Module 15
Learning
Classical Conditioning
Amusing little comic…
So, what is learning??
• 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.
Shower Scenario
• You share a bathroom with your siblings.
• Every day while you’re showering, your
brother/sister flushes the toilet. At first, you
would get scalded by the water.
• After a couple of times, you learned through
conditioning that when someone flushed you
jumped out of the way to avoid the hot water.
Stimulus
• Anything in the environment that one can
respond to.
• Example: when you hear the toilet flush, that
would be your stimulus to move out of the
way…
– Unless you’re in the movie “Two weeks Notice” where Hugh
Grant’s brother never learned. 
Sorry…. Howard
Response
• Any behavior or action
• Example: You moving out of the way
immediately to avoid the water.
John Watson and Behaviorism
• John Watson: Founder of
Behaviorism
• Behaviorism: View that
psychology should restrict
its efforts to studying
observable behavior.
– Why is Ms. Brady’s dog
peeing on the floor? We
only need to notice the
action and behavior not
why she’s doing it.
Bailee
Cognition
• Mental Processes
– All the mental activities associated with thinking,
knowing, and remembering.
– Also known as learning
Components of Classical Conditioning
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): triggers a
response reflexively or automatically.
– Hot Water.
– Classical conditioning cannot happen without this.
• Unconditioned response (UCR): The response
to an unconditioned stimulus.
– Jumping out of the way
– Relationship is Reflexive, not learned
Components Continued
• Conditioned Stimulus:
– Originally neutral
– Through conditioning gains the power to cause a
response
» The word flush was a neutral stimulus because at first you
did not put them together.
» Now, through conditioning it became the conditioned
stimulus. You jump before the hot water burns you!
• Conditioned Response:
– Developed learned response of the conditioned
stimulus.
» If I have learned to jump when someone yells Flush!, my
jumping is a conditioned response.
What are the three basic processes of
classical conditioning?
• Acquisition
• Extinction
• Spontaneous Recovery
Acquisition
• The process of developing a learned response.
• Most basic process
• Occurs when a neutral stimulus is repeatedly
paired with a Unconditioned Stimulus
» You acquire the new Conditioned response when a
stimulus (“Flush!”) was repeatedly paired with the
Unconditioned Stimulus of hot water.
Extinction
• Diminishing of a learned response
• When a unconditioned stimulus does not follow a
conditioned stimulus.
» If as a prank I kept repeatedly saying “Flush!” but hot
water never happened, then the word eventually will
have weakened and died.
» The boy who cried wolf….
Spontaneous Recovery
• The reappearance of an extinguished
conditioned response.
– After a rest period
– Tend to linger
– Weak than the original
– If I returned to the same dorm after summer, chances are that
I would jump, slightly, if someone yelled flush! The renewed
jump would be evidence of the recovery.
Spontaneous Recovery
Ivan Pavlov
• Russian Psychologist
• Study of digestion and salivation
• Inserted a shunt into a dog’s mouth to collect
salivation.
• Introduced the bell with the meat powder
• Nobel prize in 1904
Here’s how it works
What was the unconditioned
stimulus?
Meat Powder
Produces salivation response without
prior learning
What was the unconditioned
response?
Salivation
Salivation is the response to the UCS of
meat powder. Notice that no learning has
yet to taken place. The ability of meat to
make a hungry dog drool is reflexive, not
learned.
What was the Neutral Stimulus?
Sound of the tuning fork before
the dog has been conditioned
This dog did not produce a salivation
response
What was the conditioned
stimulus?
Sound of the tuning fork AFTER
the dog has been conditioned
The tone now produces the response of
salivation.
It serves as the neutral stimulus and the
conditioned stimulus at different times during
the process.
What is the conditioned
response?
Salivation
Salivation is now the response to the
sound of the tuning fork.
Generalization
• Process in which an organism produces the
same response to two similar stimuli
• Pavlov actually lost the original tuning fork…
• What do you think happened?!
