afo@pucc-k (Laurie Sefton) (09/29/84)
(sorry, no reviews)
OC stands for operant conditioning, one of two connective learning theories.
B.F. Skinner is the one who first proposed OC as a learning/training method.
The whole idea is this: if behave in a certain way, and the behaviour is
reinforced, then you will keep doing that behaviour. If it is not reinforced,
either by punishment or by extinction (no goodies for the behaviour at all),
the behaviour will go away.
Now, why the psych lecture? Because some comic book writers have OC on the
brain. They have heard it is a nasty, evil, manipulative thing, and therefore
use it in all their 'hero(ine) gets brain fried by baddies' story lines.
Re: the story line in K/W: Kitty is basically re-programmed using OC concepts;when she does something that which is what her captors want (elicits the correct behaviour), she is rewarded (the behaviour is reinforced);when she
doesn't her captors 'punish' her (remember the laughing when she fell over?,
that is an example of punishing non-wanted behaviour).
Anyway, the comic book writers seem to think that OC is the only method
of changing behaviours, and I'm gettin a little peeved at being exposed to
their interpretations of it...
Laurie
{allegra, ihnp4, harpo, decvax,}pur-ee!pucc-k!afohutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) (10/03/84)
"Who are those guys?" "They're my friends. Like 'em? I made 'em myself." I don't think that what is happening to Kitty in K&W has a lot to do with operant conditioning. What actually is happening there is that the author read too many Eric Von Lustbader books. In "Ninja" E Von L has his e-vile ninja master use a "secret technique" on the girlfriend of the good-guy ninja master. This involved using chi-harmony to invade her mind, and making a copy of his own personality AND SKILLS over her own. Then, at a particular trigger point, she was supposed to kill her lover (the good guy) and commit suicide. This was intended to guarantee the destruction of the good guy even in the event that he manage to kill the bad guy. I suspect that Kitty is being prepared in a similar fashion, except that the ninja master doesn't use the "fast" technique. However. Except for the chi-strikes used to paralyze Kitty so she can't protect herself, the indoctrination methods used are bogus. The basic idea is to install this stuff without her having any conscious awareness that it is there. The training-under-brainwashing method won't do this reliably because it is unstable in sufficiently intelligent people. Also, she has had Xavier's training in mind control. She should be able to throw off the conditioning. SPOILER WARNING: Oh, by the way, in "Ninja" when the hero inevitably manages to safely disarm his "possessed" lover, she snaps the conditioning, but retains the full set of skills she was given by the bad guy. This is interesting because she realizes that she hasn't got the discipline nor the maturity to safely hold those skills. It will be interesting to see what they do with Kitty in this regard. Hutch