classical conditioning

When ever the bell rings in any school in any nationyou are guaranteed to see students and teachers file into the hallway. This automatic response comes from somethingthat has been around for a long time called classical conditioning. Classicalconditioning was discovered and researched by Ivan Pavlov, a Russianphysiologist. His famous experimentwith his dog is known to nearly everyone who has had a middle school or highereducation. He fed his dog in a pattern,every time he fed his dog he rang a bell. Eventually the dog associated the bell with food and would begin tosalivate just on hearing the bell. Thatis the original experiment proving classical conditioning.

What is aconditioned stimulus? “A neutralstimulus that, after repeated pairings with an unconditioned stimulus, becomesassociated with it and elicits a conditioned response.” (World of Psychologypg167) In English it is something thatis used to train someone or something through repetition. Pavlov made use of this in his experiment toshow classical conditioning. Where asan unconditioned stimulus is something that is unlearned but is just respondedto out of instinct. Pavlov’s dog, for examplehad one unconditioned stimulus and one conditioned stimulus. Both the conditioned and unconditionedstimuli were to an unconditioned response, the dog salivating. The unconditioned stimulus was the dog foodthat started the dog salivating. The conditionedstimulus or new stimulus was the bell being rung every time the dog was fed.After awhile the unconditioned stimulus wasn’t even needed, because the dog wasnow conditioned to respond to the bell and salivate whenever he heard thebell. Things like this happened all thetime, for example; when I put on running shoes and running clothes my dog willbecome extremely hyper because she knows we are going outside and she will getto run around.

Probably thestrongest application of classical conditioning is emotions. Human emotions are condition extremelyeasily to things that provoke strong reaction, things such as Adolf Hitler, theIRS, the American Flag and chemistry class because of their associations withour emotions. If something like thatprovoked a strong emotion before in your life when brought up in conversationthe strong emotion that was conditioned comes up also. For example when a person meets someone withthe same name as someone they previously lik...

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... He thenwondered would the dog still salivate if he attached the device to the dogspelvis, then hind paw, then shoulder, then foreleg and finally the frontpaw. He discovered that the farther hegot from the rear thigh, or the original conditioning, the less of a salivatingresponse. Other examples of this arethings such as someone who was attacked by a dog when he or she was young andtherefore grew up hating and fearing all dogs.

On the other sideof generalization there must be discrimination. Pavlov decided he didn’t want his dogs to salivate to any othertones but “C.” This was not very hard all that was need was to cause extinction in any other type of tone. The “C” tone was reinforced by continuouslygiving food after the tone was rung. On the other hand whenever any other tone was sounded it was not reinforced by food. Thus the dog became more conditioned to “C” and the conditioned responses for the other tones becameextinct.

Classicalconditioning has and will continue to be around forever. It is part of human nature and many peopletake advantage of it daily. It can beused to dispel fears or as training for a job, it doesn’t matter what it is for it will just be there.