Thursday, February 26, 2009

Dog Behavior Answers Book

Author: Arden Moore

Some interesting points from this book~http://ardenmoore.com

- Sigmund frued believed that dogs possess a psecial sense for human emotions. His Chow, Jo-Fi, assisted the great psychoanalyst in his sessions byalerting him to patients' moods. The dog would stay across the room from patients who were stressed or tense. Freud also realized that petting a dog could help calm and relax people. Several scientific studies have shown that owning a pet may reduce blood pressure and lower cholesterol. Pets also seem to help people cope better with stress, loneliness, and depression.



- A case study:
Q: About three times a week, I take Nugget, my certified therapy dog, on visits to a nursing home and a children's cancer hospital.We spend an hour or two greeting the residents. However, she isn't as excited as she used to be when I put on her therapy vest after eight years.When she comes home from a the pay visit, she seems to be sad and a bit down. Why is she acting this way?
A: Animal-assisted programs can change and even save lives. It is just as important, however, that the therapy dogs' needs are met, too. Owner need to be on the lookout for signs of stress or burnout in their four-legged ambassadors of love. Therapy dogs are emotionally affected by sadness and pain n those they visit. They can get stressed and exhausted. It takes two to make a good therapay team, and both must be committed to performing the task. She is showing signs that she is ready for retirement.



- A tired dog is a more relaxed dog.
How true it is. A tired man is a more relaxed person too!

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Impoverished Environment & Drug-related behaviour

Focus Question: Ch9 (p.221-222) + Ch12 (p.292) + Readings
Discuss the following statement: 'Living in an impoverished environment can result in proportionally more time and/or effort being allocated to drug-related behaviours'
.

The statement: 'Living in an impoverished environment can result in proportionally more time and/or effort being allocated to drug-related behaviours' is supported by numerous research, which demonstrated that the association of impoverishment environment and drug abuse. Inhalant users who were from low incomes families had higher rate of having drug or alcohol dependence in the past year (Wu, Howard, Pilowsky, 2008). Furthermore, it was found that female heads of household who were had alcohol and other drug abuse were associated with the employment issues (i.e., loss of jobs, lower income and less working hours), problematic situational factors (e.g., health, low self-esteem) and human capital deficits (e.g., poorly educated) (Chandler, Meisel, Jordan, Rienzi, Goodwin, 2004).

Behavioural Economics may help in explaining drug-abuse behaviours in the impoverishment environment. Drug-related behaviours may cut down the opportunities of individuals for getting other reinforcers and thus lead to a higher proportion time spent on the drug abuse. In other words, people live in impoverishment environment are more likely to have more drug reinforcers by significant people e.g., family members, or peers who have drug-abuse behaviours too. In contrast, positive reinforcers are limited, e.g., good education or income. Without strong competition of other reinforcers, individuals become harder to quit and consequently maintain drug abuse habit (Laraway et al., 2000).

Stein, Dixon and Nyamathi (2008) investigated the impact of psychosocial and situational Variables on substance abuse among homeless adults. Lower self-esteem served as the predictor in greater emotional distress, lower positive coping, greater negative coping, and more alcohol use. Meanwhile, social support was associated with less emotional distress and more positive coping. Thus, it was concluded that substance abuse programs and housing support need to address issues like psychological factors and environmental factors.

References:

Chandler, D., Meisel, J., Jordan, P., Rienzi, B. M., & Goodwin, S. N. (2004).
Substance Abuse, Employment, and Welfare Tenure. Social Service Review, 78, 628-651.

Laraway, S., Snycerski, S., Byrne, T. & Poling A. (2000). Introduction to behavioral pharmacology. In A. Poling and T. Byrne (Eds.). Drug Abuse. Reno N.V.: Context Press, pp. 219-248.

Mazur, J. E. (2006). Learning and Behavior. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Stein, J. A., Dixon, E. L., & Nyamathi, A. M. (2008). Effects of psychosocial and situational variables on substance abuse among homeless adults. Psychology of addictive behaviours, 22(3), 410-416.

Wu, L. T., Howard, M. O., & Pilowsky, D. J. (2008). Substance use disorders among inhalant users: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Addictive Behaviors, 33, 968-973.

TV Violence and Aggressive behavior in Children

Because much of the research on TV violence and aggressive behavior in children is correlational, it is difficult to determine cause and effect. Describe how some researchers have tried to get around this problem. What have they found?

Much research were sought after in finding the relationship between TV violence and aggressive behaviour in children. Bandura’s classical theory of generalised imitation was a landmark study on imitation of aggressive behaviour as immediate effect (Mazur, 1965 as cited in Mazur, 2006).

