Reflex responses which are central to classical conditioning are

In our earlier example, suppose that when you smelled your favorite food, you also heard the sound of a whistle. While the whistle is unrelated to the smell of the food, if the sound of the whistle was paired multiple times with the smell, the whistle sound would eventually trigger the conditioned response.

In this case, the sound of the whistle is the conditioned stimulus. The during conditioning phase involves pairing a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus.

Eventually, the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus. Once the association has been made between the UCS and the CS, presenting the conditioned stimulus alone will come to evoke a response even without the unconditioned stimulus.

The resulting response is known as the conditioned response CR. The conditioned response is the learned response to the previously neutral stimulus. In our example, the conditioned response would be feeling hungry when you heard the sound of the whistle. In the after conditioning phase, the conditioned stimulus alone triggers the conditioned response. Behaviorists have described a number of different phenomena associated with classical conditioning.

Some of these elements involve the initial establishment of the response while others describe the disappearance of a response.

These elements are important in understanding the classical conditioning process. Let's take a closer look at five key principles of classical conditioning.

Acquisition is the initial stage of learning when a response is first established and gradually strengthened. As you may recall, an unconditioned stimulus is something that naturally and automatically triggers a response without any learning.

After an association is made, the subject will begin to emit a behavior in response to the previously neutral stimulus, which is now known as a conditioned stimulus. It is at this point that we can say that the response has been acquired. For example, imagine that you are conditioning a dog to salivate in response to the sound of a bell.

You repeatedly pair the presentation of food with the sound of the bell. You can say the response has been acquired as soon as the dog begins to salivate in response to the bell tone. Once the response has been established, you can gradually reinforce the salivation response to make sure the behavior is well learned. Extinction is when the occurrences of a conditioned response decrease or disappear.

In classical conditioning, this happens when a conditioned stimulus is no longer paired with an unconditioned stimulus. For example, if the smell of food the unconditioned stimulus had been paired with the sound of a whistle the conditioned stimulus , it would eventually come to evoke the conditioned response of hunger. However, if the unconditioned stimulus the smell of food were no longer paired with the conditioned stimulus the whistle , eventually the conditioned response hunger would disappear.

Sometimes a learned response can suddenly reemerge even after a period of extinction. Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of the conditioned response after a rest period or period of lessened response. For example, imagine that after training a dog to salivate to the sound of a bell, you stop reinforcing the behavior and the response eventually becomes extinct.

After a rest period during which the conditioned stimulus is not presented, you suddenly ring the bell and the animal spontaneously recovers the previously learned response. If the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are no longer associated, extinction will occur very rapidly after a spontaneous recovery.

Stimulus generalization is the tendency for the conditioned stimulus to evoke similar responses after the response has been conditioned. In John B. Watson's famous Little Albert Experiment , for example, a small child was conditioned to fear a white rat. The child demonstrated stimulus generalization by also exhibiting fear in response to other fuzzy white objects including stuffed toys and Watson's own hair.

Discrimination is the ability to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli that have not been paired with an unconditioned stimulus. For example, if a bell tone were the conditioned stimulus, discrimination would involve being able to tell the difference between the bell tone and other similar sounds.

Because the subject is able to distinguish between these stimuli, they will only respond when the conditioned stimulus is presented. It can be helpful to look at a few examples of how the classical conditioning process operates both in experimental and real-world settings.

John B. Watson's experiment with Little Albert is a perfect example of the fear response. The child's fear also generalized to other fuzzy white objects. Prior to the conditioning, the white rat was a neutral stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus was the loud, clanging sounds, and the unconditioned response was the fear response created by the noise.

By repeatedly pairing the rat with the unconditioned stimulus, the white rat now the conditioned stimulus came to evoke the fear response now the conditioned response. This experiment illustrates how phobias can form through classical conditioning. In many cases, a single pairing of a neutral stimulus a dog, for example and a frightening experience being bitten by the dog can lead to a lasting phobia being afraid of dogs. Another example of classical conditioning can be seen in the development of conditioned taste aversions.

Researchers John Garcia and Bob Koelling first noticed this phenomenon when they observed how rats that had been exposed to a nausea-causing radiation developed an aversion to flavored water after the radiation and the water were presented together.

In this example, the radiation represents the unconditioned stimulus and the nausea represents the unconditioned response. After the pairing of the two, the flavored water is the conditioned stimulus, while the nausea that formed when exposed to the water alone is the conditioned response. Later research demonstrated that such classically conditioned aversions could be produced through a single pairing of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus. Researchers also found that such aversions can even develop if the conditioned stimulus the taste of the food is presented several hours before the unconditioned stimulus the nausea-causing stimulus.

Why do such associations develop so quickly? Obviously, forming such associations can have survival benefits for the organism. If an animal eats something that makes it ill, it needs to avoid eating the same food in the future to avoid sickness or even death.

This is a great example of what is known as biological preparedness. Some associations form more readily because they aid in survival. In one famous field study, researchers injected sheep carcasses with a poison that would make coyotes sick but not kill them.

The goal was to help sheep ranchers reduce the number of sheep lost to coyote killings. Not only did the experiment work by lowering the number of sheep killed, it also caused some of the coyotes to develop such a strong aversion to sheep that they would actually run away at the scent or sight of a sheep.

In reality, people do not respond exactly like Pavlov's dogs. There are, however, numerous real-world applications for classical conditioning. For example, many dog trainers use classical conditioning techniques to help people train their pets. These techniques are also useful for helping people cope with phobias or anxiety problems. Therapists might, for example, repeatedly pair something that provokes anxiety with relaxation techniques in order to create an association.

