Dreams

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Dreams Learning

• Friday October 15th 2004
• PY 101-001

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Overview

• Chapter 5 (Consciousness)
• Types of Brain Waves
• Stages of Sleep
• Developmental differences in Sleep Dreams
• Disorders
• Altered States of Consciousness (hypnosis
  meditation)
• Chapter 6 (Learning)
• Classical Conditioning
• Operant Conditioning
• Observational Learning

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Consciousness

• Chapter 5

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Why do we Sleep?

• Hypothesis 1
• Sleep evolved to conserve organisms energy
• Hypothesis 2
• Immobilization during sleep is adaptive because
  it reduces danger
• Hypothesis 3
• Sleep helps animals to restore energy and other
  bodily resources
• 3 has the most support, though it is still hotly
  debated.

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Dreams

• What is a dream? Dreams are conventionally
  defined as mental experiences during REM sleep
  that are often based in vivid imagery, have a
  storylike quality, are often bizarre, and seem
  real to the dreamer.
• This definition has been challenged for several
  reasons. One being people dream in non-REM too,
  although the dreams are less story-like and vivid
  in imagery.
• Also, content is usually not bizarre, and that
  dreamers are often aware that they are dreaming.

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What is in a dream?

• Freud said that the contents of waking life tend
  to spill into dreams he called this day residue.
• Content of dreams is usually familiar.
• Common Themes falling, being pursued, trying
  repeatedly to do something, school, sex, being
  late, eating, being frightened, etc.
• People in Western cultures pay little attention
  to dreams as meaningful messages in their lives,
  while people from many non-Western cultures are
  likely to view dreams as important information
  about themselves, the future, or the spiritual
  world.

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Brain Waves

• Four different types
• Beta waves alertness or problem solving
• Alpha waves - resting and relaxation
• Theta waves - low alertness and sleep
• Delta waves - deep, dreamless sleep

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Stages of Sleep

• Stage 1 brief, transitional (1-7 minutes)
• alpha theta
• hypnic jerks (small muscle movements)
• Stage 2 sleep spindles (10-25 minutes)
• Stages 3 4 slow-wave sleep (30 minutes)
• Stage 5 REM, EEG similar to awake, vivid
  dreaming (initially a few minutes, progressively
  longer as cycle through the stages)
• Developmental differences in REM sleep

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Developmental Differences in REM

• Infants spend much more time in REM than do
  adults.
• During adulthood, sleep changes continue with the
  percentage of slow-wave sleep declining and the
  percentage of time spent in stage 1 increasing.
• One explanation for older adults needing more
  sleep is that they spend less time in slow-wave
  sleep than younger adults.

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Dreaming is a Cognitive Ability?!?

• Childrens dreams appear to differ from those of
  adults, with preschool children reporting bland
  images with no story lines when awoken from REM
  sleep.
• Children report dreaming only 20-30 of the time
  when awoken from REM sleep, as opposed to an
  adults 80 of the time.
• Children age 5 - 8 report dream narratives, but
  these are not well developed.
• Around age 11 13 adult like dreams develop
• This pattern suggests dreaming is a cognitive
  ability that develops gradually.

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Overview of Sleeping Problems

• Insomnia difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Narcolepsy falling asleep uncontrollably
• Sleep Apnea reflexive gasping for air
• Nightmares anxiety arousing dreams - REM
• Night Terrors intense arousal and panic not
  REM sleep
• Somnambulism sleepwalking

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Insomnia

• 3 different patterns
• trouble falling asleep young adults
• trouble remaining asleep middle-aged elderly
• persistent early morning awakening middle-aged
  elderly
• Estimates of the prevalence of insomnia vary, but
  it appears that about 34-35 of adults report
  problems with insomnia and about 15-17 have
  severe or frequent insomnia.
• Prevalence increases with age and is 50 more
  common in men than in women.

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Sleep Disorders

• Narcolepsy - sudden and irresistible onsets of
  sleep during normal waking hours. Those with
  this disorder go directly into REM sleep.
• Sleep apnea - involves frequent, reflexive
  gasping for air that periodically occurs, waking
  the person who has it. Literally breathing stops
  for 15 to 60 seconds, may result in heart and
  lung damage.
• Nightmares usually occur in REM sleep and are
  anxiety-arousing dreams.
• Night terrors are associated with non-REM sleep
  and are characterized by intense autonomic
  arousal and feelings of panicmore common in
  children.

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Altered Reality?

• Hypnosis
• heightened state of suggestibility as well as
  relaxation, narrowed attention, and enhanced
  fantasy.
• People differ in how easily they can be
  hypnotizedthis is termed hypnotic
  susceptibility10 of people are especially easy
  to hypnotize, 10 especially difficult.
• Susceptibility is linked to higher levels of
  absorption in a task and in a persons
  imaginativeness. Highly dependant on
  expectations. Research shows that people who are
  highly susceptible to hypnosis are just as
  responsive to suggestion without being
  hypnotized.
• Researchers argue about whether hypnosis is
  really an altered state of awareness or if it is
  simply people doing what they think they are
  supposed to do when they are hypnotized.

