Archive for October, 2010

I recently reread the portion of Watson’s theory on language and thinking.  It is stated that his theories regarding these matters were the most controversial of his work.  Essentially what Watson did was try and explain how internal speech, or thought, came about.  He uses the analogy of a baby thats talks often to himself and is told to not talk so loudly then moves up the ladder in age and development until finally one is able to suppress speech and simply talk to oneself through years of conditioning.  I did not fully buy this theory and really enjoyed  Woodworth’s response on the topic.  What Woodsworth postulated was that he did not accept the equation thought=speech because one could not turn the equation around and say that speech=thought.  One can recite a familiar passage with no sense of its meaning and while thinking about something else entirely.  I cannot be too critical of Watson however, because this is an age old debate and no one has come up with a solution.

If any of you share the same ambitious spirit of adventure I do, then you must have marveled at the power and possibility of classical conditioning. Ever since that high school psychology course (college intro for some) learning about Ivan Pavlov and some slobbering dogs, I’ve often wondered to what extent classical conditioning could be exploited. Unfortunately, I’ve found it most often, and on a personal level, manifests itself in the form of phobias. I’ll admit it here and now, I get squeamish around needles. That’s not to say I won’t get a shot; I just have to inform everyone around of the 20 minute post-shot-turning-green-while-lying-on-the-floor phase, so they don’t think I’m dying of an allergic reaction or something. Now, I’ve read my textbooks on CC and I know that I could easily initiate some desensitization training to induce extinction. In fact, if I were more motivated I’m sure I would have done so already, but I would like to thank Mr. Pavlov for laying down the rules that I’ll use to rid me of my conditioned stimulus, someday. What I’m curious about is what is the potential for classical conditioning?

For instance, I’ve heard of biofeedback, and I specifically would like to know more about the possibility of regulating adrenaline for relaxation or excitement. Anyone have any leads? If I weren’t so preoccupied with avoiding needles, I’d do more digging on my own. Besides, last time I solicited for some right brain information, you guys came through. Thanks.

OK……I am curious if there are any other Psych majors out there who are as guilty of this one particular sin as I am, I have a tenacious habit of bringing psychological observations into the conversations that I am having with people.  I tend to be the guy who says something like “Well, certain studies have shown a strong correlation between self esteem and athletics” when someone is just trying to talk about sports or something casual.  Nobody has to bear the burden of this annoying trait more so than my wife Amanda, and this weekend gave birth to another random conversation that of course led to me taking the reigns and inevitably bring it into the world of Psychology.  I found this conversation very interesting because it just so happens to be focused on something that we are discussing in class right now.

Titus

We have a two year old puppy named Titus who is more or less the equivalent of a child, we spoil him like crazy.  Titus is only about 7 pounds and has a tendency for be a little nervous.  He loves people and other dogs, however he seems to be continually anxious.  About 16 months ago we had family in from out of town and we were grilling out in the back yard and playing cowboy golf.  Amanda’s dad threw one of the roped golf balls towards the ladder and hit Titus in the head on accident.  It really scared him and it took him days to calm down and weeks to get back to his old self.  He still to this day shows signs of nervousness and reclusiveness.  We have tried working with him to make his environment as stress free as possible and teach him that he is indeed in a safe place.  Amanda loves Cesar Millan’s show The Dog Whisperer and during lunch this weekend mentioned that maybe we should take him to a similar type dog specialist.

As our conversation progressed I explained that we are currently talking about behaviorism in history of theories right now and that essentially Cesar is simply a psychological behaviorist for dogs.  That you can train an animal thoroughly, even in the areas of behavior and emotional regulation, using just behavior modification.  Behaviorism is essentially the way an organism responds to stimuli in its environment.  Change the reaction and you change the behavior.  This is such an effective therapy for an animal because they lack introspection.  Titus doesn’t posses the ability to look at his feelings with his minds eye and say to himself, “you know I really don’t have any reason to be so nervous.  This is obviously a safe place where I am loved.  I am going to try and regulate the way I feel a little more.”  When you stop and think about it, the ability to be introspective is truly an amazing gift.  It’s our ability to look at our selves objectively, pick out areas in which we would want to improve, and then decide to proceed forth with those improvements that really make humanity unique.

Something that has always fascinated me is the idea that Pavlov studied in classical conditioning. It almost blows my mind to think that we can condition animals and even people to respond to certain stimuli. It made me think of an example with my dog back home. My brothers used to take towels and used pop each other with it. My dog did not like the popping noise the towels made and would start to get agitated. Now, if we are holding a towel or even a blanket, my dog tries to bite at it. He was conditioned not to like towels or anything that resembles one. After realizing this, we are currently trying to help him not be agitated by towels anymore. Overall, this concept really interested me and I began thinking about conditioning in people.

