University of Leicester
Year 1 Psychology
Learning and Memory
Professor Graham Davies
Lecture 1
Copies of overheads
Classical Conditioning
Ivan Pavlov
(1849 – 1936)
• Extinction
• Spontaneous recovery
• Generalisation
• Discrimination
Terminology
• Meat powder = unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
• Salivation = unconditioned response
(UCR)
• Bell/tone = conditioned stimulus (CS)
• Salivation to = conditioned response
bell tone
(CR)
The stages of classical
conditioning
TIME
STIMULUS
Before C.C.
UCS (meat powder)
presented alone

UCR
(Salivation)
CS (bell) presented
alone

No response
UCS (meat) +
CS (bell) presented
together

Salivation

CR
(Salivation)
During C.C.
Following C.C. CS (bell)
presented alone
RESPONSE
Applications of conditioning
• Personality theory
- introverts and extroverts (Eysenck)
• Neuroses
- Phobias – ‘Little Albert’ (Watson &
Raynor, 1920)
• Systematic Desensitisation –
-‘Little Peter’ (Jones, 1924)
Conditioning in Action
• Dog phobias
• Chemotherapy patients
Mechanistic assumptions of
conditioning
• Conditioning is a gradual process
• Temporal contiguity is essential
• Any stimulus can be conditioned to any
response
All have been challenged
Garcia & Koelling
(1966)
• Prior:
saccharin  ingest
• Experiment:
saccharin  nausea
+ noise (several hours later)
+ light
• Post-experiment:
saccharin  disgust & rejection
plain water  ingest
+ noise + light
Conditioning and Animal
Behaviour
• Biological preparedness
(primacy of taste)
• Biological adaptiveness (behaviour of wild
rats)
• Subtle interaction of learned and
instinctive behaviour (implications for
other forms of learning)