A Boy From the Village

Find part that related to the concepts below? From what we have learned in our class?

• Associative bias

• Sensory preconditioning

• Higher order Conditioning

• Extinction

• Counter conditioning

• Spontaneous recovery

• Stimulus discrimination

• Generalization

There was a teenager named Ali who lived in a village and being a middle class citizen, he led quite a stable life, at least financially. Having a mother who was a housewife who took great care in bringing him up, Ali’s father who worked as a teacher, remained contented in being the soul breadwinner of the family.

Ali’s father loved his family very much. Although he was busy man, he managed to show his affection towards his wife and son by treating them to a scrumptious and luxurious dinner soon after he received his monthly salary. Ali will cherished at the thought of his father receiving his salary because aside from being treated to a wonderful dinner, he will surely received some gifts from his father.

One fine day when Ali paid his friend a visit, he accidentally stepped on one of his friend’s cats which happened to be the wildest among all and that rendered him to be bitten by it. Ali was petrified of seeing his foot being deeply wounded. In effect, every single time he bumped into a cat, he’ll turn away with great dislike.

Back in his childhood years, swimming was Ali’s favorite activity in his leisure time. He always goes to the beach with his family during the weekends. Swimming was his forte, but unfortunately, he nearly get drowned by a huge crashing wave on that tragic day. That incident was too traumatic for him and just having thoughts about going to a beach shall make him shudder with fear of the possibility in losing his precious life. It was just too risky, according to him.

At the age of ten years, Ali’s was harshly spanked by his teacher whenever he failed to provide an answer for questions posed by him. This made him frightened of his teacher and to an extent, he sometimes wetted his pant. Eight years later when Ali ran into him by chance, he scurried away from him with fear.

After getting satisfying results from his SPM, Ali furthered his studies in one of the famous university in his country. Despite enrolling with ease, he encountered a bad experience with one of his lecturer. Ali’s conversation with him never went well. What’s more, he was publicly yelled at and getting blamed with all sorts of nonsense accusations. While he disliked this particular lecturer, nevertheless he remained contented with the other lecturers.

Ali fancied drinking coffee in the morning to avoid dozing off in class. As time passed by, his daily coffee intake heightened that he drank them every few hours. This habit had successfully prolonged, up till a time when the smell of coffee rendered him to badly nauseate in addition to the headache he was frequently experiencing. In a short while, he left coffee for good.

Ali was a food lover and his most loved meals were spaghetti, pizza and spicy dishes. His appetite shall rise simply at the sight of fork and spoon. Even though Ali ate a lot, he was nonetheless healthy as he had incorporated exercises as part of his daily routine.

Yet the flipside of Ali’s healthy lifestyle was the fact that he was a heavy smoker. He managed to smoke several packets of cigarettes daily. Apparently he has turned over a new leaf by abandoning this rueful habit and that was caused by his father’s death. He was terminally ill from lung cancer and the fact that his father used to be a heavy smoker had caused him to feel greatly  alarmed.

 In taking a step towards intervention, he chewed on some medicated chewing gum to subside his smoking cravings. After months of struggles in restraining himself from smoking, and despite having not quitting fully, he managed to set aside a great deal of unused cigarettes and persisted on having hopes that one fine day, he will feel indifferent towards cigarettes.