You hear stories about children being abused or coming from violent homes. Even the loud sounds of screaming children on a playground make them flinch. They become afraid any loud noises due to violence they were exposed to. I began to think about conditioned responses how we might be affected in our lives. I started wondering if there were things that I did that had become a conditioned response. I had a difficult time trying to think of things I do that might be conditioned, but I sure there are several. It is interesting to sit down and actually think about why we respond to certain stimuli the way we do. Is it a natural response or could be a conditioned response? I just thought this was interesting to think about.

Watson had many concepts that helped contribute to the development of psychological thinking. One was his view on emotions. He believed that humans inherit only three emotions: fear, rage, and love. When I first considered this I began to think about all of the different emotions, trying to find more than just three but after little success and reading Watson’s explanation that all other emotions derive from the three I began to become convinced that he was right.

Along with this view, Watson believed that the body reacted differently to all of these different emotions (i.e. Fear causes catching the breath, closing eyes, crying.) and that the feelings and sensations were not important when it came to emotional response. He only cared about were the stimuli that began the emotion, the internal reaction, and the external reaction. I found this surprising because in my opinion the emotions and sensations that we experience are crucial in the way we react to things. Someone that tends to act on emotions more than normal reacts extremely different than those who are able to remain level headed.

When a child is placed in a situation where he experiences fear, how can you not think that the feelings and sensations that he experiences during that situation are not important? In my opinion they contribute strongly to the way that he reacts to the situation. The child feels threatened or scared through his senses (i.e. If a barking dog cornered a child he would be scared by hearing the bark, seeing the dog’s teeth). It seems that the feelings and sensations are what bridge the stimuli that began the emotion to the internal and external reactions, therefore crucial to this concept. I am interested to see what y’all think? Are feelings and sensations important when it comes to emotions?

I was fascinated to read about Mary Cover Jones this past week in our textbook.  It was the first time that a female has been mentioned as making great contributions to psychology, so I decided to look further into her career.

Mary Cover Jones graduated from Vassar in 1919.  She completed her graduate work at Columbia and then held a variety of research positions.  In one such position, she was tasked to follow 200 fifth and sixth grade students through puberty and adolescents.  She actually ended up following some of the students through middle and late adulthood.  With the data she collected, she was able to publish results on a wide variety of topics including the long-term psychological and behavioral effects of late and early physical maturation in adolescence.  Another study she published from this same group was exploring the developmental antecedents of alcohol abuse.  She ended up publishing over 100 studies from data obtained from this original group of 5^th and 6^th graders.  She was coined the “mother of behavior therapy” by Joseph Walpole.

Even though Jones began as a strict behaviorist, she evolved into a psychologist with an eclectic bag of tricks and including a holistic view of people she was studying.  Late in her career, at a behavior conference, she made the following quote about her body of work:

[M]y last 45 years have been spent in longitudinal research in which I have watched the psychobiological development of our study members as they grew from children to adults now in their fifties… My association with this study has broadened my conception of the human experience.  Now I would be less satisfied to treat the fears of a 3-year-old, or of anyone else, without a later follow-up and in isolation from an appreciation of him as a tantalizingly complex person with unique potentials for stability and change

Despite all of her professional achievements, she had some setbacks in her life.  For instance, she was not allowed to use her study of Peter and the rabbit (her now most famous case) as her dissertation because her sample size (1) was too small.  As a result, her work on desensitizing Peter, would not become very well known until the 1960’s.  She was also married to a prominent psychologist (Harold Jones) and was not allowed to become a professor of psychology at Berkeley because her husband already worked in that department.  Instead, she had to settle for an assistant professor position in education.

Overall, I feel that she was a fascinating woman with a long career in a male dominated field in an era when not many women were encouraged to work and think for themselves.  Her work has stood the test of time and made her immortal.  At the end of her life, before she died (at almost 91 years old), she told her sister: “I am still learning about what is important in life.”

Little Albert Song

My favorite part of this section was looking at the personal life of the psychologist and seeing how it may have affected the ideas that they formed. I think one where there is a strong connection is Watson. The book talked about how his mother was very religious and that the nurse that she employed to care for Watson would tell him that the devil lurked in the dark. The nurse’s story said that if Watson were to go out walking during the night, the devil would come out of the darkness and take him off to Hell. To Watson’s mother this was fine because it was good to be scared of the devil. This was terrifying for Watson and resulted in a life-long phobia of the dark. While he admitted that this phobia lead to a study of instinctual fear of the dark in children, I think it can also be seen in his study of Little Albert. Just like Albert associated a loud noise with the rabbit, Watson associated the devil with the dark. Above is a video about Little Albert. I was actually looking for a video of something else and came across this gem. Give it a listen.

