic nervous system, which transmits information about body movement and external environment, and the autonomic nervous system, which transmit information to and from the internal organs and glands.

            The brain has three layers: The Central Core, the Limbic system, and the Cerebral Hemispheres.

The Central Core

            Hindbrain involves primitive vertebrates and the earliest part of the brain to evolve.

            Medulla controls body functions as bodily functions as breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure.

            Pons regulates sleep-wake cycles

            Cerebellum regulates reflexes and balance movements

            Midbrain is important for hearing and sight.

            Thalamus is major sensory relay center and transfer incoming messages from the sense receptors

            Hypothalamus is smaller than thalamus; involve emotion such as experiencing rage, terror, and pleasure and motivation such as hunger, thirst, sexual drive, and body temperature.

The Cerebral Cortex

            2 hemispheres, each hemisphere is divided into 4 lobes

            Frontal lobe: account half the volume of the human brain, called “executive control center” for the brain, voluntary movement, receives and coordinated the other three lobes and play a key in complex problem solving.

            Occipital lobe: visual information

            Parietal lobe: sensory information and also has ability to follow the map and tell how to get from one place to another.

            Temporal lobe: receives and processes information from the ears, contributes to balance and equilibrium, and regulates emotions and motivations such as anxiety, pleasure and anger.

Hemispheric Specialization

            Left and right hemispheres are close communication through the corpus callosum. Left hemisphere concentrate language, also operate more analytically, logically, rationally, and sequentially than the right hemisphere does. In contrast, the right hemisphere excels at visual and spatial tasks-nonverbal imagery, including music, face recognition, and the perception of emotions.

Tools for studying the Brain

            The methods are used to study about the brain is Microelectrode techniques, Macroelectrode Techniques, Structural imaging by computerized axial tomography (CAT or CT), Functional imaging by magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic source imaging (MSI).

The Spinal Cord

            The spinal cord is made up of soft, jellylike bundles of long axons, wrapped in insulating myelin and surrounded and protected by the bones in the spine.

The peripheral Nervous System

            The peripheral nervous system links the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body, including the sensory receptors, glands, internal organs, and skeletal muscles.

            Afferent neurons carry messages to the CNS, and efferent neurons carry messages from the CNS to the body.

            The peripheral nervous system divided into two parts: autonomic nervous system and autonomic nervous system. Somatic nervous system is voluntary movements and autonomic system is involuntary movements. The autonomic system involves sympathetic division and parasympathetic division. Both of these systems work in opposite ways. Whereas the sympathetic division arouses the body in response to danger and stress, the parasympathetic division calms the body once the threat has passed.

The Endocrine System 

            Endocrine systems regulates the functioning of our bodies by coordinate and integrate complex psychological reactions.

            Endocrine glands release chemical substance called hormones into the bloodstream.

            Hormone’s roles

·        Organize the nervous system and body tissues

·        Activate behaviors

For example:

Thyroid gland release thyroxin hormone, which regulates the body’s rate of metabolism and how fat or thin they tend to be.

Pineal gland secretes melatonin hormone, which regulate sleep

Pancreas controls level of sugar in the blood by secreting two regulating hormones: insulin and glucagons.

Pituitary gland influences blood pressure, thirst, and contractions of the uterus during childbirth, milk production, sexual behavior and interest, body growth. It is called “master gland” because it also regulates other endocrine glands.

Gonads: testes in males and ovaries in females. It secretes androgens (masculine) and estrogens (feminine).

Adrenal glands: inner core is adrenal medulla and the outer layer is adrenal cortex. Both of them affect the body’s reaction to stress.

      Epinephrine activates the sympathetic nervous system makes the heart rate faster, stopping digestion, enlarging the pupils of the eyes, sending more sugar into the bloodstream, and preparing the blood to clot fast if necessary.

      Norepinephrine not only raises blood pressure by causing the blood vessels to become constricted but also is carried by the bloodstream to the anterior pituitary.

