Classical Conditioning Research Paper

Classical Conditioning
Louise Marie Reyes
N00766860
Practical Nursing
November 27, 2014
PSYC-150
Rena Borovilos

Ian Pavlov is a Russian physiologist who directed a research at the Institute of

Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg, Russia. He studied the physiology of digestion in dogs

and won a Noble Prize Award in 1904. Pavlov’s observations from his experiments leads him to

express the concept of conditioned reflex; reflex is an automatic, unlearned response to a

specific stimulus. Also the kind of learning he studied is known as classical conditioning.

According to Wood, Wood, Boyd, Wood, Desmarais (2011), “classical conditioning is a process

through which a response previously made only to a specific

According to Wood et al. (2011), “conditioned stimulus is a neutral stimulus

that comes to elicit reflexive response after being paired with UCS and conditioned

response is a learned response elicited by conditioned stimulus” (p. 127-128). In Pavlov’s

classical conditioning model depicts how a dog salivate to a bell. In the first stage which is the

before conditioning, the food is the unconditioned stimulus that leads to salivation which is the

unconditioned response. Also, the bell is the conditioned stimulus that leads to no salivation. In

during conditioning stage, the bell is the CS, the food is the UCS, and the salivation is UCR. The

after classical conditioning which is the last stage the bell is CS that leads the dog to salivate;

salivation in this stage is the CS. Therefore, if the dog hears the tone of the bell, the dog starts to

salivate even before the presentation of food.

My behaviour had developed through classical conditioning because my mom and I have

strong bond. For instance, when I noticed that my mother is not in our house or she

Wood et al. (2011)

mentions that “high-order conditioning occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with an existing

conditioned stimulus, becomes associated with it, and the gains the powers of to elicit the same

conditioned response. Spontaneous recovery is the appearance of an extinguished response when

an organism is exposed to the original conditioned stimulus following a rest period” (p. 129).

High order conditioning and discrimination are both factors of classical conditioning process and

these may apply to my behaviour. My mother which is the unconditioned stimulus combined

with the present conditioned stimulus which is the smell of worn clothes develops the same

conditioned response which is the positive warm feeling and this outcome is the high-order

conditioning. Spontaneous recovery may also apply to my behaviour; when I don’t see the

presence of my mother and smell her worn clothes, I temporarily forget that my mother is not at

home, but after a while, I started to feel the positive warm feeling when I smell her worn clothes.

As a result, the two factors of the classical conditioning process were applied to my