Classical (Respondent) Conditioning

Pavlov's pioneering work

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist who worked during the first decades of the 20th century, first systematically investigated classical conditioning.

Pavlov studied digestion in dogs. In order to study what occurs when a dog eats, he performed a minor operation in which he placed tubes into their salivary glands to measure their salivation.

Salivation reflexively occurs when a dog eats, but Pavlov noticed a strange thing in dogs that had been in his experimental setup for some time. Rather then just salivate when fed, they also salivated when the assistant who usually fed them entered the room, that is, before they were actually fed.

Believing that the dogs salivated because they associated food with the arrival of the assistant, Pavlov theorized that any stimulus could acquire the power to elicit salivation if it was followed often enough by food.

So, he did an experiment. 

Pavlov first rang a bell, then he presented meat powder to the restrained dog. The meat powder caused the dog to salivate. He repeated this procedure until he found that when the meat powder was omitted, the bell by itself was enough to elicit salivation. 

3 necessary elements

Pavlov's procedure involved the 3 necessary elements necessary for any conditioned response.

Established reflex

An established reflex is a stimulus and a response where the stimulus automatically elicits the response. The stimulus part of the reflex is referred to as the unconditioned stimulus (US) and the response part of the reflex is the unconditioned response (UR).

In Pavlov's experiment, what was the UR?
bell
food
salivation

In Pavlov's experiment, what was the US?
bell
food
salivation

Neutral stimulus

A neutral stimulus is a stimulus that does not elicit the response prior to the conditioning procedure. The neutral stimulus is referred to as the conditioned stimulus, or CS.

In this case, what was the neutral stimulus?
bell
food
salivation

Repeated pairing of the CS and the US

Finally, one must repeatedly pair the CS and the US until a conditioned response (CR) is established. 

The salivation to the bell is called a conditioned response because is now a learned response to a new stimulus.

On the other hand, if a dog reflexively salivates to food, salivation in this case would be an ___________ response.
conditioned
unconditioned

A variety of stimuli and responses can be used

Stimuli

Basically any neutral stimulus that an organism can discriminate can be used as the CS.

So, if a dog can detect the difference between the word "pizza" and other human vocalizations, the word "pizza" could be used as a CS.
true
false

Responses

Only reflexive responses can be conditioned to neutral stimuli using respondent procedures.

How does one distinguish between reflexes and other responses? One must determine whether the response is involuntary.  One also needs to determine whether the stimulus-response connection is learned or not learned.

Are unconditioned responses (URs) learned?
yes
no

Given the above two criteria, which of the following would not be a reflexive response?
an eye blink to a puff of air
muscle contraction to a shock
chewing when food is the mouth
a knee jerk when the knee is tapped

The most important category of reflexes are the emotions. Emotions such as fear, happiness, anger, love, and sexual arousal are considered reflexes and, as such, are learned through respondent conditioning.

For example, a child may have developed a fear of dogs after having been bitten by a dog.

In this case, what was the unconditioned response?
the sight of the dog
the fear
the pain of the bite

What is the CS, the formerly neutral stimulus?
the sight of the dog
the fear
the pain of the bite

What, then, is the US?
the sight of the dog
the fear
the pain of the bite

Stimulus generalization

Very often a conditioned response (CR) will not only occur to the original CS, but to new stimuli that are similar to the CS. The strongest CR will occur to stimuli most similar to the CS, with ever weaker responses to stimuli more and more different from the original. This phenomenon is referred to as stimulus generalization.

Given this, one would expect the least generalization of the fear response to _______
a cat
a wolf
a different dog
a snake

Classical (respondent) and operant conditioning compared

So, what's the difference between respondent conditioning and operant conditioning?

A prototypical example of respondent conditioning is Pavlov's experiment.

Bell (CS) ---- Food (US) ---- Salivation (UR)

A typical example of operant conditioning would be a rat in a Skinner box pressing the bar in order to get food.

The nature of the association

In operant conditioning, the important association is between ______
the before condition and the response
the response and its consequences

In respondent conditioning, the necessary association is between ______
the CS and the US
the CS and the UR
the US and the UR

So, in operant conditioning, the important association is between the response and what comes after the response, while in respondent conditioning the important association is between events the come before the response (the CS and the US).

The nature of the response

What kinds of responses are conditioned in a respondent procedure? 
voluntary responses
reflexes only

What kinds of responses are conditioned in an operant procedure?
voluntary responses
reflexes only

Higher order conditioning

Suppose we condition a person to blink her eyes whenever a red light comes on.

To accomplish this, we turn on a red light and then follow the light with the repeated presentation of ________ which in turn causes a blink.
a verbal prompt, "Blink".
a picture of a sad scene.
a puff of air to the subject's eye.

Once the subject is blinking whenever the red light comes on, we then sound a tone and quickly follow it with the presentation of the red light. 

tone (CS) ---- red light (CS) ---- blink (CR)

If we repeatedly pair the tone and the red light, what will eventually happen?
The tone will not elicit blinking because it has never been directly paired with the puff of air to the eye.
The tone will elicit blinking.

Blinking to the tone would be an example of higher order conditioning.

If standard respondent conditioning is based upon a CS-US pairing, higher order conditioning is based upon a CS-CS pairing.
true
false

Jim has anxiety to math because he has had a history of failing math tests. The CS for Jim is math and the CR is anxiety.
true
false

Math ---- Failure ---- Anxiety

Math has been paired with failure which itself produces anxiety. Is math anxiety the result of higher order conditioning? (To answer, ask yourself whether failure is a CS or an US; i.e., do we learn to fear failure or do we naturally fear failure?)
Yes, math anxiety is the result of higher order conditioning.
No, math anxiety is not the result of higher order conditioning.

