In-Class FRQ

Marijuana is a mild hallucinogen that commonly results in physical dependence.

A neutral stimulus would be the tone in Pavlov's original experiment with dog salivation. Acquisition is the process of relating a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned response, which creates a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus. Using Pavlov's classical conditioning principles, I would introduce a shock as the unconditioned stimulus. The unconditioned response would be him experiencing pain. Gradually, I would introduce marijuana as a neutral stimulus to accompany the shock. He will relate the pain of the shock to the use of marijuana, which is a process called acquisition. Eventually, he will stop smoking marijuana because he will be conditioned to avoid the pain associated with it. 

A reinforcement is an award that increases the desired behavior. Punishment is something that decreases the desired behavior. Each day he goes without smoking marijuana, I would reward him with $1, which would be positive reinforcement because I am adding something to encourage that behavior. Each time he does smoke, I would take away $5, which would be negative punishment, because I'm taking something away to discourage that behavior.

Classical Conditioning

What did you learn today?

Today I learned about biological predispositions. I learned that for a natural stimuli to become conditioned, it must make adaptive sense. An internal stimuli associates better with taste--for example, how meatball sandwiches trigger thoughts of the nuro virus. Like wise, an external stimulus associates better with pain--for example, a football player walking toward you triggers your response to flinch.

Diagram of Classical Conditioning Situation

In a previous situation, a college student wanted to classically condition his roommate. Everyday, he would play a voice recording saying, "That was easy" then shoot his roommate with a Nerf gun. He would continue doing this until one day he would play the voice recording, "That was easy" and his roommate flinched before the shot was fired.  

Unconditioned Stimulus (Nerf gun) --> Unconditioned Response (flinch)

Neutral Stimulus ("That was easy") + Unconditioned Stimulus (Nerf gun) -->UR (flinch)

Conditioned Stimulus ("That was easy") --> Conditioned Response (flinch)

Who cares?

Classical conditioning allows for us to determine how people develop phobias or certain fears of objects. Knowing this, we can then unlearn certain phobias. 

Things I Will Study for the Final

Psychoactive Drugs: Mind Map

Below is a graphic organizer of the three major drug categories, their specific common drugs, and the synaptic interactions involved in each. 

Explain the Brain

What if the thalamus was destroyed? Which sense would not not be affected?

Explaining a Neuron

Review of a Neuron
-What happens if the cell body can't process the information the dendrites receive?

Neural Transmission & Communication
-Why are neurotransmitters "expensive" to make?

(Having some technical difficulty embedding videos....for now see links above)

Survey Results

Introduction

-Does the number of sports you play affect the number of people you sit with at lunch?

I chose this research question because in high school, it is assumed that the jocks are the popular kids in the class. I wanted to see if the athletes in this class did in fact sit with more people at lunch than those who don't play sports.

Methods

-n=22

-I walked around the room and asked anyone that was near me.

Results

-Yes, there is a correlation. But it is a weak positive correlation. There is a relationship between the two variables, but it is very weak.

-r=.22

Conclusion

-My correlation coefficient for my data leads me to conclude that there is a weak positive correlation between sports and size of a  lunch group. Even though some athletes did sit with a high number of people, there were also non-athletes who sat with just as many. A possible third variable would be other extracurricular activities. Non-athletes may sit with just as many people at lunch because they are involved in other activities.

-A weakness in my correlational study would be that there were a large number of athletes that only played one sport. This didn't give me a wide range of data. To fix this, I could have been more specific with the sports. For example, do football players sit with more people than basketball players? Volleyball players? Water polo players?