The Bell and Pad Method

Today I want to give a different example for classical conditioning in the learning theory than we usually talk about. This method is called "The Bell and Pad Method" and was used during the 1930s. Actually it wasn't a very ethical type of method, but this is always the key aspect in experiments. The aim of this method was to help children to overcome bed-wetting. Let's examine the process more detailed.

The method was used by little children, who were not able to wake up when their bladder was full, so they pee in their but, insted of going to the toilet. So the mean aim was to make them able to be aware of their bladder while sleeping. So the experts constructed a pad with an electrical pad. The idea was that, whenever the pad gets wet, the electrical circuit gets closed and the bell starts ringing and this loud noise wakes the child. After several repetitions the child wakes up before wetting the pad.
The association of bed wetting and waking up due to the alarm is the conditioning, while the unconditioned stimulus is the pad wetting (bladder tension), the conditioned stimulus is the bell and the conditioned response is waking up due to the alarm or even later the urge to urinate.

Announcement

Hey everybody,
I'm trying since 3 days to upload a video on my blog, but whatever I did I wasn't successful. I really got upset, because of this and since I'm trying this I didn't post anything else. This video stuff made me really angry, I hope that I can solve it, because there are many videos I want to share with you? Is there anyone who has a blog and shares videos. If yes, please tell me how you are doing this, before I get crazy out here :) By the way you can watch the videos on youtube.
They are called:
Psychoanalytic Theories
Psychosexual Stages

Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development

According to Sigmund Freud, there are 5 different stages in the psychosexual development of a child. These stages are covering the ages from birth to the adolescence of the child. They are called: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital Stage.


Oral Stage
The oral stage generally starts at the birth and keeps until the 1st year of the child. In this stage the oral body part, like mouth, lips and tongue, of the child has the most important role in the development. The baby uses usually the mouth, especially the method of sucking to discover the environment. The relationship to the mother is also very important, especially at times when the baby is sucking to her breast. The baby learns trust and mistrust.

Anal Stage
The anal stage is the second step of Freud's psychosexual stages a child is going through. In this stage the importance is on the anal area of the body, this means shortly the anus. It occurs between the 1st year and 3rd year of the child. In this stage the child the relationship between parents and child is important, because the parents need to be successful in toilet training and need to balance of control it.

Phallic Stage
This stage occurs between 3 to 6 years. The important body part is the penis. Altough girls do not have a penis, both sexes give are focussed on this body part. Girls think about the idea, why they do not have this body part, while boys do have one. This stage allows the children to think about their sexual identification. Important to mention is that in this stage according to Freud children use to feel sexual desires to their parents (Oedipus Complex)

Latency Stage
The latency stage occurs between 6 years and stays until the puberty. In this stage the child identifies its sex more efficient. Furthermore it recognizes that the sexual desires to their parents can't be satisfied, so they decide to think the opposite, that means they repress these kind of feelings. Important is to mention also, that the children try to identify themselves with the same sex parent.

Genital Stage
The genital stage is the last psychosexual stage of Freud's theory. It occurs from the beginning to the end of the puberty. All genitals do have an influence in this stage. Now the child is aware of its own genitals and desires The social life is influencing the child, especially in the development of his character.  It develops interest in the opposite sex and starts to make relationships.

Zygotes

Hey over there :)

This is a tough week, huh? There is sooo much to do, I have to learn for a test on statistics and write an essay in the social psychology lesson. Therefore I completely forgot that I haven't finished publishing my blog about zygots. I'm really sorry about that, so I want to amend this immediately :)

Shortly for all the ones who do not know what a zygote is. A zygote is a base cell, which is usually produced at the moment of the fertizilation by an ovum (female) and sperm (male) cell. These both cells or gamets are haploid (23 chromosomes) and when they come together the chromosomes combine and they constructed zygote becomes a diploid cell (46 chromosomes/ 23 pair chromosomes ). After the fertilization and production of this zygot it comes to the fallopian tube.

