Classical Conditioning

This week’s chapter was about learning and the different ways our brains learn. In class, we focused greatly on classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is taking a neutral stimulus and turning it into a conditioned stimulus. The original test that Ivan Pavlov conducted for classical conditioning was with a dog and its response to food. When the unconditioned stimulus, the food, was presented to the dog, the unconditioned response was salivation. Pavlov then tested the neutral stimulus, the bell, which had no connection to the dog food and came to the conclusion that the bell had no effect on salivation in the dog. When the bell was rung with the presentation of food, the dog would salivate. After conditioning, the bell became the conditioned stimulus, and when rung without food, the dog would salivate. Pavlov thus discovered that a neutral stimulus could be conditioned to be a conditioned stimulus. The video I posted represents classical conditioning.

In this video, the unconditioned stimulus is the slap to the head. The unconditioned response is pain to the individual being slapped. The neutral stimulus is the song on the phone. When the song on the phone was played, the guy in the video would slap the other guy. Eventually on the fourth day, the other guy reacted by trying to protect himself. Thus the conditioned stimulus became the song on the phone and the conditioned response was defense from being slapped or not wanting to experience pain from the slap. Another example would be giving a nickname to a friend. For example, my friends name is Matt, but everyone calls him Coop. When he was first given the nickname, he did not react to it, but as more people called him Coop, he responded to it. Now he is called Coop so often that he thinks getting called by Matt is weird. This is a perfect example of classical conditioning.