Section 8-0: (Aside/Mini) Consider the following

The following is concerned with learning, the process by which we learn, how we change through our learning, and the insights I have learned while learning about learning.

Yo Dawg, I heard you liked learning, so I learnt some things about learning so you could learn about learning from what I learned about learning after learning you liked learning.
-Courtesy of kernelpanicx.deviantart.com-

So... I just learned the blogger format lacks a cursive writing font which ruins the transcription of the section I had intended to put here for journaling... making this kind of irrelevant.

Well. the xzibit joke is worth keeping the writing here for. On to the next one!

Note to the Professor
That was a picture of Mr.Rogers in the last article, if you recognized him (whether directly or implicitly recognized) if you read through the paper edition prior you may have found yourself thinking of 143, or pagers or any of the other linked items in that segment of Journaling.

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.

Section 8-2: (Mini) Music and stimulus Discrimination.

-Courtesy of westfordcomp.com-

How do people learn to play a new instrument? Except for a select few individuals, the minor tone differences between a note, and the sharp or flat versions of those notes are almost indistinguishable. One could liken this inability to tell the notes apart to stimulus generalization. Through training and repeated exposure to these similar stimuli one can begin to differentiate between these minor differences. Take for example someone who has picked up a guitar for the very first time and is told the guitar is out of tune and it is their job to tune it. In this endeavour the amateur may spend upwards of half an hour trying to find and match the proper notes to tune the guitar. Take the same guitar and place it into the hands of a veteran guitar player with years of experience and their ear will be able to pick these minute differences in tone out so quickly that within seconds they will have the instrument tuned properly. This little snippet is just one practical application of stimulus discrimination, stimulus generalization, the differences between them, and how with proper training someone can learn to discriminate between very similar environmental stimuli.

Section 8-3: Video Games and Reinforcement Schedules

-Courtesy of arcadeclassics.net-

The systems used in conditioning are deeply intertwined into the development and creation of videogames, and the videogame culture. The first step in the evolution of videogames into the monetary monstrosities that they are now is in the creation of the public arcade machine, which held "HIGH SCORES". With the highscore system your name could forever be written in the annals of history at your local arcade by being the highest scorer on the arcade machine. This pitted player against player in more than just a battle of skills, but a financial battle to have the highest score possible. This model is taken to the next level in game models of games such as "Metal slug" which allow the player to retain their previous score and continue on, if they insert the next coin within 10 seconds of dying. I'm not sure if game developers were intentional in this money making mechanic but within the next decade they would be.

-Courtesy of seobyswaby.wordpress.com-

Some promontional material actually excludes her face...
Obviously the emphasis is elsewhere...
-Image Courtesy of mr-margo.gamerdna.com

In what appears to be a bit of a financial backwards step, companies such as Nintendo started to make 'home' arcade consoles that allowed the purchaser to pay a one time fee for the machine, and then a one time fee for each game or 'cartridge' and could play in the comfort of their own home without any additional fees except for the game. Due to game developers only major source of income during this period being the initial sales of the game, many developers started to use evaluative conditioning in their games to boost sales. Take for example Lara Croft and the 'Tomb Raider' video game series. While Tomb Raider was an advanced and good platformer at the time of its release, it's sales were greatly boosted by making the main character a busty feminine model type. Thus the previously neutral stimulus to the primarily male (at the time) gaming audience of a male protagonist was replaced with a pleasing to look at female protagonist.

-Courtesy of spreadshirt.net-

With the release of the 2nd generation of Microsoft gaming consoles (the XBOX360) Microsoft announced to its developers a new and mandatory mechanic to be implemented into all of their games, a artificial points system known as Gamerscore. this points system would total cumulitvely across all games and provide special recognition to players that obtained all available points in a particular game.

-Courtesy us.playstation.com-

This drove sales of XBOX360 games in multiple ways, first the desire to continually buy new games and continue building your individual gamerscore total, and second it lengthed fairly short games into longer ones by making ridiculous to obtain achievements. This small reward has been shown to activate the reward centre of the brain and thus functions the same as operant conditioning when a rat pushes a lever to receive a reward, so too are the gamers rewarded by accomplishing virtual tasks.
This in some games gets out of hand to such an extent that developers are accused of spending more time planning lengthy achievements rather than focusing on actual game development. Take for example the 'Seriously 3.0' achievement in the game Gears of War 3 as it is explained here. This model was so successful that within the year of its launch Sony created an analogous system it called Trophies.


A new type of highly effective reward schedule has been created with the advent of social gaming and DLC which allows the gamer to unlock rewards that he would previously have had to wait for by either recruiting more people to the games (which are most often offered as free initially and rely on purchasing virtual items in the game for revenue) or monetarily compensating to skip the enforced wait time. You don't have to look very far in recent news to hear stories of children who lack the understanding of the value of a dollar to hear about multiple thousands spent towards these virtual rewards on their parent or grandparents credit cards in order to avoid the wait these games enforce otherwise. I suppose one could call this a variable-fixed interval reward schedule. fixed in the fact that without monetary compensation there is a set time limit, variable in the fact that with a financial contribution you can 'skip the line'.

-Courtesy of mobygames.com-