From marketing and education to nutrition and economics, biometric research applies to a wide range of disciplines. This technology can unveil the emotional responses that drive decisions, leading to more effective media, better teaching methods and more compelling outreach programs.
If you're a Texas A&M faculty member or graduate student, contact the team to see how you can get involved with the lab.
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Human Behavior Lab Revealing the Emotional Brain
Conception occurs when the sperm from the male penetrates the cell wall of an egg from the female. Human development during the 38 weeks from conception to birth is divided into three phases. The first, the germinal period, lasts from the moment of conception until the time the fertilized egg is implanted in the wall of the uterus, a process that typically takes 10 to 14 days. A second phase, lasting from the second to the eighth week after conception, is called the embryonic period and is characterized by differentiation of the major organs. The last phase, from the eighth week until delivery, is called the fetal period and is characterized by dramatic growth in the size of the organism.
Prenatal development is extremely rapid; by the 18th day the embryo has already taken some shape and has established a longitudinal axis. By the ninth week the embryo is about 2.5 centimetres (one inch) long; face, mouth, eyes, and ears have begun to take on well-defined form, and arms, legs, hands, feet, and even fingers and toes have appeared. The sex organs, along with muscle and cartilage, also have begun to form. The internal organs have a definite shape and assume some primitive function. The fetal period (from about the second month until birth) is characterized by increased growth of the organism and by the gradual assumption of physical functions. By the 20th week the mother can often feel the movements of the fetus, which is now about 20 centimetres long. By the 32nd week the normal fetus is capable of breathing, sucking, and swallowing, and by the 36th week it can show a response to light and sound waves. The head of the fetus is unusually large in relation to other parts of its body because its brain develops more rapidly than do other organs. The seventh month is generally regarded as the earliest age at which a newborn can survive without medical assistance.
By definition, infancy is the period of life between birth and the acquisition of language approximately one to two years later. The average newborn infant weighs 3.4 kilograms (7.5 pounds) and is about 51 centimetres long; in general, boys are slightly larger and heavier than girls. (The period of the newborn covers the first five to seven days, which the infant normally spends recovering from the stresses of delivery.) During their first month, infants sleep for about 1618 hours a day, with five or six sleep periods alternating with a like number of shorter episodes of wakefulness. The total amount of time spent sleeping decreases dramatically, however, to 912 hours a day by age two years, and, with the cessation of nocturnal feedings and morning and afternoon naps, sleep becomes concentrated in one long nocturnal period. Newborns spend as much time in active sleep (during which rapid eye movements occur) as in quiet sleep, but by the third month they spend twice as much time in quiet as in active sleep, and this trend continues (at a much slower rate) into adulthood.
At birth the infant displays a set of inherited reflexes, some of which serve his very survival. An infant only two hours old typically will follow a moving light with his eyes and will blink or close them at the sudden appearance of a bright light or at a sharp, sudden sound nearby. The newborn infant will suck a nipple or almost any other object (e.g., a finger) inserted into his mouth or touching his lips. He will also turn his head toward a touch on the corner of his mouth or on his cheek; this reflex helps him contact the nipple so he can nurse. He will grasp a finger or other object that is placed in his palm. Reflexes that involve sucking and turning toward stimuli are intended to maintain sustenance, while those involving eye-closing or muscle withdrawal are intended to ward off danger. Some reflexes involving the limbs or digits vanish after four months of age; one example is the Babinski reflex, in which the infant bends his big toe upward and spreads his small toes when the outer edge of the sole of his foot is stroked.
The newborn baby can turn his head and eyes toward and away from visual and auditory stimuli, signaling interest and alarm, respectively. Smiling during infancy changes its meaning over the first year. The smiles that newborns display during their first weeks constitute what is called reflex smiling and usually occur without reference to any external source or stimulus, including other people. By two months, however, infants smile most readily in response to the sound of human voices, and by the third or fourth month they smile easily at the sight of a human face, especially one talking to or smiling at the infant. This social smiling, as it is called, marks the beginning of the infants emotional responses to other people.
Research shows the achievement of extraordinary perceptual sophistication over the first months of life. The fetus is already sensitive to stimulation of its skin, especially in the area around the mouth, by the eighth week of intrauterine development. Judging from their facial expressions when different substances are placed on their tongues, newborn infants apparently discriminate between bitter, salty, or sweet tastes; they have an innate preference for sweet tastes and even prefer a sucrose solution to milk. Newborns can also discriminate between different odours or smells; six-day-old infants can tell the smell of their mothers breast from that of another mother.
Much more is known, however, about infants ability to see and hear than about their senses of touch, smell, or taste. During the first half-year of life outside the womb, there is rapid development of visual acuity, from 20/800 vision (in Snellen notation) among two-week-olds to 20/70 vision in five-month-olds to 20/20 vision at five years. Even newborn infants are sensitive to visual stimulation and attend selectively to certain visual patterns; they will track moving stimuli with their gaze and can discriminate among lights that vary in brightness. They show a noticeable predilection for the sight of the human face, and by the first or second month they are able to discriminate between different faces by attending to the internal featureseyes, nose, and mouth. By the third month, infants can identify their mothers by sight and can discriminate between some facial expressions. By the seventh month, they can recognize a particular person from different perspectivesfor example, a full face versus a profile of that face. Infants can identify the same facial expression on the faces of different people and can distinguish male from female faces.
Newborns can also hear and are sensitive to the location of a sound source as well as to differences in the frequency of the sound wave. They also discriminate between louder and softer sounds, as indicated by the startle reflex and by rises in heart rate. Newborns can also discriminate among sounds of higher or lower pitch. Continuous rather than intermittent sounds and low tones rather than high-pitched ones are apparently those most soothing to infants.
Even young infants show a striking sensitivity to the tones, rhythmic flow, and individual sounds that together make up human speech. A young infant can make subtle discriminations among phonemes, which are the basic sounds of language, and is able to tell the difference between pa, ga, and ba. Furthermore, infants less than one year old can make discriminations between phonemes that some adults cannot because the particular discrimination is not present in the adult language. A distinction between ra and la does not exist in the Japanese language, and hence Japanese adults fail to make that discrimination. Japanese infants under nine months can discriminate between these two phonemes but lose that ability after one year because the language they hear does not require that discrimination.
