Larita Carney
Monday, March 26, 2012
Patty Anstatt
PSY/390
Classical Conditioning Classical conditioning whether we know it or not is a method that we use to condition behavior. In Psychology the school of thought of Behaviorism is based on the belief that we learn through the things that we experience by way of the environment. Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning first studied by Ivan Pavlov (Index of learning theories and models, 2012). Being one of the first learning types discovered in behaviorism, classical conditioned was established by Ivan Pavlov when he studied associative behavior and hungry dogs. Since its breakthrough classical conditioning has been applied to human behavior in two ways specifically, psychological treatments and causing specific behaviors.
Describe the theory of classical conditioning Classical conditioning takes place with the repeated pairing of a stimulus with another stimulus, to evoke the response to the first stimulus with only the presentation of the second stimulus (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). The first stimulus was referred to by Ivan Pavlov as unconditioned stimulus that causes the mind to have an unconditioned response. One of the most important things to remember is that an unconditioned stimulus reflexively and naturally conjures up a response that is neither conditioned or learned. The second stimulus was referred to as the neutral stimulus that occurs by repeatedly pair it with an unconditioned stimulus and eventually causing it to become conditioned by eliciting a response that is conditioned. Classical conditioning starts with a reflex: an innate, involuntary behavior elicited or caused by an antecedent environmental event (Huitt, W. 1997). Initially the conditioned stimulus has a neutral stimulus that does not have a natural tendency to elicit a specific response but after repeating the pairing the same response as the