My Sisters Drug Addiction: An Informal Learning Experience

This paper will discuss how my sisters’ drug addiction has been an informal learning experience for me and how my life has been effected trying to help her with this addiction. I will discuss how her experience with drugs occurred through classical conditioning by, identifying the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and the conditioned response. I will also explain how her experience occurred through operant conditioning by describing the behavior, the consequences, and reinforcements of her drug addiction. Finally, I will address how my learning experience occurred through cognitive social learning and how influences of media and prejudice played a factor. Growing up in a small town with no ambition to set goals and your all about your friends, you will head down a dark lonely path. At the age of 17, my sister Kaitlin decided that her friends knew what was best for and took
Behaviorism is based on the assumption that learning occurs through interactions with the environment (Cherry, n.d). A neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus capable of producing a given response after being repeatedly presented with the unconditioned (significant) stimulus (Carpenter & Huffman, 2010). For example, an addict may use rolling papers, a pipe, or a syringe, etc (conditional stimulus) depending on the drug of their choice. An addict will eventually crave the drug of choice in the presence of these items (conditioned response), even when the drug is not present (unconditioned stimulus). The absence of the actual drug will lead to an overwhelming desire to use, (unconditional response). When the drugs and all the items are present and their body is going through withdrawals, when the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli occur together, the addict is