Classical Conditioning

• Classical Conditioning

  A form of learning that involves learning an association between a neutral stimulus and a reflexive response

  
  

  A stimulus is something that produces a response. In classical conditioning the response is reflexive- an automatic behaviour.

  Classical conditioning explains how someone can be conditioned into a response from a stimulus that is not one that would naturally produce that response. A diagram is a good way of explaining classical conditioning.
• Unconditional Stimulus

  A stimulus that produces a response without any learning taking place
• Unconditional response

  An unlearned response to an unconditioned stimulus
• Neutral Stimulus 


  A stimulus that does not produce the target response
• Conditioned stimulus

  A stimulus that only produces the target response after it jhas been paired with the UCS
• Conditioned response

  The response elciited by the CS
• Extinction

  -The process of reducing or eliminating a learned behavior by withholding the reinforcing consequences that previously maintained it.

  -E.g. Pavlov found that when the sound was repeatedly presented without the food, salivation gradually decreased.
• Spontaneous Recovery

  -When a behavior recovers unexpectedly after a period of extinction or lessening of the behavior when the stimulus is present.

  -E.g. From his experiments Pavlov found that spontaneous recovery was the reappearance of a Conditioned Response (CR) that had been extinguished. In other words, it no longer occurred. Specifically, Pavlov found that spontaneous recovery can occur after a period of not being exposed to the Conditioned Stimulus (CS). This period is called spontaneous because the response seems to reappear unexpectedly.
• Generalisation

  -The tendency to respond to similar stimuli in the same way as to a specific learned stimulus.

  -E.g. Pavlov also found that the dog would respond to similar sounds. When conditioned to one definite tone, many similar sounds would produce the same response.