Genetics

      Genetics is the study of how living things pass on traits from one generation to the next. 1

      Genes is the basis unit of inheritance.

      23 pairs of chromosome, except sex cells, carry Genes.

      Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is complex organic molecule that made chromosomes.

      Human genome contains 100,000 genes.

      Each chromosome carries one dominant gene and  the other recessive gene.

Behavior Genetic

      Animal behavior genetics is study nonhuman animals

      Human behavior genetics is study about family studies and adoption studies.

Evolutionary Psychology is the process of evolution by natural selection.

 

Alzheimer’s disease

 

Alzheimer’s disease

            Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in older people. AD affect the part of the brain called the cerebral cortex, which controls thought, memory, and language. AD is caused by a loss of nerve cells in areas of the brain central to memory and the nerve cells stop functioning and loose connections with other nerve cells.

            The greatest of risk factor for AD is age. The research indicates that genetic factors may be involved in more than half of the cases of AD. Other factors include environment factor and a virus.

            AD usually begins after age 65. The first sign of Alzheimer’s disease often include loss of memory, language difficulties, and difficulty performing routine activities such as driving, and shopping. As the disease progresses, behavioral problems are common. Alzheimer’s patients can have difficulty with both long and short-term memory. They also have difficulties with such basic daily activities as dressing, eating, grooming and using the bathroom. Alzheimer’s disease also cause dementia include high fever, vitamin deficiency, bad reactions to medicine, thyroid problems, minor head injuries, etc.

            Because of AD is a chronic disease, there is no cure for it, but there are effective treatments to manage the symptoms and slow the progression. People with AD need help minimizing confusion and maintain a sense of stability and comfort in their lives.

            About four million Americans currently suffer from AD. Approximately 360, 000 new cases occur each year.

            http://www.aagpgpa.org/p_c/dementia.asp

 

Regulation of Ovulation of Human Pheromones

Part B

 

Score: 1 out of 203957

 

 

Regulation of Ovulation of Human Pheromones

 

 

Pheromones are airborne chemical signals that are released by effecting physiology and behavior individually. The researchers showed that there were three phases of menstrual cycle that affect the pheromones on cycle length: menses, follicular and luteal (ovulation). In order to determine the pheromones action, the researchers measured the luteinizing hormone (LH) and progesterone glucoronide by urine samples and the time of LH surge. The result show that menses and luteal were the same during pheromone and control conditions. Which only the follicular phase was regulated. This research is to study the ovarian-dependent pheromones that regulates the ovulation-produces synchrony or asynchrony which phase-advance or phase-delay the preovulatory LH surge. Moreover, the ovarian-dependent pheromones have qualitatively different effects depend on initial condition that pheromonal and social interaction begins as in the reproductive lifespan when they occurs

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sensation and Perception

 

Sensation

Sensation is the basic experience of stimulating the body’s senses.

Receptor cell is a specialized cell that responds to a particular type of energy.

Sensation begins when it receives the message from external or internal organ sense and stimulated receptor cell to bring that coded signal to the brain and the brain will send the message when it achieve a minimum intensity as a stimulation 50 percent of the time called absolute threshold. The absolute threshold would rise because of sensory adaptation, in which our senses automatically adjust to the overall average level of stimulation in a particular setting.

Some event occur below our level of awareness is called subliminally.

Vision

When the light enters the eye, it goes through the cornea, pupil, the opening in the center of the iris. The pupil is wider or smaller by the muscle contraction of iris. In very bright light, the muscle in the iris contract to make the pupil smaller to protect the eye from damage. In dark light, the muscle in the iris contract to make the pupil wider to let in as much as light as possible.

 Inside the pupil, light moves through the lens, the retina that focuses on objects that are closer or farther away. On the retina, behind the lens is a depressed spot called the fovea

Retina contains the receptor cells responsible for vision. There are two kinds of receptor cells in the retina-rods and cones. Rods expect to see night vision and cones expect to see colors. Rods and cones connect to specialize nerve cells to the brain by bipolar cells.

