The Pros And Cons Of Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning, or also called Pavlovian conditioning, is a form of learning in which a conditioned stimulus can induce a conditioned response by pairing the conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus. It is known as Pavlovian conditioning because a Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov developed this idea in the early 1900s (Madden, Dube, Hackenberg, Hanley, Lattal, 2013). This learning theory is the factor of someone having phobias and drug addiction. “Phobia is an acquired fear that is out of proportion to the real threat of an object or of a situation” (Gazzaniga, Heatherton, & Halpern, 2016, p.235). However, in recent years there has been increasing evidence that suggests the possibility of treating these problems with counter-conditioning.

There are non-associative, associative and observational learning. Classical conditioning is an associative type of learning. It is the learning of the relationship between two pieces of information.To have a deeper understanding about classical conditioning, Pavlov’s experiments will be further discussed. According to Dickinson (1981), Pavlov first exposed food to a dog which causes salivation, due to salivary reflex. Afterwards, he exposed a neutral stimulus, in this case a metronome, to the dog which naturally would not make the dog salivate. During trials, the clicking metronome is presented to the dog just before the meal is given. After time passed by, the sound of the clicking metronome caused the dog to salivate because the dog expected to get food. This process of association is called acquisition. In this experiment, the dog was conditioned to associate the clicking sound of metronome with food. The food is the unconditioned stimulus (US), the clicking of metronome is the conditioned stimulus (CS), salivation caused by food is called unconditioned response (UR) and salivation caused by the clicking of metronome is called the conditioned response (CR) (Gazzaniga et al., 2016