remembered in history

Question One

Ivan Petrovic Pavlov (1849-1936) was a physiologist known for his practical theories of classic conditioning. Pavlov was born in Ryazan: the largest city in Russia situated along the Oka River. Pavlov, due to a serious injury, was unable to begin formal education until he was eleven years. He attended a church school in Ryazan then left the school to join the university at Petersburg in 1870. At the university, Pavlov enrolled in the math and physics faculty taking natural science courses (Babkin, 1949). He graduated in 1875 earning a degree in natural sciences. Pavlov later earned a position as a laboratory assistant at the psychological department of the veterinary institute where he worked for two years conducting studies to investigate the circulatory system. In 1879, Pavlov was awarded a medal at the Medical Military Academy for his outstanding research work. In 1881, Pavlov started a family with Seraphima Vasilievna with whom he had five children. In 1883, Pavlov was awarded his doctorate after which he studied digestion in dogs for two years. He became the chair of physiology in 1895, a position he occupied until his resignation in 1924.

James Dewey Watson is a renowned geneticist remembered in history for his prolific role in the discovery of the components and structure of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Watson was born in 1928 in Illinois; the only male child a wealthy couple James and Jean Watson. At a tender age of fifteen years, Watson joined the University of Chicago graduating four years later with a degree in zoology. He developed more interest in genetics and after joining Indiana University in Bloomington received a Ph.D. in zoology in 1950. He then went to Copenhagen where he played a role in the National Research Council as a Merck Fellow.  In 1952, Watson determined the structure of the coat surrounding the mosaic virus though little progress was made with deoxyribonucleic acid. His biggest breakthrough in the study came in 1953 when he finally discovered the elements of DNA developing the double helix model characterized by a spiraling ladder. In 1955, Watson joined Harvard University where he worked as a professor of biology. In 1962, Watson was awarded the Nobel Prize award in the company of his colleagues: Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Watson then wrote the Molecular Biology of the Gene and The Double Helix in 1956 and 1968. In 1968, he took a leadership role in a Laboratory of Quantitative Biology at Long Island.

Burrhus Skinner (1904-1990) was an American psychologist and social philosopher. Skinner was renowned for his contribution to the behaviorism theory which attempts to understand human behavior in terms of their responses to the stimuli in the environment. Skinner was born in Pennsylvania to a lawyer and a loving mother. After joining Hamilton College, Skinner developed an interest in writing. After failing in his writing career after graduation, he decided to follow a new path at Harvard University studying psychology. It was at Harvard where Skinner came up with the famous “Skinner box” with which he could observe an animal’s interaction with its environment. After earning his doctorate at Harvard, he published The Behavior of Organisms which drew comparisons to Pavlov’s responses to stimuli theories. In 194, he was appointed as chair of the psychology faculty at Indiana University. He was diagnosed with Leukemia in 1989 and one year later succumbed to the disease in Cambridge.

Question Two

1. Classical Conditioning: Classical conditioning can be defined as a process of learning where a conditioned stimulus is associated with a stimulus that is not related, unconditioned stimulus, to spark a behavioral reaction known as a conditioned response (CR). The conditioned response, therefore, becomes the learned response to what was previously neutral stimulus.
2. Extinction: Extinction is the state where a conditioned response is gradually weakening resulting in the disappearance of the behavior.
3. Stimulus Generalization: Stimulus generalization can be described as the tendency of a new stimulus to induce behaviors that are the same as those evoked by a different stimulus.
4. High Order Conditioning: High Order Conditioning is a situation whereby a previously neutral stimulus is paired with a conditioned stimulus to evoke a similar response as the conditioned stimulus.
5. Operant Conditioning: Operant conditioning can be defined as a process of learning that entails rewards and punishments. Through this process, an association is developed between a behavior and the consequence.
6. Discriminative Stimuli: A discriminative stimulus is a term in classical conditioning where a consistent stimulus is developed to achieve a particular response that will serve to increase the chances of the development of the desired response.
7. Shaping: In shaping an existing response is slowly altered across the successive trials towards a particular target behavior.

Question Three

John Watson is credited for the conceptualization and promotion of behaviorism as a terminology.  In one of his works, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” Watson argues that psychology failed in its attempts to be included as a natural science due to its inclination towards unseen phenomena. Watson, therefore, advocated for the point that psychology should instead focus more on the study of observable behavior. Also according to Watson, behaviorism entailed the response to introspection where the researcher becomes their subject.  Watson, therefore, believed that the best way to study psychology was through controlled laboratory studies. The controlled laboratory studies entailed the manipulation of the subject’s environment to facilitate development. Watson’s works were also centered on the study of emotions. Watson was mainly invested in how emotions could be understood. John Watson believed that an individual’s emotions were just there physical response to stimuli and that emotions such as rage and fear were not yet acquired when a person was born.

