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Discussing Classical Conditioning

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Examine the theory of classical conditioning. In your examination, address the following:

o Describe the theory of classical conditioning.
o Select a scenario in which you would apply classical conditioning theory, such as training your dog to sit or training your partner to clean the house.
o Describe your selected scenario and illustrate how you would apply classical conditioning theory to the scenario
.
Use at least three references, one of which may be your book. Two need to be from a peer-reviewed journal or book on a related topic. The last one can be from a website or another electronic source.

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Classical Conditioning

o Describe the theory of classical conditioning.

Remove the word, 'classical' and the concept of conditioning is based on the idea that like most other animals, humans can be conditioned, trained, or programmed to act in a certain way. The programming occurs by using a cause [stimulus, reward, or action] that produces a response, which is an effect. Actually, unification in the field of psychology will one day link the science of UniversalGravitation.org that's Isaac Newton's scientific law of cause and effect. In fact, the Journal of Behaviorism references Gormezano & Coleman's peer reviewed article, "Classical conditioning and the Law of Effect" as it includes empirical data on the subject matter. Hence, most everyone knows the famous axiom: "For every action, there's an equal or opposite reaction."

Missouri University of Science and Technology references how, "the classical conditioning experiment conducted by Pavlov goes as follows: A dog is hooked to a mechanism that measures the amount that the dog salivates. A tone is sounded just before a dog is given meat powder. This occurs several times. Eventually, conditioning occurs in that the dog salivates just to the bell alone. Of course, the dog salivates instinctively in response to the food, but "learns" to salivate to the sound of the bell, much as you might find your mouth watering at the site, smell, or even memory of your favorite food. Pavlov used this relatively simple experiment as a model for describing much of the automatic/nonconscious learning that occurs in everyday life. In any case where you have "learned" to respond automatically to some sort of stimulus with fear, joy, excitement, or anticipation you have become classically conditioned."

> http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/classical_conditioning.htm

-------> Note: You may (or may not) wish to expand on this section by incorporating notes from Northern Illinois University's data on the key concepts of classical conditioning, which includes, "Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS), Unconditioned Response (UCR), Conditioned Stimulus (CS), Conditioned Response (CR), and the following terms:

- Acquisition
The acquisition phase is the consistent parings of the CS (bell) and the UCS (food) that produces a CR (salivation). In the example above, this phase occurs when the dog begins to salivate at the ...

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