Both movement and contrasts between dark and light tend to attract an infants attention. When an alert newborn is placed in a dark room, he opens his eyes and looks around for edges. If he is shown a thick black bar on a white background, his eyes dart to the bars contour and hover near it, rather than wander randomly across the visual field. Certain other visual qualities engage the infants attention more effectively than do others. The colour red is more attractive than others, for example, and objects characterized by curvilinearity and symmetry hold the infants attention longer than do ones with straight lines and asymmetric patterns. Sounds having the pitch and timbre of the human voice are more attractive than most others; the newborn is particularly responsive to the tones of a mothers voice, as well as to sounds with a great deal of variety. These classes of stimuli tend to elicit the most prolonged attention during the first 8 to 10 weeks of life. During the infants third month a second principle, called the discrepancy principle, begins to assume precedence. According to this principle, the infant is most likely to attend to those events that are moderately different from those he has been exposed to in the past. For instance, by the third month, the infant has developed an internal representation of the faces of the people who care for him. Hence, a slightly distorted facee.g., a mask with the eyes misplacedwill provoke more sustained attention than will a normal face or an object the infant has never seen before. This discrepancy principle operates in other sensory modalities as well.
Even infants less than one year old are capable of what appears to be complex perceptual judgments. They can estimate the distance of an object from their body, for example. If an infant is shown a rattle and hears its distinctive sound and the room is then darkened, the infant will reach for the rattle if the sound indicates that the object can be grasped but will not reach if the sound indicates that it is beyond his grasp.
More dramatically, infants will also reach for an object with a posture appropriate to its shape. If an infant sees a round object in the shape of a wheel and hears its distinctive sound and also sees a smaller rattle and hears its sound, he will reach in the dark with one hand in a grasping movement if he hears the sound of the rattle but will reach with both hands spread apart if he hears the sound associated with the wheel.
The four-month-old infant is also capable of rapidly learning to anticipate where a particular event will occur. After less than a minute of exposure to different scenes that alternate on the right and left side of their visual field, infants will anticipate that a picture is about to appear on the right side and will move their eyes to the right before the picture actually appears. Similarly, infants only five to six months old can detect the relation between the shape of a persons mouth and the sound that is uttered. Thus, they will look longer at a face that matches the sound they are hearing than at one where there is a mismatch between the mouths movements and the sound being uttered.
Infants develop an avoidance reaction to the appearance of depth by the age of 8 to 10 months, when they begin to crawl. This discovery was made on the surface of an apparatus called the visual cliff. The latter is a table divided into two halves, with its entire top covered by glass. One half of the top has a checkerboard pattern lying immediately underneath the glass; the other half is transparent and reveals a sharp drop of a metre or so, at the bottom of which is the same checkerboard pattern. The infant is placed on a board on the centre of the table. The mother stands across the table and tries to tempt her baby to cross the glass on either the shallow or the deep side. Infants younger than seven months will unhesitatingly crawl to the mother across the deep side, but infants older than eight months avoid the deep side and refuse to cross it. The crying and anxiety that eight-month-olds display when confronted with the need to cross the deep side are the result of their ability to perceive depth but also, and more importantly, their ability to recognize the discrepancy of sitting on a solid surface while nevertheless seeing the visual bottom some distance below. Both nervous-system maturation and experience contribute to this particular cognitive advance.
Finally, infants create perceptual categories by which to organize experience, a category being defined as a representation of the dimensions or qualities shared by a set of similar but not identical events. Infants will treat the different colours of the spectrum, for example, according to the same categories that adults recognize. Thus, they show greater attentiveness when a shade of red changes to yellow than when a light shade of red merely replaces a darker shade of the same colour. Five-month-old infants can tell the difference between the moving pattern of lights that corresponds to a person walking and a randomly moving version of the same number of lights, suggesting that they have acquired a category for the appearance of a person walking. By one year of age, infants apparently possess categories for people, edible food, household furniture, and animals. Finally, infants seem to show the capacity for cross-modal perceptioni.e., they can recognize an object in one sensory modality that they have previously perceived only in another. For example, if an infant sucks a nubby pacifier without being able to see it and then is shown that pacifier alongside a smooth one, the infants longer look at the nubby pacifier suggests that he recognizes it, even though he previously experienced only its tactile qualities.
Infants make robust advances in both recognition memory and recall memory during their first year. In recognition memory, the infant is able to recognize a particular object he has seen a short time earlier (and hence will look at a new object rather than the older one if both are present side by side). Although newborns cannot remember objects seen more than a minute or two previously, their memory improves fairly rapidly over the first four or five months of life. By one month they are capable of remembering an object they saw 24 hours earlier, and by one year they can recognize an object they saw several days earlier. Three-month-old infants can remember an instrumental response, such as kicking the foot to produce a swinging motion in a toy, that they learned two weeks earlier, but they respond more readily if their memory is strengthened by repeated performances of the action.
By contrast, recall memory involves remembering (retrieving the representation, or mental image) an event or object that is not currently present. A major advance in recall memory occurs between the 8th and 12th months and underlies the childs acquisition of what Piaget called the idea of the permanent object. This advance becomes apparent when an infant watches an adult hide an object under a cloth and must wait a short period of time before being allowed to reach for it. A six-month-old will not reach under the cloth for the hidden object, presumably because he has forgotten that the object was placed there. A one-year-old, however, will reach for the object even after a 30-second delay period, presumably because he is able to remember its being hidden in the first place. These improvements in recall memory arise from the maturation of circuits linking various parts of the brain together. The improvements enable the infant to relate an event in his environment to a similar event in the past. As a result, he begins to anticipate his mothers positive reaction when the two are in close face-to-face interaction, and he behaves as if inviting her to respond. The infant may also develop new fears, such as those of objects, people, or situations with which he is unfamiliari.e., which he cannot relate to past experiences using recall memory.
As stated previously, Piaget identified the first phase of mental development as the sensorimotor stage (birth to two years). This stage is marked by the childs acquisition of various sensorimotor schemes, which may be defined as mental representations of motor actions that are used to obtain a goal; such actions include sucking, grasping, banging, kicking, and throwing. The sensorimotor stage, in turn, was differentiated by Piaget into six subphases, the first four of which are achieved during the initial year. During the first subphase, which lasts one month, the newborns automatic reflexes become more efficient. In the second subphase, the infants reflex movements become more coordinated, though they still consist largely of simple acts (called primary circular actions) that are repeated for their own sake (e.g., sucking, opening and closing the fists, and fingering a blanket) and do not reflect any conscious intent or purpose on the infants part. During the third phase, lasting from the 4th to the 8th month, the infant begins to repeat actions that produce interesting effects; for example, he may kick his legs to produce a swinging motion in a toy. In the fourth subphase, from the 8th to the 12th month, the child begins coordinating his actions to attain an external goal; he thus begins solving simple problems, building on actions he has mastered previously. For example, he may purposely knock down a pillow to obtain a toy hidden behind it. During the fifth subphase, covering the 12th to 18th months, the child begins to invent new sensorimotor schemes in a form of trial-and-error experimentation. He may change his actions toward the same object or try out new ones to achieve a particular goal. For example, if he finds that his arm alone is not long enough, he may use a stick to retrieve a ball that rolled beneath a couch. In the final subphase of infancy, which is achieved by about the 18th month, the child starts trying to solve problems by mentally imagining certain events and outcomes rather than by simple physical trial-and-error experimentation.
