Donato Zevallos: Observation on learning

Learning can be absorbed in many different ways. That being said i decided to make an observation my self to see which would be more effective in how my little cousin would obey me. Now before I explain my experiment, l’m going to add addtional information so that you can understand it a bit more. My little cousin is three years old, he misbehaves almost all the time and never listens to anyone, except for my grandfather. Everyone but my grandfather seems to handle my little cousin’s bad behavior the same, they would all give him whatever he wants so that he could behave or relax. sometimes they would  try to reason with him through words so that he could stop. My grandfather takes a different approach when it comes to discipling my little cousin. He would yell or hit my little  cousin with his belt enough so he can cry , but not cause excruciating pain, every time he does this my little cousin would obey anything my grandfather would say to him. So to begin my experiment i had to wait for my little cousin to misbehave again, when he did i went up to him and told him that ” if you stop i’ll let you play games on my phone”. This positive reinforcement worked temporary until he got bored, after which he started to misbehave again by cursing and throwing his toys around the room. This is where i then asked him nicely to stop, but he didn’t listen to me. I then yelled at him and told him i was going to get grandpa’s belt. When I  grabbed the belt and positioned myself as if i were to hit him, he immediately stopped, looking as if he was going to cry he repeatedly said “sorry” over and over again, from then on he had obeyed everything i had to say to him. This experiment taught me that positive reinforcement can work, but not as effectively as positive punishment, because it wasn’t until i showed him that i was going to hit him that he actual stopped completely and listened to what I had to say

Reference- Personal experiment

Donato Zevallos- Observation on attention

Some things in life can grab our attention so much that we become distracted to the point where nothing else seems to matter. My best friend, Aaron, has an addiction to nasal spray. He’s had this addiction for five years and he tells me how without the spray his nose begins to become extremely stuffy after two hours which disallows him from breathing properly from his nose and from focusing on anything but the spray. He tells me that anytime he goes out, whether it’s to school, the gym, or anywhere in general he must bring the nasal spray with him. Aaron said during high school he would try to go to the bathroom in between classes just so he could spray the nasal spray into his nose. Without doing this he wouldn’t perform his best in tests or listening to the teachers’s instructions because all he would be thinking about was when he would be able to use his nasal spray.