clasical conditioning

• ao1

  classical conditioning involves learning a new behaviour through the process of associations. This was demonstrated by pavlov who showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate when hearing a bell. Before conditioning the UCS(food) produces the unconditioned responce UCR salivating

  during conditioning the UCS(unconditioned stimulus) is paired with the neutral stimulus (bell) which produces the (UCR) this is repeated until association occurs between the UCS and the NS

  after conditioning the NS becomes the CS which now produces the CR (salivating)
• paragraph 2

  furthermore generalisation can occur when slight changes to the CS eg) different pitches of bell in pavlovs has the same CR of salivating however extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with the UCS so the CR becomes extinct but spontaneous recovery can occur when the individual still produces the conditioned responce some time after it has been extinct
• one strength of cc is that it has led to successful therapies 


  the principle of cc can be applied to the management of phobias and has led to the development of effective methods like systematic desensitisation.

  k-this shows that cc can has real world application
• another strength is that it's more scientific

  cc involves measuring behaviours in highly controlled laboratory settings as it has high objectivity and replication

  k-it therefore gives psychology credibility and status within the scientific community
• one limitation of cc is that the research is underpinned on animals 


  animals in research eg) dogs in pavlov's research are exposed to stressful situations as well as ethical issues associated with this research stress may have also affected how they respond to experimental situations

  k-therefore the research has issues with validity and cc has issues with scientific credibility
• another limitation of oc is that it is deterministic 



  this approach sees all behaviour as determined by past experiences it ignores any possibility of free will and that people can change

  k-therefore giving an incomplete explanation of human behaviour