User talk:Enrico16

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning was one of the most intriguing lessons I learned in psychology. It is defined as a type of learning where an organism comes to associate stimuli. An example of this would be teaching a child to be afraid of wasps because they sting and give out a certain amount of pain. The child associates the stimuli of pain with the wasp and becomes afraid of this wasp. Due to learning about this type of conditioning, I better understand many things, from wild-life to how we grew as humans.

The child I was speaking of when I mentioned the wasp example is me. As a kid, I found every way to get stung by wasps. Of course this was not done on purpose, but because of this, to this day if I am outside and an insect flies by me, I am struck with fear and panic. This even includes flies or simple june bugs. However this is a perfect example of natural classical conditioning. I believe that classical conditioning is the reason for many of our fears.

Pavlov proved classical conditioning by making a dog salivate unnaturally to the sound of a bell. However classical conditioning happens every day and I am not sure the human race would be alive today without it. Many fears that are learned in this manner are very logical. For example, I am assuming that cavemen learned at some point that cuddling with bears will usually lead to being eaten by these same bears. This would lead to cavemen being quite afraid of bears. Without rational fears like of bears, poisonous snakes or heights, the human race may not have survived.

Classical conditioning also tells a great deal about today’s wild-life. Imagine you are driving, and suddenly a squirrel jumps out into the road, stares at you for a second and then as quickly as it can, scurries off the road. Why does this furry rodent not just stand in the middle of the road? It knows that if it does decide to just sit there, then there will most likely not be a happy ending for the little squirrel. This squirrel has learned that cars generally hurt when they run over you. Without this knowledge similar to this, squirrels might not be an existing species today. It doesn’t stop with just squirrels, all species have to learn to adapt to their environment through trial and error. This trial and error is a form of classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning is an adaptive process that allows for all species to succeed in their own environment. All species are constantly adapting as new dangers as well as positive variables are entered into their lives. Classical conditioning is not only an interesting process I learned about in psychology but it is also a necessary asset to survive.

Object Permanence

Of the many lessons I took from this semester’s psychology class, object permanence stuck out from the group. Learning about object permanence gave me new knowledge, a possible career for the future, and a new perspective on life.

Object permanence is a necessary developmental step in the maturation of the mind usually learned around the age of six months. It is defined as the awareness that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen. An example of this is to take a toy that the baby is interested in, and place it underneath a rug or a towel. If the child can logically pick up the towel and get his or her toy back, then he or she has attained object permanence. If not, it is still a stage of development the child is awaiting to conquer.

Learning this came into play about the same time I started volunteering for the YMCA. My mother is a physical therapist and she ran a program for disabled children in the gymnastics section of the YMCA. She used volunteers to work with these children, aging anywhere from four to twelve years old. I was one of the seven volunteers to sign up. Each child was assigned to a specific volunteer; I was given a little boy about the age of six named Logan. Logan has cerebral palsy and mental retardation, both are relatively severe. It wasn’t long before working with Logan that I found out he could not talk but to utter a few gibberish sounds. He also had a pacifier that he constantly had in his mouth, and if it was dropped, he began to become upset. I had learned that without object permanence, learning to speak is not an option. So I decided to test Logan’s object permanence by using his pacifier and my sweatshirt. I took it from his mouth and placed it under my sweatshirt, and was not able to find the pacifier. I realized at this point that Logan may never be able to speak at all.

Realizing all of this about Logan gives a new perspective on life. Too often people take simple things for granted. Even talking and other simple mental functions are taken for granted every day. Logan may not ever be able to utter any words and may never be able to walk on his own. With this perspective on things, it’s hard to fathom my own self were I in Logan’s place. He is a relatively happy child, but only because the severity of his condition allows him to be so. He does not realize what his life could be, and I am thankful for that, because the crushing depression that would be connected to realizing the life ahead of him would be too much, not only for him, but for me.

Learning about object permanence helped me to understand Logan more, and to understand life more, and it also may have helped me to understand a little more about my own future. Working with Logan and testing his object permanence gave me a sense of worth I have never felt before. Being able to apply my knowledge directly from class to my volunteer work was satisfying in more ways than one. Often in school, we are taught things that we don’t understand when we will need to learn them. However learning about object permanence was different, I was able to apply my knowledge the day I learned it. This has since made me consider work in physical therapy for kids about Logan’s age. I enjoyed working with him and doing various tests I learned throughout psychology on him. Thanks to learning about object permanence one day in class, I may have figured out my own future.

Defense Mechanisms

Life can be confusing, conflicting and also very happy. Life is easy to live when everything is happy, but how about when it isn’t? When life becomes a troublesome burden, we as people have to find a way to continue living and to attempt to make ourselves happy. It is human nature to be happy. Defense mechanisms are handy little devices that get the job done; they make conflicting situations easier, however as I have learned in psychology, they can be as troublesome as the original situation.

Defense mechanisms come in many forms. There are six different types of mechanisms. Rationalization is one of the most common of these forms. In rationalization someone attempts to create self-justifying reasons for doing something that may not have been correct. Rationalization makes wrong or out of character things normal. Creating this false sense of self-justification sooths the person who is using rationalization, but only temporarily. Like all of the defense mechanisms, rationalization protects the person from seeing what the true problem is. This can be very helpful, it is great to use on small conflicts that do not matter. They can protect people against the small things that we get caught up on and make us struggle.

Another common defense mechanism is repression. Repression is used to block out traumatic experiences. This can be a very helpful way to forget painful memories. Horrible memories have the potential to haunt you and alter who you are. Repression offers an alternative, however the alternative to this in repression is completely forgetting the memory. It is only sometimes a better alternative. If the affected person is not going to be able to cope with the memory, repression is better. However, if the affected person can work through the bad memories and maybe even become stronger because of them, then repression is the worse of the two.

A less common and much less useful defense mechanism is regression. Regression is when an individual reverts back to an earlier time in his or her life due to large amounts of anxiety. This can take a person back months, years, or it can even take an adult to their early childhood. A person in regression believes that they are the age they reverted back to, and they act accordingly. This is not one of the useful defense mechanisms because it distorts reality to solve the problem, which is never a good thing.

As I have stated, some defense mechanisms can also get you into quite a bit of trouble. Mechanisms like this don’t allow you to see the truth about things. If there are problems in your life you need to face them, and beat them. Defense mechanisms merely deflect the conflict and in many cases create more problems. They are especially troublesome when used against large life problems that need to be assessed not deflected. Even though they can be useful when used against small every day problems, if not careful they can be abused and can send someone down a bad road.