Suppose a child goes to the dentist and has a cavity filled, a painful experience.

The CR would be fear, while the CS would be ______
pain.
the sight of the white-coated dentist.

If higher order conditioning has occurred, one would expect this child also to fear ______
doctors wearing white coats.
the waiting room of the dentist's office.

If stimulus generalization occurs, one would expect this child also to fear ______
doctors wearing white coats.
the waiting room of the dentist's office.

Conditioned aversion

Learning to fear dogs, spiders, math, or dentists would be examples of conditioned, or learned, aversion.

However, sometimes behavior therapists deliberately wish to condition aversion to some stimulus in order to make that stimulus less attractive. Why? Because that stimulus is something that the client would be better off if he didn't like it so much.

For example, alcoholics like alcohol too much. One form of therapy would be to give the alcoholic a drug called antabuse. If he drinks while antabuse is in his system, he gets violently ill. On the other hand, nothing happens if the alcoholic doesn't drink.

The CS?
nausea and vomiting
the antabuse
the taste of alcohol

The CR?
nausea and vomiting
the antabuse
the taste of alcohol

Extinction of conditioned responses

Suppose a dog has learned to salivate to a tone after this tone has been paired with food.

How do we extinguish this salivation?
Give the dog as much food as he can eat so that the tone doesn't elicit salivation.
Repeatedly present the tone without the food until the dog no longer salivates to the tone.
Repeatedly present the food without the tone until the dog not longer salivates to the tone.

Extinction of a learned fear response is more difficult. Suppose, for example, that you have a very strong fear of snakes because you had once been bitten by a snake.

Extinction would involve exposing you to a snake (CS) that does not bite (US). Ideally, you would pick up and handle the snake. Initially, your fear would be great, but when nothing terrible happens to you, your fear should subside and eventually extinguish.

Unfortunately, things don't work out so simply.

What might interfere with extinction in this situation?
Finding a snake that does not bite.
Extinction of a snake fear can only be accomplished through exposure to the original snake. And the original snake bites.
Intense fears are often accompanied by avoidance responses. If one avoids the feared object, extinction will not occur since one cannot learn that the object no longer poses a danger.

If avoidance responses interfere with extinction, which of the following fears would be least likely to extinguish naturally? (Hint: In real life, some things are easier to avoid than others.)
fear of riding in cars after being in an accident
fear of spiders after having been bitten
fear of bridges
fear of public speaking in a student enrolled in the required speech class

Approaches to extinction of fear responses

For extinction of a fear response to occur, an individual must be exposed to the fear-producing situation under safe, controlled conditions. This form of therapy is called exposure therapy.

Exposure therapies fall into two general categories: brief/graduated exposure therapy and prolonged/intense exposure therapy. They differ in how long the exposure to the threatening event occurs and whether this exposure is graduated, or incremental, or not.

If avoidance responses interfere with extinction of a fear response, which of these therapies would be preferable?
brief/graduated exposure therapy
prolonged/intense exposure therapy

Techniques that involve having the subject gradually approach a phobic situation, with or without reinforcement of the approach responses, help overcome the avoidance responses that can interfere with the extinction.

In exposure therapies, the mode of exposure can vary in terms of how real are the events to which a client is exposed.

At one end of the continuum is in vivo exposure, in which the client is exposed to the actual event.  At the opposite end is imaginal exposure which takes place entirely in the client's imagination.

In between these extremes is virtual reality, in which technology creates an almost real experience, and verbal and visual depictions, which are one step more real than imaginal exposure.

Let's look at a couple of examples of brief/graduated exposure therapy, one of which is in vivo and the other imaginal.

In vivo brief/graduated exposure therapy

Reinforced practice

Reinforced practice involves reinforcing step-by-step approach responses to the phobic situation.

For example, Lazarus intervened to help a child overcome his fear of cars, acquired after an accident. Lazarus used pieces of chocolate to reinforce the child for talking about various vehicles, then for watching Lazarus play with toy cars that crash into each other, then for playing with the crashing cars, then for sitting in a parked car discussing the accident, then for riding in the car a block to the candy store to get more chocolates.

Lazarus' technique illustrates the gradual approach to the phobic situation maintained by reinforcement. The child became able to ride in the car. Was extinction also occurring during this process?
yes
no

Imaginal brief/graduated exposure therapy

Systematic desensitization

Systematic desensitization is a technique developed by Joseph Wolpe in which a person with a phobia practices relaxation while imagining scenes related to the fear-producing stimulus. 

For example, suppose that a person is terrified of flying.

There are 3 steps:
1. The client learns relaxation skills.
2. The therapist and client develop a hierarchy of fear-producing stimuli.
3. The client practices the relaxation skills while the therapist describes scenes from the hierarchy.

In the flying example, the person would create a hierarchy of scenes related to flying ranging from the least anxiety-producing (looking at pictures of airplanes) to more anxiety-producing (getting into a car to travel to the airport) to the most anxiety-producing (being strapped into an airplane and taking off), with many intermediate scenes between these. 

In what order should the client imagine these anxiety-producing scenes?
from the most- to the least-anxiety producing
from the least- to the most-anxiety producing

This technique relies on counterconditioning. A new response (relaxation) is conditioned to the fear producing CS at the same time it is being extinguished. In the case of systematic desensitization, the logic behind practicing relaxation is that one cannot be relaxed and anxious at the same time. So the relaxation exercises inhibit the anxiety.

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