Behaviorism (brief reminder-please skip the whole paragraph if you know about the term): the Russian Ivan Pavlov made a famous experiment. First he showed a piece of meat to a group of dogs while making sound a whistle. The dogs, at the sight of the meat, logically segregated saliva, in anticipation of the food. Pavlov then removed the meat from the equation and left only the whistle; he found out that, for a long number of later experiences, the dogs kept on segregating saliva just the same, because their brains still associated the sound to the promise of food. Another famous experiment -maybe by Burrhus Skinner, the other master of the technique-, with rats this time, consisted in associating a green light and a bell with an electric shock. When the shock was removed, the rats got terrified by the light and the bell just the same.
We humans can also be conditioned through behaviorist techniques. It sometimes happens even by accident. Here are some funny associations, typically behaviorist, that have stuck with me for a long time (or are still with me):
- Whenever I disable certain browser plug in, I think of a cousin of mine who recently became a father.
- Whenever I play Bomb Jack (remember?), I think of two former friends of mine, a boy and a girl, who were on the verge of becoming a couple several times, we always thought they would, but they never did.
- Whenever I play a certain version of Tetris, with a modified key set, then and only then, I remember a lovely weekend I had two months ago in the country.
A pattern clearly emerges from these associations: it seems the computer is particularly suitable for the creation of them. On second thought, it is quite logical; what is a computer, after all, but a machine that produces lights and whistles?
Did you recognize any link of this kind created during your computer time?
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Hi Nacho,
Well, not really; spending a lot of time with a computer creates, at least in me, an association of the computer to everything.
I remember the first time I went to a strip club and saw a naked woman dancing, I was about 15, and the song playing the girl was dancing, everytime I hear it again brings the same impresion, image, even smell in my mind after all these years (what a memory!)
By the way, the song was “One More Night” by Phil Collins
I guess that’s what make couples say: “That’s our song honey”
At that moment I learned the power of “mind recordings” and started using songs played again and again while performing a specific activity, so I could use the song later to remember how to do that activity.
Raul
Excellent example of conditioning. Besides, there is another factor: the things that happen at young ages leave a deeper trace because the clay is more fresh, so to say.
)
All in all, the most traumatic element for me in the whole experience would have been Phill Collin’s music (it’s August, I’m just joking…
Linking music to events is also a good trick. Thanks for sharing.