Chapter 3 Blog

From this chapter I learned about different levels of awareness, sleep, and other things that can effect the mind and the way it works. The levels of awareness affects me because it is important that I know what level of awareness I am at and know what I am doing. Sleep of course has a huge affect on me, and it has shown me how sleep is affected by cycles and the brain. It has also shown me how important sleep really is to us. People are on a kind of biological clock, it can be thrown off easily, but it is important that people are able to be on schedule with their biological clock. Sleep can affect happiness, concentration, slower reactions and thinking time, and many other functions necessary to people. Something I found surprising was how active the brain really is when we sleep. Most people assume that when we go to sleep, everything just kind of shuts down. This chapter showed that our brain is sending out different waves at different amplitude and frequency. There's really nothing I disagree with in the chapter, it all makes sense to me.

Chapter 7 Blog

The thing I found most interesting in this chapter was Classical Conditioning and how simple it really is. It is amazingly easy to train someone or something based on the natural tendencies that organism already has. I also think it is interesting how many of us think of something like this as no big deal, so what if the dog learns to come to the bell? But yet Pavlov noticed a pattern in his dogs and decided to study it. It really is amazing how well it works too.

I can also think of many examples of Classical Conditioning in my life. The first and most obvious is how all students, me included, learn to move to the next class at the sound of the bell. Now anytime I'm in school, if I hear the bell I know it means its either time to leave class or time to get there. Another thing I find interesting is that here in Greenwood, there are 3 bells before 1st hour, but all of us students know what each means with out even having to think about it. Each bell, though they sound the same, comes naturally to us.

Another example I can think of is at my house whenever we pick up a container with many small, hard pieces inside it, our cats come running, expecting food. They've learned the sound their food bin makes and now come running to that sound every time.

Pavlov's Classical Conditioning is by far my favorite learning style, because it's so easy to make an organism learn with their natural tendencies.