CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING
FATHIMA I
M.SC PSYCHOLOGY
SEMESTER 2
IVAN PAVLOV
• Pavlov was born in Russia in 1849 and died there in 1936.
• His father was a priest, and originally Pavlov himself studied to become a priest.
•
• He changed his mind, however, and spent most of his life studying physiology.
• In 1904, he won a Nobel Prize for his work on the physiology o f digestion.
• He did not begin his study of the conditioned reflex until he was fifty years of age.
• Pavlov’s method of studying digestion involved a surgical arrangement on a dog that allowed gastric
juices to flow through a fistula to the outside of the body, where it was collected.
• His accidental findings on salivation in dogs, triggered by stimuli like food or the experimenter’s
presence, led him to explore “psychic” reflexes.
• Studying the digestive system in his dogs, Pavlov had built a device that would accurately measure the
amount of saliva produced by the dogs when they were fed a measured amount of food.
• Normally, when food is placed in the mouth of any animal, the salivary glands automatically start
releasing saliva to help with chewing and digestion.
• This is a normal reflex an unlearned, involuntary response that is not under personal control or
choice one of many that occur in both animals and humans.
• The food causes a particular reaction, the salivation.
• A stimulus can be defined as any object, event, or experience that causes a response, the reaction of
an organism.
• In the case of Pavlov’s dogs, the food is the stimulus and salivation is the response
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
Learning to make an involuntary (reflex) response to a stimulus other than
the original, natural stimulus that normally produces the reflex
• Reflex an involuntary response, one that is not under personal control or
choice.
ELEMENTS OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
• Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) a naturally occurring stimulus that leads to an
involuntary (reflex) response.
• Unconditioned response (UCR) an involuntary (reflex) response to a naturally
occurring or unconditioned stimulus.
• Conditioned stimulus (CS) stimulus that becomes able to produce a learned reflex
response by being paired with the original unconditioned stimulus.
• Conditioned response (CR) learned reflex response to a conditioned stimulus
• Neutral stimulus (NS) stimulus that has elicit no effect on the desired response.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING EXPERIMENT
• Before conditioning takes place, the sound of the
metronome does not cause salivation and is a neutral
stimulus, or NS.
• During conditioning, the sound of the metronome
occurs just before the presentation of the food, the
UCS.
• The food causes salivation, the UCR.
• When conditioning has occurred after several pairings
of the metronome with the food, the metronome will
begin to elicit a salivation response from the dog
without any food.
• This is learning, and the sound of the metronome is
now a CS and the salivation to the bell is the CR.
The basic principles are:
• The CS must come before the UCS. If Pavlov sounded the metronome just after he gave
the dogs the food, they did not become conditioned.
• . The CS and UCS must come very close together in time—ideally, no more than 5
seconds apart.When Pavlov tried to stretch the time between the potential CS and the
UCS to several minutes, no association or link between the two was made.Too much
could happen in the longer interval of time to interfere with conditioning.
• The neutral stimulus must be paired with the UCS several times, often many times,
before conditioning can take place (Pavlov, 1926).
• The CS is usually some stimulus that is distinctive* or stands out from other com-peting
stimuli.The metronome, for example, was a sound that was not normally present in the
laboratory and, therefore, distinct
classical conditioning, forward conditioning and backward conditioning refer to the timing of the presentation of the conditi oned stimulus (CS)
In
and unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
• Forward Conditioning
• CS precedes UCS: In forward conditioning, the conditioned stimulus (CS) is presented before the unconditioned stimulus (UCS).
• Optimal for learning: This timing is considered most effective for classical conditioning because it allows the organism to associate the CS
with the upcoming UCS, promoting the formation of a strong conditioned response (CR).
• Backward Conditioning:
• UCS precedes CS :I n backward conditioning, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is presented before the conditioned stimulus (CS).
• Less effective: Backward conditioning is generally less effective in establishing associations between stimuli. The time gap between the UCS
and CS doesn’t align well with the natural order of events in learning.
• In summary, forward conditioning, where the CS precedes the UCS, is the more common and effective form of classical conditioning. It
follows the natural sequence of events and maximizes the association between the stimuli, leading to better learning outcomes compared to
backward conditioning.
SOME IMPORTANT CONCEPTS
• Stimulus generalization the tendency to respond to a stimulus that is only similar to
the original conditioned stimulus with the conditioned response.
• Stimulus discrimination the tendency to stop making a generalized response to a
stimulus that is similar to the original conditioned stimulus because the similar stimulus is
never paired with the unconditioned stimulus.
• Extinction the disappearance or weakening of a learned response following the removal
or absence of the unconditioned stimulus (in classical conditioning) or the removal of a
reinforcer (in operant conditioning).
• Spontaneous recovery the reappearance of a learned response after extinction has
occurred.
• Higher-order conditioning occurs when a strong conditioned stimulus is paired with
a neutral stimulus, causing the neutral stimulus to become a second conditioned stimulus.
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