Classical Conditioning: Study with Video Lessons, Practice Problems & Examples

Introduction to Classical Conditioning

This video we're going to be talking about classical conditioning. So, you guys remember Ivan Pavlov from chapter 1? He is located right here in this photograph. And he was a Russian physiologist and he is credited with discovering classical conditioning back in the 1890s. Although he actually discovered it kind of by mistake.

But like I said, Pavlov was a physiologist and he was actually studying digestion in dogs. He was trying to see if dogs would have different salivation responses to different types of food. But over time he and his graduate students began to notice that the dogs were actually salivating before they got their food. So, for example, they would salivate at the sight of the lab assistant who often fed them or at the sight of an empty food bowl. And over time Pavlov began to realize that these dogs were actually associating environmental stimuli with food and that is what was causing this salivation response.

So, what Pavlov had discovered was actually a form of learning and it's a very specific type of learning. Now, learning honestly is one of these terms in psychology where every textbook will have a different definition but, broadly, we can define it as a relatively enduring change in behavior, thought, or knowledge as a result of past experience. So, for example, if you're watching this video and then a week from now you can remember all of the content from the video, you have learned something. Now, more specifically than that, we have conditioning. So conditioning is a form of learning that involves making associations between environmental stimuli and an organism's behavior.

This is sometimes also called associative learning. So if the smell of coffee makes you feel a little bit energized, if your dog perks up and wags its tail every time it sees you holding its leash, those are types of conditioning. And there are 2 types of conditioning, operant conditioning and classical conditioning, and we're going to talk about both of those in this chapter. Now more specifically what Pavlov had discovered is something that we call classical conditioning. So classical conditioning is the process of pairing a neutral stimulus with a bodily response until that neutral stimulus is able to elicit the bodily response.

Now I know that this is a mouthful. It's wordy. It's confusing, and don't worry about that. You probably don't have to know the actual definition of classical conditioning verbatim. What's going to be much more important for you to understand is the actual process of classical conditioning and how it works and we're going to go over that in a ton of detail in our upcoming videos, so don't stress too much about that actual definition.

What's more important to take away here is that the broadest term here is learning, and then conditioning is a type of learning and classical conditioning is a type of conditioning. And fun fact, classical conditioning is considered one of the simplest forms of learning. We've actually even seen it in a species of flatworm which is considered to be one of the simplest animals alive with a brain. So we can see classical conditioning across the entire animal kingdom, which is pretty cool. Alright.

So I'll see you guys in our next video to go over that process of conditioning in a bit more detail. Bye bye.

Classical Conditioning Example 1

All right, so we are going to be filling out this Venn diagram with the labels in the box here. So the idea is that the largest oval is going to indicate our most general term and the smallest oval indicates the most specific term. So out of all of the labels in the box here, our most general term is learning. So learning is just a change in an individual's behavior, or thoughts, or knowledge that we can see that happens as a result of past experience, right? So learning is our most general term, and then from there, conditioning is a type of learning where we're basically making associations between environmental stimuli and behavior, that kind of associative type of learning.

And then from there, our most specific term is going to be classical conditioning, which is this very specific type of conditioning. Alright. So conditioning is a type of learning. Classical conditioning is a type of conditioning. Alright.

And I will see you guys in our next video. Bye bye.

What trend did Pavlov notice that eventually became the focus of his research?

• A. Dogs had the cognitive skills to show preference for certain foods.
• B. Dogs displayed taste aversions that were individual to each dog and later supported by genetic markers.
• C. The dogs would salivate in anticipation of the food when certain environmental cues were present.
• D. The doges seemed to have a stronger appetite around certain caretakers.

Principles of Classical Conditioning

Alright, so now we're going to get into the process of classical conditioning. I will give you a heads up: this lesson is going to have a lot of new terminology and it might seem overwhelming at first, but what I want you to focus on is just really understanding the process of what is happening here. Because all of these terms, honestly, are quite intuitive once you begin to understand, kind of, logically what is actually happening. So don't get too caught up in, like, memorizing definitions. Try to just go through it and begin to really understand the process.