Ganglion cells are the neurons that connect the bipolar cells in the eyes to the brain. The axons of the ganglion cells join to form the optic nerve, which carries messages from each eye to the brain. About 125 million rods and cones in each retina and about 1 million

Color vision

Hue, saturation, and brightness are three separate aspects of our experience of color.

Hearing

Sound has sound waves, frequency (Hz), and pitch of the sound

The Ear

Hearing begins when sound waves are gathered by the outer ear and passed along to the eardrum causing it to vibrate. Vibration attaches to the oval window. Oval window are transmitted to the fluid inside a snail-shaped structure called the cochlea. Cochlea is divided lengthwise by the basilar membrane, and it reaches to receptor cells for the sense of hearing. The sense of hearing is truly bilateral and each ear sends messages to both cerebral hemispheres.

The other senses are smell and taste.

Smell has the receptors located in the roof of the nasal cavity detect chemicals called pheromones, which have powerful effects on behavior. Receptors of smell go directly to the olfactory bulb, the smell center of the brain.

Taste has the taste bud receptors, most of which are found on the tip, sides, and back of the tongue.

Perception

Perception use sensory information as raw material and interpret it into perceptual experiences, which go beyond that sensed directly.

The German Gestalt psychologists established the perceptual process as distinguish figures from the ground against which they appear.

Perceptual constancy refers to the tendency to perceive objects as relatively stable and unchanging despite changing sensory information.

Perception of Distance and Depth.

Making judgments about distance and depth are known as monocular cues or binocular cues but binocular cues make more accurate.

Horses , deer and fish reply on monocular cues. Humans, apes, lions, tigers and wolves use binoculars cues.

The difference between the two images that the eyes receive is known as retinal disparity.

Perception of Movement

Real movement refers to the physical displacement of an object from one position to another.

Apparent movement occurs when we perceive movement in objects that are actually standing still.

Visual Illusions

Visual illusions graphically demonstrate the ways in which we use a variety of sensory cues to create perceptual experiences that may or may not correspond to what is out there in the real world.

 

 

1st Day

Diary about Dream

 

1st Day

            I went to camping with my former class when I was in Vietnam. There was a boy that I did not recognize that he was my classmate or not because I knew he was in my former class but I did not know who he was. I could not write down any more detail before that. The scenery I remembered clearly was at nighttime we slept together. Each one of us had a blanket but I saw that boy covered him and other girl in his blanket. I could not tell who she was because they covered whole their bodies from the head to the heel. Suddenly, I saw my ex-boyfriend and he used the same blanket with me. He tried to cover him by squeezing his body…..I could not remember anything else after that.

 

2nd Day

            I was talking to this lady. In my eyes she was my friend who had 2 kids and younger than me. I felt like I was younger than her because I never have any kid. Unfortunately, when I talked and looked closely to her, my mind told me that she was my sister. I wanted to make sure she was my sister or my friend. My eyes affirmed that she was my friend but my mind told me she was my sister….

 

3rd Day

            I saw that I was sleeping in my former house in Vietnam. During sleeping, I saw my grandfather who died 13 years ago keep walking toward me. I suddenly awake and I saw I was sleeping in my bed in the mosquito-curtain….

            Later on, I saw another scenery about my former friends. We were talking to each other but I did not talk anything. I made a view to look over my entire friends. It seemed they gossiped about me because they were wondering why I came to Vietnam to go school instead of staying in United States because I had been living in America for 5 years. I looked at myself and asked me too…then I could not remember anything.

 

4th Day

            I went to camping with lot of other campers. It seemed like I was High School student. I saw this man who was currently my friend. He is a teacher. During my dream, it was dark and had fired wood too. That man was talking to us but I did not hear anything. I believed he used his nonverbal to communicate. After for a while, he made a movement to his friend and my mind told me that he was asking his friend to substitute his position while he was not here. And I saw he walked away….I asked me why he did not say to me anything….

