Section 8-1: FF and learning.

To the videogame fans that are reading along, I apologize, this FF is not the one you are looking for. When I say FF I am refering to the earlier article "Flashbulb Firsts" as we are now going to revisit it.

Earlier we looked at how this event related to the human memory system. Now we will look at how the event relates to the human learning system (specifically the usage of both classical and operant conditioning as it applies to myself.)

-Courtesy of age-of-the-sage.org-

First is my classically conditioned fear response to lightning. When the loud sound and flash of light from the lightning initially occurs an immediate loss of light is caused, while this was slightly confusing and alarming, on it's own does not function well enough to create a conditioned response. Upon the second occurrence of a particularly loud and bright flash of lighting immediately following was the pain caused by hot liquid hitting my skin. It is interesting that although the two unconditioned stimuli are different the responses are the same and are paired with the same conditioned stimuli thus able to cause a conditioned fear response. This conditioned response proved to be highly immune to extinction and highly generalized (even dark clouds looming overhead could result in a mild fear response)... the response did not seem to weaken as a result of passage of time either (winter). Perhaps this is because as discussed humans are biologically predisposed to certain fear responses as a survival instinct (spiders, rats, snakes etc.) In the end it was only by facing my fears (albeit unintentionally) that I was able to overcome my fear of lightning, when I was nearly struck by lightning one summer during my teenage years that I overcame my fear through realizing just how unlikely it was I would ever be directly struck by the lightning.

-Courtesy of memecrunch.com-

Next we move onto operant conditioning. In the story I was holding the flashlight above my soup and the resulting scalding that followed the flashlight falling into the soup I have learned to not hold objects over my soup, Especially objects that I cannot firmly grasp. My operant conditioning acted as it does in many athletes and resulted in me temporarily acting in superstitious ways to ensure there was never any object above me while I ate my soup (light fixtures, smoke detectors, tree branches) for fear that it would fall into my soup and result in burning. Of course fairly unsurprisingly I never found that anything would fall into my soup and without the reinforcer acting upon it the superstitious act of ensuring nothing was above my soup while I ate faded away within a few years. Although I do sometimes think about the Incident when eating Liptons chicken noodle soup, it does not affect my behavior while I eat the soup anymore.