And catching on to that terminology will come pretty quickly once you understand what's happening here. Alright, so we typically think of classical conditioning as having 3 phases. First, we have our before conditioning phase and every time I say conditioning in this lesson I want you to basically just think of the word learning. So this is the phase before learning is taking place and essentially we're just going to be measuring responses that already exist before we do anything to the animal. So in this phase, we're going to have our unconditioned stimulus or our unlearned stimulus which we're going to abbreviate as US. These abbreviations that we're going to go through are important so do be aware of them, but luckily they're all very intuitive.

They're basically just going to be the first two letters of all these words. So an unconditioned stimulus is going to be a stimulus that elicits a reflexive response. So this is not something that the animal ever has to learn. Now we also are going to have our unconditioned response or the UR and this is basically the reflexive response that is produced by the unconditioned stimulus. So, for example, a piece of meat is an unconditioned stimulus.

An animal does not have to learn how to respond to a piece of meat. And salivating for a dog is an unconditioned response. Dogs will reflexively salivate in the presence of food. Okay? So these are unlearned.

This is an unlearned stimulus and an unlearned response. Quite often what you'll see is that the unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response reflect something that's kind of biological or innate about that animal. Dogs salivate in the presence of food. They never have to learn to do that. Right?

So those are our unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response. Now at this phase, we are also going to have what's called a neutral stimulus and this is exactly what it sounds like. It's a stimulus that does not naturally elicit any specific consistent response from the animal. So for example, a bell is a neutral response to a dog and that's one of the things that Pavlov used in his original experiments. But the sound of a bell does not have any inherent meaning to a dog.

Right? Though a dog is not really going to have any specific response to it so that is our neutral stimulus. It basically has no meaning at this time. It's completely neutral. Alright.

That is our before learning phase. Next, we have what are known as the acquisition trials or the acquisition phase. This is basically the phase of conditioning where we are going to be pairing our neutral stimulus and our unconditioned stimulus and essentially this is the phase where learning is actually going to be taking place. Right? So basically what you're going to do is you're going to have your neutral stimulus, so you're going to ring your bell, then you're going to present the dog with the unconditioned stimulus, so some food, and then that is going to be eliciting the unconditioned response.

So at the time or during these acquisition trials, this unconditioned response is still being caused by the meat. You have to have meat present in order for the dog to salivate. So this is basically we're just pairing these two stimuli over and over and then they're going to be producing that unconditioned response. Now one thing to note here is that for the strongest learning to take place, so the fastest learning and the strongest learning, what you want is that your neutral stimulus should precede the unconditioned stimulus. But what you're going to want to do is, you know, ring that bell, wait a couple of seconds, and then present the food.

What you're trying to teach the animal essentially is that this stimulus is signaling or predicting the presence of this stimulus. That's what you're trying to get the animal to understand. So we're going to do that over, you know, days, weeks, even potentially months. We're doing those learning trials over and over. And then finally, we have our after conditioning or after learning phase.

Now at this point, the neutral stimulus elicits the unconditioned response. Because that is happening our terminology is now going to change. So basically the neutral stimulus is now going to be referred to as a conditioned stimulus. So a conditioned stimulus is a previously neutral stimulus that now produces a reliable response. So our bell is now considered a conditioned or a learned stimulus.

We basically learned something about that bell, it's no longer considered neutral to that animal. And then that is going to be producing a conditioned response and the conditioned response is going to be a reaction that is very similar or honestly even identical to the unconditioned response. But it's going to be produced by that conditioned stimulus. So now when our dog is salivating we're going to call that a conditioned response. So honestly even though we have a lot of new terminology here the actual, like, stimuli and behavior is basically all the same. So basically, your neutral stimulus is now called a conditioned stimulus and your unconditioned response is now called a conditioned response but it's all referring to the same stimuli and the same behaviors.

It's just new terminology because learning has taken place. Alright, so that is the actual process of classical conditioning. Again, it is very important for you to understand what each of those words means and be able to understand, what all of these abbreviations refer to. So definitely take your time with that and make sure that you can kind of follow along with that process of conditioning and use all of those terms appropriately. That will be very important moving forward in this chapter.

