Classical Conditioning

• Theories of learning


  • Classical conditioning
  • Operant conditioning
  • Social learning theory
• Learning


  A relatively permanent change, often of behaviour or acquiring new and lasting information, that occurs as a result of experience
• Learning


  • Change
  • Behaviour
  • Experience
  • An increase or a decrease in the strength of a behaviour
  • Any act that is observable
  • Our interaction with the environment
• Sometimes experiences do not lead to lasting changes in behaviour
• Stimulus response


  Learning occurs due to a response to a stimulus in an environment
• Behaviourists


  • Theorists who use the stimulus response model, believing all behaviour is learned from responses to the environment
• Classical conditioning


  A type of associative learning that takes place when an originally neutral stimulus is paired with a conditioned response, due to its association with an unconditioned stimuli

  • reflexive response
• Operant conditioning


  Learning that involves voluntary behaviours and consequences
• Observational learning


  Learning that focuses on internal, or cognitive/mental processes, not changes in observable behaviours as a result of environmental stimuli
• Neutral stimulus


  A stimulus that does not produce a response (biologically neutral)
• Unconditioned stimulus


  A natural stimulus that results in a natural response
• Unconditioned response


  A natural response to the natural stimulus
• Conditioned stimulus


  A formerly neutral (unconditioned) stimulus that is associated with a conditioned response
• Conditioned response


  A response to a conditioned stimulus in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus that would normally cause it
• Acquisition


  A neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus, and after several trials the neutral stimulus will gradually begin to elicit the same response as the unconditioned stimulus
• The neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus
• The unconditioned response becomes the conditioned response
• Stimulus generalisation


  Similar (neutral) stimuli to conditioned stimuli which elicit a conditioned response
• Discrimination


  The animal does not respond to all stimuli in the same way
• Extinction


  A procedure that leads to the gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of the conditioned response
• Extinction does not mean the complete elimination of a response, it merely suppresses the conditioned response
• Spontaneous recovery


  No longer responds to the conditioned stimuli for a break period, but then rapidly regains a conditioned response to the stimuli
• Spontaneous recovery is weaker than the original conditioned response