Module 15
Classical Conditioning
The Office
Fraiser
Classical Conditioning terms
• Learning: A relatively permanent change in
behavior due to experience.
• Classical conditioning: A type of learning where a
stimulus gains the power to cause a response
because it predicts another stimulus that already
produces the response.
• Acquisition: The process of developing a learned
response.
• Stimulus: Anything in the environment that one
can respond to.
• Response: Any behavior or action.
Classical Conditioning terms
• Behaviorism: The view that psychology should
restrict its efforts to studying observable
behaviors, not mental process.
• Cognition: Mental processes; all the mental
activities associated with thinking, knowing,
and remembering.
Ivan Pavlov’s Experiment
• Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist that was interested in
studying digestion.
– What causes drooling
• He showed the dog the meet powder (UCS) which caused the
dog, by instinct, to salivate (UCR).
• He then started ringing a bell before he would give the dog
the food. The dog didn’t catch on at first, but then he started
salivating at the sound of a bell.
– The bell was the CS, and the salivating to the bell is now the CR,
because he learned to respond to the bell.
• Salivation can be the UCR and the CR. It’s the UCR when he
salivated because his instinct is to salivate at the sight and
smell of food. It’s the CR when he learns that he’s going to get
the food when he hears the bell and then salivates.
Pavlov dog experiment
Components of Classical Conditioning
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): Stimulus that triggers a response
reflexively or automatically. Classical conditioning cannot happen
without a UCS. The only behaviors and emotions that can be
classically conditioned are those that are reliably produced by a
UCS.
• Unconditioned Response (UCR): The UCR is the response to the
UCS.
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): The CS is originally neutral stimulus
that, through conditioning (learning), gains the power to cause the
response.
– In basic classical conditioning, the neutral stimulus and CS are always
the same thing. The term neutral stimulus describes the stimulus before
conditioning and the term CS describes the stimulus after conditioning.
• Conditioned Response (CR): The CR is the response to the CS.
– In basic classical conditioning, it is the same behavior that is identified as
the UCR.
3 Basic Processes in Classical
Conditioning
• Extinction: The diminishing of a learned
response; when an unconditioned stimulus
does not follow a conditioned stimulus.
• Spontaneous Recovery: The reappearance,
after a rest period, of an extinguished
conditioned response.
Generalization and Discrimination
• Generalization: A process in which an organism
produces the same response to two similar
stimuli.
– Ex: Let’s say Pavlov lost his bell, so he got a new one
with a different tune. The dog hears the similarity and
still salivates.
• Discrimination: A process in which an organism
produces different responses to two similar
stimuli.
– Ex: Okay so again, we’re going to say that he got a
new bell with a different tune. But the dog hears the
difference and realizes that is not the sound that leads
to the food, so he doesn’t salivate.
• Ivan Pavlov: famous for discovering classical
conditioning.
• Rosalie Rayner: Co-researcher for the famous
Little Albert demonstration of classically
conditioned emotion.
Commercials or Advertising
We use the UCS, UCR, CS, and CR in our everyday
lives.
In a Nestea commercial they show people that are
hanging out by a pool, it makes you feel cool or
refreshed. The pool is the UCS and us feeling
refreshed is the UCR.
When you go to the store and see the Nestea brand
iced tea, you feel refreshed because you learned
that that’s how it’s advertised to make you feel.
So the tea is the CS, and you feeling refreshed is
the CR.
John Garcia
Identified taste aversion
Taste Aversion
• Taste aversion is your avoidance of certain tastes, just
because of how they taste, or how they make you feel.
• John Garcia and Robert Koelling discovered a way to
show how taste aversion could develop. They paired a
nausea-producing drug with a certain food or drink.
The drug that produces nausea is the UCS and the
nausea, or you feeling sick, is the UCR. They would use
that same food or drink with the nausea-producing
drug repeatedly. Eventually just the thought, taste, or
smell of that food could create nausea. So that food
becomes the CS, and your nausea is now the CR.