Classical Conditioning: Discrimination and Factors

Study Notes

Discrimination

In classical conditioning, discrimination refers to the tendency of a response to be elicited more by one stimulus than another.
Example: An animal will not salivate to the sound of a bell if the conditioned stimulus (CS) is a tone.
Discrimination can be trained, e.g., an animal will learn to salivate only to a 1000 Hz tone if it's always followed by food, while an 800 Hz tone is never followed by food.

Factors Influencing Conditioning

Timing: Classical conditioning works best when the CS is presented before the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and when the CS and UCS are close together in time.
Predictability: The CS must provide the organism with information on whether the UCS is likely to occur, i.e., the CS must predict the occurrence of the UCS.
Novelty: Conditioning works best when the CS is novel.
Salience: Conditioning works best when the CS is noticeable (salient) but not overpowering.

Conditioning of Emotional Responses

Many emotional responses, such as fear, disgust, arousal, likes, and dislikes, are classically conditioned.
John Watson's experiment with baby Albert (Watson & Rayner, 1920) demonstrated that emotional responses can be conditioned.
Fears are commonly conditioned, and the gold standard treatment is exposure therapy, which involves exposing the person to the object of their fear to learn it can be encountered safely.
A goal of modern research is to strengthen extinction learning and reduce relapse of fear after exposure therapy.

Description

Learn about the concept of discrimination in classical conditioning, where a response is elicited more by one stimulus than another, and factors that influence conditioning, such as timing and contiguity.