This is just going to be a really quick video clearing up 2 common misconceptions that I often see students have with classical conditioning. So the first is that classical conditioning is just a simple association. You're learning that these two stimuli go together but it's a little bit more complicated than that. In classical conditioning, what we're actually learning is that the conditioned stimulus is a signal that predicts an event. So basically, the conditioned stimulus is predicting the presence of the unconditioned stimulus.
If I hear this bell I am going to receive food is kind of the idea there. And this leads into our second common misconception which is that during the acquisition phase the neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are presented simultaneously. So you're handing that dog a food bowl as you're ringing a bell and that's actually not what you really want to do. Ideally, for the strongest conditioning, the neutral stimulus should precede the unconditioned stimulus. Again, what we're trying to teach the animal or the person is that, you know, this stimulus predicts this stimulus and it can't predict it if it is happening at the exact same time or if it is happening a little bit after.
Right? Ideally, you would want that to precede the unconditioned stimulus. You can get a conditioned response by pairing these things simultaneously but it's usually going to take a little bit longer and be a bit of a weaker response. Again, for the strongest conditioning you'd want to precede it. You'd want to ring that bell, wait a few seconds, and then present that food.
Alright, great job with this section guys and I will see you in our next one. Bye bye.