Realty duo re'sound'ing hit - Hoover Library

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DESPITE AGGRESSION Published for friends of Western Maryland College, Westminster, Maryland
LEARNING DESPITE AGGRESSION <strong>hit</strong> upon a successful behavior, in this case. Editor's Note: Renovation of/he WillSfOIl'Celller is underway and when complete, the former still/em ('ellter wilt provide nell' office, classroom, and research space for {he education (J(IIII'deajprogmni and the psychology deparnnent. These academic areas complement each other lind research hy members of/he psydlO/ogYfacllfry tuis spilled urer into seeking lind providing needed answers {O learning problems of the deaf. The l'xc/UIIIRf! between thefondf)' and students o/these 111'0 ProRNI!I1,\' is 1/ healthy (Jill' Gild the following article discusses the research by Stephen Colyer and his contributions By Joyce E. Muller What do the territoriality and aggression displayed by Siamese fighting fish have in common with improving learning in deaf children A simple answer is Stephen Colyer. Colyer. a young psychology professor at the college for !O years. has bounced from his interest in child development to the study of aggression in mice and fighting fish and has linked several of his findings 10 designing programs to assist educators in improving learning by deaf and multiply handicapped children. After joining the faculty. Colyer received many calls from people who needed help teaching handicapped children with learning problems. "Few people want to work with a lq-year-old aggressive child," says Colyer. But with the assistance of a state gran~. Colyer got involved in training teachers and admInistrators to develop programs for these children .. Aggressive behavior of deaf children often arises out o~e way deaf children communicate. The prob~ems they experience with communication can be a maJor, factor In prodUCing and maintaining aggressive behavior ,. ~rior to language development. a normal hearing child will often resort to aggressive behavior to gain attention, but the learning of language skills enables the child to deal more effectively with his world. In the case of some deaf children who cannot use language effectively or who discover that sign language is not totally effective in communicating. children may learn to communicate by acting aggressively. Furthermore, the handicapped child has limited capacity to modulate or vary his behavior. Once they aggression. they repeat the behavior. Later. when such behavior is resisted. the child experiences frustration, becomes more aggressive and the pattern continues. Colyer's approach toward this problem arose out of his interest and studies of animal life. He questioned whether the aggressive behavior of Siamese fighting fish. thought to be an innate characteristic of the fish. was in fact a response to a situation and reinforced by the fish's environment. "Aggression in my opinion." says Colyer, "is hardly a fixed immutable part of one's personality. Why would it be beneficial for any animal to be immutably aggressive"!" His objective was to demonstrate that aggression in the fish was an operant, a way of coping. like the deaf children who resort to aggresive behavior due to their inability 10 effectively communicate. "n's very difficult to come to grips immediately with some 01 the problems of aggressive deaf and multiply handicapped children, but in going to a laboratory situation and setting up something that is comparable, we often gain some insight into how to design a study with the deaf children." Colyer and the students working with him were able to design a study of aggression using Siamese fighting fish. They first established that the fish were territorial; that a fish could develop a sense of his "home tank" and protect his proprietary rights by reacting aggressively when another fish. an "intruder," was introduced in his territory. Oversimplifying. their results indicate that the aggressive behavior of the territorial fish depended on the fish's past experience of winning by being aggressive and that territorial aggression increased or decreased as a result of past combat experiences. The fish like the child was reacting to a situation and environment. Another study with rats is examining the phenomenon of delayed gratification and its effect on learning. "The results arc equivocal," says Colyer, and he hopes that following the move into Winslow. Iunher tcsrs can be rerun and the results more conclusive. Another area of learning that Colyer and his students arc researching is how cognitive mediators facilitate learning lr is a commonly accepted axiom that learning is easier when you can develop an image otthc subject or task to be learned. This learning framework where a stimulus and response is paired is tagged "paired associate learning." The task is representative of typical teaching strategies. Pictures are often used as a stimulus in this framework because of their concreteness. Through testing. Colyer has observed that pictures do not appear to facilitate learning in young children
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Page 31: estern Mil!Y1and CoUege Westminster
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Page 41 and 42: 1957 1979 and speot thehollo8Y seas
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Page 45 and 46: Jamison & Brazis, Always in Season
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