In this experiment, the unconditioned stimulus is the dog food as it produces an unconditioned response, saliva. The conditioned stimulus is the ringing bell and it produces a conditioned response of the dogs producing saliva. Thus we can see that such repetition and pairing influences significantly on behavior. Later another experiment by Watson and Rayner showed that this classical conditioning theory is equally applicable for us human. In his experiment he used Little Albert a 9-month-old infant.
However, every time the dog saw the experimenter, the dog had already started to salivate before it came close to eating the food; this was unusual. It was thought that salivation was a reflex and only happened when the food touched the tongue. Pavlov thought about why this happened and developed his current theory, the theory of association. The dog associated the footsteps of Pavlov to receiving the food, causing the dog to salivate because the dog knew it would receive food. (Carolyn Aldworth et al, 2010 & McLeod, 2007) Since salivation was a natural response, he named this the unconditional response.
The mere presence of the person who supplied the food or the footsteps of that person would stimulate the dogs and more stomach acid would be produced (Feldman, 2010). This increased stomach acid and salivation led Pavlov to the discovery of classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is defined as a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about that response (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). In layman terms this means that classical conditioning is associated learning or learning through experience. Pavlov’s work with dogs continued as he learned more about classical conditioning.
Phobias are learned through elements of classical conditioning, and addictions can be learned and strengthened through elements of operant conditioning. Distinguishing between Classical and Operant Conditioning Classical conditioning, the first type of learning to be systematically studied, is defined as a procedure by which a previously neutral stimulus come to elicit a response after it is paired with a stimulus that automatically elicits that response (Kowalski, 2009). Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, documented and developed the concept of classical conditioning in an experiment he conducted in which he conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus, a bell, is paired with a stimulus, dog food. The dog food is a stimulus that produces a response naturally.
Generally dogs in response to a bowl of food salivated however they wanted to see if they could pair this with a bell ringing. So every time they dogs received their food the bell rang and in the end when the bell rang the dogs salivated because they already associated the bell ring with their food. Operant conditioning however is the course of altering behaviour by receiving rewards and punishments. In this experiment they made a cat learn that every time it gets out of the box that it was placed in got a reward. This means it learnt doing the same escape routine because it knew the consequences were rewarding.
Describe and discuss the behaviourist approach in psychology Classical conditioning Pavlov investigated learning through the association of an unconditioned stimulus. Pavlov rang a bell (the conditioned or neutral stimulus) at the same time that food was presented to the dog. The dog then started to salivate as an involuntary reflex response. He did this until the dog salivated just to the sound of the bell. After allot of trails, Pavlov discovered that he had no longer needed to present the food to the dog.
This was due to reflexes that originate from the cerebral cortex of the brain. This makes classical conditioning a taught behavior which moves on to being a reflex after time so that you do it without thought. With classic conditioning there are unconditioned responses, conditioned stimulus, and a conditioned response. With unconditioned responses this is something that happens naturally like getting hungry when you smell food. For conditioned stimulus this would be viewed as a neutral stimulus that after time has become associated with an unconditioned stimulus.
The behaviorist perspective was developed in the early twentieth century. This perspective focuses on the way stimuli come to control behavior through learning. One of the most well-known examples is Pavlov’s dogs (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). This was an experiment on the digestive system of dogs but during the experiment another discovery was made. The experiment showed that once the dogs became accustomed to hearing a particular noise at mealtime, they began to salivate automatically whenever they heard it.
Pavlov experimented classical conditioning by experimenting with dogs. Pavlov rang a bell every time he would feed the dogs. After repeating this experiment a few times, every time he would ring the bell the dogs will start salivating. This results in the food being the unconditioned stimulus, the dog salivating is the unconditioned response, the bell being rang is the conditioned stimulus, and the dog salivating is the conditioned response. By this experiment Pavlov preformed, physiologists began to realize that classical conditioning can occur during peoples every day lives.
For example, a person is in a pre-conditioned state the unconditioned stimulus draws out an unconditioned response. An unconditional response is a response that is not learned but comes naturally in response to an unconditional stimulus. An example of an unconditional response would be a sneeze or blinking. A conditioned stimulus is something that was a neutral stimulus but is not associated with an unconditional stimulus that at some point becomes a trigger for a conditioned response. For example, if every time a person smelled their favorite food they heard a whistles blow, eventually every time that person heard a whistle blow they would associate