Behaviorism Blog Post 2 (Fun Activity!)

• Interpret and explain what is happening in the video. Be specific. What is being paired and how is it being reinforced or punished?

In this video Jim is using classical conditioning to make Dwight start to salivate when he hears a certain sound go off on his computer. He talks about how he learned about Pavlov's experience with the dogs, a bell sound and the presentation of food. In Pavlov's experiment he was studying the digestive system of dogs. Before he would feed the dog he would ring a bell next to the dogs cages. After he performed this many of times he realized that the dogs began to salivate as soon as they heard the bell opposed to when they saw the food. In this particular experiment the unconditioned stimulus was the presentation of the food because it was the event that evoked an automatic response from the dogs while the dogs salivating to the ringing of the bell (neutral stimulus) was the unconditioned response. The ringing of the bell was once a neutral stimulus until it was paired with the food being presented to the dogs. The dogs were taught to produce saliva when hearing the bell so in this experiment the saliva is the conditioned response while the the dogs hearing the bell is the conditioned stimulus. In the video the neutral stimulus is the sound of the computer while the altoid Jim gives Dwight is the unconditioned stimulus that makes Dwight have an unconditioned response of reaching for a mint. After multiple times of Jim pairing the neutral stimulus (computer sound) with the unconditioned stimulus (altoid) with the unconditioned response, and the reinforcement of Jim handing over an altoid every time the computer makes a certain sound, created a a conditioned response of Dwight putting his hand out for an altoid.

• Now, invent a scenario. Think about how you could teach some kind of content through paired association. Would it look very different? (Think about your language classes, pairing pictures with word meanings, etc). What would be paired and how would it be punished or reinforced to end up with the desired learning? (Describe the scenario)

One thing that would always help me in middle school and even high school is if my teacher made up riddles or songs to go along with the lesson. I remember one time in my fifth grade science class my teacher taught us a song to help us remember the "scientific classification" of animals and I have not forgotten them to this day. When I have a classroom of my own I will try to help my students learn material through song and riddles. It would be reinforced by repetition and although students may feel silly at the time, I know in the long run they will always remember the material.