Classical Conditioning (AP Psychology Review)

hello there everybody and welcome to the Mr sin Channel if this is our first time meeting my name is Mr sin and I am here to help you rock your AP Psychology class today we are going to be reviewing classical conditioning to start let's review stimulus and response a stimulus is an event or a thing that triggers a specific reaction when talking about classical conditioning you are going to need to be familiar with a neutral stimulus an unconditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimul Ulus a neutral stimulus is a stimulus that elicits no response from a subject for instance this light on the screen if I had not said anything you probably wouldn't even really thought about it here the stimuli is observed but it does not elicit a response now an unconditioned stimulus on the other hand is a stimulus that naturally triggers a response there is no teaching here or prior knowledge for instance if you are relaxing after a long day of school and all of a sudden there is a loud bang you will most likely jump or at least become startled here you did not have to be taught to react to the loud sound there is no prior learning the sound naturally elicits the response now let's say I decide to show the light on the screen and about a second after I play a loud bang if I were to repeat this process multiple times over a period of time eventually I may be able to pair the light with the loud bang this would be an example of a conditioned stimulus which is when a stimulus that is neutral is paired with an unconditioned stimulus to trigger a conditioned response here learning has happened eventually I would be able to show the light and elicit the jump or startle that the loud bang elicited without even needing the sound now so far I've been focusing on the stimuli but we also need to talk about the responses let's go back to our unconditioned stimulus example notice that in this example you are relaxing after a long day of school and all of a sudden there's a loud bang what happens after the bang is known as the unconditioned response resp which is a response that does not need to be learned and occurs naturally in our example the unconditioned response was you jumping or becoming startled due to the loud sound you did not have to be taught that when you hear a loud sound unexpectedly to jump or become startled it happened on its own on the other hand if we go back to our example of a conditioned stimulus we can see a conditioned response when pairing the light with a loud bang sound we are learning to respond to the previously neutral stimulus when the light elicits the response of us jumping or being startled that is the conditioned response learning has now occurred now this whole process of having an individual link two or more stimuli together is known as classical conditioning this is a type of learning in which an individual or animal comes to associate two different stimuli and as a result responds to one of them in a way that is similar to how it responds to the other in 1890 a Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov discovered classical condition I conditioning in his famous experiment where Pavlov used dogs the sound of a bell and the presentation of food before the experiment the sound of a bell would elicit no response from the dog and the presentation of food would elicit the dog to salivate after doing the experiment and repeating the process the Bell alone elicited salvation from the dog now when it comes to classical conditioning you also want to try and make sure that you are familiar with acquisition Extinction spontaneous recover y stimulus generalization and also discrimination and of course last but not least higher order conditioning but we'll get to that in a little bit acquisition occurs during the stage where the condition stimulus is repeatedly presented just before or at the same time as the unconditioned stimulus this leads to association between the two stimuli to form eventually if the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented without the unconditioned stimulus the association between the the two will weaken and the condition response will diminish and eventually disappear this is known as Extinction after Extinction occurs if there is a delay and the conditioned stimulus is presented again the conditioned response may briefly reappear generally this response is weaker than it was during acquisition if this happens it is known as a spontaneous recovery now we can also see stimulus generalization and discrimination occur during classical conditioning stimulus generaliz ation is when a subject responds to a similar CS for instance if we go back to Pavlov and his dog if Pavlov presented the dog with different tones that were similar to the original Bell and those tones elicited the dog to salivate that would be stimulus generalization on the other hand if Pavlov played a different tone and found that the dog recognized that the two stimuli were different and only salivated for certain tones that would be stimulus discrimination Pavlov could accomplish this by playing a tone similar to the Bell but never giving the dog food after the tone eventually the dog would learn not to salivate to that tone last but not least there is higher order conditioning also known as second order conditioning this is when conditioning has already occurred and a new neutral stimulus is presented to a subject to be paired with an already conditioned stimulus when this happens the neutral stimulus becomes the new conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus being present for example if Pavlov turned on a light and then rang the bell then gave the dog food the dog would start to associate the light with the Bell which is already associated with the food resulting in the dog eventually salivating at the light being turned on in this example the light was never paired with the food it was only paired with the Bell well there you have it a quick overview of classical conditioning now if you do need more help in your psychology class don't forget to check out my ultimate review packet it'll help you get not only an A in your class but a five on that AP Nation exam as always I'm Mr sin thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time online