The childs actions thus far have shown progressively greater intentionality, and he has developed a primitive form of representation, which Piaget defined as a kind of mental imagery that can be used to solve a problem or attain a goal for which the child has no habitual, available action. An important part of the childs progress in his first year is his acquisition of what Piaget calls the idea of object permanencei.e., the ability to treat objects as permanent entities. According to Piaget, the infant gradually learns that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer in view. Children younger than six months do not behave as if objects that are moved out of sight continue to exist; they may grab for objects they see but lose all interest once the objects are withdrawn from sight. However, infants of nine months or older do reach for objects hidden from view if they have watched them being hidden. Children aged 12 to 18 months may even search for objects that they have not themselves witnessed being hidden, indicating that they are capable of inferring those objects location. Show such a child a toy placed in a box, put both under a cover, and then remove the box; the child will search under the cover as though he inferred the location of the toy.
The first of the two basic sounds made by infants includes all those related to crying; these are present even at birth. A second category, described as cooing, emerges at about eight weeks and includes sounds that progress to babbling and ultimately become part of meaningful speech. Almost all children make babbling sounds during infancy, and no relationship has been established between the amount of babbling during the first six months and the amount or quality of speech produced by a child at age two. Vocalization in the young infant often accompanies motor activity and usually occurs when the child appears excited by something he sees or hears. Environmental influences ordinarily do not begin to influence vocalization seriously before two months of age; in fact, during the first two months of postnatal life, the vocalizations of deaf children born to deaf parents are indistinguishable from those of infants born to hearing parents. Environmental effects on the variety and frequency of the infants sounds become more evident after roughly eight weeks of age. The use of meaningful words differs from simple babbling in that speech primarily helps to obtain goals, rather than simply reflecting excitement.
Emotions are distinct feelings or qualities of consciousness, such as joy or sadness, that reflect the personal significance of emotion-arousing events. The major types of emotions include fear, sadness, anger, surprise, excitement, guilt, shame, disgust, interest, and happiness. These emotions develop in an orderly sequence over the course of infancy and childhood.
Even during the first three or four months of life, infants display behavioral reactions suggestive of emotional states. These reactions are indicated by changes in facial expression, motor activity, and heart rate and of course by smiling and crying. Infants show a quieting of motor activity and a decrease in heart rate in response to an unexpected event, a combination that implies the emotion of surprise. A second behavioral profile, expressed by increased movement, closing of the eyes, an increase in heart rate, and crying, usually arises in response to hunger or discomfort and is a distress response to physical privation. A third set of reactions includes decreased muscle tone and closing of the eyes after feeding, which may be termed relaxation. A fourth pattern, characterized by increased movement of the arms and legs, smiling, and excited babbling, occurs in response to moderately familiar events or social interaction and may be termed excitement. In the period from 4 to 10 months, new emotional states appear. The crying and resistance infants display at the withdrawal of a favourite toy or at the interruption of an interesting activity can be termed anger. One-year-old infants are capable of displaying sadness in response to the prolonged absence of a parent.
Finally, infants begin displaying signs of the emotion of fear by their fourth to sixth month; a fearful response to noveltyi.e., to events that are moderately discrepant from the infants knowledgecan be observed as early as four months. If an infant at that age hears a voice speaking sentences but there is no face present, he may show a fearful facial expression and begin to cry. By 7 to 10 months of age, an infant may cry when approached by an unfamiliar person, a phenomenon called stranger anxiety. A month or two later the infant may cry when his mother leaves him in an unfamiliar place; this phenomenon is called separation anxiety. It is no accident that both stranger and separation anxiety first appear about the time the child becomes able to recall past events. If an infant is unable to remember that his mother had been present after she leaves the room, he will experience no feeling of unfamiliarity when she is gone. However, if he is able to recall the mothers prior presence and cannot understand why she is no longer with him, that discrepancy can lead to anxiety. Thus, the appearance of stranger and separation anxiety are dependent on the improvement in memorial ability.
These emotions in young infants may not be identical to similar emotional states that occur in older children or adolescents, who experience complex cognitions in concert with emotion; these are missing in the young infant. The older childs anger, for example, can remain strong for a longer period of time because the child can think about the target of his anger. Thus, it may be an error to attribute to the young infant the same emotional states that one can assume are present in older children.
Perhaps the central accomplishment in personality development during the first years of life is the establishment of specific and enduring emotional bonds, or attachment. The person to whom an infant becomes emotionally attached is termed the target of attachment. Targets of attachment are usually those persons who respond most consistently, predictably, and appropriately to the babys signals, primarily the mother but also the father and eventually others. Infants are biologically predisposed to form attachments with adults, and these attachments in turn form the basis for healthy emotional and social development throughout childhood. Infants depend on their targets of attachment not only for food, water, warmth, and relief from pain or discomfort but also for such emotional qualities as soothing and placating, play, consolation, and information about the world around them. Moreover, it is through the reciprocal interactions between child and parent that infants learn that their behaviour can affect the behaviour of others in consistent and predictable ways and that others can be counted on to respond when signaled.
Infants who do not have a particular adult devoted to their care often do not become strongly attached to any one adult and are less socially responsiveless likely to smile, vocalize, laugh, or approach adults. Such behaviour has been observed in children raised in relatively impersonal institutional surroundings and is shared by monkeys reared in isolation.
The social smiling of two-month-old infants invites adults to interact with them; all normal human infants show a social smile, which is, in fact, their first true sign of social responsiveness. The social smile is apparently innate in the human species. At about six months of age infants begin to respond socially to particular people who become the targets of attachment. Although all infants develop some form of attachment to their caregivers, the strength and quality of that attachment depends partly on the parents behaviour to the child. The sheer amount of time spent with a child counts for less than the quality of the adult-child interaction in this regard. The parents satisfaction of the infants physical needs is an important factor in their interaction, but sensitivity to the childs needs and wishes, along with the provision of emotional warmth, supportiveness, and gentleness are equally important. Interestingly, mothers and fathers have been observed to behave differently with their infants and young children: mothers hold, comfort, and calm their babies in predictable and rhythmic ways, whereas fathers play and excite in unpredictable and less rhythmic ways.
