Tag: classical conditioning

Conditional Cravings

In the early 1900s Pavlov achieved something more than getting a dog to drool at the sound of a tune. His famous experiment made people aware of and explained a type of learning that is instinctual to intelligent life. “Learning by association” or specifically “classical conditioning” is a way that we associate an unrelated (neutral) stimulus to another stimulus which in result induces a specific behavior.  

There are generally 4 components to classical conditioning. The unconditioned response (UR), unconditioned stimulus (US), conditioned response (CR), and the conditioned stimulus (CS). In Pavlov’s example, the US was the food and the UR was salivating. This is the natural reaction the dog would have. During conditioning, the tune was played before the food was given to the dog. After some time the tune became the CS and the salivating became the CR. 

A real life example of a way I have been classically conditioned happens to me almost every night. I find myself rummaging through my cabinet looking for something sweet. I’m craving dessert. Most of the time I don’t realize I want dessert until after I have sought it out by opening up my cabinet. Now, I don’t have to eat dinner and I will still crave something sweet in the evenings. As a kid my parents would often have dessert for us after dinner and when I had a meal plan I would almost always get a cookie or ice cream at the dining call. Now that I shop and cook for myself I don’t always have a sweet treat to fulfill my craving. 

This is one of the reasons why weight loss can be so hard for people. People have habits that are hard to break. When you eat dinner, it triggers a response that once you are done it is time for dessert. Fortunately for people trying to lose weight, these habits can be broken with some discipline and time. If you stop eating dessert after dinner the cravings for it can go away. This is an example of “extinction”. However, if you start eating desserts again these cravings can come back and this is known as “spontaneous recovery”. 

Classical conditioning happens all around us without us noticing. It is important to be aware of how we might be classically conditioned to avoid immediate responses we might not wish to have. What are some ways you have experienced classical conditioning first hand? 

 

 

Classical Conditioning in the Classroom

Classical Conditioning

Ever wonder why you may reach for your phone when you hear someone else’s phone go off that happens to have the same ringtone as you? Or how cats are trained not to jump on furniture? Classical conditioning is the answer. Classical conditioning is the way in which behavior is taught through association.

How Conditioning Works

For example, a cat naturally doesn’t care about a couch and will climb on it all day if it wanted to. The couch in this case would be the Neutral Stimulus (NS) because it elicits no natural response from the cat. Anybody who knows anything about cats knows cats hate getting prayed with water. The spray bottle is the Unconditioned Stimulus (US) because it naturally elicits an Unconditioned Response (UR)  which is running away. Now imagine if we begin to consistently spray the cat with water every time it jumps up on couch. Eventually, the cat will associate the couch with getting sprayed with water and won’t go on the couch anymore. The NS that the cat didn’t care about has now become the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) because we taught it to associate a harmless couch with the feeling of getting sprayed. This aversion to the couch out of fear is the Conditioned Response (CR) we were looking for.

Over time, the cat may Discriminate the couch with other pieces of furniture and refrain from jumping on those too. Consistency is key as well, however. After some time, the cat may quit responding to the association and this conditioning would experience Extinction. In this case, it’s important to condition again to elicit Spontaneous Recovery.

Conditioning for Educators

Can you identify what the NS, US, UR, CS, and CR is?

When I personally was a kid growing up in the classroom, my peers and I had so much energy and would constantly talk while the teacher was talking. My teacher found a way to safely condition us to stop talking at inappropriate times by turning off the lights and lecturing us. Every time our teacher would turn off the lights, she would explain how disrespectful we were being towards our fellow classmates and to us and that made us feel extremely embarrassed and quiet. After days of doing that, whenever we got too noisy, as soon as the lights got turned off, we all immediately stopped talking and then knew we were being disrespectful.

          • NS: The lights
          • US: Getting lectured
          • UR: Feeling embarrassed
          • CS: The lights
          • CR: Feeling embarrassed
Why this is Important

Classical conditioning can be an easy and non-invasive way to elicit or discourage a specific behavior from students. In my past experience, my teacher successfully gained control back of the noisy classroom until we understood that talking out of turn is disrespectful and we shouldn’t do that. Teachers everywhere should take advantage of such a great psychology technique to indirectly better their students!

