Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Psychology 001
Professor Amie Gheewala
Student Name : Urmila Singh Nandy
Student Number: 823 636 915
Due date: November 27th, 2013
able to elicit salivation (CR) independent of food (Samuel E.Wood,Ellen G. Wood, Denise Boyd,
Eileen Wood, Serge Desmarais, 2013)
responses come to be controlled by their consequences, and they can be in the form of negative
or positive reinforcements. .The following table gives a clear idea of the difference between the
two types of conditioning.
Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning
reflex
My personal experience involved classical conditioning which did have the influence of
the reinforcement (operant) and resulted in generalization (the tendency for the conditioned
stimulus to evoke similar responses after the response has been conditioned In my case with the
speeding violation, the issue of a traffic violation ticket by police officer represents the US. This
also became the negative reinforcement which in turn resulted in the positive UR of reducing the
car speed. The outcome of all this made me alert to always read posted speed limit signs (CS)
and reducing my speed to 50 kilometer per hour on posted roads (CR). However this was not in
isolation as Generalization also occurred since I slow down my car speed every time I see a sign
posted 50 km/hr on any road. This indicates I did not develop discrimination with regards to the
speed limit posts.
We can see different examples of classical conditioning in everyday life, e.g. irrational
fears, phobia, anxiety etc. For instance, if someone was driving around Ninth street and had a
crash they will always be anxious whenever they come near that street. Another example relates
to classical conditioning, where environmental cues associated with drug use can become
conditioned stimuli and later produce the conditioned response of drug craving. Addictions are
difficult to break as we usually surround ourselves with people, paraphernalia or situations that
trigger the behaviour that led to the addiction in the first place. But psychological
conditioning can be used to break bad habits. (Reichel, 2013). Another example is the media
advertisers who are constantly trying to classically condition us when they show us their
products along with great looking models or celebrities or in situations where people are
enjoying themselves. The advertisers rely on the probability that if the neutral product is
associated with people, the object or situations that we particularly like, then in time the product
will elicit a similarly positive response The same goes for television advertisement. (Samuel
E.Wood,Ellen G. Wood, Denise Boyd, Eileen Wood, Serge Desmarais, 2013)
In conclusion, I can relate to several instances of my life which involves classic and
operant conditioning. I am able to identify the factors influencing my responses based on the
theories that I have learned. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that these two forms of
conditioning do not occur in isolation but are often seen to influence each other. I can now also
conclude that my traffic violation made me learn a hard lesson for not obeying the posted speed
limit. Even though there was a negative reinforcement, it still had a positive outcome: I have
become a more competent and alert driver with no more traffic violations against me. It can be
said that psychological conditioning helped me correct a bad habit. (Reichel, 2013)
References
Jesse E Purdy, Michael R. Markham, Bennnet L. Schwartz,William C. Gordon. (2001). Chapter
6 The iInteraction of classical and operant conditioning. In Learning and Memory (pp.
165-191). Belmont,CA, USA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Reichel, A. (2013, March 6). Breaking bad habits :classical conditioning and smoking.
Retrieved from http:/theconversation.com/breaking-bad-habits-classical-conditioning-and
smoking-11578
Samuel E.Wood,Ellen G. Wood, Denise Boyd, Eileen Wood, Serge Desmarais. (2013). In The
world of psychology (pp. 124-153). Toronto: Pearson.
APPENDIX
References
page 5
page 3
page 2
Marking rubric
page 7
Mark(s)
1