4 Phenomena Associated with Classical Conditioning–Notes

The salivary response had got conditioned to the bell. Phenomena associated with classical condi­tioning: Some important phenomena associated with classical conditioning are as follows:

1. Extinction:

After a condition response has been learned what will happen if the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without being fol­lowed by the unconditioned stimulus? It will lead to a gradual weakening and finally disappearance of the conditioned response. This is known as extinction.

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Thus, extinction occurs, if after the ac­quisition of the conditioned response, conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without being followed by the unconditioned stimulus.

2. Spontaneous Recovery:

Pavlov also discov­ered the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery. Alter extinction when the dog was brought to the laboratory, after a rest interval, and the bell was sounded (again without being followed by the food) the dog began salivating. This is called spontaneous recovery.

3. Stimulus Generalisation:

Pavlov also found that a subject who is conditioned to respond to a particular stimulus (e.g., a bell) also learns to respond to stimuli which are similar (a beat of metronome or a buzzer) to the original stimuli to which the subject was conditioned. This is called stimulus generalisation. It consists in responding to stimuli which are similar to the learned stimuli.

4. Discrimination:

It is the process of learning to make one response to one stimulus and a different response or no response to another similar stimulus. In a sense, discrimination is the opposite of generalisation. An experiment on classical con­ditioning demonstrating discrimination will be something like this.

On some trials the experi­menter would pair the bell (CS) with the food (US). ON other trials he would present the beats of metronome without food. As a result of this, the dog will learn to discriminate between the bell and the metronome. He will salivate only when the bell is sounded and will not respond to the metronome.