Classical Conditioning Flashcards
Classical Conditioning explains how
someone can be conditioned into a response from a stimulus that is not the one that would naturally produce the response
The stimulus is
what is done to the animal/human
The response is a
reflex
Forward conditioning is
(Best) where NS is presented before UCS, can occur in 2 ways, delayed or trace conditioning
Delayed conditioning is
where there is an overlap where the NS keeps going while the UCS is introduced
Trace conditioning is
where break occurs between the pairings
Spontaneous conditioning is
where the NS and UCS are presented at the same time
Backward conditioning is
where the USC is presented and then the NS, not as effective as forward conditioning
Extinction is when
a conditioned response disappears, happens when association between UCS and CS no longer occurs
Spontaneous recovery is when
the resonse reappears after extinction for no reason
Generalisation is when the
conditioned response occurs in esponse to other stimuli that are similar to the origional conditioned stimulus
Discrimination is when the
conditioned response only happens in response to the orgional conditioned stimulus and not anything else
Unlike social learning theory, CC cannot explain how
we learn new behaviours, only how we learn how to display existing behaviours in response to different situations
Classical conditioning can easily be demonstrated in a laboratory where
extraneous variables can be controlled and cause and effect can be identified
Classical conditioning does not take into account other forms of learning behaviours such as
learning from the consequences of our behaviour or from observing and imitating others
Has application to real life as it can be used
to treat phobias and addiciton
It can be demonstrated in real life making it more credible like when
someone salivates at a box of chocolates, face validity
The scientific nature of the experiments that investigate classical conditioning means that
ecological validty may be lacking and behaviours are reduced into small parts making them reductionist as the whole body isn’t taken into account
Studies have involved the use of animals, the differences between humans and animals make the findings difficult to generalise as
the way a human learns a behaviour is likely to be much more complex than the way an animal learns a behaviour
Kippin (2000) classically conditioned rats to ejaculate at the smell of almonds or lemon, male rats mated with females who either smelt of a or l and
eventually when presented with the smell alone they ejaculated which supports CC
Watson and Rayner (1920) supports CC because
they classically conditioned a baby to have a fear of white rats
Olson and Fazio (2001) aimed to cc attitudes, words and neutral images shown in pairs to ppts excellent/terrible, after the exp they were asked to rate how
positively they felt about the images, images shown with negative words were negatively rated and vice versa