 

5th Day

            It seemed like I was in scenery studio. Everything around me was blurred and nobody except me. I looked around and stand still. I knew this was for studio film but I did not know what I was doing….

            I could not remember the rest of that day.

 

6th Day

            I saw I went back to Vietnam and visited Cu Chi tunnel. I saw a lot of people were there. Suddenly I saw my boyfriend and his 2 other friends who I met them at the first time I met my boyfriend. I sneaked in the crowded people to approach to him and we walked out the tunnel. I did not know why he and I walked slower than his friends. I walked side by side with him and I lean on him and he kissed me softly. I knew that his friend walked far away from us….

 

7th Day

            I went back Vietnam to visit my brothers and sisters. My brother had a baby. She was about 3 months but she could walk if I helped her. I held her hands and she kept moving. The amazing thing was she spoke to me and told me that she needed me curdle her. Then she and I walked to the places that I had been lived when I was in Vietnam. We passed through many places and my mind could recognize which was which…then I could not remember anything.

            Later, I dreamed about my friends. I was talking to 2 other girls. I used to go church with them before. I have not seen them for a while since I did not go church. They talked to me but it seemed like I did not know what I was going to talk. I saw they kept look at me and I had no idea what I was talking about….

The Mind of Smother

            Everyone is born in the earth has the same basic characteristic of the mind. Smother helps us to understand about our mind by reading his book. In the introduction part, Smother defined “at the level of mind, life is a game, the purpose of which is to survive.” In order to survival on this earth, everyone has an act, which is called the right act. The right act might be the truth when everyone agrees with it or it is a successful act. You have to moderate your life depend on situation that you use your knowledge to determine the right step in order to become the one, which is called survival one on the earth. These are short summaries that Smother list some terms that help us will not be mistaken using it whereas it will be needed.

            Stuff is the very substance of unreality. It’s your attachment to the illusions of life. Your stuff are judgment, belief, opinion, position and etc. Stuff might be important to you but it is not important to others because when you are not here, it gone, the stuff become inconsequential.

            Judgment is illusion stuff that you cannot see or touch it. Just only your mind can control it. When you do something repetition without harming, your mind says your judgment is right. When you do something is rarely and not consequence doing it, your mind says your judgment is wrong. If you do something, do it with conscious and let them be. If you will let them be, they will let you be.

            Belief is called illusion stuff too. If what you believe is actually true, you do not need to believe it. It’s always there and is collected from the saying about people, culture or animals.

            Drama is what you do when you have a dream while you are awake. This is not realistic but it can help you be what you want in your life.

            Guilt is inner-directed. Guilt is absolutely no function in stopping something that is harmful. Guilt is not an honest “feeling” or emotion. If you do something to harm other, stop to repeat doing it instead of feeling guilty about it.

            Jealousy is outer-directed. Jealousy is “feeling” , which the mind has adopted. Guilt is hostility directed toward yourself, and jealousy is hostility directed toward another person.

            Polarities of the Mind is any position your mind takes creates its own opposition with mechanical reliability. Polarity is opposite way. If you define others as wrong, you constrict the space in which they exist a little, and you constrict the space in which you exist a lot. That’s why you need to expand your life. Be inclusive, not exclusive.

            Trying defines as life works perfectly, naturally, when you are willing to let it. When you try, you are not letting it be naturally perfect. Don’t be confusing between doing and trying. Trying is something you put extra your work on what you are doing. When you try, you put something on it to lead you sacrifice. When you sacrifice your life, that is your privilege. When you are doing, you still look something unnecessary things around you to prevent what you are doing. When you are trying, you keeping doing it and ignore anything to be done your work.

            Reasons only help you sound reasonable. They have nothing to do with your getting what you want in life. That is right because when you give some excuse on what you are doing, you give reason for it even it is not right. Do not let reason be the things that lead you to become the other person who always create something else appear in your mind by the word of “because.”

            Justifications define, as you have to be as enormous as you are to let others be “right”

            Intention is you always get exactly what you intend. The purpose of it is to determine the course of your life events. If you pay attention on your life, you will have experience what you want in your life.