Now I'd like to tell you more about the idea of the production of twins. Like we all know there are two different types: 1. the identical twins (monozygotic) and 2. fraternal twins (dyzygotic). Actually I wanted to explain the idea more precisely, but our teacher put a picture, which I think is better that subscribing the process so I'd like to share it with you. Hopefully it won't be a problem :)

By the identical twins only one ovum gets fertilized by a sperm. The produced zygote divides itself into two cells.So there are two cells, which share a placenta. Actually we can say that in this case it is an error of the zygote, from which twins occur.

Talking about dizygotic, we mean the procedure where two different ovums get fertilized by two sperms (one each!!) Also these produced zygotes develop in different placentas. So in this case the babies are actually compeletely seperated from each other, but because they are fertilized at almost the same time and develop at the same time in the same womb and finally were born on the same time, they are called twins.

Heredity and Conception

Hi everybody,

it's a rainy day outside, so I thought the best thing would be to make a new blog :)
In the last lecture I felt like I was in highschool biology lesson, all these stuff with DNA, genes, zygots...and I realized that I missed that all we've done in highschool a little ;)

What ever I think I should come to the point :D
Our 2nd lecture was on "Heredity and Conception" and this is what I'm going to talk about today :)

When we talk about Heredity we try to observe the influence to the Development . In short the idea of how a baby develops.

Now the idea is simple there is a cell, which is containing chromosomes (23 pair chromosomes, the 23rd pair chromosome tells the sex of the person by the way :D) these chromosomes are composed by DNA containing different proteins, this is called chromatides (one single part of the chromosom is called one-chromatid-chromosom). I hope that I'm not confusing you. And finally the DNA contains genes, which are segments of the DNA, who contain different characteristics of that person that are important for the heredity.

cell ----> chromosomes ----> DNA ----->genes (segments of a DNA)

To build up a human body, these cells need to make cell division and reproduction. For this there is the need of the processes called mitosis and meiosis.
But there are differences between these two kind of cell divisions.
While mitosis is used for cell division of all cells, meiosis functions just for gametes. Mitosis is a normal cell division, meiosis a reduction division. One other important difference is that there is no recombination at the mitosis, but at on the other at the meiosis recombination exists, which is also a danger for faults. Last but not least the chromosome set at the mitosis is diploid, that means each chromosome is existing double. In contrast to that at the meiosis it is haploid, only one part of the "chain" exists.

First three years of a child

Hey everybody :)

Next week University of Minnesota Child Development professor Alan Sroufe will come to our university to give a lecture on "Attachment Psychology". Did you ever heard about that? I have to be honest, I didn't. Because of this, I just decided to research a little on the internet and check what is meant with attachment psychology. While researching it, I found a short text which was quiet interesting and because it has to do something with our topic "child development" I want to share it with you :)

Here is the link:

http://wcco.com/specialreports/importance.early.years.2.1214145.html


It's about the idea, why the first three years of a child are very important. Prof. Sroufe talks about his researches. Maybe I can ask him a few questions about that on friday at the lecture :) This little text and especially the title of the text, made me curious! I just want to check why the first years of a child should be so important! I'm going to inform you as soon as I found more reliable sources :)

Learning Theory 2

After publishing the classical conditioning theory, I'd like to show the operant conditioning theory. But this time I think it would be nice to give german speaking followers the chance to understand me more efficiently, therefore I'm going to explain this theory in german! I hope there won't be any problem :)

Für alle die nicht so gut Englisch verstehen, aber trotzdem meinem Blog folgen möchten :) Ich werde sehr oft auch auf Deutsch bloggen, um euch die Gelegenheit zu geben Informationen (sehr oft aus Vorlesungen meiner Uni, mit meinen Kommentaren) über Kinderentwicklung besser zu verstehen. Das letzte Mal hatte ich über die Klassische Konditionierung gesprochen (was ihr auf Englisch findet, p.s spricht mich an, wenn ihr etwas dazu auf Deutsch wissen wollt ich poste es gerne :)), diesmal geht es um die Operante Konditionierung.