Alright, great job with that one guys and I'll see you in the next one. Bye bye.

Classical Conditioning Example 2

Okay, so for our situation here we're going to be basically just labeling our unconditioned stimulus, our unconditioned response, neutral stimulus, conditioned stimulus, and our conditioned response. Then when we're done, we're going to be putting a star on the box that represents the phase where learning is taking place. So, beginning over here with this green box, it looks like we have some food and our cat is responding very excitedly to that food. And this would represent that our food would be an unconditioned or an unlearned stimulus, right?

And then the cat responding to it is going to be our unconditioned response. So these are both unlearned, right? The cat does not need to learn how to respond to food; that is something that is innate within that animal. So those are our unlearned stimuli and our unlearned response, basically. And then we also have a can opener.

And to a cat a can opener is completely neutral, right? That is a meaningless piece of stimuli. So you can see we have our neutral stimulus here, our can opener, and it is not eliciting any response in our cat. We have no response here. Now moving over here, you can see we're beginning to pair our two types of stimuli.

So our labels are going to be the exact same, that can opener is a neutral stimulus; we are pairing that neutral stimulus with our unconditioned stimulus, and then that unconditioned stimulus is still producing that unconditioned response. And we're going to do that over and over and over until eventually the cat is now responding to this can opener. So learning has taken place. So this can opener is now a learned stimulus or a conditioned stimulus. So our neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus and then that conditioned stimulus elicits the conditioned response, right?

And again, this response is basically the same one that we saw before. Our terminology has just changed because learning has taken place. Now, in order to think about which box represents the phase where learning is taking place, that is going to be this box here where we are pairing our two types of stimuli together. Right? Our acquisition phase, or those trials where we're pairing our two types of stimuli and basically teaching the animal that the presence of this stimulus predicts the presence of that stimulus.

And that is what eventually will come to elicit that conditioned response over time. Alright. So there you have it, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye bye.

Which term describes the bell in Pavlov's experiment before the acquisition phase?

• A. Neutral stimulus.
• B. Conditioned stimulus.
• C. Unconditioned stimulus.
• D. Excitatory stimulus.

Dr. Cho runs a lab studying learning in rats. Rats typically show a fear response (like freezing) when presented with a loud noise. Dr. Cho pairs a loud noise with a flash of light repeatedly until the rats freeze at the light alone. In this study, what is the conditioned stimulus?

• A. The rat.
• B. The fear response (freezing)
• C. The light.
• D. The loud noise.

Extensions of Conditioned Responses: Second-Order Conditioning

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.

Classical Conditioning Example 3

Okay. So for this one, we're going to be putting events in order to describe higher-order conditioning and then we're going to circle the step where the original conditioned stimulus is no longer needed to produce the conditioned response. Alright, so if we are thinking about second-order or higher-order conditioning, the first thing that we have to do is basically have a previously established conditioned response. For example, a bell that makes an animal salivate. Based on that, it looks like that would be here, so we'll cross out and put that over here.

So that's the first thing that we have to do and now we basically have to pair a new neutral stimulus with that conditioned stimulus over and over in some kind of acquisition or learning trials. That would be here. So we're going to be pairing our new neutral stimulus, for example, our flashing light, with our conditioned stimulus, for example, our bell, and then over time that light alone is going to be enough to produce a conditioned response which is what is describing here. So our neutral stimulus is now considered a conditioned stimulus and it by itself can elicit that conditioned response. Out of all these steps, the only one where we don't need the previous conditioned stimulus present at all is going to be this final one right here.

Remember, obviously, we would need it here before any learning has taken place; at that point, our neutral stimulus is completely neutral and has no meaning to the animal. Right? And then during the acquisition phases, we do need that conditioned stimulus, the previous one, still present in order to elicit that response. The neutral stimulus is being learned about but not in a strong enough way where it's producing that response on its own yet during that acquisition phase. However, by our final phase here, you know, kind of that after conditioning or after learning then our new neutral stimulus, now called a conditioned stimulus, is going to be strong enough to produce that response all on its own.

So there you have it.

For higher-order conditioning to occur, a new neutral stimulus must be paired with what?

