classical conditioning

• general principles of classical conditioning

  developed in the early 1900's by pavlov

  is about how a stimulus is associated with a response

  it applies only to the conditioning of reflexes which are automatic and involuntary behaviours

  human reflexes include fear response, eye blinking, knee-jerking and breathing

  e.g a fear can be conditioned as a reflexive response to something that has occurred in an individuals life (stress) in a specific location such as a lift, now from that point on that individual might be afraid of being in a lift because the response was associated with the lift
• the process of classical conditioning

  unconditioned stimulus (UCS) - unconditioned repose (UCR)

  neutral stimulus (NS) - no response (NR)

  UCS + NS - UCR

  conditioned (neutral) stimulus (CS) - conditioned response (CR)
• stimulus

  something in our environment that affects us
• response

  reaction to a stimulus
• extinction

  extinction occurs when the association between UNS and the CS no longer occurs so after a few trails of separating the 2 stimuli the learned response is extinguished

  e.g teaching your dog to shake your hand and then not getting your dog to shake your hand for a while so the repose becomes extinct as the dog will no longer respond when asked to shake your hand
• spontaneous recovery

  the reappearance of a CR after it has been extinguished is called spontaneous recovery

  e.g if you learnt a fear of shopping due to being frightened by a loud noise such as a bang during a shopping trip then if you went shopping and there was no noise you could unlearn the association extinguishing your fear if shopping however might spontaneously reappear at a later date without the noise which would be spontaneous recovery

  but after spontaneous recovery the association can diminish very quickly
• stimulus generalisation

  the stimulus that evokes the CR in classical conditioning is specific

  however a stimulus similar to the specific one can cause the CR and this is known as stimulus generalisation

  e.g someone experiences an anxiety attack in one shop can produce the same repose in any other shop so the fear of a shop can become a fear of shopping in general
• classical conditioning: pavlov (+)


  found that it was possible to condition an automatic reflex to occur in the presence of a neutral stimulus (metronome) as the dogs learnt to associate salivation with sound rather than food

  this shows that behaviour can be learnt through associating a stimulus with a response
• classical conditioning: watson and rayner (+)


  found that it was possible to train little albert to associate fear of a loud noise with a white rat

  this means that classical conditioning could be used to explain how phobias develop
• classical conditioning: bandura (-)


  found that children learnt aggression through observation and imitation of a role model and not through association

  this shows that classical conditioning is not the only way that behaviour is learnt