Classical Conditioning Paper

Classical Conditioning
Everyday someone exhibits forms of classical conditioning. It is a learned responsive behavior which develops from an innate or natural stimulus. It is learning to get up and moving when the alarm clock sounds; it is the automatic covering of ears when a loud noise occurs. These are conditioned responses that exhibit a certain learned behavioral emotion. Classical conditioning can be associated with the research and studies by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian Physiologist. His contributions to conditioning are widely used in today’s studies. Pavlov introduced the theory of classical conditioning. This type of learning behavior is known to produce natural and automatic responses from neutral stimuli (Ridley, 2003).
With certain aspects of conditioning come new terms that are listed as follows: Extinction – which is a weakening of the conditioned response when there is no paring between the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). Spontaneous Recovery- is the tendency for the conditioned response (CR) to reappear after extinction takes place. Generalization- takes place when an animal or person not only to condition to the exact CS used during trail research, but also to similar stimuli- [example = Pavlov’s dogs salivating to the sound of a bell, which would tend to create the dog to salivate when any bell sound is heard (Becker, 2003)   .
Pavlov started his work on classical conditioning shortly after noticing the effects food had on his dog.   At first Pavlov noticed that whenever the dog was eating he would salivate.   Later he began to notice that when he walked into the room with food the dog would salivate in the same manner.   This made him curious as to why the dog acted in such a nature.   After thinking and researching this matter he believed that these actions were both learned and unlearned components in the dog’s behavior. Pavlov believed that an (US) created a natural and automatic response from the organism...