Approaches: Lesson 2 - Classical Conditioning

Question 1

What does the behaviourist approach suggest?

Answer 1

All behaviour is learnt rather than being innate or inherited

Question 2

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 2

Learning by association

Question 3

Outline the procedure of Pavlov (1927)

Answer 3

1. Before Conditioning
   - Food was an unconditioned stimulus that produced the reflex of salivating, which is an unconditioned response
   - The bell was a neutral stimulus that produced no conditioned response
2. During Conditioning
   – The unconditioned stimulus (food) was repeatedly paired with the neutral stimulus (bell)
   - Eventually the dog associated the bell with food
   3 After Conditioning
   – The bell was a conditioned stimulus that produced salivating in the dogs as a conditioned response

Question 4

What four factors did Pavlov find affected learning via classical conditioning?

Answer 4

1. Timing
2. Extinction
3. Spontaneous Recovery
4. Stimulus Generalisation

Question 5

What is ‘Timing ‘ Pavlov (1927)?

Answer 5

– If the neutral stimulus cannot be used to predict the unconditioned stimulus (because the neutral stimulus occurs first or there is too much time between them) conditioning will not take place

Question 6

What is ‘extinction’ (Pavlov 1927)?

Answer 6

– The conditioned response is not permanent. After a few presentations of the bell being rung without food appearing the dogs stopped salivating (behaviour is now extinct)

Question 7

What is ‘spontaneous recovery’ (Pavlov 1927)?

Answer 7

• If the conditioned response becomes extinct, but then an attempt is made to teach the conditioned response again, it will be learned much more quickly than it was originally

Question 8

What is ‘stimulus generalisation’ (Pavlov 1927)?

Answer 8

– Once an animal has been conditioned they will respond to other similar stimuli in the same way they would respondto the conditioned stimulus (e.g. a tuning fork would produce the same response as the bell)