preview

Reflection Paper Ap Psychology Learning

Decent Essays

There are two types of people: the dogs, and the researchers. Pavlov’s Bell is the most famous psychological experiment classical conditioning, and it paved the way to further understanding learning. In the experiments, there is a researcher and a dog. The dog must simply make a association between a neutral and an unconditioned stimulus (a bowl of food and a bell ringing, respectively); however, the researcher is tasked with training the dog to find an association between the two. The different methods of learning have always fascinated me, so, in an effort to learn in an alternate way, I scheduled a research course during my senior year, but rather than researching an area of science, I requested to do research in literature. I was permitted to do so, with one stipulation: I had to design my curriculum for the trimester before my research could be approved. In learning, I had always been "the dog", simply following promptings of a teacher until a connection was made, but now I was both researcher and dog. I had to …show more content…

I had self studied AP Psychology during my junior year, but I had a curriculum mapped out already for me. Like a regular academic course, I knew exactly what I needed to learn. This is the inherent strength of an academic-style of learning, it is focused and you only learn the information you need. But, in this strength also lies its greatest weakness. In an academic setting, the information is often so focused it blurs together. I discovered that hours spent hunched over a book meticulously following lesson plans were never as effective as late night study sessions in coffee shops with friends. Similarly, my most influential teachers made lectures more effective by intertwining memorable experiences like projects into lessons. An essential part of learning is the unconditioned stimulus, the memorable factor, that will drag the valuable information associated with it into the long term

Get Access