classical conditioning Flashcards
who created classical conditioning?
Ivan Pavlov
what does classical conditioning suggest?
that a response that would not naturally occur could be conditioned to occur to a stimulus.
what is a stimulus?
something that causes a response (food)
what is a response?
a natural automatic reflex (salivation)
what was the unconditioned stimulus/neutral stimulus in pavlovs experiment?
food
what was the unconditional response?
salivation
the bell an unconditioned stimulus was paired with the neutral stimulus and what happened ?
after a few parings the unconditioned stimulus of the bell became a conditioned stimulus which then triggered a conditioned response of salivation.
what is forward conditioning?
when the NS is displayed before the UCS
what is the spontaneous conditioning?
when the NS and the UCS is presented at the same time
what is backwards conditioning
when the UCS is presented before the NS
- this isn’t as effective as forward conditioning.
what is meant by extinction?
refers to when there is no longer association between the UCS and the CS so the behaviour stops.
what is meant by spontaneous recovery?
when the behaviour suddenly reappears for no apparent reason
what is meant by generalisation?
when the behaviour occurs to other stimulus that is similar to the orginal.
what is meant by discrimination?
when the behaviour only occurs to the original stimulus.
what can’t CC explain which may be a weakness of the theory?
- it can’t explain how new behaviours are learned it can only explain how we display existing behaviours but through different situations.
- therefore it might be considered an incomplete explanation.
what did Kippin find? (2000)
- classically conditioned rats to ejaculate to the
smell of almond or lemon. - During conditioning male rats were allowed to mate with female rats who either smelled of lemon
or almond.
-At first male rats showed no preference but after
conditioning they preferred to mate with those who had the smell that they associated to ejaculation .
what problems with generalisability might arise?
- often studies are carried out using animals, such as Kippin and Pavlov’s own study which may be difficult to generalise to humans.
- however having said this in Watson and Raynor’s study they were able to classically condition a human child,
why might classical conditioning have high internal validity regarding the way that it is studied?
Classical conditioning can easily be demonstrated in a
laboratory where extraneous variables can be controlled and cause and effect identified.
how can classical conditioning explain real life explanations?
Classical conditioning can be demonstrated in real life situations such as television advertisements or salivating at just the sight of a box of chocolates.
