Classical conditioning is a theory of learning founded by Ivan Pavlov, It is a way of learning through past association, he accidentally stumbled upon this theory as he was studying the digestive system of the dog and then applied it to human psychology. It involves an unconditioned stimulus and an unconditioned response. He tested his theory with a dog, food being the stimulant (UCS) and salivation being the response (UCR) and a bell as a neutral entity to which there was no response until combined with the food. The final test in the his theory is to reintroduce the the bell without food (UCS) and which this time causes the salivation (UCR). This reveals the dogs mind is remembering the past association with the bell and the food.
In classical conditioning, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), conducted an experiment on the eating habits of dogs. In the experiment, Pavlov rang a bell whenever he gave his dog food. After repeating this procedure several times, he realized than whenever the bell rang, the dog could start salivating. The dog had associated food with the sound of the bell. Pavlov concluded that the dogs demonstrated classical condition, whereby the bell was a neutral stimulus and by itself could not produce a response such as salivating (Coon, Mitterer, Talbot & Vanchella, 2010).
By associating the neutral stimulus with the environmental stimulus (the presentation of food), the sound of the tone alone could produce the salivation response. In order to understand how more about how classical conditioning works, it is important to be familiar with the basic principles of the process. Classical conditioning. Conditioned stimulus The conditioned stimulus is previously neutral stimulus that, after becoming associated with the unconditioned stimulus, eventually comes to trigger a conditioned response. In our earlier example, suppose that when you smelled your favourite food, you also heard the sound of a whistle.
The theory of classical conditioning was introduced near the turn of the nineteenth century (1900) by Russian scientist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Pavlov’s experiment was originally intended to study the physiology of salivation, however it turned out that his experiments led him to the discovery of conditioned reflexes. Pavlov’s experiments involved measuring stomach secretions in dogs as they were introduced to food, meat, meat powder, etc. As Pavlov progressed through his experiments he noticed that the dogs had began to salivate upon seeing the food. Then Pavlov began to notice that the dogs began to salivate when he saw an empty plate, or when he saw the experimenter; the dogs even salivated at the sound of the foot steps from the experimenter as they were about to enter the room.
Learning is through operant, classical or instrumental conditioning. Behaviourists view instrumental and operant conditioning as having a slight difference on the constructs they observe for each of these. Cognitivists view learning as through classical conditioning, operant (instrumental) conditioning or observational learning. Ivan Pavlov a Russian psychologist studied classical conditioning, which is a valid means of learning to both groups. In his classic studies Pavlov rang a bell each time before giving his dogs food and eventually the dogs were conditioned to salivate when they heard the bell in expectancy of food.
In order to understand the theory, we must familiarise ourselves with the basic principles. (Martin, Carlson, Buskist, page 259). The unconditional stimulus is something that creates a natural and automatic reaction, like reflexive behaviour. For example, if you smell your favourite food cooking, you will automatically feel hungry. In this example, the smell of food is the unconditional stimulus.
Theory Main points Explanation Behaviourism Role of Reinforcement Positive Reinforcement- Stimulate particular patterns of behaviour so actions can be repeated to get the same results. Negative Reinforcement- removing something unpleasant to increase a particular behaviour. Conditioning Classical conditioning Unconditioned stimulus- smell of food or being presented with the food Unconditional response- make you salivate Neutral stimulus- the ringing of the bell at lunch time Conditional stimulus- repeated ringing of the bell at lunch time with the smell of the food being cooked allows the conditional response to develop. Conditional response – the bell ringing at lunch time will provoke us to salivate this is known as conditional response. Classic conditioning is learning by association for example stimulus such as ringing of the bell at lunch time provoked a conditional response so we associated the bell to food.
Classical Conditioning Psychology 390 June 3, 2011 Classical Conditioning Often in the scientific world discoveries are made when one is looking for an answer to another question. Such is the case with Ivan Pavlov and his discovery of Classical Conditioning. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian Physiologist, recognized the significance of the theory of classical conditioning while studying the digestive tract of canines. In his experiments he saw that when the canine was presented with food it salivated but when the food was paired with a bell over an extended period of time the same result occurred when the canine was exposed to the sound of the bell. This rather simple concept is now the foundation of Classical Conditioning.
It was around the turn of the century and Pavlov had been studying the process of digestion. He noticed that when a hungry dog got the smell or sight of food that it would began to salivate. He then changed his motive from digestion to how the dog anticipated the food before the food was presented, so he decided to make an experiment out of it. When he first began his experiments he got a tuning fork and meat powder to get the dog to salivate. First he would ring the tuning fork then directly after put the meat powder on the dog’s tongue.
A subject can be taught to discriminate and only respond to a specific stimulus e.g. dog has been trained to run to his owner when he hears a whistle, after the dog has been conditioned he responds to a variety of sounds that are similar to the whistle. The trainer wants the dog to respond only to the sound of the whistle, the trainer teaches the dog to discriminate between different sounds and then it will respond only to the whistle and not to other tones. While studying digestive research using dogs, Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936) Russian psychologist observed that the dogs salivated when food was produced and noted that this was an unconditioned response. But he then observed that the dogs also salivated in the absence of food and smell, he noted this was not due to an automatic physiological process, but it