Classical Conditioning Flashcards
What is a Stimulus?
Something in our environment that affects us.
What is a Response?
A reaction to a stimulus.
What are Unconditioned Responses (UCR)?
Natural reaction to certian stimuli, i.e laughing when tickled.
What are Unconditioned Stimuli (UCS)
Stimilu which trigger unconditioned responses.
What are Neutral Stimulus (NS)?
Stimulus that don’t affect us.
What is Conditioning?
Pairing a NS with a UCS over time so they become associated.
What are Conditioned Stimulus (CS)?
After conditioning, the NS produces the same reaction from us that the UCS produces.
What is the Conditioned Response (CR)?
Response to a CS.
What is Extinction?
When conditioned stimuli lose their association with the original neutral stimulus and revert abck to be neutral stimulus (takes a long time).
What is Spontaneous Recovery?
Once an association is formed, it is never truly forgotten. Even after extinction, a CR can reappear.
What is Stimulus Generalisation?
Stimuli that are similiar to the CS will produce the CR.
How can extinction be prevented?
By pairing the CS with the old UCS again on future occasions, in order to strengthen the association.
Where has classical conditioning been applied?
- Aversion therapy
- Phobias and Systemic Desensitisation
What is Antabuse?
A drug that reacts with alcohol in the blood stream and makes the person feel violent nausea.
How has classical conditioning been applied to Aversion Therapy?
Alcoholics given Antabuse causing them to feel nauseous. Although alcohol is a UCS that produces a pleasant UCR, when paired with Antabuse it becomes a CS instead and leads to a CR (feeling sick at the sight of alcohol).
What is a Phobia?
Irrational fear that might be learned when a NS, i.e. a spider, is paired with a UCS that is naturally frightening, i.e. a thunderstorm. The spider becomes a CS and produces the same CR as the thunderstorm - fright. Stimulus generalisation means CR is extended to all spiders, or maybe all “creepy crawlies.”
What is Systematic desensitisation?
A gradual exposure of a phobia sufferer to their phobia.
What are the 4 steps of systematic desensitisation?
- Functional analysis - careful questioning to discover the nature of the anxiety and possible triggers.
- Construction of an anxiety hierarchy - client and therapist derive hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situationss from least to most fearful.
- Relaxation training.
- Gradual exposure.
What’s the difference between “In vivo” and “In vitro”?
In vivo = ‘real life’ experience.
In vitro = ‘through imagination’.
How can classical conditioning be applied to Systematic Desensitisation?
- Phobia-sufferer draws up a anxiety hierarchy, and is slowly introduced to their phobia, i.e. a drawing at a distace, then a drawing in hand, then a photo, then a film clip, then the real thing.
- At each stage, the sufferer learns to associate the spider with a harmless, relaxed experience - counterconditioning as relaxation cancels out anxiety the phobia produces.
- Eventually, sufferer can pick up and handle a spider and learn that this is harmless and relaxing - spider becomes NS again.
- At each stage, the sufferer learns to associate the spider with a harmless, relaxed experience - counterconditioning as relaxation cancels out anxiety the phobia produces.
What evidence is there for the theory?
Pavlov:
- Classically conditioned dogs by repeatedly pairing a NS, e.g. a whistle, with a UCS, e.g. dog food, turning the NS into a CS producing a CR (salivation) all by itself.
However,
- Low generalisability as the dogs have less complex brains than humans and have different motivations, therefore results cannot be applied to humans.
- This weakens the applicability of the evidence to the thoery, making it less credible.
