Classical Conditioning

Classical Conditioning

An individual receives frequent injections of drugs, which are administered in a small examination room at a clinic.  This drug itself causes increased heart rate but after several trips to the clinic, simply being in a small room causes an increased heart rate.  Throughout this essay the behavioural perspective of Pavlovian’s Classical Conditioning will be applied to this scenario.

According to Plotnik & Kouyoumdjian, (2008) classical conditioning is a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the ability to produce a response that was originally produced by a different stimulus.  In lay man term, classical conditioning can be described as learning through association, which often happens unconsciously.  There are five main terms in classical conditioning; neutral stimulus, unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus and conditioned response.  A neutral stimulus is a stimulus that causes a sensory response but does not produce the behaviour being tested.  An unconditioned stimulus elicits a natural and automatic response from an organism. An unconditioned response is a response that is completely natural and occurs without an organism going through any prior learning.  The conditioned stimulus is a formerly neutral stimulus that has acquired the ability to elicit a response that was previously elicited by the unconditioned stimulus.  The conditioned response is elicited by the conditioned stimulus; it is similar to but not identical in size or amount to the unconditioned stimulus.

In the scenario presented the neutral stimulus (NS) is the small examination room.  The unconditioned stimulus (US) is the individual receiving frequent injections of drugs.  The unconditioned response (UR) is the increase of heart rate after the drug is administered.  The conditioned stimulus (CS) is the small room which was previously the neutral stimulus and the conditioned response (CR) is that simply being in a small room causes an increased heart rate.  In classical conditioning the repeated pairing of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus produces the conditioned stimulus which was previously the neutral stimulus and now evokes the neutral response.  In this scenario an individual receives frequent injections of drugs that caused increased heart rated, which was administered in a small examination room at a clinic, after a while the individual associated being in a small room with increased heart rate, since each time he went into the small room at the clinic he got an injection which increased his heart rate.