In one of his renowned works, Little Albert, Watson paired what can be described as a dull stimulus, loud noise, with the presence of a neutral stimulus, such that the disturbing sensation produced by the loud noise with the neutral stimulus would evoke a fear response. In the Little Albert study, therefore, Watson employed the use of loud noises to teach a baby to fear white rats or any similar neutral stimulus. In other studies he conducted, Watson discovered that emotions like fear could be extinguished through the individual’s exposure to the feared object and their learning of new associations between stimuli.  Watson will be, therefore, remembered for his contributions to the understanding of particular behaviors which can be conditioned by the manipulation of the stimuli in the subject’s environment.

Question Four (a)

Albert Bandura is an American psychologized remembered for his conceptualization of the social cognitive theory. Bandura was born in 1925 in Canada, the last born of six children. His parents played an integral role in motivating him to pursue adventures beyond their small rural town called Mundare Alberta. After graduating from high school, Bandura was employed at the Yukon. It is in Yukon where he was exposed to the culture of gambling and drinking broadening his perspective about life (Pajares, 2004). Bandura graduated after three years with a B.A from the University of Columbia then later earned his M.A and Ph.D. in the University of Iowa in 1951 and 1952 respectively.  During his time at Iowa, Bandura supported a model of psychology that attempted to investigate various aspects of psychology through experimental testing. One year after completing his post-doctoral internship, Bandura assumed a teaching role at Stanford University which he still holds.

Question Four (b)

Observation learning can be defined as a form of learning that takes place through the observation of other people. Albert Bandura held that children, through observational learning acquire both desirable and undesirable tendencies. According to Bandura’s social cognitive theory, four factors affect observational learning: attention, retention, initiation, and motivation. Attention occurs when an observer pays attention to things around them while retention is when they remember those things after some time. Initiation, on the other hand, occurs when the person is both intellectually and physically able to imitate the act while motivation is when the observer is inspired or motivated to execute the act.

Question Four (c)

According to Albert Bandura, children learn in their social environment through the observation and imitation of the behavior of other individuals in their environment. He argued that learning could not only be achieved by reinforcement but also by the influence of others. Bandura also held that the consequences of behavior under observation also often played an integral role in determining whether or not the behavior would be adopted. Through various experiments, Banduras observed children as they watched adults attacking Bobo dolls. When let loose, the children imitated the behavior they observed in the adults. When they saw adults being punished for aggressive behavior, however, he observed that the children were less motivated to imitate the aggressive behavior. Bandura’s concept applies to teenagers learning how to drive by paying attention to the adult’s and peers’ behavior then developing the skill to drive. The motivation of being able to drive stems from their need to fit in especially when most of their peers are driving.  Their driving peers thus are rewarded by gaining a higher status in their social groups and this compels their need to know how to drive. The need to fit in also played an integral role as a motivating factor in my teenage years when peers with a good fashion sense were rewarded by getting higher status in society. We, therefore, ended up following what our best-dressed peers did so that we could achieve a similar level of recognition.

Question Four (d)

Bandura and Piaget both attempted to understand and characterize how human beings learn. While Piaget focused exclusively on the mental development of children including adults with psychological issues, Bandura’s theory is applicable to any human being at any stage of their lives. Secondly, Piaget perceived psychological processes as an integral aspect of an individual’s development with his tests for object permanence and conversation essential for understanding a child’s thought patterns. Bandura, on the other hand, focused more on the behaviors themselves. Another significant difference between Piaget and Bandura is that the former generalized the stages to every child regardless of other factors such as gender and culture while Bandura perceived individual characteristics as only one aspect of the person’s learning process. Bandura, unlike Piaget, also stressed the relevance of the environment on the development of a person.

Question Five (a)

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist renowned for his studies and theories that were centered on the psychological development of children. Vygotsky was born to what can be described as a non-religious family with a banker father. Vygotsky never obtained his degree at the Imperial Moscow University as his studies were interrupted by a 1917 uprising called the October Bolshevik (Yasnitski, 2018).  He completed his dissertation in 1925 titled The Psychology of Art which later acknowledged as a scholarly degree. Between 1925 and 1930, he worked on a research program, that was centered on the development of higher cognitive functions of decision making, selective retention, and logic. His death in 1934 interrupted his earlier quest of establishing a psychological theory of consciousness. Vygotsky is remembered for his Zone of proximal development (ZPD) which is defined in psychology as the distance between what a student can accomplish on their own and what they can do with the support of someone with more experience or knowledge about a given skill or activity.