• A. A conditioned stimulus.
• B. Another neutral stimulus.
• C. An unconditioned stimulus.
• D. An extinct stimulus.

Extensions of Conditioned Responses: Stimulus Generalization and Discrimination

Okay, so like we talked about, conditioned responses can be extended or they can also be refined. And two examples of this are stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination. So stimulus generalization is pretty much what it sounds like. It's the tendency for stimuli that are similar to the conditioned stimulus to also generate the conditioned response. So, for example, let's just say we have trained an animal to salivate when they hear an A note on the piano.

In this case, our conditioned stimulus is this A note and then our conditioned response is salivation. So, that is an established response. Now with stimulus generalization what's going to happen is that similar stimuli, let's say we play an E note or a C note, are also going to generate the conditioned response. The animal has basically generalized the stimuli that it will respond to. Now, the opposite of that pretty much is stimulus discrimination.

Stimulus discrimination is when the animal has the ability to distinguish between similar but not related stimuli. So assuming, you know, our example here is the same, we have our conditioned stimulus as the A note and that produces our conditioned response of salivation. But with stimulus discrimination, what's going to happen is that similar stimuli, so an E note for example, is going to elicit no response from that animal. They have basically learned to discriminate between those very similar-sounding stimuli. So, they've basically refined their responses.

Now like I mentioned, these are basically opposites, so as stimulus discrimination increases, as the animal gets better at refining that response and discriminating between similar types of stimuli, then stimulus generalization would decrease and vice versa could also potentially happen. Alright, so that is stimulus generalization and discrimination, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye-bye.

Classical Conditioning Example 4

Alright, so for this one we're going to be reading through these examples and determining if they are talking about stimulus generalization or stimulus discrimination. So our first one reads, a lab rat learns that it often gets fed first thing in the morning when the researcher enters. Now anytime a light turns on it runs to its food bowl. So it sounds like this rat has basically generalized its response, right? It learned that when the light turns on first thing in the morning it's going to get food but it kind of generalized that and now it's basically responding any time a light turns on.

So that would be stimulus generalization. Alright, b reads that sheepdogs are trained using 3 distinct whistle calls. Based on which whistle sound they hear they will perform a different task. So it sounds like those dogs have basically learned to discriminate between those very similar types of stimuli and perform a specific task for each one. So that would be an example of stimulus discrimination.

And then finally, in c it says, A cat is classically conditioned to meow when they hear certain words. After a while the cat starts to meow anytime a person speaks. So it sounds like that cat has basically generalized its response, right? It's no longer responding to that very specific conditioned stimulus of those, you know, words it was trained on. It's kind of generalized that response and now it's responding to any words.

So that would be stimulus generalization. All right, I will see you guys in our next one. Bye bye!

Which of the following statements are accurate?

I) A cat runs to the kitchen every time they hear kibble being poured. Over time, the also begin to run to the kitchen anytime someone pours cereal. This is an example of stimulus generalization.

II) As stimulus generalization decreases, stimulus discrimination also decreases.

III) In stimulus discrimination, a similar stimulus will not elicit the conditioned response.

• A. I & II.
• B. II & III.
• C. I & III.
• D. I, II, & III

Extinction

Okay, so our conditioned responses aren't always permanent; they can actually go away, and we call that process extinction. Extinction is essentially the elimination of a learned response, and it's going to occur when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus. So, basically what's going to happen is after a few repetitions of no longer pairing these two things, the conditioned stimulus will no longer create the conditioned response. To kind of walk you through an example, let's just say we have our acquisition trials where our neutral stimulus, our bell, is getting paired with an unconditioned stimulus or some food. And, of course, over time we have learning taking place, we're getting more and more drops of saliva from that animal until eventually that bell by itself is going to be producing our response.

So, that bell is now a conditioned stimulus; it's producing a conditioned response, learning has taken place. Now, what's going to happen is during our extinction trials, we're going to present that conditioned stimulus alone. So we're going to ring the bell, but we're never going to give the dog any food. What's going to happen is for the first couple of trials, you're still going to see the conditioned response because the animal did learn it, right? So it's still going to be responding in some way. But, basically, over time as you repeatedly don't pair those two things anymore, eventually, that response will just disappear, and you can ring that bell and the animal is going to have no response to it at all.

