Okay, so conditioned responses can actually be kind of extended or modified through a process called second order conditioning, also known as higher order conditioning. And you can kind of think of this as layering conditioned responses one on top of the other. So basically, what we are going to do here is that it is going to be a procedure where our conditioned stimulus is going to get paired with a new neutral stimulus with the end goal being that this new neutral stimulus will eventually become a conditioned stimulus as well. So if we are looking at our kind of three phases of learning, if we look at our before learning or before conditioning phase over here, what we are going to start off with is a previously established conditioned stimulus and response. So our original conditioned stimulus elicits a conditioned response.
Like we talked about in our previous video, this bell is a conditioned stimulus and it's going to elicit salivation or this conditioned response within the animal. The animal has learned to do this. Right? Now we're also going to present a new neutral stimulus, and in this example, it's going to be like a flashing light. And this again is neutral, it has no meaning to the animal, so it's going to produce no response initially. So that is our before conditioning phase.
Now during our acquisition trials what we're going to do is that we're going to pair this new neutral stimulus with our conditioned stimulus. Okay. So these are going to get paired together, so we would flash our light, ring our bell, and then that ringing of the bell would be producing that conditioned response. Now, in order to make this second order conditioning, we cannot present the unconditioned stimulus here, okay? If we did that, then it would just be regular conditioning essentially.
So, with second order conditioning, we're not going to be presenting the unconditioned stimulus at all. We're going to be pairing these two stimuli over and over until finally we have our after conditioning phase and at this point learning has taken place and now this light is producing this conditioned response. And so now this light is considered a conditioned stimulus as well. Okay, so we always go from neutral stimulus turns into a conditioned stimulus, right? Alright, so that is an example of second order conditioning.
One thing to note is that usually what you're going to see with second order conditioning is that the response is going to be a little weaker than you saw with your previous conditioned response and that's just kind of the nature of it. Again, we're kind of layering learning on top of learning, though it does tend to produce a bit of a weaker response. But it absolutely does work and still will produce responses if you do enough trials. Alright. So that is second order conditioning, and I will see you guys in our next video.
Bye bye.