Classical Conditioning !

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5 Components of Classical Conditioning:!

1.) Neutral Stimulus (NS)!

- does not elicit a response!
- is neutral !
- ex. bell, metronome, cupboard, rabbits, etc.!

2.) Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) !

- produces a natural response !
- ex. meat powder, candy, loud noises!

Classical Conditioning was

first proposed by Ivan
Pavlov, who was actually a
physiologist NOT a
psychologist. He won a
Nobel prize for his work on
the dogs digestive tract.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ua1nW5n8src

3.) Unconditioned Response (UCR)!

- response from the UCS !
- natural, instinctive, unlearned!
- ex. salivation, fear!

4.) Conditioned Stimulus (CS)!

- was once the neutral stimulus!
- produces conditioned response!
- ex. bell!

5.) Conditioned Response (CR) !

- response produced from the CS !
- learned response!
- sometimes the same but not always the same at the UCR!

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- depends on the autonomic nervous system of the organism !
!
*Neutral Stimulus + Unconditioned Stimulus = Conditioned Stimulus* !
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Famous Examples of Classical Conditioning:!
!

An excellent example of classical conditioning is the phenomenon of taste aversions. Taste

aversions occur when a particular type of food has been paired with nausea and sickness, like
Dr. Jacksons example of getting sick from drinking too much vodka and eating tacos resulting
in you not liking tacos anymore. Another good example of a taste aversion is when farmers
injected dead sheep with poison to prevent coyotes from eating them. The poison wasnt
enough to kill the coyotes but enough to make them very sick. This resulted in the coyotes not
wanting to eat anymore sheep. !
An example of how two non-related things can be associated with each other just by pairing
them together over and over again would be to think of the movie Jaws. We all associate the
music when the shark attack is occurring with sharks in general because they have been
paired together so many times. !
Sometimes we see things paired together so many times that we actually cannot learn (or it is
very difficult to learn) to associate them with something else. This is the phenomenon of latent

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inhibition and a good example of this would be fast food logos like McDonalds. Its hard to
imagine the McDonalds logo representing anything else because of its strong association to
the fast food chain. !
My favourite way to truly learn and understand classical conditioning is to try to relate it to a
time in your life when you classically conditioned something or you yourself were classically
conditioned.!
An example of classical conditioning in my life is when I classically conditioned my !
guinea pig. I keep her food in a cupboard in my room across from her cage. Overtime, !
she began to associate the cupboard with containing her food. Eventually, every time I !
would open my cupboard, even if I wasnt getting her food, she would run out of hiding !
spot and squeal in delight (thinking she was getting food). As more time passed, she !
even began to squeal whenever I would walk into my room in the direction of the !!
cupboard. !
NS: cupboard!
UCS: food!
UCR: squeal/excitement!
CS: cupboard !
UCS: squeal/excitement !
Other famous examples of classical conditioning include Little Albert (Watson)!

Examples of Classical Conditioning:!

1. Sarah has a jacket with a fur collar. Whenever she wears the jacket, the fur tickles her
nose, causing her to sneeze. By the middle of winter, whenever she puts on any jacket,
Sarah begins to sneeze.
UCS: fur on the jacket

2.

!CS: jacket
!UCR: sneezing
!CR: sneezing
!!
Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy frequently develop nausea and vomiting as a

result of the chemicals. After several treatments, some patients develop nausea when they
see the nurse.
UCS: chemotherapy

!CS: nurse
!UCR: nausea/vomiting
!CR: nausea
!!
3.) Imagine you eat a hotdog before going on a roller coaster. You then experience nausea
after the ride, unrelated to the hotdog. However, from that point on you find hotdogs
unappetizing.

!UCS: roller coaster

!CS: hotdogs
!UCR: nausea
!CR: nausea
!4.) Sarah loves playing in her tree house, it is her favourite part of the day. One day, she

found a wasp nest inside her tree house and got stung by a wasp. The next day. she went
back into her tree house and got stung again. Eventually, Sarah did not want to go into
her treehouse and began avoiding that part of her backyard altogether.

1.

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you to jump back from the water. Over time, you begin to jump back automatically after
hearing the flush, before there is any change in the water temperature.
US:

2.

!UCS: wasp nest

!CS: tree house
!UCR: fear
!CR: fear
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Practice:
!Every time someone in your house flushes a toilet, the shower becomes very hot, causing
!CS:
!UR:
!CR:
!When you were a child, your mother always made you chocolate chip cookies when you
were sad, cheering you up. As an adult, whenever you smell chocolate chip cookies
baking, you feel happier.
US:

!CS:
!UR:
!CR:
!!
!!
!

Operant Conditioning!

Learning is facilitated by the consequences of an organisms behaviour. The organism

actually has to complete an action or behaviour and its
learning depends on whether it will be rewarded or
Operant conditioning was
punished. !
first stated by behavioural
- depends on the skeletal muscles of an organism !

Reinforcements !
= outcomes that strengthen the probability of a response!
Reinforcements can be:!
Positive: giving a pleasant stimulus !
or!
Negative: taking away an unpleasant stimulus !

Examples of Reinforcements:!
Positive: Doing well on a test and getting a chocolate
bar !
Negative: Doing well on a test and not having to do
your chores !

psychologist B.F. Skinner.

He created the apparatus
the Skinner Box where he
would train rats and
pigeons by rewarding them
if they completed a certain
task. Watch this link to see
an example of the Skinner
box: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?
v=PQtDTdDr8vs

Punishment !
= outcomes that weaken the probability of a response !
Punishments can also be:!
Positive: receiving unpleasant stimulus !
or !
Negative: taking away pleasant stimulus !

Examples of Punishments:!
Positive: Getting yelled at for having your phone out in class !
Negative: Taking a childs favourite toy from them to make them stop their tantrum !

Shaping!
The phenomena of shaping occurs when an organism is rewarded each time it gets
closer and closer to the target behaviour, which shapes the organism into learning the
behaviour. The best example of this is thinking of a Skinner box and shaping a rat to
press a lever. At first, the rat doesnt associate the lever with anything so it gets
rewarded with food every time it goes near the lever. Over time it begins to go closer
and closer to the lever, when this occurs you would only reward the rat when it goes up
on its hind legs even closer to the lever (to facilitate learning). Eventually, the rat will
press the lever on a whim and therefore, you would only reward the rat when he
pressed the lever from there on. ex.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQtDTdDr8vs !

Watch this video for an excellent (funny) example of operant conditioning: !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4N9GSBoMI