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) is a German sociologist and economist known for his critical theories about politics, economics, and society.  Marx was the oldest boy of nine children born to a successful lawyer father and Polish mother. Between 1830 and 1835, Marx was educated at a High School situated in Trier (Marx, 2000). He later enrolled at the University of Bonn where he attended humanity courses characterized by such subjects Greek mythology, Roman mythology, and art history. Among the most renowned works of Marx was his conceptualization of communism as a form of governance (Marx, 2000). According to Marx, communism is an ideology whose main goal is to establish a socio-economic order founded upon such ideas as common ownership of the various factors of production and the absence of stratification elements such as money and social classes.

Question 5 (b)

1. Psychological Tools: Psychological tools can be defined as a symbol or sign that helps an individual master various functions like perception and memory.
2. Cultural line of development: The cultural line of development is a type of development that entails the mastery of various cultural means.
3. Memory aids: Testing accommodation that supports a p learner with mental disabilities.
4. Abstract thinking: Abstract thinking is a person’s ability to think about concepts that are not physically present.
5. Egocentric speech: Egocentric speech is spoken when a child speaks to themselves during an activity
6. Conscience: Conscience is an individual’s sense of morality.
7. Will power:  The motivation to practice one’s will even in the face of strong opposition.
8. Inner speech: Self-talk facilitated by running verbal monologue of thoughts while the person is conscious.

Question 5 (d)

At the center of the idea behind Vygotsky’s ideas is that social interactions play an integral role in the mental development of an individual. One of the major applications of his theories can be in teaching where the tutor can create an enabling environment to help the student developmentally by, for example, allowing them to play and interact with their peers.

Question 6 (a)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a renowned neurologist who remembered for his conceptualization of psychoanalysis. Sigismund Freud was born in Freiburg to Jewish parents.  He was enrolled at the University of Vienna at seventeen years joining the medical department at the institution where his course also included such disciplines as philosophy, physiology, and zoology. He qualified as a doctor after earning an MD at the University of Vienna in 1881. He began his career a year later at a general hospital in Vienna. In 1886, he resigned from his post at the hospital. He then married Martha Bernays with whom he had six children.

In conceptualizing psychoanalysis, Freud developed various therapeutic models like the discovered transference making them an integral role of the analytic process. The psychoanalytic theory of development argues that an individual’s personality is developed through an individual’s internal conflict between the three essential structures of their mind: the ego, the id, and the superego.  The id can be described as the instinctual and primitive part of an individual’s mind characterized by hidden memories and aggression. The super-ego mainly entails the moral conscience while the ego is the realistic aspect of the mind that mediates between the drives of the id and the super-ego. Freud was also responsible for the introduction of the Oedipus complex through his redefinition of sexuality such that it also included what can be described as infantile forms. Psychoanalysis still makes integral contributions to the field of psychology enabling counselors and researchers to understand better psychological development and other psychological issues such as depression and how they can be treated.

Question 6 (b)

1. Oral: Mouth, sucking, and swallowing.
2. Anal: The anus expelling or withholding feces.
3. Phallic: Clitoris or penis masturbation.
4. Latency: Inadequate or no sexual motivation
5. Genital: Penis or vagina intercourse.

Question 6 (c)

A Christian cannot be a behaviorist because the idea of behaviorism denies the existence of a soul. By using the word mind, the theory of behaviorism refers to the physical and tangible aspects of the body. By being a behaviorist, therefore, a Christian would be contradicting their belief in the existence of an immaterial spirit inside the physical body.

Question 6 (d)

Karl Marx perceived capitalism as a historical stage that despite being ones progressive will eventually end because of the various internal contradictions. According to Marx, therefore, capitalism was a mere stepping stone that would eventually succumb to a political revolution before it embraces the classless society.

Question 6 (e)

Freud’s psychoanalytic concept perceived religion as a product of the unconscious need for fulfillment. He held that people believed in a god because of their need to feel secure and to protect themselves from guilt. The fact that the psychoanalytic theory does not consider the possible existence of God limits its application in the psychology field. The integration of religious beliefs in psychology can play an integral role in improving patient outcomes.

References

Babkin, B. P. (1949). Pavlov. A biography.

Fowlers Stages of Faith. Developmental Psychology 205. PPT

Marx, K. (2000). Karl Marx: selected writings. Oxford University Press, USA.

Pajares, F. (2004). Albert Bandura: biographical sketch.

Piaget’s Cognitive–Developmental Theory Developmental psychology 205.PPT

Yasnitsky, A. (2018). Vygotsky: An intellectual biography. Routledge.