Classical Conditioning : Stimulus vs. Response

Classical conditioning is a theory that was accidentally discovered by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist that was researching on a dog’s salivation in response to being fed. He would ring a bell each time he fed the dog, he then realised that the dog would salivate as soon as he would ring the bell even when he had no food with him! Curiosity amounted to this finding and became the driving force of behaviorism and the start of all research on conditioning!

To understand conditioning you must understand the basis of what is a stimulus vs. a response.

There are two kinds of stimulus and responses:

• Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): is a neutral and automatically triggers a response. E.g. the smell of your favorite food (UCS) might make you hungry.

• Conditioned stimulus (CS): is a neutral stimulus (e.g. bell) that has been associated with an unconditioned stimulus and the end result is that it eventually triggers a conditioned response. E.g. Pavlov’s dog would salivate at the sight of food, but once the association of the bell was repeated multiple times it became the conditioned stimulus; at the sound of the bell the dog would salivate even if there is no food around.

• Conditioned response (CR): is a learned response to the previously neutral stimulus. To make this clear the CR response is a learned reflexive response. The example above the CS (bell) causes the CR being salivation. It has been learned from multiple associations between the bell (CS) and food (UCS).By association the mind believes that the bell means food making the dog salivate.

• Unconditioned response (UCR): this one is simple. It is a reflex to a UCS, it is not learned it just happens. E.g. Jumping (UCR) at the sound of a loud noise (UCS).

Now that you understand unconditioned vs. conditioned and response vs. stimulus, here is an example of the famous experiment by John B. Watson.

The little Albert experiment has gained notoriety with the years and if someone wanted to replicate this experiment now, it would not be allowed for many ethical reasons. Like many other ethical concerning experiments this one does show in the clearest way the work of conditioning.

Little Albert was a normal 9 month old child when he was tested on multiple levels for phobias. When it was clear that he did not fear a white mouse, John B. Watson then confirmed that Albert gets startled when he hears the noise of a hammer on a steel surface. Once this was noticed it was time for conditioning. Seven times over a period of seven weeks every time little Albert was shown the mouse a hammer would hit a metal sheet making him cry. This process was repeated until little Albert associated the sound with the mouse. At that point conditioning was done and if Albert saw a mouse he would cry and fear it. His mind had created an association between the mouse and the noise.

If we break this down looking at the conditioned and unconditioned responses and stimulus it looks like the following:

• Before conditioning: NS: white mouse = enjoyment

• Conditioning: UCS: noise from metal bar + NS: white mouse = UCR: fear (Repeat multiple times)

• After conditioning: NS becomes a CS resulting in CR of fear

Conditioning is a very important theory and is taught to all psychology scholars in Canada in their beginning class. This is one of many ways we learn and is also used as treatment for phobias, anxiety and lots more!

written by: Tarek Benzouak

#classicalconditioning #stimulusvsresponse