Huesmann, Lagerspetz and Eron (1984) investigated intervening variables in the TV Violence-Aggression Relation for 758 children in US and 220 children in Finland. By employing an overlapping longitudinal design, they used interviewed and tested for 3 years in the children. The result showed that TV violence viewing was significantly related to concurrent aggression and predicted future changes in aggression. Path analyses showed a bidirectional causal effect in which violence viewing engenders aggression, and aggression engenders violence viewing.

Later on, Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, and Eron (2003) used partially of the old data to do follow up on longitudinal relation to the TV violence and aggression. The old data, which was from the same participants who took part in the earlier studies conducted by Huesmann et. al. (1984). Follow up archival data (N=450) and interview data (N= 329) showed that childhood exposure to media violence predicts young adult aggressive behaviours in both genders. The relationship between TV violence and aggression remain strongly associated even after controlled other variables of socioeconomic status, intellectual ability and parenting factors.

The impact of watching TV violence of children who behave aggressively can be explained by the pattern of brain activation. Murray et al. (2006) examined brain activation in 8 children, aged 9-13 years old who watched televised violent and nonviolent video sequences. Meanwhile, children’s brain activities were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). The result revealed that large number of aggressive scripts kept in long term-memory in the posterior cingulate. It is later recalled and subsequently acted upon when committing violent acts.

It is suggested that future studies may look into other possible variables, which are facilitating to the aggressive behaviour in children and TV violence.

References:

Huesmann, L. R., Lagerspetz, K., & Eron, L. D. (1984). Intervening variables in the tv violence-aggression relation:Evidence from two countries. Developmental Psychology, 20, 746-775.

Huesmann, L. R., Moise-Titus, J., Podolski, C., & Eron, L. D. (2003). Longitudinal relations between children’s exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977-1992. Developmental Psychology, 39 (2), 201-221.

Mazur, J. E. (2006). Learning and Behavior. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Murray, J. P., Liotti, M., Ingmundson, P. T., Mayberg, H. S., Pu, Y., Zamarripa, F., et al. (2006). Children’s brain activations while viewing televised violence revealed by fMRI. Media Psychology, 8, 25-37.

Discrete Trial procedure and a Free Operant procedure

Define spontaneous recovery, describe Pavlov's theory about why it occurs and outline one study, which demonstrates spontaneous recovery.

After extinction of conditional response due to time lapse, the return of conditional response drawn out by the conditioned stimulus (CS) is referred to as spontaneous recovery (Sandoz & Pham-Delègue, 2004). Pavlov addressed this phenomenon of spontaneous recovery as an evidence of CS-US association not fully eliminated in the extinction phase. This means that it is hard to erase the previous learning, and the time lapse served as a crucial factor to determine the level of spontaneous recovery (Mazur, 2006).

Sandoz & Pham-Delègue (2004) reproduced the study on how honeybees had been used, to test Pavlov’s theory about spontaneous recovery in controlled laboratory conditions. The proboscis extension response of the honeybees can be conditioned by associating an odour stimulus (CS) to a sucrose reward (US). After a single CS-US pairing in honeybees, extinction process occurs when conditioned responses to the CS are eliminated after repeated unrewarded presentation of the CS. The time intervals during training, the number of conditioning, and whether extinction trials have an influence on the amount of spontaneous recovery were investigated in this study. The result showed that spontaneous recovery mostly appeared in a massed fashion (1-min intertrial intervals) and highly relied on time intervals through conditioning and extinction (1 hr being an optimum). In addition, multiple conditioning trials improved the level of spontaneous recovery, whereas extinction trials lessen it. After the extinction process in the single-trial conditioning, spontaneous recovery appeared once only.

In short, the study of spontaneous recovery revealed that memory patterns of short-term and long-terms depends on the interval of conditioning and extinction trials.

References:

Mazur, J. E. (2006). Learning and Behavior (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Sandoz, J. C., & Pham-Delègue M., H. (2004). Spontaneous recovery after extinction of the conditioned proboscis extension response in the honeybee. Learning & Memory. 11. 586-597.

Pavlov's theory -spontaneous recovery

Define spontaneous recovery, describe Pavlov's theory about why it occurs and outline one study, which demonstrates spontaneous recovery.

After extinction of conditional response due to time lapse, the return of conditional response drawn out by the conditioned stimulus (CS) is referred to as spontaneous recovery (Sandoz & Pham-Delègue, 2004). Pavlov addressed this phenomenon of spontaneous recovery as an evidence of CS-US association not fully eliminated in the extinction phase. This means that it is hard to erase the previous learning, and the time lapse served as a crucial factor to determine the level of spontaneous recovery (Mazur, 2006).

