classical conditioning

• what is a stimulus

  something that produces a response
• what is the response in classical conditioning

  involuntary, a reflex
• process starts with an unconditioned stimulus that automatically provokes an unconditioned response
• why is it called an unconditioned stimulus

  bound to provoke the respone
• in the second step the unconditioned stimulus is then paired with a neutral stimulus to produce the unconditioned response
• why is it called a neutral stimulus

  at this point it does not produce a response
• after a few pairings the neutral stimulus will on its own produce a response, so the neutral stimulus is now a conditioned stimulus and the esponse is now a conditioned response
• forward conditioning


  the neutral stimulus is presented before the unconditioned stimulus
• delayed conditioning


  overlap between the neutral and unconditioned stimulus
• trace conditioning


  if theres a break between the neutral and unconditioned stimulus
• spontaneous conditioning 


  presenting the neutral stimulus at the same time as the unconditioned stimulus
• backward conditioning 


  neutral stimulus presented after unconditioned stimulus
• pavlov found forward conditioning to be most effective
• extinction 


  when the association between the UCS and and the CS no longer occurs, usually because the UCS appears a few times without the CS
• spontaneous recovery

  after extinction the association sometimes recurs for no apparent reason
• stimulus generalisation

  when a stimulus similar to the specific conditioned one elicits the conditioned response, the opposite is called discrimination
• research evidence from Pavlov

  conditioned dogs to salivate to the sound of a metronome after pairing it with food, when the metronome sounded on its own 11 drops of saliva were collected
• weakness of Pavlov

  lacks generalisability, study used dogs as its sample, they have different cerebral cortexes to humans so fidnings cannot be applied accurately to humans
• research to support the idea of generalisation

  Little Albert (Watson and Rayner) was conditioned to develop a fear response to a white rat which was then generalised to a rabbit and a santa mask
• weakness of Little Albert

  he was an unusual baby who had lived in a hospital is whole life so may not have experienced much, also later died due to hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain) this could have caused the generalisation and fear response, also cant be replicated so fidnings lack reliability