Classical conditioning

The typical paradigm for classical conditioning involves repeatedly pairing an unconditioned stimulus (which unfailingly evokes a reflexive response) with another previously neutral stimulus (which does not normally evoke the response). Following conditioning, the response occurs both to the unconditioned stimulus and to the other, unrelated stimulus (now referred to as the "conditioned stimulus"). The response to the conditioned stimulus is termed a conditioned response. The classic example is Pavlov and his dogs. Meat powder naturally will make a dog salivate when it is put into a dog's mouth; salivating is a reflexive response to the meat powder. Meat powder is the unconditioned stimulus (US) and the salivation is the unconditioned response (UR). Then Pavlov rang a bell before presenting the meat powder. The first time Pavlov rang the bell, the neutral stimulus, the dogs did not salivate, but once he put the meat powder in their mouths they began to salivate. After numerous pairings of the bell and the food the dogs learned that the bell was a signal that the food was about to come and began to salivate when the bell was rung. Once this occurred, the bell became the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the salivation to the bell became the conditioned response (CR).

Another influential person in the world of Classical Conditioning is John B. Watson. Watson's work was very influential and paved the way for B.F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. Watson's behaviorism (and philosophy of science) stood in direct contrast to Freud. Watson's view was that Freud's introspective method was too subjective, and that we should limit the study of human development to directly observable behaviors. In 1913, Watson published the article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views," in which he argued that laboratory studies should serve psychology best as a science. Watson's most famous, and controversial, experiment, "Little Albert", where he demonstrated how psychologists can account for the learning of emotion through classical conditioning principles.

Imprinting is the special type of learning in which young animals, particularly birds, make a strong association with another individual or in some cases, an object. In 1935, the Austrian Zoologist Konrad Lorenz discovered that certain birds will follow and form a bond with a moving object shortly after hatching. Under normal conditions, the object is the mother. Thus imprinting has a survival value because it ensures that the young birds will not wander off away from their mother's protection. Under experimental conditions, however, the young hatchling will imprint on just about any moving object (even human beings), particularly if the object makes sounds.

3. Mental characteristics of a secondary School age student

School‐age children think systematically about multiple topics more easily than preschoolers. Older children have keener metacognition, a sense of their own inner world. These children become increasingly skilled at problem solving.

Piaget referred to the cognitive development occurring between ages 7 and 11 as the concrete operations stage. Piaget used the term operations to refer to reversible abilities that the child has not yet developed. By reversible, Piaget referred to mental or physical actions that can occur in more than one way, or in differing directions. While in the concrete operations stage, older children cannot think both logically and abstractly. School‐age children are limited to thinking concretely—in tangible, definite, exact, and uni‐directional terms—based on real and concrete experiences rather than on abstractions. Older children do not use magical thinking and are not as easily misled as younger children. Unlike preschoolers, school‐age children know better than to ask their parents to take them flying in the air just like the birds do.

Piaget noted that children's thinking processes change significantly during the concrete operations stage. School‐age children can engage in classification, or the ability to group according to features, and serial ordering, or the ability to group according to logical progression. Older children come to understand cause‐and‐effect relationships and become adept at mathematics and science. Comprehending the concept of stable identity—that one's self remains consistent even when circumstances change—is another concept grasped by older children. For example, older children understand the stable identity concept of a father maintaining a male identity regardless of what he wears or how old he becomes.

In Piaget's view, children at the beginning of the concrete operations stage demonstrate conservation, or the ability to see how physical properties remain constant as appearance and form change. Unlike preschoolers, school‐age children understand that the same amount of clay molded into different shapes remains the same amount. A concrete operational child will tell you that five golf balls are the same number as five marbles, but the golf balls are larger and take up more space than the marbles.

Piaget believed that preoperational cognitive abilities are limited by egocentrism—the inability to understand the point of view of others. But egocentrism is not found in children in the concrete operations stage. By the school years, children have usually learned that other people have their own views, feelings, and desires.

Piaget's model of cognitive development has come under increasing attacks in recent years. Modern developmentalists have frequently referred to experimental research that contradicts certain aspects of Piaget's theories. For example, cognitive theorists like Robert Siegler have explained the phenomenon of conservation as a slow, progressive change in the rules that children use to solve problems, rather than a sudden change in cognitive capacities and schemas. Other researchers have shown that younger and older children develop by progressing through a continuum of capacities rather than a series of discrete stages. In addition, these researchers believe that children understand far more than Piaget theorized. With training, for instance, younger children may perform many of the same tasks as older children. Researchers have also found that children are not as egocentric, suggestible, magical, or concrete as Piaget held, and that their cognitive development is largely determined by biological and cultural influences.

School‐age children are better at the skill of remembering than are younger children. Experiencing more of the world, older children have more to draw upon when encoding and recalling information. In school, older children also learn how to usemnemonic devices, or memory strategies. Creating humorous lyrics, devising acronyms, chunking facts (breaking long lists of items into groups of three's and four's), and rehearsing facts (repeating them many times) help children memorize increasingly complicated amounts and types of information.

Youngsters may remember more when participating in cooperative learning, in which adult‐supervised education relies on peers interacting, sharing, planning, and supporting each other. Develop‐mentalists disagree on the relative value of cooperative learning versus didactic learning, in which a teacher lectures to students.

School‐age children also begin to evince metamemory, or the ability to comprehend the nature of memory and predict how well one will remember something. Metamemory helps children sense how much study time is needed for next week's math test.

Psychologists and other authorities are keenly interested in childhood intelligence.Intelligence is an inferred cognitive capacity that relates to a person's knowledge, adaptation, and ability to reason and act purposefully. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Alfred Binet and Theophile Simon measured perception, memory, and vocabulary in children. These researchers divided a child's mental age, or level of intellectual attainment, by his or her chronological age, or actual age, to yield the child's intelligence quotient (IQ). Years later, the average IQ for a child was set at 100. Today, the two most famous IQ tests for children are the Stanford‐Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), both of which have been updated numerous times.

Some psychologists indicate that the multifaceted nature of intelligence necessitates a distinction between basic intelligence (academic IQ) and applied intelligence(practical IQ). For instance, Howard Gardner proposed that children exhibit multiple intelligences, including musical ability, complex movement, and empathy. Similarly, Robert Sternberg proposed the triarchic theory of intelligence, which states that intelligence consists of three factors: information‐processing skills, context, and experience. These three factors determine whether cognition or behavior is intelligent.

An individual's intelligence, at least as measured by IQ tests, remains fairly constant throughout life. Yet considerable differences in IQ scores exist across a range of individuals. These individual differences are probably the result of some combination of genetics, home and educational environment, motivation, nutrition and health, socioeconomic status, and culture.

Critics repeatedly question the value of measuring intelligence, especially when the most commonly used testing instruments are inherently culture‐specific. Critics point out that minorities score lower on IQ tests that are devised and standardized using white, middle‐class subjects. These same minorities score higher on IQ tests devised and standardized using subjects from their own cultural background. Proponents of IQ tests suggest that it is possible to develop culture‐fair (fair for all members in a culture) and culture‐free (without cultural content) IQ tests, such as Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. This IQ test gauges the subject's ability to solve problems that are presented in unfamiliar designs. Proponents also claim that IQ scores effectively predict future academic performance—what these tests were originally designed to measure.

A great deal of uproar occurred in the 1970s in response to schools placing minorities into special education classes based on their IQ scores. These scores were obtained from culturally biased IQ tests. Today, IQ tests cannot be used as academic achievement or placement tests.