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Classical Condition and My Behaviour

Keisha Appiah Kubi

N01184087
Dual Credit
Thursday May 19th, 2016
Psychology: An Introduction; PSYC 150
Rena Borovilos

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Learning is a process in which behaviours are acquired and modified

through practice, training or by experience. Leaning is a fundamental skill
that allows us to assess our environment and the things in it, so that we can
become informed and will be able to survive. There are many different
methods to acquiring knowledge or learning a behaviour. There have also
been many different theories that have been proposed, to explain how we
learn new things. For example, one may learn certain things in life through
different experiences or through consequences, as a result of the lesson.
Another way that one can learn new things, is by direct associations with the
topic. When you see, hear or smell something distinct and become motivated
by that sense one way or another, this is a prime example of a common
learning method called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a
simple and powerful form of learning that can have lasting effects on our
attitudes, likes, dislikes and even our emotional responses. This essay will
explore what exactly classical conditioning is, and will also identify an
example of one behaviour in my life that I have personally acquired through
classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning is defined as a process in which a stimulus

that was previously neutral, comes to evoke a particular response, by being
paired with another stimulus that normally evokes a regular response. A

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stimulus is any object or event that causes a reaction or any sort of response
in a being. In life, we all have certain learned responses to different object or
events that we may come across. For example, words like Christmas, Family
and Food, are all simple words that tend to rouse strong emotional responses
in a person, due to their associations. We tend to associate positive or
negative viewpoints with one thing to another (i.e. could be a person,
gesture, style, etc.) In classical conditioning, an association is learned
between one stimulus and another.
Ivan Pavlov is credited with building the foundations of research for
classical conditioning with his famous experimentation with the digestion of
dogs. Pavlov was a great Russian physiologist, who had begun to study
digestion in dogs. Ivan would first start out by studying the dogs salivary
responses to food, by measuring out exactly how much saliva they would
produce when the food was presented to them, when they ate, etc. However,
Pavlov began to notice that his dogs were beginning to salivate even before
their food was presented to them. He noticed that the saliva levels increases
even at the sound of the lab assistants footsteps coming to feed them and
to other regular sights and sounds that wont normally cause a dog to
salivate. Pavlov wondered why the dogs were doing this before they were
given food and why were they salivating to ordinary sounds. These findings
led him to further research and study what is now known as classical
condition.

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Pavlov isolated the dogs and exerted major control over their
environment to test his findings again. This time, whenever it was time to
feed the dogs, he would pair the feeding with a bell first. Every time the dogs
were about to eat, he would play this tone and then give them their food.
Over an extended period of time, Pavlov began to notice that now there was
also an increase in salivation levels in the dogs, right when they would hear
the bell. Pavlov concluded that the dogs had learned to associate the tone of
the bell, with it being feeding time, and this was causing the increase in
saliva. Pavlov began to define the four basic components of his new classical
conditioning model, based on his work with the dogs: the unconditioned
stimulus (UCS), the unconditioned response (UCR), the conditioned stimulus
(CS) and the conditioned response (CR).
Reflexes are involuntary responses to a particular stimulus. There are
two types of reflexes conditioned (learned reflexes) and unconditioned
(natural/unlearned reflexes). Salivation in response to food, is an example of
the unconditioned response (CR) because this is an automatic, natural,
unlearned response to an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), which is, in this case
the food, because food is the object that naturally elicited the response in
the dogs. When Pavlov noticed the dogs salivate to the tones of the bells and
assistants footsteps, he realized that the response (salivation) was the result
of learning. The dogs were now conditioned to salivating to previously
neutral stimuli (bell) before being introduced to the food. The increased
pairings reaffirmed the association between food and bell, therefore making

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the salivation to the bell the conditioned response (CR), because it was a
learned reflex. The tone of the bell became the conditioned stimulus (CS)
because it was the neutral object that started to elicit the salivation
response, after the repeated pairings.

There are many other examples of behaviours in life that people

have learned through the classical conditioning method. One behaviour that I
have personally developed through classical conditioning, is my fear thunder
and lightning (rainstorms).
In the middle of summer, when I was about 11 years old, there was
one particular week where there was non-stop rainfall. In the beginning, it
started off as light rainfall, but soon turned into a heavy thunderstorm by the
third day. Prior to this event, I had never really quite experienced a violent
thunder storm or had ever really seen lighting before. On the third day of the
week, the rain fall started to get very heavy and the clouds became a black
grey colour. Then suddenly out of the blue, a streak of lighting hit the sky,
followed by the loudest noise I had ever heard before. I got sacred and
automatically started screaming and jumped at the sound because I had
thought that there was something terrible going on outside, like an
earthquake. After a while, the sound didnt come back and I found out that it
was just the thunder that was making that noise. So I eventually calmed

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down. 20 minutes later, I saw the lighting again, followed by the sound, this
time louder and more violent than before. I got startled again and began to
scream. This cycle keep happening for the next two days. I would never
really know when the thunder was coming exactly, but whenever I saw the
lighting or even rainfall, I quickly learned that after the rain and the lighting
came, the thunder would come too. Every time I saw the rain and lighting, I
knew that the thunder would come next so I began to hide. Eventually, as I
grew older, I became less affected by the sound of thunder, because it
wasnt happening so often. Over time I calmed down more, but now, even to
this day, whenever I see rainfall, I start to wince and brace myself, because I
associate the thunder with the lighting and begin to ready myself for the
loud noise.
In my example, the unconditioned stimulus was the thunder and the
unconditioned response was the act of me being startled by the thunder. This
is because, the thunder was the stimulus that naturally elicited me to
respond. The conditioned stimulus is the rainfall and the conditioned
response is me becoming startled by the rain. This is because, the rain was a
previous neutral stimulus that didnt cause me to react in any way, but now
because it is paired with the lighting and then thunder, I become startled
(conditioned response). (In the appendix there is a diagram of the classical
conditioning model that illustrates my example).
Extinction of a conditioned response, is the gradual weakening of a
learned response because the conditioned stimulus is not paired enough with

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the unconditioned stimulus. In my example, since it didnt rain all the time,
the effects of the thunder on me, began to weaken because I wasnt exposed
to it very often (only when it rained). This led to me becoming less afraid of
the thunder. Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of the conditioned
response when the unconditioned stimulus is repaired with the conditioned
stimulus. Since, there wasnt as much rainfall, the learned response of fear of
rain, was extinguished. However, once it randomly began to rain, I started
fell back into my conditioned responses and started bracing myself and
wincing in anticipation for the thunder.

Whether you may know it or not, we all have leaned many things in our
life through classical condition. For example you may have associated heat
and pain with fire with some sort of prior experiences, so whenever you see
fire, you know to be cautious. You may have also learned other things like
when to tell when a thunderstorm is coming in and to be weary. Whatever
the case may be, we all have learned one thing or another through
associations and experiences. Classical conditioning has a direct impact on
our everyday lives and helps us to asses our environment bases on prior
knowledge, while also helps to make connections in our lives.

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References

Wood, S.E., Wood, E. G., Boyd, D., Wood, E., & Desmarais, S. (2015).
The World of Psychology (7th Canadian Edition.). Toronto: Pearson Canada.

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Appendix

Figure 1.0 Classical Conditioning Model of my Behaviour

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(Conditioned Stimulus)

(Conditioned Response)

(Unconditioned Response)

(Unconditioned Stimulus)