Procedure

• There must first be an association already present

  • This can be a biological reaction or training from another session beforehand

• This association that already exists involves the unconditioned stimulus (US) and the unconditioned response (UR)

  • They are unconditioned because they are not the final, desired association

  • The stimulus elicits a response

  • Let’s use Pavlov’s dogs as an example: The US is food, and the UR is salivation because of the food

    • You must attribute the response at this stage to the US, not any other reason

• A neutral stimulus (NS) is introduced

  • The neutral stimulus, at this point, does not elicit the desired response

  • Pavlov rings a bell

  • The dogs may have perked up or looked over to the bell, but when the association has not yet been made, they are not reacting as intended

• The NS and US are paired

  • Pavlov rings the bell as he brings the food to his dogs

  • This is what will build the association

  • There are different ways the US and NS can be presented but most commonly they are presented at the same time or directly after one another

• The NS becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) which elicits and conditioned response (CR)

  • The dogs now salivate because of the bell

    • Now note that the response is attributed to a new source, the CS

Extinction

• Extinction occurs when the CS gains a weakened or no CR at all, and the association is no longer present

• Different methods of conditioning will result in different rates of extinction

• The association can undergo spontaneous recovery, where the CS once again receives the CR, but not at the same intensity

Discrimination and Generalization

• A learner who is able to discriminate stimuli will not give the CR to stimuli similar or very close to the CS

• Learners who generalize will give the CR to similar stimuli

• There can be different degrees of this

• In the Little Albert experiment, the baby Albert was conditioned to fear white rats

• There was a very loud sound played behind him every time he was presented with a rat

  • He began to fear all small, white, fluffy objects

  • He would break down into tears and shaking when he saw stuffed animals and even John B. Watson himself, who conducted the experiment

    • Some think this was because Watson was always present in the room, so Albert also associated the loud noise with him

    • Others think it was because he has whiteish-grey hair that may have looked like the rat

Higher Order Conditioning

• Multi-level learning

• Remember that the US and UR can be from previous learning

• The CS and CR from the first association become the US and UR in the next series of steps