Discussion Week Three

Billy Wood
IDST 01H
The Examined Life
Discussion Week Three
Give one personal example of how you have been classically conditioned.

The following example of classical conditioning has happened to me during my career as a fire fighter. This personal example will be in regards to the new fire fighter becoming classically conditioned to respond in certain ways to emergency alert tones. We use alert tones in the fire service to get the attention of fire fighters so that they will listen more closely to their radios for call information and readiness.

New fire fighters are in the first stage of classical conditioning (in regards to tone recognition) the acquisition phase. In the acquisition phase, (Meyers, 2004) the conditioned stimuli (alert tones) leads to an unconditional response (excitement) regardless of the amount of or type of alert tone. This leads to a conditioned response of readiness every time they hear any tone come across the radio.

Next, new fire fighters enter into the extinction phase in which he or she learns that the amount of alert tones is essential and not the alert tone itself. In other words the conditioned stimulus (the alert tone) no longer generates a conditioned response (readiness). The extinction is a result of the fire fighter no longer having the unconditional response (excitement) every time he or she hears the alert tone. However if you remove a fire fighter from service for a while and then return him to service the extinction will spontaneously recover for a short time. This happens when fire fighters move to an administrative role and later return to the field.

Generalization occurs initially for the new fire fighter who does not recognize the difference between alert tones and non emergency information tones. Eventually the new fire fighter learns to discriminate the difference between the two types of tones.

Give one personal example of how you have been operantly conditioned!

My text defines operant conditioning as “a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished by a punisher” (Meyers, 2004). Although I am sure that I have been operantly conditioned I would like to use my wife’s parenting skill as an example.

We were having a difficult time getting my four year old daughter Celia to go to sleep at night. Celia would deliberately stall. I believe that her action was learned by an accidental rewarding system that we had been implementing. My wife and I had grown tired of Celia’s refusal to go to bed to the point that we were giving in to her stall tactics. Her reaction was a product of conditioned reinforcement. We played her game and bed time dragged on from 20 minutes of prep time to one hour. Something had to stop this.

My wife suggested a positive reward system that involved a sticker chart. Our goal was to change our daughter’s behavior at bed time. Every night that Celia went to bed without wavering, she would receive a sticker for her chart the next morning. Once a goal of 11 nights of cooperation was reached Celia would earn a new toy. This positive reinforcement reward system worked. It has now been months since we have had any backsliding.

Billy Wood
Works Cited
Meyers, D. G. (2004). Psychology Seventh Edition in Modules. New York: Worth Publishers.