As I reread this topic several times and tried to bring it to life to write an intelligent paper on it, I had to search my memory for the actions that made me think, learn, act and react. So, I took a trip down memory lane and thought back to my childhood and started thinking of my elementary school days, high school days, military days, right on through to raising my children and now attempting college myself. What a trip! I'm not sure if I am learning anything or if I just keep going to see where I will wind up. At any rate, I will try to apply all these things into this paper as well as where I relate it in the book "Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology".

(Your comment here on perhaps people should keep a learning journal; I am totally in agreement to this idea as it would be so helpful in later years.)

Learning has many forms, of them I believe that repetition is a common form, I do something over and over again and I do it wrong a few times, am told of my mistakes and how to correct them, then go back to repeat the process correctly, eventually I will do it properly, then I can say I have mastered a new feat. A good example of this would

be riding a bicycle. I remember learning to ride by falling off several times, and being a youngster, I didn't care about the bruises and skinned knees. I'd get up off the sidewalk, road, or whatever I landed on and repeat the process again and again, until I was able to do it without falling and even got brave and tried with no hands, (not a good idea when you are a beginner). As an adult learning to ride a bicycle is a much more difficult procedure, we aren't as prepared to take the physical spills a child can endure, therefore, it is much more frightening to an adult to master bicycle riding.

In order for a test to accurately test intelligence, it must demonstrate that it brings unvarying and duplicated results and have strength to gauge what was supposed to be measured. It is believed by many psychologists that there are multiple intelligences and that current tests only tap at the surface and register primarily academic intelligence as opposed to practical intelligence. Meaning it is easy to monitor book smarts through IQ testing, but street smarts and common sense are much harder to provide researched studies on, seeing they are individual traits.

Your comment regarding learn or die, could be a most appropriate thought. As it is my thought, that if we fail to push our minds to continue to operate, we will slowly become negligent in ourselves and no longer be able to intelligently function in this ever-changing world we live in.

Intelligence is a difficult thing to assess: the first person to attempt to develop a test of intellectual ability was Sir Francis Galton, over a century ago. (Hilgard pg 413) Based upon his beliefs that some families were smarter, stronger and logically superior because of their intelligence and passed down from generation to generation. Galton's original testing was based upon head size and he eventually had to admit that a man's head size had absolutely nothing at all to do with his level of intelligence.

Another method of learning th

Some common words found in the essay are:
Pavlov Hilgard, Francis Galton, Introduction Psychology, Demonstrate Intelligence, Hilgard Chapter, aversive conditioning, conditioning aversive, school days, conditioning aversive conditioning, form learning, peer pressure, dog conditioned, head size, reaction doing, negative reaction, academic intelligence,
Approximate Word count = 1347
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)