Sandoz & Pham-Delègue (2004) reproduced the study on how honeybees had been used, to test Pavlov’s theory about spontaneous recovery in controlled laboratory conditions. The proboscis extension response of the honeybees can be conditioned by associating an odour stimulus (CS) to a sucrose reward (US). After a single CS-US pairing in honeybees, extinction process occurs when conditioned responses to the CS are eliminated after repeated unrewarded presentation of the CS. The time intervals during training, the number of conditioning, and whether extinction trials have an influence on the amount of spontaneous recovery were investigated in this study. The result showed that spontaneous recovery mostly appeared in a massed fashion (1-min intertrial intervals) and highly relied on time intervals through conditioning and extinction (1 hr being an optimum). In addition, multiple conditioning trials improved the level of spontaneous recovery, whereas extinction trials lessen it. After the extinction process in the single-trial conditioning, spontaneous recovery appeared once only.

In short, the study of spontaneous recovery revealed that memory patterns of short-term and long-terms depends on the interval of conditioning and extinction trials.

References:

Mazur, J. E. (2006). Learning and Behavior (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Sandoz, J. C., & Pham-Delègue M., H. (2004). Spontaneous recovery after extinction of the conditioned proboscis extension response in the honeybee. Learning & Memory. 11. 586-597.

Language is an Innate Human Ability

Describe some of the evidence supporting the view that language is an innate human ability.

Human language is described as a form of communication (Wesley, 1998). According to Wesley (1998), human language is unique in terms of how it uses the complex syntactic structure and how it is learned by observational learning. The reason of why humans have language could be due to the ability to learn any system of communication.

There are four thousand languages available in used throughout the world. Human being has no specific language, which is applicable universal as the speakers of different language are unable to understand each other’s language. However, common similarities among human languages are more remarkable than the differences among them (Gleitman, 2006).

The capacity to acquire a human language is innate since learners can naturally absorb the formal and substantive properties and readily pick up languages during the human development (Gleitman, 2006). The learner is equipped with a “bioprogram” that leads the learning process and makes the competence of learning a language possible (Luria et al., 2006). Gleitman (2006) argued that language learning proceeds evenly within and across linguistic communities even though a great variability of the language offered to each person regardless of races and culture. For example, in several countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, schoolchildren have to learn Chinese and English, in Malaysia, they have to learn three languages. It is expected that one may not master all languages concurrently, but it is possible to learn various languages in different environment as well. Secondly, children do not have particular experience of language, but have the capability to learn many linguistic generalisations. A person, who migrated to another country, is able to learn the new language and communicate with local residents after acculturation but not necessarily attending formal education.

References:

Gleitman, L. R. (2006). A Human Universal: The Capacity to Learn a Language. In H. Luria, D. M., Seymour, & S. Trudy (Eds.), Language and linguistics in context: Readings and applications for teachers (pp. 13-27). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Wesley, O. M. (1998). Formal approach to innate and learned communication: Laying the foundation for language (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1998). Dissertation Abstracts International, 59 , 1B.

Interaction of gene x parenting style in predicting depression

This is the reason why parents play a significant role in influencing the well-being of children. Other than the interaction of parent’s work stress and child’s psychological adjustments, Ecological systems Theory of Development has expanded into many related fields like depression study. In fact, I remember a psychology research article in a local newspaper a few years ago, which reported that the main stressor of key person in adolescent is ironically from his/her mother. Personally, I agree with this because my mother always has the greatest demand/expectation from me in becoming an ideal individual.

Psychologist, Gerald Haeffel, and colleagues examined whether a gene associated with dopamine interacted with maternal parenting style to predict episodes of depression. The sample consisted of 177 male adolescents from a juvenile detention center in Russia. Depression was diagnosed by employing a structured diagnostic interview; while aspects of maternal parental rearing (i.e. physical punishment, hostility, lack of respect for the child’s point of view, and unjustified criticism in front of others) were assessed by a questionnaire. It was reported that neither genes nor maternal parenting style alone can be used to predict depression. However, depression can be determined by a combination of the following factors: (1) The male adolescents with especially rejecting mothers, and (2) a specific form of the dopamine transporter gene. Therefore, it is suggested that the use of psychosocial interventions to increase dopamine activity in the brain (Association for Psychological Science, 2008). Most importantly, we need to aware of the impact of parenting styles on parents as part of a child’s immediate environment.

References:

Association for Psychological Science (2008, January 16). Nature And Nurture Are Both To Blame For Depression, Study Says. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 28, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/01/080115102642.htm