A Comprehensive Understanding of Classical Conditioning

Third concept : Classical Conditioning

The phenomenon whereby a stimulus that elicits an emotional response is accompanied by a neutral stimulus that does not until eventually the neutral stimulus elicits the emotional response by itself. Stimulus and responses form the speech and emotional responses without the concern of the mind and consciousness. All individual differences in response is resulted from distinct experiences of learning. This concept includes learning a behavior or response through a process called association. For an example, you experienced feelings of love when you visited your grandfather and your grandfather's house always smelled faintly of roses. Gradually, the smell of roses alone will arouse the emotions you experienced during your visits, through the process of classical conditioning.

In this video, the classical conditioning theory is explained through Eve's life. Eve is a successful women, she likes to go to the garden and she feels joyful to walk around in the garden. When she was young, she always spend the time with her best friend in the garden. She felt very joyful being with her friend is repeatedly paired with being in the garden. Hence, the joy that she spent with her best friend is replaced by being in the garden eventually. Now she feels the sense of joy whenever she goes there because the place makes her recall back her memory that she had a great time with her best friend.

There are 3 stages to classical conditioning.

Stage 1 : Before Conditioning. A stimulus in the environment produces an response that is unlearned. Hence, it is a natural response. For example, a friend(UCS) can creates a response of happiness(UCR) . This stage involves a neutral stimulus which creates no response until it is paired with the unconditioned stimulus. A neutral stimulus can be a person, object, place, etc.

Stage 2 : During conditioning. The neutral stimulus is now paired with the unconditioned stimulus and become conditioned stimulus(CS) . For example, Eve's friend(UCS) might associated with a specific place(CS) . Every time Eve goes to the garden will be accompanied by her friend and produce the happiness playing together.