Basically, what happened here, remember, we had taught the animal that the presence of this stimulus predicts the presence of this stimulus. Right? But when that association no longer holds true, then suddenly this bell essentially becomes neutral again. It completely loses meaning. It no longer predicts the presence of food, so the animal has no reason to respond to it.

Now, the speed at which extinction takes place can be affected by a few different things. So, the first is the duration and the frequency of the original conditioning. For example, if you have a conditioned response that was established over a week versus, you know, months of repeated trials, it's probably going to take longer to extinguish the one that you had established over months. Right? So just kind of the general duration and frequency of that original acquisition phase in the original conditioning can affect how long it will take for extinction to take place.

One other thing that can affect extinction is biological preparedness, which is a phenomenon that we see in organisms, both humans and animals, where we seem to make certain associations much quicker based on our evolutionary history or past. For example, it's much harder to extinguish conditioned fear responses. You know, it's obviously very evolutionarily advantageous to fear things. It keeps you alive. Right?

And so those responses can be harder to extinguish. The same goes for things like conditioned taste aversions. If you've ever had an aversion to a food after having a stomach bug, that can be really hard to make go away. Right? But there's obviously an evolutionary advantage to that.

If a food makes you sick, you want to avoid it. Right? And so things like biological preparedness can also affect the extinction process. Now, interestingly, extinction is not always necessarily permanent. We can see a phenomenon called spontaneous recovery.

So this is essentially going to be the reappearance of a conditioned response after apparent extinction, and it usually happens after a period of rest. So for example, if we look at our graph up here, what we might see is that, you know, after we have our extinction trials and our conditioned stimulus no longer creates that response, if we have a 48-hour rest period and then we bring our dog in and ring our bell, suddenly they're responding again. We have some salvation happening. So that would be an example of spontaneous recovery, and you can see it took a couple of trials, but then that response was extinguished again. And spontaneous recovery can actually happen multiple times for an animal, again, usually with brief rest periods in between each one.

Alright. So that is extinction, and I will see you guys in our next video. Bye-bye.

Classical Conditioning Example 5

Okay, so for this one we have the graphs of 2 extinction trials, and we're going to be matching the statements in this box with the graph that these statements are describing. Statement a says, "This extinction took fewer trials to achieve." So looking at our two boxes here, it looks like for this first one, it took quite a while. It looks like it really did not extinguish the response until about trial 10. Whereas in this graph, we can see that this got extinguished pretty quickly.

So by about 4 trials, we had a very weak response, and by about 7 trials in, we had basically extinguished that response completely. So a would go with this box. Now, b says, "This extinction took more trials to achieve," and so this would be describing our first graph over here, right, which again we talked about took about 10 trials to establish. Alright. c reads, "This was likely a more established response."

So that would probably be describing this graph. Right? Because it took a much longer time to extinguish that response, we can assume that it's very likely that this was a more strongly established response in the first place. So we'll put a c there, and then d reads, "This was likely a less established response," and that is probably true of this second graph here where the response got extinguished much more quickly, so we will put a d there. Alright, there you have it.

Which of the following situation is an example of extinction?

• A. Your dog runs to the door when he sees you pit your sneakers on because you always wear the on your walks. Eventually, you start wearing your sneakers all day long because they are so comfortable, and overtime, your dog stops running to the door when he sees you put your sneakers on.
• B. A toddler notices that whenever they put their crayons in a box, their parents praise the. They start putting their crayons in the box after every play session.
• C. A teenager feels anxious when they don't study for an exam. Before their next exam, they spend extra tie studying and feel less anxious.
• D. Your cat develops a habit of clawing the corner of the couch. Every time your cat does this, you redirect them with their favorite toy. Over time, they stop clawing the couch.

After extinction, a conditioned response may reappear when the conditioned stimulus is presented again after some time. What is this phenomenon?

• A. Stimulus generalization.
• B. Stimulus discrimination.
• C. Spontaneous recovery.
• D. Higher-order conditioning.

Common Misconceptions

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.