THEORIES OF LEARNING

1. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

A type of conditioning in which an individual responds to some stimulus that would not ordinarily produce such a response.

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, incidentally discovered classical conditioning, a very basic form of learning in which an organism comes to associate one stimulus with another, while studying the digestive system in dogs.

Pavlov strapped dogs into a harness, placed different types of food in their mouths, and measured the flow of saliva through a tube surgically inserted in the their cheeks, after repeated sessions, he noted that the dogs would begin to salivate before the food was actually put in their mouths. This occurred in anticipation of the food, before it was actually present. The mere sight of food, the sight of the dog dish, and even the sound of the experiments footsteps made them drool.

From this experiment, Pavlov developed the theory of classical conditioning and began to study classical condition systematically.

In his experiment, his dogs did not have to be conditioned to solvate. The salivary reflex is a innate unconditioned response (UCR) that is naturally associated by placing meat powder in the mouth, an unconditioned stimulus (UCS).

Pavlov conducted an experiment to see if the dogs could be conditioned to salvate at the sound of a bell. Because a dog doesn’t salivate initially to the ringing of a bell, Pavlov called the bell a neutral stimulus (NS).

Pavlov reputedly rand a bell before presenting food in the dogs mouth, bell, food, bell, food.

After a number of these pairings of the bell, with the meat powder, the dogs began to salivate to the sound of the bell alone.

 The bell, which was initially a neutral stimulus, became a conditioned stimulus (CS) and salvation, which was initially an unconditioned response (UCR) to meat powder become a conditioned response (CR) to the sound of the bell.

Through, learning, a previously neutral stimulus evoked the same response as the unconditioned stimulus had.

Hence, the basic classical conditioning procedures involve an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), an unconditioned response (UCR), a neutral stimulus, a conditioned stimulus (CS), and a conditioned response (CR).