Category: Behavioural

Video Games and Learning

We can demonstrate classical conditioning in children via video games. In 2010, Cornejo, Castillo, Saavedra, and Vogel, used a simple video game to demonstrate predictive  situations.

The video game worked as followed:

In this new task you will be shown aliens shooting at a cloud. You have to learn WHICH of the aliens CAN and which CANNOT make rain.

Each time an alien appears shooting, you will have to tell whether or not it is going to rain by pressing a key on the computer. There will

immediately appear a cloud with drops of rain or without drops of rain, showing what happened after the shooting. Pay attention to what happens after the shot, since you will be asked about which aliens MAKE RAIN and which aliens DO NOT MAKE RAIN.

PRESS THE SPACE BAR TO CONTINUE.

To make sure that the instructions on the screen were understood, the following instruction appeared:

So, your task consists of learning which aliens MAKE rain and which aliens DO NOT MAKE rain.

To indicate they make rain press key “S” and press key “N” to indicate they won’t make rain.

You should press only ONE key

PRESS THE SPACE-BAR TO CONTINUE

Each different alien was associated with a key on the keyboard (keys A through H).

Training Phase:

  • Some aliens were paired and some were not.
  • Aliens A (8 drops), B (8 drops), and EF (8 drops) were followed by rain.
  • Aliens C, D, and GH were not followed by rain.
  • At the end of training, children were asked to guess how many drops of rain will follow the shootings of A, B, and AB

Test Phase: 

  • Aliens shown were: A (8 drops), B (8 drops), EF (8 drops), AB (16 drops), C, D, GH, CD.

 

The results of the test showed that the children were able to discriminate between the aliens that produce rain and the ones that do not produce rain. Also the children had greater predictive value with the combination of AB than predicting A, B, or EF. This game shows that children were processing each individual alien (even those in compounds – 2 aliens at a time).

Cornejo, F. A., Castillo, R. D., Saavedra, M. A., & Vogel, E. H. (2010). Summation in predictive learning in children. Psicológica, 31(2), 199-217.

Eat Your Vegetables

Now that you are familiar with classical conditioning you can use it to “train” your kids to do things like eat their vegetables. But what if they actually liked eating the vegetables? That would make matters even easier.

In 2007, Havermans and Jansen used classical conditioning to pair a neutral vegetable flavour with a preferred vegetable flavour (essentially they added sugar) to increase a five year old child’s preference for the neutral flavour. It would look something like this:

Neutral Flavour (cauliflower) = “it tastes just okay”

Unconditioned Flavour (sugared cauliflower) = “i like it”

cauliflower + sugared cauliflower = “i like it”

cauliflower = “i like it”

The results of the study strongly implied an increase in preference for the vegetable taste that was conditioned compared to the vegetable taste that was not conditioned.

Havermans, R. C., & Jansen, A. (2007). Increasing children’s liking of vegetables through flavour-flavour learning. Appetite, 48(2), 259-262. doi:http://dx.doi.org.cat1.lib.trentu.ca:8080/10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.063

Now, I’m not suggesting that you start adding sugar to all of your kids foods. However, if you try to integrate foods that they do  like into foods they do not like, you may be able to convince them that they actually do like broccoli. When first initiating this process, be sure to add more of the food they do like, and slowly with each meal reduce this amount.