One significant difference has been detected in the quality of infants attachment to their caregiversthat between infants who are securely attached and those who are insecurely attached. Infants with a secure attachment to a parent are less afraid of challenge and unfamiliarity than are those with an insecure attachment.
During the first two years of life, the presence of targets of attachment tends to mute infants feelings of fear in unfamiliar situations. A one-year-old in an unfamiliar room is much less likely to cry if his mother is present than if she is not. A one-year-old is also much less likely to cry at an unexpected sound or an unfamiliar object if his mother is nearby. Monkeys, too, show less fear of the unfamiliar when they are with their mothers. This behavioral fact has been used to develop a series of experimental situations thought to be useful in distinguishing securely from insecurely attached infants. These procedures consist of exposing a one-year-old to what is known as the strange situation. Two episodes that are part of a longer series in this procedure involve leaving the infant with a stranger and leaving the infant alone in an unfamiliar room. Children who show only moderate distress when the mother leaves, seek her upon her return, and are easily comforted by her are assumed to be securely attached. Children who do not become upset when the mother leaves, play contentedly while she is gone, and seem to ignore her when she returns are termed insecurely attachedavoidant. Finally, children who become extremely upset when the mother leaves, resist her soothing when she returns, and are difficult to calm down are termed insecurely attachedresistant. About 65 percent of all American children tested are classed as securely attached, 21 percent as insecurely attachedavoidant, and 14 percent as insecurely attachedresistant. All other things being equal, it is believed that those children who demonstrate a secure attachment during the first two years of life are likely to remain more emotionally secure and be more socially outgoing later in childhood than those who are insecurely attached. But insecurely attachedresistant children are more likely to display social or emotional problems later in childhood. The development of a secure or insecure attachment is partly a function of the predictability and emotional sensitivity of an infants caregiver and partly the product of the infants innate temperament.
Individual infants tend to vary in their basic mood and in their typical responses to situations and events involving challenge, restraint, and unfamiliarity. Infants may differ in such qualities as fearfulness, irritability, fussiness, attention span, sensitivity to stimuli, vigour of response, activity level, and readiness to adapt to new events. These constitutional differences help make up what is called a childs temperament. It is believed that many temperament qualities are mediated by inherited differences in the neurochemistry of the brain.
Most individual differences in temperament observed in infants up to 12 months in age do not endure over time and are not predictive of later behaviour. One temperamental trait that is more lasting, however, is that of inhibition to the unfamiliar. Inhibited children, who account for 1020 percent of all one-year-old children, tend to be shy, timid, and restrained when encountering unfamiliar people, objects, or situations. As young infants, they show high levels of motor activity and fretfulness in response to stimulation. (They are also likely to be classified as insecurely attachedresistant when observed in the strange situation.) By contrast, uninhibited children, who account for about 30 percent of all children, tend to be very sociable, fearless, and emotionally spontaneous in unfamiliar situations. As infants, they display low levels of motor activity and irritability in response to unfamiliar stimuli. Inhibited children have a more reactive sympathetic nervous system than do uninhibited children. Inhibited children show larger increases in heart rate in response to challenges and larger increases in diastolic blood pressure when they change from a sitting to a standing posture. In addition, inhibited children show greater activation of the frontal cortex on the right side of the brain, while uninhibited children show greater activation of the frontal cortex on the left side.
These two temperament profiles are moderately stable from the second to the eighth year; studies reveal that about one-half of those children classed as inhibited at age two are still shy, introverted, and emotionally restrained at age eight, while about three-quarters of those children classed as uninhibited have remained outgoing, sociable, and emotionally spontaneous.
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human behavior | Definition, Theories, & Development ...
Social work theories are general explanations that are supported by evidence obtained through the scientific method. A theory may explain human behavior, for example, by describing how humans interact or how humans react to certain stimuli.
Social work practice models describe how social workers can implement theories. Practice models provide social workers with a blueprint of how to help others based on the underlying social work theory. While a theory explains why something happens, a practice model shows how to use a theory to create change.
Social Work Theories
There are many social work theories that guide social work practice. Here are some of the major theories that are generally accepted in the field of social work:
Systems theorydescribes human behavior in terms of complex systems. It is premised on the idea that an effective system is based on individual needs, rewards, expectations, and attributes of the people living in the system. According to this theory, families, couples, and organization members are directly involved in resolving a problem even if it is an individual issue.
Social learning theoryis based on Albert Banduras idea that learning occurs through observation and imitation. New behavior will continue if it is reinforced. According to this theory, rather than simply hearing a new concept and applying it, the learning process is made more efficient if the new behavior is modeled as well.
Psychosocial development theoryis an eight-stage theory of identity and psychosocial development articulated by Erik Erikson. Erikson believed everyone must pass through eight stages of development over the life cycle: hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom. Each stage is divided into age ranges from infancy to older adults.
Psychodynamic theorywas developed by Freud, and it explains personality in terms of conscious and unconscious forces. This social work theory describes the personality as consisting of the id (responsible for following basic instincts), the superego (attempts to follow rules and behave morally), and the ego (mediates between the id and the ego).
Transpersonal theoryproposes additional stages beyond the adult ego. In healthy individuals, these stages contribute to creativity, wisdom, and altruism. In people lacking healthy ego development, experiences can lead to psychosis.
Rational choice theoryis based on the idea that all action is fundamentally rational in character, and people calculate the risks and benefits of any action before making decisions.
Social Work Practice Models
There are many different practice models that influence the way social workers choose to help people meet their goals. Here are some of the major social work practice models used in various roles, such as case managers and therapists:
Problem solvingassists people with the problem solving process. Rather than tell clients what to do, social workers teach clients how to apply a problem solving method so they can develop their own solutions.
Task-centered practiceis a short-term treatment where clients establish specific, measurable goals. Social workers and clients collaborate together and create specific strategies and steps to begin reaching those goals.
Narrative therapyexternalizes a persons problem by examining the story of the persons life. In the story, the client is not defined by the problem, and the problem exists as a separate entity. Instead of focusing on a clients depression, in this social work practice model, a client would be encouraged to fight against the depression by looking at the skills and abilities that may have previously been taken for granted.