            Perfection and Your Victim Story is your basic nature is that of perfection. You are perfect person naturally. You were born with it. Therefore, anyone is perfect, do not blaming others or run any victim story to others. Even you have a good reason and you are victim secretly, please turn it off and be silence. Silence under these circumstances is really beautiful. Be enlightened in your silence.

            Reality is what is is, what is not, is not. Reality is the truth. Every thing is true about you, it will be in your forever. If it will not, will not.

            Illness and Disease is to prevent illness, inhabit your body. There are many differences in bacteria or virus living around you. You must be aware on what you touching or live in it. Same as your relationship or anything relate to your life equally has its own good and bad. You need to be conscious, be aware and inhabit to the environment that you live in.

            ABOUT YOUR LIFE WORKING

            Agreements are your life works exactly to the degree that you keep your agreements. An agreement has integrity because you make it and for no other reason. The world is also your world. You will accept it as your responsible and make it works by agreement.

            Problems are actually opportunities. The larger the problem is, the larger the opportunity. The bigger the problem is the greater its potential for contribution to your life.

            About having a Teacher is the quality of your life increases directly in proportion to the number of teachers you have in your life. Make your life big and large as greeting more teachers come to your life by learning.

            The other Universe is the Context out of which this universe came.

            Basic Mind Structure is to survive and be right. So the mind wires itself up very quickly to avoid those situations that threaten its survival.

 

                                                                       

DON’T SHOOT THE DOG

DON’T SHOOT THE DOG

Chapter 1

            Reinforcement: Better than Rewards

            Reinforcement is anything that occurs in conjunction and tends to repeat it again. There are types of reinforcement: positive and negative reinforcements. The major point in training about reinforcement is reinforcement cannot happen if the subject is not there. Examples of positive reinforcement are greeting puppy, wakening alarm, food, and friends. Reinforcements are relative, not absolute. For example, raining is positive to ducks but negative reinforcement to cats. Food is not a positive reinforcement if you are full. Smiles and praise may be useless as reinforcement if the subject is trying to get you mad. Therefore, in order to be reinforcement, the item chosen must be something the subject wants. Negative reinforcement is something a subject will work to avoid.  Negative is not punishment. For example, my have a bad report card, my parent yelled at me. I was punished because I am not sure I will get a good report card next time or not. Negative reinforce can change to positive reinforcement. For example, I put my feet to the coffee table while sitting in my aunt’s house. She looked at me with disappointed eyebrow. My behavior has been reinforced by my aunt’s aversive stimulus. I will remember put my feet off the furniture when I come to her house in future. Reinforcement also involve time and size. Conditioned reinforcement is some meaningless signal-a sound, a light, a motion that is deliberately associated with the arrival of reinforcement. We had conditioned reinforcement to learn to associate the ringing or the envelopes with good things. We put gifted stuff around our rooms, pictures, trophies not because they are beautiful but because they remind us of times when we were happy or of people we love. They are conditioned reinforcers. Further more, reinforcement involve schedule. The longer the variable schedule, the more powerfully it maintains behavior. One of the most useful practical applications of reinforcement is reinforcing yourself. We often neglect to do it because we tend to demand a lot more of ourselves than we would of others. We should look back ourselves and reinforce ourselves for some habit change or new skill.

 

Chapter2

            Shaping: Developing Super Performance Without Strain or Pain

            Shaping is when we do something consist of taking a right step with small tendency in the right direction and keep doing it until it becomes an ultimate goal. For example, we like to learn new skill such as skiing, piano playing, tennis player or whatever, of course we keep do it and learn as fast as possible, that’s where good shaping comes in. there are two aspects to shaping: the method is the behaviors that are to be developed and the principle are the rules and why those behaviors are reinforced. There are three shaping shortcuts: targeting, mimicry, and modeling. You can shape behavior in just about any organism. You can reinforce yourself but the outcome is never make you surprise it is always up there. It is hard to lead you to the achieved result because you are most of the time thinking something else while doing something in this moment. 

