This wednesday, I’ll be off on a 5-hour road trip to Boston for the PBS conference, where I’ll be presenting a poster on my qualifier research. I’ll be going with the same people that went to last year’s conference in Reno. Our trip this time will definitely remind me of last year’s memorable drive up to Lake Tahoe. I’m looking forward to getting away from here for several days; unfortunately, I’ll be lugging with me my readings – to work on my Introduction and Literature Review outlines. Even if I don’t get any outlining done, at least I should catch up on my reading. But there’s so much to see and do and eat in Boston, I am not sure if I’ll get anything done. I’ll have to find someway to read 2 hours a day. Or if I can tolerate reading during the car-ride, I could read then too.

I hope I can meet up with Christine while in Boston, as she is bringing back from Malaysia the things I ordered: Milo 3-in-1, Nescafe 3-in-1, and Xifu korean ginseng chicken herbal soup seasoning pack. I didn’t know what else to order, these stuff were just for the sake of it.

ahhhhh

Sigh…

This has been my life for the past few weeks – drafts, revisions and more revisions. I’ll save my words to revise the method and results sections.

Today, I discovered the key to being on-task while writing or revising academic papers — find someone in the computer lab or library, who looks like s/he will be working there for the next 3 hours, and sit next to her/him. I never thought of this before. Before this, when I needed to get some serious writing done, I was usually either in my room or at a quiet spot in the library. But I struggled to even get started. This afternoon, while I was in the computer lab, someone sat next to me and he was diligently working. Somehow that rubbed off on me, and I managed to revise my introduction in 4 hours. So, that is what I will do from now on – look out for diligent-looking people.

Since I completed my work for today, I can have a guilt-free blog entry.

“Ambiguity is part of life and we will have to learn to live with it and/or be continually frustrated by it.”
~ Someone in my Learning Environments class (2006)

I’m currently working on recoding all the articles in my meta-analysis. I thought I had a good handle on all the items and their definitions. But after training 3 of my fellow coursemate to code a third of all the articles, I find that there’s so much ambiguity. It’s frustrating! For every question that they have for me regarding the codes, for each time some form of clarification is required: it’s another decision that I have to make. And I can’t just make any random decision, it has to be a rational, informed, “helpful in answering my research questions” decision, and I have to be prepared to defend those decisions. What makes this harder is the fact that there cannot be any ambiguity: It has to be a yes or a no, and not a maybe.

Anyway, Premack principle has been enforced once again. It’s ridiculous, I know.

This time, I am only allowed to update this blog after I have recoded all 39 articles in my database (review previous codes and make changes, if necessary; calculate every single effect size; make decisions for every item that needs some form of decision making) and enter all data into SPSS.

Submitted my revision to my advisor this afternoon. Now that I can have my reinforcer, there’s nothing interesting to write about.

“Premack principle states that individuals engage in certain behaviors at low frequencies, so these behaviors have low probability of occurrence. Other behaviors are engaged in at high frequencies and therefore have a high probability of occurrence. When low-frequency behaviors are followed by high-frequency behaviors, the effect is to increase the probability of the low-frequency behavior. In other words, any activity a person voluntarily performs frequently may be used as a reinforcer for any activity s/he seldom performs voluntarily.”
~ Alberto & Troutman (2006, p. 222)

Academic writing is definitely one of my low-frequency behaviors and if it doesn’t increase exponentially very soon, I’m in big trouble. Since I obviously find updating this blog very reinforcing (high-frequency behavior), I’ve decided to enforce the Premack principle in my academic writing behavior.

Thus, I am only allowed to update this blog after I have submitted my revision of my qualifier’s introduction and method sections to my advisor

Serious stuff

An important deadline is approaching-December 8- the day I have to present my qualifying project to the faculty. I have to rewrite my introduction and method sections, analyze and interpret the results of my PBS meta-analysis, and write the results, discussion, and conclusion sections. I’ll also need to recruit several friends to help me code some articles for reliability purposes.

Here are all the important materials that I have to reread and review, and my favorite Lay’s Cheddar and Sour Cream potato chips to keep me going.

I was supposed to do a summary of my presentation on Bystander Effect here. Well, here’s my summary:

1. During an emergency, the more people are around, the less likely the bystanders will help. The speed of help will also be reduced. In other words, if you’re in an emergency situation, you would hope that fewer people are around so that you will get help faster.