Cognitive behavioral therapyfocuses on the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Social workers assist clients in identifying patterns of irrational and self-destructive thoughts and behaviors that influence emotions.
Crisis intervention modelis used when someone is dealing with an acute crisis. The model includes seven stages: assess safety and lethality, rapport building, problem identification, address feelings, generate alternatives, develop an action plan, and follow up. This social work practice model is commonly used with clients who are expressing suicidal ideation.
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Theories Used in Social Work Practice & Practice Models
HBES is a society for all those studying the evolution of human behavior. Scientific perspectives range from evolutionary psychology to evolutionary anthropology and cultural evolution. The societys worldwide membership includes researchers from a range of disciplines in the social and biological sciences.
HBES hosts an annual conference that provides a forum exploring current research in the field. The conference offers invited plenary presentations from leading scientists.
The official journal of HBES is Evolution and Human Behavior, an interdisciplinary journal presenting research reports and theory in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior.
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Human Behavior and Evolution Society - Home - HBES
Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. was in private practice for more than thirty years. He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the states...Read More
It is now a well-known fact that weather conditions impact on how people feel and function in their daily lives. In some cases the weather affects physical and emotional health.
During the winter months its called SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Gray skies, snow, cold temperatures and a lack of sunlight, because many people to feel depressed during the winter months. These same people experience a boost in mood with the advent of spring and its increasing amount of sunlight and warmer temperatures.
At present, during the summer of 2012 there is an intense heat wave covering much of the United States. This has caused alarm among the health and mental health community. There are a host of heat related illnesses that are seriousness enough to result in hospitalization and death. Among these are dehydration, heat stroke, increased blood pressure and many other illnesses.
There are also some serious mental health issues that result from the heat. This is evidenced by the fact that there is an increase in psychiatric hospitalizations during the summer months. There is also an increase in suicide attempts, acts of violence, increased irritable and angry mood. Hot weather also causes people to feel tired and unmotivated to do very much.
There are many types of medications that make it necessary for people to remain in air conditioned environments. For example, for those who take anti-psychotic medications, the sensitivity to heat is increased. There are other medications that make it necessary to limit exposure to sunlight, particularly for those who want to go to the beach. Whether medication is for psychiatric or some other health problem its essential that patients consult with their physician about the side effects of heat and sunlight.
Older people, especially those who are 65n years of age and older, are especially vulnerable to the impact health has on health and mental health.
Generally, it is recommended for all of us to drink a lot of water or other liquids to prevent dehydration. Some of the drinks recommended for athletes are a good idea. Its a good idea to limit coffee and alcohol because they tend to dehydrate. If its necessary to go out, wearing a hat is a good idea as well as going out during the morning or evening when temperatures cool and the sun is not intense. For those who must work outside, consult your doctor about how best to protect your health during a heat wave.
Stay cool, both physically and mentally.
Your comments are welcome.
Allan N. Schwartz, PhD
Keep Reading By Author Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D.
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Summer Heat and Human Behavior - MentalHelp
State-of-the-art education and training in psychiatry, psychology and related fields. Ground-breaking research on the brain, human behavior and mental illness. Excellence in providing compassionate care to all patients. These are the hallmarks of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Academic programs in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior focus on educating the next generation of professionals, giving them training in psychiatry and the behavioral sciences through curricula, residency programs and mentoring. Programs in psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, and research monitoring and fellowships in child and adolescent psychiatry and sleep medicine attract students from across the globe.
Understanding the science of mental illness, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions requires an integrative study of biology, behavior, affect and cognition. Translational psychiatric research at UMMC is supported by more than 13 National Institutes of Health grants in addition to funding from the Department of Defense and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Knowledge becomes care at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior's clinical programs. Highly trained psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, licensed therapists and nurse practitioners provide a wide range of services for children, adolescents and adults in inpatient and outpatient settings.
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Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior - University ...
The development of intelligence in humans and association with evolution of the brain and the origin of language
The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately 7 million years,[1] from the separation of the genus Pan until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. The first 3 million years of this timeline concern Sahelanthropus, the following 2 million concern Australopithecus and the final 2 million span the history of the genus Homo in the Paleolithic era.
Many traits of human intelligence, such as empathy, theory of mind, mourning, ritual, and the use of symbols and tools, are apparent in great apes although in less sophisticated forms than found in humans, such as great ape language.
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The great apes (hominidae) show considerable cognitive and empathic abilities. Chimpanzees can make tools and use them to acquire foods and for social displays; they have sophisticated hunting strategies requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, manipulative and capable of deception; they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence.[2]
Around 10 million years ago, the Earth's climate entered a cooler and drier phase, which led eventually to the Quaternary glaciation beginning some 2.6 million years ago. One consequence of this was that the north African tropical forest began to retreat, being replaced first by open grasslands and eventually by desert (the modern Sahara). As their environment changed from continuous forest to patches of forest separated by expanses of grassland, some primates adapted to a partly or fully ground-dwelling life. Here they were exposed to predators, such as the big cats, from whom they had previously been safe.
These environmental pressures caused selection to favor bipedalism: walking on hind legs. This gave the Homininae's eyes greater elevation, the ability to see approaching danger further off, and a more efficient means of locomotion.[citation needed] It also freed the arms from the task of walking and made the hands available for tasks such as gathering food. At some point the bipedal primates developed handedness, giving them the ability to pick up sticks, bones and stones and use them as weapons, or as tools for tasks such as killing smaller animals, cracking nuts, or cutting up carcasses. In other words, these primates developed the use of primitive technology. Bipedal tool-using primates form the Hominina subtribe, of which the earliest species, such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis, date to about 7 to 5 million years ago.
From about 5 million years ago, the hominin brain began to develop rapidly in both size and differentiation of function.
There has been a gradual increase in brain volume as humans progressed along the timeline of evolution (see Homininae), starting from about 600cm3 in Homo habilis up to 1500cm3 in Homo neanderthalensis. Thus, in general there's a correlation between brain volume and intelligence.[citation needed] However, modern Homo sapiens have a brain volume slightly smaller (1250cm3) than neanderthals, and the Flores hominids (Homo floresiensis), nicknamed hobbits, had a cranial capacity of about 380cm3 (considered small for a chimpanzee) about a third of that of H. erectus. It is proposed that they evolved from H. erectus as a case of insular dwarfism. With their three times smaller brain the Flores hominids apparently used fire and made tools as sophisticated as those of their ancestor H.erectus. In this case, it seems that for intelligence, the structure of the brain is more important than its volume.
