thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: September 2013
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2013_09_01_archive.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Monday, 9 September 2013. Why World of Warcraft isn't a Skinner Box. The title of my post, for those with an understanding of the concept under discussion, is intentionally controversial. Alternatively I had considered using the title: What are the mechanisms underpinning the partial reinforcement effect? WHAT IS A SKINNER BOX GAME? Games like World of Warcraft are often accused of being Skinner boxes, for example Cracked. The argument, therefore, is that ...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: April 2014
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2014_04_01_archive.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Tuesday, 29 April 2014. Misandry in Mice: Is sexism among rodents destroying science? This is a nightmare. It isnt real. It isnt. DONT TOUCH ME! In world-breaking cute news, it turns out that mice are scared of men. Robert Sorge and colleagues decided freak some mice out by seeing whether the gender of the researcher could affect the behavior of mice, and they discovered that mice experienced greater stress in the presence of men compared to women. The pai...
ekoans.blogspot.com
eKoans: A "Ma Nishada" mind map :-)
http://ekoans.blogspot.com/2010/01/ma-nishada-mind-map.html
Saturday, January 30, 2010. A "Ma Nishada" mind map :-). Product of a lazy cold cloudy Saturday morning :-). The origins of Ramayana are said to lie in the first sloka uttered spontaneously from Sage Valmiki's shoka (sadness). While bathing in the river, he observed a pair krauncha (heron family) birds in love. A hunter shoots down one of the birds with his arrow. Witnessing the sorrow of the surviving bird, Valmiki reacts against the cruelty of the hunter with "Ma Nishada" (Abstain! Without this gene an...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: Can plants learn?
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2014/01/can-plants-learn.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Thursday, 23 January 2014. So a while ago I wrote a post on the question of whether insects can feel pain and at the time I thought that. Was a reasonably unusual question to ask. Now I'm asking whether plants can learn. Feed me, Seymour. 8212;the sensitive plant—the defensive leaf-folding behaviour in response to repeated physical disturbance exhibits clear habituation, suggesting some elementary form of learning. Applying the theory and the ana...Can dis...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: October 2013
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2013_10_01_archive.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Tuesday, 29 October 2013. The Problem with Small Sample Sizes. They arent saying that its always wrong to point out the problems of trying to determine causation from a simple correlation but rather it is wrong to reject the importance that correlations play in the determination of causation. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). The Problem with Small Sample Sizes. Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists. Is the Ecological Approach Radical Enough? The party we need.
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: There's an app for that
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2014/03/theres-app-for-that.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Monday, 3 March 2014. There's an app for that. One of the awesome things about science and technology is that as it advances, it becomes more accessible to the everyday person. In behavioral psychology we now have a couple of possible options for cheaper, open-source contraptions to use in our experiments:. Yeah, yeah, just a minute - I'm about to beat my top score in Flappy Bird! There is an App for that: A touchscreen behavioral evaluation system. Even i...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: December 2012
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A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Monday, 17 December 2012. Robert Sapolsky and B.F. Skinner Discuss Behaviorism. This is an interesting video up on YouTube at the moment where the uploader has spliced together snippets from one of Sapolsky's lectures with various snippets of Skinner discussing similar topics or claims as those raised by Sapolsky. The brilliance in this is the seamless juxtaposition of contradictory claims being raised on the same topic - behaviorism. Given the somewhat co...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: February 2014
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A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Thursday, 27 February 2014. For those who have been paying attention to the latest news in science, you might have heard of computer scientist Cyril Labbé. For the past two years, Labbé has been using a program he created to detect fake articles created by another program called SCIgen that strings together words to create fake science papers and submits these articles to a range of journals. Tuesday, 4 February 2014. The Law of Feynman. To help clarify th...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: The Law of Feynman
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-law-of-feynman.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Tuesday, 4 February 2014. The Law of Feynman. I've considered writing this entry a number of times from multiple different angles but in light of the recent Edge.org. Debacle, I've gone with this: The Law of Feynman. Stated simply, I view the relationship as such:. As a scientist's popularity increases, the probability of them making silly statements outside of their area of knowledge also increases. Feed I particularly liked this one:. I found some more s...
thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com
The Last Behaviorist: September 2012
http://thelastbehaviorist.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html
A blog about animal behavior, science, and more. Friday, 28 September 2012. Why Addicts Overdose: Learned Tolerance. The conclusion of this study was that, for the majority of overdose victims, the death could not be attributed to a toxic quantity of morphine in the blood. Even 30 years ago, the problems with the standard overdose story were succinctly summarised by Brecher. Be due to overdose,. There has never been any evidence. That they are due to overdose,. Saturday, 22 September 2012. A few years ag...