J.B. Watson would be in so much trouble by today’s ethical rules.  The first reason being, he cheated on his wife with his secretary, if I’m not mistaken that was and still is a big no-no.  The second reason would be the case of poor Little Albert.  While exploring conditioning is great for those of us going into psychology today, we would never in our wildest dreams be allowed to terrify an innocent child.  Granted, not all of that is Watson’s fault, where were Alberts parents through all this?

Then, in a complete flip form of my arguement.  How much more do y’all think we could learn if we were ethically allowed to do experiments like the one done on Little Albert?

Edit:

Amy you are correct, I couldn’t remember if it was assistant or secretary so I picked secretary.  Secondly, I dont always agree with what I write this is just an assignment to me.  I fully agree with ethical codes they are important.

I have always been interested in Watson’s experiments over the years, but having read through parts of his life in addition to knowing his famous studies, I feel as if I understand him a good deal better. Reading through, I began to wonder if Watson’s great focus on children is due to his own difficult childhood. His nanny told him horrific stories of the Devil lurking in the dark, and as a result he battled a fear of the dark for the rest of his life. When he was having a particularly nervous time, he would sleep with the light on. I wonder if his experiment with little Albert was a result of his own fears from childhood. Was he searching to find a way to unlearn/systematically eliminate his own fears? If he was, then his study on Peter might have given him hope for himself.

Similarly, I wonder if Watson’s poor childhood contributed to his passion for child studies. As a child, his father was a drunkard who was continually chastised by his zealously religious mother. Eventually, he left both the bickering and his family. Watson began to act out, and he refused to see his father despite his father’s approaches later in life. Was an overbearing mother and an absent father create a desire in Watson to see how children ought to be brought up? Was it the lack of a father figure that left him devoid of proper emotion (according to his sons by Rosalie)? I can only speculate on these matters.

Concerning his child-rearing practices though, I am almost certain I dislike them. Treating a child as an adult and depriving them of emotions seems unhelpful.  I think children would more likely end up having difficulty expressing emotions properly as well as demonstrating a good deal of insecurity in their adult lives. Watson may have coped with his circumstances by avoiding emotion, but that doesn’t mean others should deprive infants and children of hugs and giggles.

I found this article that summarized William James’s thought on the healthy vs the sick minded person:

The healthy mind, (described in Lectures IV and V under the title of “The religion of healthy-mindedness”. The healthy-minded have a naturally positive outlook on life. Perhaps influenced by the popularity of the Mind-Cure Movement, a social pressure group of the day that promoted positive thinking as a cure for disease and depression, James assumed that some people simply are happy. “We find such persons in every age, passionately flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness of life, in spite of the hardships of their own condition, and in spite of the sinister theologies in which they may be born. From the outset, their religion is one of union with the divine” says James. In the lectures, Walt Whitman is a favorite example of healthy mindedness. James quotes Francis W Newman, describing such individuals as seeing God, “not as a strict Judge, not as a Glorious Potentate, but as the animating Spirit of a beautiful harmonious world. Beneficent and Kind, Merciful as well as Pure”.

The sick soul, (described in Lectures VI and VII). Those people having a sick soul are those who are depressed and see the evil in all things. James focused on this “divided soul” personality as the candidate for the benefits of conversion. He believed that the only way for a sick soul to cure itself is to undergo a powerful mystical experience, or religious conversion. He argues these so-called “twice born” souls turn out to be the most healthy in the end, since they have seen life from both perspectives.

I personally believe in what William James says, that in order to be a truly intellectual and wise person, or healthy as it is put, then you must be a “twice born,” or sick soul. He states that the sick soul has seen both perspectives and therefore can make decisions in an unbiased and truly thought out level, and I feel that without thinking about all sides, which in turn would mean to experience all sides, then we cannot really break into a truly individualistic and higher intellectual train of thought. Not saying that it is bad, but without the adversity, the bad, negative outcomes and experiences, and just bad with the good we cannot truly say that we have life or any aspect completely figured out. If I had just experienced nothing but the good, everything I wanted, and never really had the challenge of failing in my beliefs, thoughts, actions, and desires then I would not be the person I am today, nor would I try to thoroughly try to think out and analyze what is presented to me. Not saying that I’m the model intellect mind you, far from it actually, but I know I wouldn’t be on this level of thought without the bad, and wouldn’t try to keep a neutral view in anything, therefore I don’t miss things based on focusing only on positive light. I am sure that many other people feel the same way, that phrase, “wouldn’t change a thing,” in this term because we have all experienced bad, and I just think that we are better minded, better acted, and just better people for them.

reference: http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience#Healthy-mindedness_versus_the_sick_soul