Roughly 2.4 million years ago Homo habilis had appeared in East Africa: the first known human species, and the first known to make stone tools, yet the disputed findings of signs of tool use from even earlier ages and from the vicinity as multiple Australopithecus fossils may put this to question its "greater intelligence when compared to earlier and more primitive Australopithecus genus".
The use of tools conferred a crucial evolutionary advantage, and required a larger and more sophisticated brain to co-ordinate the fine hand movements required for this task.[3] Our knowledge of the complexity of behaviour of Homo habilis is not limited to stone culture, they also had habitual therapic use of toothpicks.[4]The evolution of a larger brain created a problem for early humans, however. A larger brain requires a larger skull, and thus requires the female to have a wider birth canal for the newborn's larger skull to pass through. But if the female's birth canal grew too wide, her pelvis would be so wide that she would lose the ability to run, which was a necessary skill 2 million years ago.[citation needed]
The solution to this was to give birth at an early stage of fetal development, before the skull grew too large to pass through the birth canal. This adaptation enabled the human brain to continue to grow, but it imposed a new discipline. The need to care for helpless infants for long periods of time forced humans to become less mobile[citation needed]. Human bands increasingly stayed in one place for long periods, so that females could care for infants, while males hunted food and fought with other bands that competed for food sources[citation needed]. As a result, humans became even more dependent on tool-making to compete with other animals and other humans, and relied less on body size and strength[citation needed].
About 200,000 years ago Europe and the Middle East were colonized by Neanderthal man, extinct by 39,000 years ago following the appearance of modern humans in the region from 40,00045,000 years ago.
Around 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens first appeared in East Africa. It is unclear to what extent these early modern humans had developed language, music, religion etc. They spread throughout Africa over the following approximately 50,000 years.[citation needed]
According to proponents of the Toba catastrophe theory, the climate in non-tropical regions of the earth experienced a sudden freezing about 70,000 years ago, because of a huge explosion of the Toba volcano that filled the atmosphere with volcanic ash for several years. This reduced the human population to less than 10,000 breeding pairs in equatorial Africa, from which all modern humans are descended. Being unprepared for the sudden change in climate, the survivors were those intelligent enough to invent new tools and ways of keeping warm and finding new sources of food (for example, adapting to ocean fishing based on prior fishing skills used in lakes and streams that became frozen).[citation needed]
Around 80,000100,000 years ago, three main lines of Homo sapiens diverged, bearers of mitochondrial haplogroup L1 (mtDNA) / A (Y-DNA) colonizing Southern Africa (the ancestors of the Khoisan/Capoid peoples), bearers of haplogroup L2 (mtDNA) / B (Y-DNA) settling Central and West Africa (the ancestors of NigerCongo and Nilo-Saharan speaking peoples), while the bearers of haplogroup L3 remained in East Africa.[citation needed]
The "Great Leap Forward" leading to full behavioral modernity sets in only after this separation. Rapidly increasing sophistication in tool-making and behaviour is apparent from about 80,000 years ago, and the migration out of Africa follows towards the very end of the Middle Paleolithic, some 60,000 years ago. Fully modern behaviour, including figurative art, music, self-ornamentation, trade, burial rites etc. is evident by 30,000 years ago. The oldest unequivocal examples of prehistoric art date to this period, the Aurignacian and the Gravettian periods of prehistoric Europe, such as the Venus figurines and cave painting (Chauvet Cave) and the earliest musical instruments (the bone pipe of Geissenklsterle, Germany, dated to about 36,000 years ago).[5]
The social brain hypothesis was proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who argues that human intelligence did not evolve primarily as a means to solve ecological problems, but rather as a means of surviving and reproducing in large and complex social groups.[6][7] Some of the behaviors associated with living in large groups include reciprocal altruism, deception and coalition formation. These group dynamics relate to Theory of Mind or the ability to understand the thoughts and emotions of others, though Dunbar himself admits in the same book that it is not the flocking itself that causes intelligence to evolve (as shown by ruminants).[6]
Dunbar argues that when the size of a social group increases, the number of different relationships in the group may increase by orders of magnitude. Chimpanzees live in groups of about 50 individuals whereas humans typically have a social circle of about 150 people, which is also the typical size of social communities in small societies and personal social networks;[8] this number is now referred to as Dunbar's number. In addition, there is evidence to suggest that the success of groups is dependent on their size at foundation, with groupings of around 150 being particularly successful, potentially reflecting the fact that communities of this size strike a balance between the minimum size of effective functionality and the maximum size for creating a sense of commitment to the community.[9] According to the social brain hypothesis, when hominids started living in large groups, selection favored greater intelligence. As evidence, Dunbar cites a relationship between neocortex size and group size of various mammals.[6]
Phylogenetic studies of brain sizes in primates show that while diet predicts primate brain size, sociality does not predict brain size when corrections are made for cases in which diet affects both brain size and sociality. The exceptions to the predictions of the social intelligence hypothesis, which that hypothesis has no predictive model for, are successfully predicted by diets that are either nutritious but scarce or abundant but poor in nutrients.[10]
Meerkats have far more social relationships than their small brain capacity would suggest. Another hypothesis is that it is actually intelligence that causes social relationships to become more complex, because intelligent individuals are more difficult to learn to know.[11]
There are also studies that show that Dunbar's number is not the upper limit of the number of social relationships in humans either.[12][13]
The hypothesis that it is brain capacity that sets the upper limit for the number of social relationships is also contradicted by computer simulations that show simple unintelligent reactions to be sufficient to emulate "ape politics"[14] and by the fact that some social insects such as the paper wasp do have hierarchies in which each individual has its place (as opposed to herding without social structure) and maintains their hierarchies in groups of approximately 80 individuals with their brains smaller than that of any mammal.[15]
Another theory that tries to explain the growth of human intelligence is the reduced aggression theory (aka self-domestication theory). According to this strand of thought what led to the evolution of advanced intelligence in Homo sapiens was a drastic reduction of the aggressive drive. This change separated us from other species of monkeys and primates, where this aggressivity is still in plain sight, and eventually lead to the development of quintessential human traits such as empathy, social cognition and culture.[16][17] This theory has received strong support from studies of animal domestication where selective breeding for tameness has, in only a few generations, led to the emergence of impressive humanlike abilities. Tamed foxes, for example, exhibit advanced forms of social communication (following pointing gestures), pedomorphic physical features (childlike faces, floppy ears) and even rudimentary forms of theory of mind (eye contact seeking, gaze following).[18][19] Evidence also comes from the field of ethology where it has been found that animals with a gentle and relaxed manner of interacting with each other like for example stumptailed macaques, orangutans and bonobos have more advanced socio-cognitive abilities than those found among the more aggressive chimpanzees and baboons. It is hypothesized that these abilities derive from a selection against aggression.[17][20][21][22]
On a mechanistic level these changes are believed to be the result of a systemic downregulation of the sympathetic nervous system (the fight-or-flight reflex). Hence, tamed foxes show a reduced adrenal gland size and have an up to fivefold reduction in both basal and stress-induced blood cortisol levels.[23][24] Similarly, domesticated rats and guinea pigs have both reduced adrenal gland size and reduced blood corticosterone levels.[25][26] It seems as though the neoteny of domesticated animals significantly prolongs the immaturity of their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system (which is otherwise only immature for a short period when they are pups/kittens) and this opens up a larger socialization window during which they can learn to interact with their caretakers in a more relaxed way.