2. During an emergency, bystanders tend to look at the reaction of others before they decide to do anything. So if all bystanders do not look like they’re worried about the situation, you’ll probably be less worried and probably be less likely to take action.

3. Some researchers suggest a model of helping called Limited altruism: 1) the probable cost to bystanders for attempting to help & 2) the victim’s state of need. Meaning we all weigh the cost to us and the need of the victim before we decide to take action.

Here’s an activity I did with the other students. I gave them 9 situations and asked them to decide whether they would help or not help or undecided. You could try this out and my classmates’ decisions are in italics.

Situation 1

You’re walking in a park on a cold Sunday evening. You come across a young crying child. The child had dropped a toy that is floating in a pond out of the child’s reach. The pond is about knee-deep. There are several bystanders in the area but none of them seems to be the little child’s parents.
Would you wade into the pond to retrieve the toy?
Yes-30%, No-40%, Undecided-30%

Situation 2

You’re walking in a park on a cold Sunday evening. You come across a young crying child who had fallen into a pond. The child is floundering out of arm’s reach. The pond is about knee-deep. There are several bystanders in the area but none of them seems to be the little child’s parents.
Would you wade into the pond to save the boy?
Yes-100%

Situation 3

You just drove into a parking lot at the local mall. There are many shoppers and cars around. A college-aged girl approaches you. She tells you that her car broke down and she’s expecting an important long-distance call from the admissions board of the law school that she wants to go. Her home is 7 miles away.
Would you help her by driving her back to her home?
Yes-20%, No-60%, Undecided-20%

Situation 4

You are leaving the mall. There are still many shoppers and cars around. A college-aged boy approaches you. He tells you that his car broke down and he has an appointment with his doctor for his annual check-up today. The doctor’s office is 7 miles away.
Would you help him by driving him to the doctor’s clinic?
Yes-10%, No-80%, Undecided-10%

Situation 5

It is lunch time and you are walking along 4th Street. You come across a man attacking a woman. You hear the woman scream “I don’t know why I married you!”
Would you intervene?
Yes-90%, No-10%

Situation 6

It is lunch time and you are walking along 4th Street. You come across a man attacking a woman. You hear the woman scream “I don’t know you!”
Would you intervene?
Yes-90%, No-10%

Situation 7

You are driving on your way up to Iacocca. You are in a hurry to get to class; it’s your turn to present in the Doctoral Seminar. You see a car by the road side. A man is sort of slumped over the steering wheel.
Would you pull over?
Yes-30%, No-40%, Undecided-30%

Situation 8

You are driving on your way up to Iacocca. You are in a hurry to get to class; it’s your turn to present in the Doctoral Seminar. You see a car by the road side. A man is sort of slumped over the steering wheel. You see there are many cars ahead of and behind you.
Would you call campus police to check on the man?
Yes-80%, No-10%, Undecided-10%

Situation 9

You are in a local high school classroom collecting data for your research/work. You see a teacher roughly pushing a student against a wall. The student doesn’t seem to look distressed. Both teacher and student look as if they’ve gone through this before. But the rough handling of the student continues on.
Would you intervene?
Yes-70%, No-20%, Undecided-10%

Today’s doctoral seminar is on the study done by Zimbardo and colleagues in 1973.
Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.
The researchers placed 20 normal male college students in a simulated prison in the basement of the Dept of Psychology at Stanford. Nine of them were to role play as prisoners and the other 11 as guards. And within 2 days, the prisoners suffered acute emotional disturbance, and the guards became aggressive and dehumanizing. The conclusion is that the prison environment is so pathological that even normal people would start behaving crazy once they are inprisoned.

Originally the researchers planned to run the experiment for 2 weeks but they had to end the experiment after 6 days because the behavior change in both prisoners and guards were so extreme. It was no longer ethical to retain the prisoners in this state of oppression.

The students were paid $15 a day to participate in this study. I wonder how much the $15 is worth now in 2005?

I had the Bystander Effect presentation today. And I have a midterm exam tomorrow. Right now I think I’ve burned up all my fuel for the day: cannot focus on reading about phonemic and decoding instruction. So I spent the time uploading pictures and updating this blog.