MODULE 20 PREVIEW
Learning helps us adapt to our environment. For example, through classical conditioning we learn to
anticipate events, such as being fed or experiencing pain. In his famous studies, Pavlov presented a
neutral stimulus just before an unconditioned stimulus, which normally triggered an unconditioned
response. After several repetitions, the neutral stimulus alone began triggering a conditioned response
resembling the unconditioned response. Pavlov’s work laid a foundation for John Watson’s emerging
belief that psychology should study only overt behavior, a position he called behaviorism. The
behaviorists’ optimism that learning principles would generalize from one response to another and from
one species to another has been tempered. We now know that conditioning principles are cognitively and
biologically constrained.
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
1. To present the principles and processes involved in classical conditioning.
2. To update the basic principles of classical conditioning in order to account for cognitive processes and
biological constraints.
3. To demonstrate the applications of classical conditioning.
MODULE GUIDE
Introductory Exercise: Fact or Falsehood?
1. Discuss the nature and importance of learning.
Learning is a relatively permanent change in an organism’s behavior due to experience. Nature’s most
important gift to us may be our adaptability—our capacity to learn new behaviors that enable us to cope
with ever-changing experiences. We learn by association; our mind naturally connects events that occur
in sequence. The events linked in associative learning may be two stimuli (as in classical conditioning) or
a response and a rewarding or punishing stimulus (as in operant conditioning).
Exercise: Defining Learning
Videos: A Question of Learning; Discovering Psychology: Learning; Learning; Classical and Operant Conditioning
Transparencies: 95 Associative Learning; 96 Classical Conditioning; 97 Operant Conditioning
Pavlov’s Experiments
2. Describe the general process of classical conditioning as demonstrated by Pavlov’s experiments.
Pavlov would repeatedly present a neutral stimulus (such as a tone) just before an unconditioned stimulus
(UCS), such as food, which triggered the unconditioned response (UCR) of salivation. After several
repetitions, the tone alone (now the conditioned stimulus [CS]) began triggering a conditioned response
(CR, salivation). As Pavlov demonstrated, classical conditioning involves respondent behavior—
reflexive behavior that occurs as an automatic response to some stimulus.
Exercises: Classical Conditioning; Classical Conditioning With a Watergun; Classical Conditioning: Preparing for an Important
Event
Lecture: Human Taste Aversions
Project: Conditioning the Eyeblink
PsychSim: Classical Conditioning
Film: Pavlov: The Conditioned Reflex
Transparency: 98 Pavlov’s Classic Experiment
3. Explain the processes of acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, and
discrimination.
Responses are acquired, initially learned, best when the CS is presented half a second before the UCS.
Conditioned responses weaken if they are not reinforced (extinction), but they may reappear after a rest
(spontaneous recovery). Furthermore, responses may be triggered by stimuli similar to the conditioned
stimulus (generalization), but not by dissimilar stimuli (discrimination).
Transparency: 99 Idealized Curve of Acquisition, Extinction, and Spontaneous Recovery
Updating Pavlov’s Understanding
4. Discuss the importance of cognitive processes and biological constraints in classical conditioning.
Research indicates that, for many animals, cognitive appraisals are important for learning. For example,
animals appear capable of learning when to “expect” an unconditioned stimulus. Conditioning occurs
best when the CS and the UCS have just the sort of relationship that would lead a scientist to conclude
that the CS causes the UCS.
Lecture: Cognitive Processes in Learning
The behaviorists’ optimism that learning principles would generalize from one response to another and
from one species to another has been tempered. Conditioning principles are constrained by the biological
predispositions of each species. For example, rats are biologically prepared to learn associations between
the taste of a particular food and the onset of illness, but not between a loud noise and an illness.
Lecture: Biological Predispositions
Pavlov’s Legacy
5. Explain the importance of Pavlov’s work, noting how it paved the way for the behaviorist position, and
describe how it might apply to an understanding of human health and well-being.
Pavlov taught us that principles of learning apply across species, that significant psychological
phenomena can be studied objectively, and that conditioning principles have important applications.
Pavlov’s work laid a foundation for John Watson’s behaviorism, the emerging belief that, to be an
objective science, psychology should study only overt behavior, without considering unobservable
mental activity.
Classical conditioning principles provide important insights into drug abuse and how it may be
overcome. Classical conditioning works on the body’s disease-fighting immune system. For example,
when a particular taste accompanies a drug that influences immune responses, the taste by itself may
come to produce those immune responses. Watson’s “Little Albert” study demonstrated how classical
conditioning may underlie specific fears. Today, psychologists use extinction procedures to control our
less adaptive emotions and condition new responses to emotion-arousing stimuli.
Lectures: The Association Principle; Phobias
Transparency: 100 Little Albert’s Conditioning