 

Chapter 3

            Stimulus Control: Cooperation Without Coercion

            Stimuli are anything that causes some kind of behavioral response. Some stimuli are unconditioned or primary such as the eyes will close when see the flashlight for protection or we tend to go the kitchen when we feel hungry. Some other stimuli are come from association. For example, the noisy make us turn to that the place where the noise come from or traffic jam make us stop and go. There are the rules of stimulus control. To establish stimulus control, you need to shape a behavior in an effect shape. Then, that stimulus become the signal, you use it for behavior.

            Perfect stimulus control is defined by four conditions

1.      The behavior always occurs immediately upon presentation of the conditioned stimulus

2.      The behavior never occurs in the absence of the stimulus.

3.      The behavior never occurs in response to some other stimulus

4.      No other behavior occurs in response to this stimulus

Conditioned stimulus does not have to be of any particular volume or size to get results. Conditioned stimulus has to be recognized to elicit the full response. For example, you stop at the red light, you do not stop faster or slower to the size of the light fixture. A very useful technique for getting prompt response to a conditioned stimulus is the limited hold. There is some gap between presentation of the stimulus and the subject’s response. Once a conditioned stimulus is established an interesting thing happens. It’s become  reinforcer. Behavior chain is called by series connected behavior or in real life. If there are unlearned, behavior in the chain of behavior that have been brought under stimulus control. That means that behavior chain should always be train backward. Start with the last behavior in the chain, make sure it has been learned and that the signal to begin it is recognized. One example of behavior chain is teaching the dog to play Frisbee.

            After shaping the behavior, now you are bringing it under stimulus control. You might bring behavior to something else “prelearning dip” or called the trading time. Behavior is called prelearning temper tantrum because the subject always thought the tantrum to be true but when it turns out, it suddenly not to be true.    

            Nobody expect stimulus take place all the time. Of course not, we are living in nature, not a bunch of machine. We learned how to response but cannot be carried on continuously.

           

Chapter 5

            Reinforcement in Sport

            It would be good that learning different type in sport field with the good instructor. The instructor must give a shaping procedure, pay attention on what part is need to be conrrect in order to earn the good posture. On lesson, the staff used exactly the same methods on adults as on children, no scolding or urging, just instant reinforcement for each accomplishment.

            Reinforcement in Business

            It comes up with trainer approach, the ways to use reinforcement that range from the ingenious to the down right brilliant. Reinforcement for middle-level, middle-aged managers can consist of more interesting work at their present level instead of offering hope of promotion.

            Reinforcement in the Animal world

            Training small monkeys to be helping hands for quadriplegics is to control with vocal commands and train with positive and negative reinforcement such as operate light switches, change TV channels, turn pages, fetch specific items, and unload the cassette player. The good thing when training for animal is we reinforce as whatever happen to and see where it leads.

            Reinforcement and Society

            It seems everything happens in daily life that human ill, from wars to wars, which one come from reinforcement. Behaviors include external and internal response, cleared and uncleared. So reinforcement has limitations. With resembling three interlocking rings, in one ring are the behaviorists such as Skinner and everything we know about learning and cognition; in another ring are Ethogists such as Lorenz and everything we know about the biological evolution of behavior; the third if is behavior we do not yet understand well such as play. Each ring shares point of its contents by overlapping with the other two.

            Society and reinforcement have produced mixed result under structure of society, a prison, hospital, school, detention home- undermined by the vary people doing the reinforcing.

            Reinforcement has been used on an individual and group basic to foster not just specific behavior but characteristics of value to society. Training shift from individual to society group, you can increase from whatever baseline he or she began at.

            The important impact of reinforcement theory on our society will be not to change the institution but in the effect on individual of positive reinforcement itself.

            The laws of reinforcement are powerful tools. It involves in a process of continual change, of continual give-and-take of continual growth. It is said 2-way nature process. Who is the trainer and who is the trained, both change and both learn.