4/7/2023 0 Comments Pavlov conditioning![]() Tiger will learn to get excited when she hears the “squeak” of the cabinet. What if the cabinet holding Tiger’s food becomes squeaky? In that case, Tiger hears “squeak” (the cabinet), “zzhzhz” (the electric can opener), and then she gets her food. In this case, what are the UCS, CS, UCR, and CR? This is an example of classical conditioning. What do you think Tiger does when she hears the electric can opener? She will likely get excited and run to where you are preparing her food. Tiger quickly learns that when she hears “zzhzhz” she is about to get fed. For every meal, Tiger hears the distinctive sound of the electric can opener (“zzhzhz”) and then gets her food. You keep her food in a separate cabinet, and you also have a special electric can opener that you use only to open cans of cat food. Let’s say you have a cat named Tiger, who is quite spoiled. For example, if someone rang a bell every time Moisha received a syringe injection of chemotherapy drugs in the doctor’s office, Moisha likely will never get sick in response to the bell.Ĭonsider another example of classical conditioning. It is hard to achieve anything above second-order conditioning. This is an example of higher-order (or second-order) conditioning, when the conditioned stimulus (the doctor’s office) serves to condition another stimulus (the syringe). In addition to the doctor’s office, Moisha will learn to associate the syringe with the medication and will respond to syringes with nausea. After entering the doctor’s office, Moisha sees a syringe, and then gets her medication. Let’s assume that the chemotherapy drugs that Moisha takes are given through a syringe injection. In this case, the chemotherapy drugs are the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), vomiting is the unconditioned response (UCR), the doctor’s office is the conditioned stimulus (CS) after being paired with the UCS, and nausea is the conditioned response (CR). Now, when she visits her oncologist’s office every 6 months for a check-up, she becomes nauseous. Moisha’s treatment was a success and her cancer went into remission. In fact, every trip to the doctor for chemotherapy treatment shortly after the drugs were injected, she vomited. When she received her first chemotherapy treatment, she vomited shortly after the chemicals were injected. How does classical conditioning work in the real world? Consider the case of Moisha, who was diagnosed with cancer. Real World Application of Classical Conditioning Before conditioning, think of the dogs’ stimulus and response like this: The dogs’ salivation was an unconditioned response (UCR): a natural (unlearned) reaction to a given stimulus. The meat powder in this situation was an unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that elicits a reflexive response in an organism. In Pavlov’s experiments, the dogs salivated each time meat powder was presented to them. Through his experiments, Pavlov realized that an organism has two types of responses to its environment: (1) unconditioned (unlearned) responses, or reflexes, and (2) conditioned (learned) responses. He was able to train the dogs to salivate in response to stimuli that clearly had nothing to do with food, such as the sound of a bell, a light, and a touch on the leg. To explore this phenomenon in an objective manner, Pavlov designed a series of carefully controlled experiments to see which stimuli would cause the dogs to salivate. These unusual responses intrigued Pavlov, and he wondered what accounted for what he called the dogs’ “psychic secretions” (Pavlov, 1927). However, dogs don’t naturally salivate at the sight of an empty bowl or the sound of footsteps. Salivating to food in the mouth is reflexive, so no learning is involved. Over time, Pavlov (1927) observed that the dogs began to salivate not only at the taste of food, but also at the sight of food, at the sight of an empty food bowl, and even at the sound of the laboratory assistants’ footsteps. In his studies with dogs, Pavlov measured the amount of saliva produced in response to various foods. Pavlov’s area of interest was the digestive system (Hunt, 2007). Physiologists study the life processes of organisms, from the molecular level to the level of cells, organ systems, and entire organisms. Pavlov was a physiologist, not a psychologist. ![]() Pavlov came to his conclusions about how learning occurs completely by accident. Ivan Pavlov’s research on the digestive system of dogs unexpectedly led to his discovery of the learning process now known as classical conditioning.
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