Die Operante Konditionierung

Wenn man über die Operante Konditionierung spricht, denkt man eigentlich zuerst an die Theorie von Burrhus Frederic Skinner, einem US-amerikanischen Psychologen. In seinem Experiment benutzte Skinner Tauben(pigeons) und Ratten (rats). Hierbei ging es darum, dass die Tiere in einer heute sogennanten "Skinner-Box" erlernen sollen, auf einen Hebel (crank) zu drücken, um an ihre Nahrung zu gelangen. Genauer genommen, befand sich in dieser Box ein Hebel, welches genau vor dem Tier stand. Dieser Hebel ermöglichte die Öffnung einer Klappe(valve), hinter dessen sich Nahrung(food) für das Tier(animal) befand. Außerdem ist es wichtig zu erwähnen, dass sich das Tier in einer von der Außenwelt (outerworld) abgeschirmten Box befand, die sich wiederum in einer weiteren Box befand, um Geräusche (sound) von der Außenwelt abzuhalten. Zu Beginn des Experiments berührt das Tier den Hebel eher rein zufällig(random) und sieht sobald sich die Klappe öffnet das Futter, was sozusagen die Belohnung für das Öffnen der Klappe ist. Dadurch sieht das Tier, dass immer wieder, wenn es den Hebel drückt, Nahrung zur Erscheinung kommt. Dadurch entwickelt sich die zufällige Berührung mit dem Hebel zur Absicht.

Bei der operanten Konditionierung sieht es genauer genommen so in etwa aus:

ENVIRONMENT------------CHILD------------ ENVIRONMENT
Reinforcement ----> Behavior or Person <------ Punishment
(Bestärkung) ----> (Verhalten oder Person) <------ (Strafe)

*reinforcement: frequency of behavior increases
Bestärkung: Die Häufigkeit des Verhaltens steigt

**punishment: frequency decreases
Strafe: Die Häufigkeit des Verhaltens sinkt

Um das etwas besser darzustellen, kann man als Beispiel das Verhalten eines Kindes im Spielzeugladen betrachten. Wenn das Kind (child) beispielsweise ein bestimmtes Spielzeug (toy) haben möchte, allerdings die Mutter (mother) nicht damit einverstanden ist, beginnt das Kind zu weinen (cry) mit der Hoffnung, dass sie Mutter es doch kauft. Wenn die Mutter nun das Spielzeug kauft und diese Situation mehrere Male aufeinander vorkommt, dann entsteht die Situation des sogennanten "reinforcements". Das heißt das Verhalten des Kindes wird durch die Außenwelt so gestärkt, dass es nun bei jedem Einkaufsbesuch oder jedes Mal wenn das Kind etwas bekommen möchte erscheint und es zu einer Angewohnheit kommt. Wenn allerdings die Mutter mit dem Weinen des Kindes nicht sozugen "manipuliert" wird und alles andere als einverstanden ist, deswegen auch das Kind statt dem Kind das Spielzeug kaufen es anschimpft oder auch einfach ignoriert geschieht etwas anderes. In diesem Fall versteht das Kind, auch hier muss die Situation mehrere Male aufeinader folgen, dass das Weinen nichts bringt und dadurch das Verhalten sinkt. Dies ist dann wiederum die Punishment Situation.
Verglichen mit den Basic Issues, die ich zuvor schon in einem Blog dargestellt hatte, kann man sagen, dass die Operante Konditionierung: continuous, nurture affected und universal ist. Vielleicht könnt ihr mir ja sagen warum? :)

Lecture 1 Theories

Unfortunately as I hadn't any internet connection last week, I couldn't post any new blog. So this week I'll try to amend this and write more then usually :)

I think it would be good, when I continue there, where I stoped the past week. In order to do this, I'm going to show 2 different learning theories connected to the basic issues, we talked about before...

1. Theory:
Pavlov' Dogs: classical conditioning

In this theory, we basically observe the unconditioned and conditioned stimuli to the brain and thereupon the conditioned response from the correspondent animal.
Ivan Pavlov experimented with dogs to observe the connection between those stimuli and response.
The idea was to offer the dogs food, which is in this case an unconditioned stimulus, because food is the infinite (unilimited) value. Pavlov rang a bell to call the dogs for feeding and to see their reactions to the bell. As he realized that there was no reaction he decided to rang the bell and by the way to show them the food so the dogs started to probe saliva, when they saw the food and on the same time hear the bell. In this case the bell is the conditioned stimulus, because the dogs only showed reaction, when it appeared in connection with food.
Afterwards he repeated this action severe times, until the dogs began to probe saliva by only hearing the sound of the bell. This shows that the salivating activity of the dogs is an conditioned response to the stimuli coming from the outer world (environment). The reason is that, the dogs can't control their saliva, it occurs immediately when they hear the sound of the bell, because they only experienced it in connection to food and expect that when the bell occurs the food will occur too.