This downregulation of sympathetic nervous system reactivity is also believed to be accompanied by a compensatory increase in a number of opposing organs and systems. Although these are not as well specified various candidates for such organs have been proposed: the parasympathetic system as a whole, the septal area over the amygdala,[16] the oxytocin system,[27] the endogenous opioids [28] and various forms of quiescent immobilization which antagonize the fight-or-flight reflex.[29][30]
Other studies suggest that social exchange between individuals is a vital adaptation to the human brain, going as far to say that the human mind could be equipped with a neurocognitive system specialized for reasoning about social change. Social Exchange is a vital adaptation that evolved in social species and has become exceptionally specialized in humans.This adaption will develop by natural selection when two parties can make themselves better off than they were before by exchanging things one party values less for things the other party values for more. However, selection will only pressure social exchange when both parties are receiving mutual benefits from their relative situation; if one party cheats the other by receiving a benefit while the other is harmed, then selection will stop. Consequently, the existence of cheatersthose who fail to deliver fair benefitsthreatens the evolution of exchange. Using evolutionary game theory, it has been shown that adaptations for social exchange can be favored and stably maintained by natural selection, but only if they include design features that enable them to detect cheaters, and cause them to channel future exchanges to reciprocators and away from cheaters. Thus, humans use social contracts to lay the benefits and losses each party will be receiving (if you accept benefit B from me, then you must satisfy my requirement R). Humans have evolved an advanced cheater detection system, equipped with proprietary problem-solving strategies that evolved to match the recurrent features of their corresponding problem domains. Not only do humans need to determine that the contract was violated, but also if the violation was intentionally done. Therefore, systems are specialized to detect contract violations that imply intentional cheating.[31]
One problem with the hypothesis that specific punishment for intentional deception could coevolve with intelligence is the fact that selective punishment of individuals with certain characteristics selects against the characteristics in question. For example, if only individuals capable of remembering what they had agreed to were punished for breaking agreements, evolution would have selected against the ability to remember what one had agreed to.[32][33][34]
This model, which invokes sexual selection, is proposed by Geoffrey Miller who argues that human intelligence is unnecessarily sophisticated for the needs of hunter-gatherers to survive. He argues that the manifestations of intelligence such as language, music and art did not evolve because of their utilitarian value to the survival of ancient hominids. Rather, intelligence may have been a fitness indicator. Hominids would have been chosen for greater intelligence as an indicator of healthy genes and a Fisherian runaway positive feedback loop of sexual selection would have led to the evolution of human intelligence in a relatively short period.[35]
In many species, only males have impressive secondary sexual characteristics such as ornaments and show-off behavior, but sexual selection is also thought to be able to act on females as well in at least partially monogamous species.[36] With complete monogamy, there is assortative mating for sexually selected traits. This means that less attractive individuals will find other less attractive individuals to mate with. If attractive traits are good fitness indicators, this means that sexual selection increases the genetic load of the offspring of unattractive individuals. Without sexual selection, an unattractive individual might find a superior mate with few deleterious mutations, and have healthy children that are likely to survive. With sexual selection, an unattractive individual is more likely to have access only to an inferior mate who is likely to pass on many deleterious mutations to their joint offspring, who are then less likely to survive.[35]
Sexual selection is often thought to be a likely explanation for other female-specific human traits, for example breasts and buttocks far larger in proportion to total body size than those found in related species of ape.[35] It is often assumed that if breasts and buttocks of such large size were necessary for functions such as suckling infants, they would be found in other species. That human female breasts (typical mammalian breast tissue is small)[37] are found sexually attractive by many men is in agreement with sexual selection acting on human females secondary sexual characteristics.
Sexual selection for intelligence and judging ability can act on indicators of success, such as highly visible displays of wealth. Growing human brains require more nutrition than brains of related species of ape. It is possible that for females to successfully judge male intelligence, they must be intelligent themselves. This could explain why despite the absence of clear differences in intelligence between males and females on average, there are clear differences between male and female propensities to display their intelligence in ostentatious forms.[35]
The sexual selection by the disability principle/fitness display model of the evolution of human intelligence is criticized by certain researchers for issues of timing of the costs relative to reproductive age. While sexually selected ornaments such as peacock feathers and moose antlers develop either during or after puberty, timing their costs to a sexually mature age, human brains expend large amounts of nutrients building myelin and other brain mechanisms for efficient communication between the neurons early in life. These costs early in life build facilitators that reduce the cost of neuron firing later in life, and as a result the peaks of the brain's costs and the peak of the brain's performance are timed on opposite sides of puberty with the costs peaking at a sexually immature age while performance peaks at a sexually mature age. Critical researchers argue that this means that the costs that intelligence is a signal of reduce the chances of surviving to reproductive age, does not signal fitness of sexually mature individuals and, since the disability principle is about selection for disabilities in sexually immature individuals that evolutionarily increase the offspring's chance of surviving to reproductive age, would be selected against and not for by its mechanisms. These critics argue that human intelligence evolved by natural selection citing that unlike sexual selection, natural selection have produced many traits that cost the most nutrients before puberty including immune systems and accumulation and modification for increased toxicity of poisons in the body as a protective measure against predators.[38][39]
A 2008 study argues that human cleverness is simply selected within the context of sexual selection as an honest signal of genetic resistance against parasites and pathogens.[40][unreliable medical source?] The number of people with severe cognitive impairment caused by childhood viral infections like meningitis, protists like Toxoplasma and Plasmodium, and animal parasites like intestinal worms and schistosomes is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.[41] Even more people live with moderate mental damages, such as inability to complete difficult tasks, that are not classified as diseases by medical standards, may still be considered as inferior mates by potential sexual partners.