Pavlov’s Dogs and Little Albert

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to associate stimuli. For example, when there is lightning, there is thunder. Therefore, when a person sees lightning, they are scared because they are expecting thunder to follow due to classical conditioning. One famous experiment that shows classical conditioning perfectly is Pavlov’s experiment with dogs and salivation around food. This experiment was done by having dogs in a controlled environment where the scientists could measure each dog’s level of salivation. Before the conditioning began, the scientists noticed that food produced salivation. When they began using classical conditioning, they would use a neutral stimulus, and an unconditioned stimulus to produce and unconditioned stimulus. In this particular experiment, the neutral stimulus was a tone that signaled food was coming. The unconditioned stimulus is the dog’s food. The two of these together produced the unconditioned response of salivation. This scenario was done multiple times and yield the same response. After the classical conditioning process was done, the neutral stimulus (the tone), which was originally irrelevant, now becomes the conditioned stimulus. This now triggers salivation from the dogs, which is now the conditioned response because it is learned. This process was also used in the famous “Little Albert” experiment. This was were a baby was conditioned to hate rats through classical conditioning. The experiment realized how little Albert disliked loud sounds because they are startling. The experimenter paired the loud sounds with rats. Little Albert soon realized that whenever he saw a rat, there would soon be a loud sound that he disliked. This ended up with little albert generalizing this to all other small furry animals. So whenever he saw one, he would become visibly upset assuming there was a loud sound soon to follow. These experiments can be used to explain other real life scenarios.

Blog 3: Classical Conditioning and Taste Aversion

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to associate two stimuli together. A response that usually results from the second stimuli usually also results from the first. An example of classical conditioning is Pavlov’s experiments. Pavlov’s experiments analyzed the response of a dog when the dog would see food. In this example, the unconditioned stimulus is the food because it naturally elicits a response from the dog. The dog’s response of salivation is the unconditioned response which is a naturally occurring response. However, Pavlov would begin ringing a bell before presenting the food and eventually the dog would salivate upon hearing the bell. In this case, the sound of the bell and food became a paired stimulus. The sound of the bell is the conditioned stimulus which was initially an irrelevant stimulus but became associated with the unconditioned stimulus to trigger a conditioned response. The conditioned response was the learned response.

Pavlov’s Experiment

Many people believed that any association between two stimuli could be learned equally. In response, John Garcia conducted an experiment where he paired taste, sound and sight with radiation that would elicit the response of nausea in mice. He concluded that taste was strongly associated with the nausea. In this case, taste was the conditioned stimulus, radiation was the unconditioned stimulus, and nausea was the conditioned response. This experiment concluded that some things are easier to associate than others. This experiment also demonstrated the idea of taste aversion where humans are apt to have an aversion to foods if they become sick afterwards. For example, when I was in seventh grade, I went to a Mexican styled restaurant with family friends and ordered a chicken quesadilla. The family friends I went to the restaurant were recovering from the stomach flu and ordered chicken quesadillas. After enjoying my meal, I went home and went to bed. I woke up in the middle of night with abdominal pain and began to throw up. Reflecting on that night today, it was likely that I had caught the stomach flu and my nausea and uneasiness resulted from it. However, from that day, I could not eat any styled of Mexican food for two years; the thought of any Mexican styled food made me nauseous. Only recently have I been able to enjoy Mexican styled food. This is the perfect example of classical conditioning and how taste aversion works. The stomach flu was the unconditioned stimulus and nausea was the unconditioned response. Because of my pairing of the stomach flu and Mexican styled food, Mexican styled food was the conditioned stimulus and nausea became the conditioned response. Classical conditioning results from pairing any two stimuli; the pairing of some stimuli is stronger (like taste) than others.  

Picture: https://www.psychestudy.com/behavioral/learning-memory/classical-conditioning/pavlov