Outline Pavlov Classical Conditioning Theory and briefly evaluate it. A Russian psychologist discovered

4 October 2005

Word count: 566 words

Outline Pavlov Classical Conditioning Theory and briefly evaluate it.

A Russian psychologist discovered classical conditioning being a form of learning in 1900’s. His name was Ivan Pavlov. Classical conditioning included a reflective or an automatic response that transferred from one stimulus to another. Pavlov’s experiments included how the saliva aids to digestive process. He would give the dog a meal for sometime and would record its saliva while the dog ate the meal. Pavlov conditioned the dog to the sound of the bell.

During conditioning Pavlov would ring a bell which is neutral stimulus and give food to the dog. It becomes a neutral stimulus because it doesn’t produce any salivation response in dog. He would repeat the procedure on several times until he started sounding the bell without food and the dog would salivate to the sound of the bell. The dog would associate the ringing of the bell to food. The bell has become a conditioned stimulus and the dogs responds to the bell is called a conditioned response. Pavlov also found that the basic conditioning process could be made more flexible by generalisation.

This is a preview of the whole essay

A buzzer with a different tone than the original will elicit the conditional response if they are similar to the original or perhaps a tapping noise will probably elicit the salivary response. Also animals maybe taught to chose between stimuli, to discriminate by conditioning them to choose. Thus is if presentation of food is paired with presentation say of a circle shape, which Pavlov was using. The animal become conditioning to salivation at the appearance of the circle. However, although different colours of circles can be represented with food a dog can be conditioned that it only discriminate the others for the white circle. By reinforcing only the presentation of white circle stimulus the other circles are not reinforced by the accompaniment of the food and salivation at their appearance soon stops. One learned a conditioned response is not necessarily permanent. If the conditioning procedure is altered so that the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented but without the unconditioned stimulus then the strength of then conditioned response is gradually reduced until it does not appear in response to the conditioned stimulus. However extinction is not a complete eradication of the conditioned response but rather a learning to inhibit it, a new learning in addition to the original conditioning.

However most human learning is not based on classical conditioning. In classical conditioning animals are presented with various conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. In real life, learning general involves animal and human interaction actively with the environment. an alternative procedure based on conditioning is called aversion therapy and is used to treat such problems as drug addiction and alcoholism. The aim is to help the patient to develop an adverse reaction to the stimulus and produces the unconditional response of vomiting. The medicinal drug or emetic unconditional stimulus is then paired with the conditional stimulus whish is the alcohol and the two together acting together produce the unconditional response to vomiting. Alcohol alone will produce the conditional response of vomiting. The vomiting is associated with alcohol, but the reflexes are conditioned the patient cannot stop himself vomiting. Though he may realise that’s the medicinal drug or emetic that causes the vomiting the association between unconditional stimulus and the conditioned stimulus is automatic and thinking about it cannot stop it.