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Meditation

• An ancient discipline which has recently become
  an area of growing interest. Grew out of Eastern
  religions, though many mediate separately from
  religious practice.
• Attempts to bring attention to heighten awareness
  and mental processes under greater voluntary
  control
• Tibetan Buddhist meditators show high activity in
  the prefrontal cortex (an area important for
  focused attention) and low activity in parts of
  the parietal lobe that are known to process
  information about the bodys location in space.
  This may explain some of the transcendent
  experiences reported by many meditators.
• Potential physiological benefits
• Bodily arousal is suppressed, but it is unclear
  how meditation differs from other systematic
  relaxation training procedures which produce very
  similar effects.
• Relaxed EEG mainly theta alpha waves.
• decreased heart rate, respiration rate

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Learning

• Chapter 6
• Basic types of learning application

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Pavlovian Conditioning a Classic

• 4 main terms
• UCS unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
• UCR - unconditioned response (UCR)
• CS conditioned stimulus (CR)
• CR learned reaction (CR)
• Food (UCS) Salivation (UCR)
• Ringing bell Salivation (CR)

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Classical Conditioning

• Extinction - CS and UCS are no longer paired and
  the response to the CS is weakened.
• We know that the response is still there, just
  not active.
• Because of spontaneous recovery when an
  extinguished response reappears after a period of
  non-pairing.
• Generalization - occurs when conditioning
  generalizes to additional stimuli that are
  similar to the CS
• Example Little Albert
• Discrimination - the response is to a specific
  stimulus similar stimuli dont work (opposite of
  generalization)
• Higher order conditioning - occurs when a CS
  functions as if it were a UCS to establish new
  conditioning
• Respond to a tone with saliva, pair the tone with
  a light.

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Extinction Recovery
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Operant Conditioning aka
Instrumental Learning

• Edward L. Thorndike (1913)
• Law of effect
• if a response in the presence of a stimulus
  leads to satisfying effects, the association
  between the stimulus and the response is
  strengthened.
• B.F. Skinner (1953)
• Principle of reinforcement
• organisms tend to repeat those responses that
  are followed by favorable consequences, or
  reinforcement.
• FOURTY YEARS LATER!!

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Skinner Box

• Box where animals are placed to observe if a
  specific response made (and recorded), while the
  consequences of the response are systematically
  controlled.
• Example Rats press a lever for a food pellet
• Operant responses are VOLUNTARY therefore they
  are emitted rather than elicited (classical
  conditioning).
• Reinforcement contingencies rules for whether
  responses lead to the presentation of
  reinforcers.

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Skinner Box
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Operant Conditioning Terms

• Acquisition initial stage of learning.
• Shaping a gradual learning process, which
  consists of the reinforcement of closer and
  closer approximations of a desired response.
• Extinction gradual weakening and disappearance
  of a response tendency, because the response is
  no longer followed by a reinforcer.
• Example stop giving food when the rat presses
  the lever, creates a brief surge of bar pressing,
  then slow decline until it approaches zero.
• Discrimination occurs when an organism responds
  to one stimulus, but not another one similar to
  it.
• Generalization - a new stimulus is responded to
  as if it were the original.

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What is a Reinforcer?

• Reinforcement occurs whenever an outcome
  strengthens a response
• Dont use experience of pleasure, because it is
  unobservable feeling.
• Two types of Reinforcers
• Primary reinforcers
• Inherently reinforcing
• In humans include food, water, warmth, sex, and
  arguably affection expressed through hugging and
  close bodily contact.
• Secondary reinforcers
• Reinforcing b/c associated with primary
  reinforcers
• In humans include things like money, good grades,
  attention, flattery, praise, and applause.

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Schedules of Reinforcement

• A schedule of reinforcement determines which
  occurrences of a specific response result in the
  presentation of a reinforcer.
• Continuous reinforcement occurs when every
  instance of a designated response is reinforced
  (faster acquisition, faster extinction).
• Intermittent reinforcement occurs when a
  designated response is reinforced only some of
  the time (greater resistance to extinction).
• Two types

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Intermittent Reinforcement

• Ratio - require the organism to make the
  designated response a certain number of times to
  gain each reinforcer.
• Fixed give a reinforcer after a fixed number of
  non-reinforced responses.
• Variable - giving a reinforcer after a variable
  number of non-reinforced responses.
• Interval - require a time period to pass between
  the presentation of reinforcers.
• Fixed - reinforcing the first response that
  occurs after a fixed time interval has elapsed.
• Variable-interval - reinforcing the first
  response after a variable time interval has
  elapsed.

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Reward Punishment

• Reinforcers
• Strengthened either by presenting positive
  reinforcers or by removing negative reinforcers.
• Punishment
• Event following a response weakens the tendency
  to make that response.
• Involves presentation of an aversive stimulus
  (spanking) or removal of a rewarding stimulus
  (taking away TV).
• Drawbacks
• Can trigger strong emotional responses (anxiety,
  anger, resentment, hostility)
• Physical punishment can lead to an increase in
  aggressive behavior.

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Reward versus Punishment
Positive Reinforcement
Negative Reinforcement
Punishment Decreases Behavior
Negative Reinforcement
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Observational Learning Albert Bandura

• Vicarious conditioning occurs by an organism
  watching another organism (a model) be
  conditioned. Observational learning can occur
  for both classical and operant conditioning.
• 4 steps for Observational Learning to occur
• Pay attention to the model
• Retain the information observed
• Ability to reproduce the behavior
• Motivated to reproduce the behavior

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Acquisition versus Performance

• Acquisition - having the response in your
  repertoire
• Performance - actually engaging in the behavior
• Reinforcement usually influences already acquired
  responses (performance), more than the
  acquisition of new responses.