Teachers are able to apply classical conditioning in the class by creating a positive classroom environment to help students overcome anxiety or fear. Pairing an anxiety-provoking situation, such as performing in front of a group, with pleasant surroundings helps the student learn new associations. Instead of feeling anxious and tense in these situations, the child will learn to stay relaxed and calm. Ever wonder what your personality type means?

Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Wolpe J, Plaud JJ. Pavlov's contributions to behavior therapy. The obvious and not so obvious. Am Psychol. Holland JG. Behaviorism: Part of the problem or part of the solution. J Appl Behav Anal. Windholz G. Pavlov on the conditioned reflex method and its limitations. Am J Psychol. Experimental evidence of classical conditioning and microscopic engrams in an electroconductive material.

Acquisition of conditioned responding in a multiple schedule depends on the reinforcement's temporal contingency with each stimulus. Learn Mem. Conditioning of a motor response like jumping occurs most quickly when the signal comes about half a second before the reflex is activated. Landauer's timing was close to optimum. He shouted "NOW! It was natural that everybody jumped in reaction to the gun report. A loud noise is an unconditional stimulus US that leads to an unlearned startle response UR.

Five more times in the next 20 minutes of his lecture about classical conditioning Landauer raised his arm, shouted "NOW! Then Landauer raised his hand and shouted "NOW! Everybody jumped. He had conditioned the entire crowd in less than half an hour. Why did this happen? The essence of classical conditioning is putting a signal before a reflex so that an organism can get a "jump" or head start on the reflex. Remember we described classical conditioning as a primitive form of prediction.

Landauer's students were making an anticipatory response. After hearing "NOW! When they heard the signal again, they responded they jumped. Of course, it was prediction of a simple sort. They were not planning to jump. They just did it. Classical conditioning does not require conscious intention. The Landauer example shows this. Landauer only had to shout "NOW! A typical acquisition curve involving 15 trials. The figure shows a learning curve. On the y-axis is the amount of saliva secreted during each training session.

Notice there is evidence of conditioning by the 7th trial. Each trial is one pairing of the signal with activation of the reflex. Unlike many textbook diagrams, which are smoothed, this particular example shows true-to-life variability. It goes up and down, not just up. Conditioning does not always proceed smoothly from no response to a large response, and there may be setbacks during training when the organism does not respond as much as before. A classically conditioned response can be eliminated or extinguished by eliminating the predictive relationship between the signal and the reflex.

This is accomplished by presenting the signal CS while preventing the reflex. How can the reflex be prevented from occurring? One technique is to activate a behavior incompatible with the reflex. For example, a cat will be fearful of a box in which it receives an electric shock. The cat can be given "therapy" later by feeding it in the box.

This discovery led to a therapy called desensitization designed to eliminate fears and phobias. Desensitization was very successful. It marked the beginning of behavior therapy as a discipline. If a CS occurs many times but the reflex is never activated, the organism learns that the signal no longer has the same meaning as before. The signal no longer predicts the activation of the reflex, and the conditional response disappears. This overall process is called extinction.

Landauer demonstrated extinction in his lecture. He stuck up his arm periodically and shouted "NOW! At first people continued to jump. However, as he repeated the action, shouting "NOW! Eventually nobody jumped.

By repeatedly giving the signal without firing the gun, he eliminated the predictive relationship between the conditional stimulus "NOW! Soon there was no conditional response. Extinction had occurred. As time passes after extinction, a classically conditioned response typically recovers a bit and comes back.

This recovery takes place spontaneously without any additional training so it is called spontaneous recovery. After Landauer first extinguished the startle response, he lectured on a different topic for 20 minutes. Then, without warning, he pushed his arm in the air and shouted "NOW!

Most of the crowd jumped again. Spontaneous recovery after the first extinction period. In order to completely extinguish a classically conditioned response, one must go through the extinction procedure repeatedly. Spontaneous recovery is extinguished each time it occurs. A genuine record of behavior would never be this clean and simple. For the animal, spontaneous recovery is like testing the hypothesis that the predictive relationship will return.

No sea slug would use those exact words, but in effect spontaneous recovery allows animals to avoid giving up too soon on a predictive relationship. This would be adaptive tendency if for example a conditional response related to feeding did not work for one day. Instead of abandoning knowledge previously gained linking odor to a food source animals will respond to the cue again the next day.

That is spontaneous recovery. Maybe the predictive relationship will return, and if so, spontaneous recovery allows the animal to take advantage. Robert A. He wrote a American Psychologist article titled, "Pavlovian Conditioning: It's not what you think it is.

Rescorla cited an out-of-date description of classical conditioning in an introductory psychology textbook. The response elicited by the unconditioned stimulus is the unconditioned response UR. Then it is called the conditioned response CR. In fact, it is still typical of how classical conditioning is described in many textbooks, an additional 30 years later.

What is wrong with the old-fashioned description of conditioning? Rescorla cited these problems:. The textbook description gave the impression any two stimuli could be associated as conditional stimulus and unconditional stimulus. Modern research showed that some stimuli were much easier to associate with a particular biological response than others. Rescorla wrote, "Although conditioning can sometimes be slow, in fact most modern conditioning preparations routinely show rapid learning" requiring from 1 to 8 trials.

What were problems with many textbook descriptions of classical conditioning, in Rescorla's view? He said his professors back in the 60s conveyed the impression classical conditioning was "all spit and twitches," because famous experiments relied on salivation, eyeblinks, and finger withdrawal.

Rescorla pointed out that classical conditioning in the modern era is relevant to much more than spit and twitches. Classical conditioning "is intimately involved in the control of central psychological processes, such as emotions and motivation. The following section of the chapter contains many examples that support Rescorla's arguments.

Classical conditioning is now known to be involved with the immune system, sexual anticipation, tolerance to addictive drugs, and much more. Fitzpatrick, S. Russians on the psyche: A review.