Question

Can you help me with psychology? (PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE INCLUDED)

Seven-year-old Luke Nuttall has Type 1 diabetes. One night his blood sugar levels dropped suddenly while he was sleeping, but his glucose monitor-that is, his mechanical glucose monitor- didn't detect the drop. However, his canine monitor, a black Labrador named Jedi, picked up the change and immediately woke Luke's mother, as he was trained to do. Jedi is a diabetes alert dog-a DAD-carefully trained, through procedures developed by psychologists specializing in learning, to detect changes in the bodies of diabetics. Because of their supersensitive noses, dogs are famous for sniffing out bombs and drugs, but they can also learn to detect cancers, urinary tract infections, and diabetic glucose levels. So add another job title to the services dogs routinely provide to humans in exchange for room and board and a little cuddling (Langley, 2016).

Answer 1

1. Taking into consideration both the prologue and epilogue,I think Jedi learned to detect glucose level changes and to act upon immediately through the strategic combination of both the behavioral learning processes that is classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Firstly Jedi must have been carefully trained through classical conditioning process. As mentioned in the prologue section that dogs have super sensitive noses with the help of which they can sniff out several diseases, drugs as well as glucose levels in the body, this super sense (Neutral stimulus) of dogs must have been paired with some unconditional stimulus such as perceived danger situations or alarms, most specifically something which appears as danger or harmful to the dogs to get trained him with conditional response that is to immediately react whenever glucose level in body changes( conditional stimulus) and simultaneously combining this training with operant conditioning, so whenever the dog engages in desired behavior (that is immediately reacts to the changes in glucose level) he had been provided with some reward ( positive reinforcement) to reinforce his behavior and when he failed punishment been used in order to direct his behavior more and more towards desired behavior.

2.For this this type of training, only operant conditioning would be helpful that can teach Jedi to detect the right smell and avoid the wealth of other smells that his nose is capable of detecting. Sketch for the training: Firstly I will bring the dog to different smells one by one, and every time he will come close to right smell I will reward him with his favorite dog treats or will provide him with his favorite toy to play with as positive reinforcement to strengthen the response and to other smells will present an unfavorable event ( negative reinforcement) or outcome in order to weaken the response to other smells.

In animal training, food is the best reward to reinforce the correct response. Therefore, in a training of glucose detection I will provide Jedi with his favorite food ( be it dog treats , chicken or something else) every time he engages in correct performance, praise and petting alongside will also do the trick.

3. Even if Luke remains healthy and his glucose levels hold steady for years, in such case Jedi will not forget how to detect glucose levels, the speed rate of reaction/response might get slow. This was evidently shown in the extended experiment of classical conditioning by Ivan Pavlov called as "spontaneous recovery". In which after a period of time, when the sound of the bell was presented to the dog (one in pavlov's experiment) began to salivate again. But I think in such medical scenario risk must not be an option, and a regular skill refreshment training must be provided to the dog (Jedi) time to time for the safer side.