Week 2 DQ 1 Principles of Classical Conditioning
Locate a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article in the Ashford University Library.
This article must be an original research project published within the past five years.
The study should illustrate one of the following conditioning principles: contingency,
preparedness, or blocking. See directions below for your assigned principle.
In your own words, summarize the research design, procedures, and results of the
study. In the subject line, indicate which principle of classical conditioning was
reviewed in your study.
Your initial post should be a minimum of 250-300 words. You must use at least one
scholarly, peer-reviewed source that was published within the last five years and is
cited according to APA guidelines as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.
The study you select should correspond to the following conditioning principle,
based upon the first letter of your last name:
A-I: Contingency
J-R: Preparedness
S-Z: Blocking
Guided Response: Review several of your classmates’ posts. Respond substantively
to at least two of your classmates who addressed different principles than the one
you covered. What were the strengths of the research design that was used in each
of the studies? How well did the results support the conditioning principles? What
would you recommend for improvement?
The blocking effect convincingly refutes that consistently matching a stimulus that elicits
change together with a stimulus that is neutral does not necessarily tie them in to produce
a predictable result. For example, a bird that is conditioned to fly away whenever it hears a
gunshot might not respond the same way if it sees a hunter. If the bird was presented with
the two stimuli simultaneously, there is a probability that the bird will respond to the
gunshot, the stimulus on which it was conditioned to fly away, but not to the hunter,
because the first stimulus has already blocked the second stimulus. In a similar research,
rats were placed in a three-sided pool to locate a concealed structure. In order for the rats
to reach this structure, the researchers have placed a landmark and a part of the pool that
had a different shape opposite to the structure, to serve as the rats’ guides. Findings of the
study revealed that male and female rats differed in their approach towards the structure.
Although previous research noted that rats use the landmark to find the concealed
structure, this particular study showed that female rats prefer to use the landmark in order
to locate the structure, while male rats used the odd-shaped part of the pool to reach the
structure. In other words, female rats had a block of shape learning while male rats had a
block of landmark learning. Although the researchers of this study indicated that the
results of their experiment do not cover all the issues on blocking and cue competition,
they can partly explain gender differences in driving and asking for directions. Although a
conditional stimulus can be matched together with a neutral stimulus, there can be
conflicting response based on different categories of people or animals. For example,
women usually ask for landmarks near to their destination rather than for the four basic
directions North, South, East, and West. Because they might be conditioned to landmarks as
their stimulus, they might be blocking other stimuli such as directions. Therefore, stimuli
might be viewed differently by various kinds of people due to the blocking effect.
Preparedness challenges the basic principles of classical conditioning as well as the theory
of contiguity which states that association between stimuli and responses can occur only
when they form a close temporal relationship. It argues that inherent and close connection
between experiences helps people and animals to easily form association between these
experiences. Taste aversion illustrates the function of preparedness in the classical
conditioning process. People and animals develop what is termed Conditioned Taste
Aversion to certain food after eating them and getting ill after a period of time. This
aversion causes the person to avoid certain food because he/she has associated that certain
food to the illness that he/she experienced. This example challenges some mechanics of
classical conditioning because the association in the above example was not formed by
simply connecting contiguous experiences. By looking at the role of preparedness, we can
say that there are other processes at work which cause people and animals to become
more predisposed to form association on some experiences than others.
In one particular study, researchers tried to find out if rats will develop taste aversion over
certain food in particular time intervals. The study noted that the rats developed an
association between a conditioned stimulus (CS), which was taste, and an unconditioned
stimulus (US) which made them ill. The researchers noted that aversion developed over
three hour intervals, whereas previous studies with rats whose metabolism were not
controlled failed to do so. The findings showed that preparedness was included in the
process and that the theory of contiguity is not enough to explain the phenomenon.
Preparedness argues that association between conditioned stimuli and unconditioned
stimuli will vary from person to person and automatic pairing of these will yield
discrepancies in findings and conclusions. Preparedness helps us understand that people
and animals are more predisposed to easily form association between some CS-US than
others.