~ Classical Conditioning ~
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Classical conditioning is an early learning paradigm associated with Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov in the late 1890s, and his famous experiment inducing a dog to drool at the sound of a bell. Classical conditioning is referred to as an associationist theory along with Skinner's Operant conditioning. Association theories are those that base the learning of new material on material learned previously, wherein the learning of one becomes associated with the learning of the other. We see this clearly demonstrated in Pavlov's elegant research study whereby a dog's natural tendency to salivate to a slab of
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meat was directly transferred to the dog salivating every time he heard a certain tone.
After repeated pairings of a loud bell when the dog was tossed a chunk of meat, it did not take long for the dog to realize that meat was coming his way each and every time he heard that bell, thereby producing the same salivating reflex toward the sound of the bell that would normally accompany a slab of meat. Pavlov came to learn that the dog could generalize from the actual bell to a sound similar to the original bell, and elicit the same conditioned but weaker response. The closer the sound resembled that initial bell, the greater and faster the conditioned response. In continued experiments Pavlov learned that when the dog was conditioned to the sound of a bell and then also conditioned to the sound of a bell just an octave or so lower, differentiation could be achieved. After the two different sounds were shown to result in conditioned responses, one somewhat stronger than the other, Pavlov than presented the dog with meat when hearing only one of those tones but withheld the treat to the other tone. This resulted in the dog in a de-conditioning of one of the previously conditioned sounds, and in this case, it can be said that the dog learned to differentiate between the two similar sounds.
Pavlovian or classical condition consists of four main components and a neutral condition as follows:
An Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) is a something that requires no prior experience in order to elicit a response, and in the Pavlovian example, is the meat. A dog naturally salivates when presented with a rewarding food independent of anything being done to make that happen. It is by definition, a reflexive response. An Unconditioned Response (UCR) is the response that naturally occurs when presented with the UCS, and in this example, would be the salivation response from the dog. A Conditioned Stimulus (CS) in this example is the bell. A CS is always a Neutral Stimulus (NS) that has nothing whatever to do with anything, but is used to train a response. The NS changes into a CS, once the conditioning has taken place in the same way that a hammer is nothing more than a tool (NS) until you decide to kill someone with it and now that tool has morphed into a murder weapon (CS). Finally, a Conditioned Response (CR) is what occurs in reaction to the CS.
Classical conditioning is not always as simple as it appears here. Within this learning paradigm are considerably more advanced and targeted learning, such as forward and backward conditioning, second-order conditioning, delayed and trace conditioning, inhibition, blocking, extinction, recovery, and more. It is not as simple as Pavlov's original design suggests.
After repeated pairings of a loud bell when the dog was tossed a chunk of meat, it did not take long for the dog to realize that meat was coming his way each and every time he heard that bell, thereby producing the same salivating reflex toward the sound of the bell that would normally accompany a slab of meat. Pavlov came to learn that the dog could generalize from the actual bell to a sound similar to the original bell, and elicit the same conditioned but weaker response. The closer the sound resembled that initial bell, the greater and faster the conditioned response. In continued experiments Pavlov learned that when the dog was conditioned to the sound of a bell and then also conditioned to the sound of a bell just an octave or so lower, differentiation could be achieved. After the two different sounds were shown to result in conditioned responses, one somewhat stronger than the other, Pavlov than presented the dog with meat when hearing only one of those tones but withheld the treat to the other tone. This resulted in the dog in a de-conditioning of one of the previously conditioned sounds, and in this case, it can be said that the dog learned to differentiate between the two similar sounds.
Pavlovian or classical condition consists of four main components and a neutral condition as follows:
An Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) is a something that requires no prior experience in order to elicit a response, and in the Pavlovian example, is the meat. A dog naturally salivates when presented with a rewarding food independent of anything being done to make that happen. It is by definition, a reflexive response. An Unconditioned Response (UCR) is the response that naturally occurs when presented with the UCS, and in this example, would be the salivation response from the dog. A Conditioned Stimulus (CS) in this example is the bell. A CS is always a Neutral Stimulus (NS) that has nothing whatever to do with anything, but is used to train a response. The NS changes into a CS, once the conditioning has taken place in the same way that a hammer is nothing more than a tool (NS) until you decide to kill someone with it and now that tool has morphed into a murder weapon (CS). Finally, a Conditioned Response (CR) is what occurs in reaction to the CS.
Classical conditioning is not always as simple as it appears here. Within this learning paradigm are considerably more advanced and targeted learning, such as forward and backward conditioning, second-order conditioning, delayed and trace conditioning, inhibition, blocking, extinction, recovery, and more. It is not as simple as Pavlov's original design suggests.
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