Regarding Henry: Conditioning, Memory, and Learning

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In the movie Regarding Henry, Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) is shot in the head twice when he walked into a convenience store while it was being robbed. He wakes up from a coma and has apparently lost all of his memory. After the accident he is pretty much like a child learning everything all over again. He doesn’t remember his friends, coworkers, or even who his family are and what roles they play in his life and in his family.

When he first wakes up he just kind of stares at nothing, he can’t respond or even focus on anyone it seems. After the accident he has to learn everything by observing those around him and what they are doing. He also seems to listen to the sounds, expressions, and words they make to try and make sense of what’s going on around him and what are the people doing to him.

Henry is subject to operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and conditioned response. Henry is taught by giving praise when he does something right and being corrected when he does something wrong. He is taught that if he does a certain thing like walking for example he gets praise. He is taught to associate certain things with others when they are presented like a fork for example to him means it’s time to eat because he has been given a fork before eating a few times before.

Henry adapts to his environment after the accident pretty well. He seems happy with the place he’s at and the people he’s in contact with each and every day. He starts to slowly get used to having his physical therapist, Bradley (Bill Nunn), around him as a friend and a sort of mentor for him. He begins to walk around the facility he’s at and he likes to spend time with Bradley to socialize and talk to him.

Henry suffers from retrograde amnesia due to internal bleeding in the part of the brain that controls memory. This causes him to forget completely everything he ever learned. His entire life is forgotten and he has to basically relearn who he was, only to find he didn’t like who he was and that he didn’t want to be that person. He starts to pay more attention to his daughter and his wife and starts to spend more time with them.

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