• Even though it was not exact (but similar), the dog did
respond by salivating.
• He used other examples. The closer the sound was to
the original, the more the dog salivated
Discrimination
• A process in which an organism produces
different responses to two similar stimuli
• Let’s assume the dog could hear the difference.
» The sound would be extinguished because it would not
lead to food!
» Kind of like Ms. Brady. My mom and dad have to win me
over with food….
• My dad asks me to wash his truck, then he feeds
me.
• My mom asks me to wash her car, I know there’s
no food involved.
• I’m discriminating against my mom
Buzzy Bee Example
• A little girl develops a classically conditioned fear
of buzzing insects. The sting paired pain- an
Unconditioned Response that naturally produces
fear, with the buzzy bee. Through this
association, the buzzy bee became the
Conditioned Stimulus for the Conditioned
Response of Fear. This fear then generalized to
all buzzing insects. Later she began to make the
discriminations between painful buzzers and just
really annoying ones like mosquitoes.
Classical Conditioning in Every Day Life
• It does not explain all things, but it explains
SOME THINGS very well.
• Psychologists can predict and control
classically conditioned responses with great
accuracy.
Little Albert
• John Watson
• Worked with Rosalie
Rayner
• Wanted to demonstrate
that phobias (fears)
could be explained by
classical conditioning.
• Fear of Rats in an 11month-old boy known
as Little Albert.
The Actual Experiment
• Albert initially was not
afraid of the “tame, white
lab rat.” (What kind of
Stimulus is the White rat)
• Did not respond with
crying.
• Watson and Rayner
changed that
• Snuck up behind him
banging a steel bar to
make a starling noise
whenever Albert was in
the presence of the rat.
Stimulus’ and Responses
•
•
•
•
UCS: Noise
UCR: Fear (crying)
CS: Rat because it produced the same……
CR: Fear (crying)
Little Albert and
Generalization/Discrimination
• Also showed fear of a furry, white rabbit
(Generalization)
• Did not show fear to dissimilar toys.
(Discrimination)
• Mother ended up taking him out of the
experiment, before they could extinguish the
phobia.
Classical Conditioning and Business
• Advertisers
– Cool refreshing swimming pools with Nestea
Instant Iced Tea.
– UCS: POOLS TO PRODUCE A FEELING OF BEING COOL AND
REFRESHED.
– CS: NESTEA instant iced tea. (after repeated views)
• Marlboro (rugged macho image), Mountain Dew
(youthful image)
• They use it to sell products
Comfort and Classical Conditioning
• Say you had a long weekend of work. Now
you have a day off. You want to comfortable,
but you might have to go somewhere later.
What do you reach for when getting dressed?
• Sweatshirts, old shoes, t-shirts, old jeans, etc.
Why?
• Because many pleasant events may be
associated with their use, old clothes and
shoes often become conditioned stimuli that
produce a relaxed, comforting response.
• New clothes may be stylish, but they don’t
have the ability to unwind.
John Garcia and Taste Aversion
• Psychologist who worked
with Robert Koelling
showed how classically
conditioned taste
aversion could develop.
• Avoidance of certain tastes.
• Began when they noticed
rats not drinking from
water bottles in radiation
chambers.
So, what did they do?
• Used a nausea-producing drug as a UCS to
condition an aversion response to a particular
taste.
• Paired with the drug that produced nausea, a
particular food or drink became a Conditioned
Stimulus that also produced the feelings of
nausea.
Have you guys ever felt sick shortly
after eating a certain food?
Mine…. Chicken Marsala….
Cognition and Biological
Predispositions
Robert Rescorla
• Began to think outside the
box!
• Certain aspects of classical
conditioning situations
could not be explained
without reference to
cognition
– His theory emphasized the
importance of cognition.
• Subjects had to think if
whether the Conditioned
Stimulus was a predictor of
the Unconditioned
Stimulus.
Ms. Brady’s Chicken Marsala…
I won’t order the marsala, but I still
eat at Olive Garden…