Thus, widespread, virulent, and archaic infections are greatly involved in natural selection for cognitive abilities. People infected with parasites may have brain damage and obvious maladaptive behavior in addition to visible signs of disease. Smarter people can more skillfully learn to distinguish safe non-polluted water and food from unsafe kinds and learn to distinguish mosquito infested areas from safe areas. Smarter people can more skillfully find and develop safe food sources and living environments. Given this situation, preference for smarter child-bearing/rearing partners increases the chance that their descendants will inherit the best resistance alleles, not only for immune system resistance to disease, but also smarter brains for learning skills in avoiding disease and selecting nutritious food. When people search for mates based on their success, wealth, reputation, disease-free body appearance, or psychological traits such as benevolence or confidence; the effect is to select for superior intelligence that results in superior disease resistance.
A predominant model describing the evolution of human intelligence is ecological dominance-social competition (EDSC),[42] explained by Mark V. Flinn, David C. Geary and Carol V. Ward based mainly on work by Richard D. Alexander. According to the model, human intelligence was able to evolve to significant levels because of the combination of increasing domination over habitat and increasing importance of social interactions. As a result, the primary selective pressure for increasing human intelligence shifted from learning to master the natural world to competition for dominance among members or groups of its own species.
As advancement, survival and reproduction within an increasing complex social structure favored ever more advanced social skills, communication of concepts through increasingly complex language patterns ensued. Since competition had shifted bit by bit from controlling "nature" to influencing other humans, it became of relevance to outmaneuver other members of the group seeking leadership or acceptance, by means of more advanced social skills. A more social and communicative person would be more easily selected.
Human intelligence is developed to an extreme level that is not necessarily adaptive in an evolutionary sense. Firstly, larger-headed babies are more difficult to give birth to and large brains are costly in terms of nutrient and oxygen requirements.[43] Thus the direct adaptive benefit of human intelligence is questionable at least in modern societies, while it is difficult to study in prehistoric societies. Since 2005, scientists have been evaluating genomic data on gene variants thought to influence head size, and have found no evidence that those genes are under strong selective pressure in current human populations.[44] The trait of head size has become generally fixed in modern human beings.[45]
While decreased brain size has strong correlation with lower intelligence in humans, some modern humans have brain sizes as small as Homo Erectus but normal intelligence (based on IQ tests) for modern humans. Increased brain size in humans may allow for greater capacity for specialized expertise.[46]
Group selection theory contends that organism characteristics that provide benefits to a group (clan, tribe, or larger population) can evolve despite individual disadvantages such as those cited above. The group benefits of intelligence (including language, the ability to communicate between individuals, the ability to teach others, and other cooperative aspects) have apparent utility in increasing the survival potential of a group.
Higher cognitive functioning develops better in an environment with adequate nutrition,[47] and diets deficient in iron, zinc, protein, iodine, B vitamins, omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium and other nutrients can result in lower intelligence[48][49] either in the mother during pregnancy or in the child during development. While these inputs did not have an effect on the evolution of intelligence they do govern its expression. A higher intelligence could be a signal that an individual comes from and lives in a physical and social environment where nutrition levels are high, whereas a lower intelligence could imply a child, its mother, or both, come from a physical and social environment where nutritional levels are low. Previc emphasizes the contribution of nutritional factors, especially meat and shellfish consumption, to elevations of dopaminergic activity in the brain, which may have been responsible for the evolution of human intelligence since dopamine is crucial to working memory, cognitive shifting, abstract, distant concepts, and other hallmarks of advanced intelligence.[50]
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Evolution of human intelligence - Wikipedia
This new way of looking at human behavior first and foremost answers the core question initiated by Freud, namely, Why do we do what we do? The simple fact about history is that it is most often shaped by the desires driving those who would break the rules imposed by societyessentially, law-breakers.
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Human Behavior Criminal Justice Law International
Four Principles of Human Behavior
As you well know, a large portion of the SubSkills Online Training Course was dedicated to classroom management strategies as it is the number one concern of substitute teachers. Before we begin reviewing those strategies, four principles of human behavior need to be understood.
Principles are truths not limited by age, time, location, or situation. Once you become familiar with behavior principles, you will see them illustrated all around youbetween parents and children, in stores, on playgrounds, at family events, etc. It is impossible to write a book that covers every classroom scenario you may encounter as a teacher. However, when you know and understand these principles, your actions can change, increasing the likelihood that the students in your class will behave appropriately.
Principle One: Behavior is largely a product of its immediate environment.
The classroom environment teachers create through the expectations they set will influence students more than outside factors do. This allows teachers to take control and influence the students behavior in their classrooms. If a student is acting out, the teacher should pay special attention to altering the classroom (immediate environment). If the teacher changes the classroom, the behavior of the students will change.
Principle Two: Behavior is strengthened or weakened by its consequences.
When disruptive behavior becomes a pattern, it is important to take a look at what is happening immediately after the behavior. Attention from a teacher is a powerful motivator for most students. If you pay more attention to students who are behaving appropriately than to students who are not, you will be encouraging appropriate behavior.
Principle Three: Behavior ultimately responds better to positive than to negative consequences.
People respond better to positive encouragement than to negative processes. Think of the tasks you do every day; if someone thanks you or compliments you on how well you did, you feel much more likely to continue the task. As a teacher, you can help stop undesirable behavior and increase appropriate behavior by genuinely reinforcing the latter.
Principle Four: Whether a behavior has been punished or reinforced is known only by the course of that behavior in the future.
If an appropriate behavior is repeated, it has been reinforced. If an undesirable behavior is repeated, it too has been reinforced. If an undesirable behavior has discontinued, it has been properly disciplined.
The only way to tell if a response to a behavior is punishing or reinforcing is to watch what happens to the behavior in the future. What is considered a punishment to one person may reinforce and perpetuate a behavior in another.
Understanding these four principles of human behavior is a key to your success in the classroom. As you work to fully apply and practice each one, you will feel confident when approaching the classroom because you can make correct decisions about managing behavior. The most important thing to remember about each of these principles is that they are a call to action on your partyou can manage student behavior properly only by first managing your own.
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The Four Principles of Human Behavior | MyLearning.STEDI.org
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