So in order to the basic issues, I told you the past week, can you guys tell me, whether this theory is nature or nurture, continuous or discontinuous, universal or culture-specific and finally whether it is active and passive. I would appreciate it, when you give me the answer and tell me why you think that it is like that... See you soon :)

Lecture 1 Issues

On friday, we had our first lecture. Mainly,we talked about some basic issues and theories on child development.

There are 4 basic issues, such as Nature vs nurture, continuous vs. discontinuous, universal vs.culturally-specific and finally active vs. passive.
When we take a look at these issues, we can observe these facts presented in the following.

Nature vs. Nurture

Talking about the issue "nature vs.nurture" psychologists usually mean the observation, where they try to find out whether a behavior is naturally constructed, that means that genes took a role, or whether it is by nurture, that means by environmental factors, such as social life, which may influence the person to create that specific behavior.

In this context "Gender" is one of the most important topics, where scientists try to examine, whether it is naturally or environmentally constructed.
But in relation to child development the basic question won't be: nature or nurture? Far from it the question is: "How does heredity and environment interact?"

Continuously vs. discontinuously

In this issue, the main question, which is important for the observation is: "How does the development creature proceed?"

When we talk about discontinuously development, we talk about a qualitative change in the bahavior. To illustrate this more efficiently we can think about the logic of a child. When a child is at the age of 5 it would give different answers to questions than it would in it's teenage years. A child would identify peace as to not hurt a friend, which is in this case a non abstract answers. But laterly this same child can tell us that for example peace is harmony or a world without war etc. when it grew up to a teenager. This would be a logical and abstract answer.

The development here is qualitative and discontinuously, because the child has an step to step development, where the change of it's logic takes time and becomes completely different in contrast to how it was before.

On the other hand, there is the continuously development. This kind of development is quantative and has a straight linear change (incrementally).
In this case, we can think about the idea, that children learn continuously new abilities and skills, which gives them a quantitative rise of the things they know, which affects on their development.

Universal vs. context-specific

The idea of universal means that all children around the world go through the same experiences in life.
For example all babies cried at least once in their life.

Culture-specific means that a specific behavior is limited or shaped somehow, because it is influenced by culture.
For example emotions are universal, whereas a man isn't able to cry in public in some areas on the world, because culture asks men to be strong, in short: Men don't cry.

Active vs. passive

In this issue, the importance is to find out, whether the child interacts actively or passively with the environment.

Active:
child -----> environment
When there is an active situation, the child and it's behavior are interacting with the environment

Passive:
environment-------> child
When we talk about passive, we mean that the environment influences the child and of course it's behavior.

Introduction

Hey guys out there!!

This is the first entry to my blog under the topic: CHILD DEVELOPMENT.
The reason for creating a blog was actually the child development course I'm taking in my university. So I thought it would be nice to introduce what I'm going to do in the next time on this blog site, before starting with facts, reviews and opinions...

I hope that I'll be able to create a nice and informative blog for all you interested people on child development...
And as I love to be creative this blog will contain more than just long and boring informative texts (monologs!)=)
So you can be sure that I'll put as often as I can interesting videos, pictures which will be interacting with our current topic, so the texts get more informative, but also interesting :)
you all will be able to make comments or even ask me questions on that topic ;)

Finally I should mention that I'll try to make this blog a litte universal, that means it won't be only in ENGHLISH, but also in TURKISH and GERMAN =)
so all the people who might not speak English, but are still interested on this topic get the chance to understand what I'm going to talk about, because I know that there is so much information about child development in English, but so little in turkish...

Well this is it for now, but see you very very soon guys! :))
Enjoy yourself! ;)