Classical Conditioning

Learning

Classical Conditioning

There are many different styles of learning. Each aspect of learning can have different effects on each person individually. They can range things such as discriminative listening, comprehension listening, and there are other kinds of listening that can all correlate and culminate in the eventual learning http://changingminds.org/techniques/listening/types_listening.htm However the type and instance of learning that is going to be focused on in this blog is the way of learning called classical conditioning.

What is it?

The idea of classical conditioning was discovered by a Russian medical researcher know as Ivan Pavlov. He was studying the digestive systems of dogs. This led him to study the salivating glands in dogs. He determined that when the dogs received the food they would salivate, however as the experiment continued on he was shocked to see the dogs salivating before the food even made it to the mouth of dog. He discovered that the footsteps of the one feeding the dogs or even the door opening would lead to the dog salivating. He determined that the form of learning that these dogs underwent was what he called classical conditioning. Classical Conditioning: A form of learning in which animals or people make a connection between two stimuli that have occurred together, such that one predicts the other. There are many aspects on this idea of classical conditioning one is the neutral stimulus, which is a stimulus that causes no response. So this would be someone saying a word or making a noise, or in the case of Ivan ringing a bell and having no response. Another aspect is the unconditioned stimulus which is a stimulus that causes a response without any need for learning. In this case for Ivan it would have been the food given to the dogs. An unconditioned response is the automatic response to a stimulus. These were all the initial reaction of the dogs in Pavlov’s experiments to the bell ringing and the food. Over time however, the neutral stimuli transformed into a conditioned stimuli which caused a response in the animal. The reason this took place was that a conditioned response took place this is a response acquired through learning. As Ivan Pavlov began to ring the bell before each feeding of the dogs they learned that the bell meant food, and began to salivate without food. Therefore Pavlov learned that you can condition animals and thus humans to have certain responses to certain stimuli. file:///C:/Users/Daniel%20Beal/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/Week%207_Chapter_Pomerantz1e_Learning.pdf

 

Personal Learning:

When reading about this way in which learning takes place was the fact that people and animals can be trained do respond certain ways to certain stimuli. This idea of learning is one of the ways in which many people train animals in order to receive the response that they desire.

Real-World Application:

There are many ways in which this way of learning is used in the real world today. However, one of the biggest users of this in today’s world is the advertisement industry. One of the main reasons that the industry uses these techniques is because they want to train the viewer to have a positive response to the product that they are intending to sell. Of course one of the best examples of this is McDonalds. After showing any of their commercials they play the jingle “I’m lovin it” they do this in order to get people to think about their food anytime that is played even without viewing the food. This can cause the response of craving the food that has been advertised.

 

Sources:

file:///C:/Users/Daniel%20Beal/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/Week%207_Chapter_Pomerantz1e_Learning.pdf

http://changingminds.org/techniques/listening/types_listening.htm

https://chinaipr2.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/mcdonalds.jpg

https://smilingculture.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/pavlov.jpg

https://monicaj7.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/pavlov-dogs.jpg