In almost every course on cognitive psychology, there is a chapter about learning and it almost always starts with classical (Pavlovian) conditioning. The terminology of classical conditioning (conditioned – unconditioned stimulus – respons) isn’t that difficult although the word “conditioned” isn’t quite accurate and – according to Dinsmoor (2004) – wrongly translated from Russian. It should in fact be “conditional”, but due to the poor knowledge of the English language of Pavlov; it escaped to his attention; see also Skinner (1999) for an anecdotal recount of the story in which Pavlov was robbed upon his arrival in New York.
To fully understand and appreciate the concepts and research methods of classical conditioning, one has to do some hands-on experiments. In the video below, you see the acquisition of a fear response (freezing) of a virtual rat, named Sniffy.
The software for running this experiment is included with the textbook of Alloway et al. (2011), but you can also download a demo version from the website of the publisher. With the demo version, you can run all experiments but not save or print them (this is not necessary).
With the menu Experiment > Design Classical Conditioning Experiment …, you can set the experimental conditions (see figure). The unconditioned stimulus (US) is set to a medium intensity electrical shock. The conditioned stimulus (CS) is a medium pitched tone. The animal receives 10 trials (shocks accompanied by a tone) with 2 minutes between each trial.
Give it a try and experience the joy and pains to conduct behavioural experiments!
The post Teach yourself classical conditioning appeared first on Cogpsy.info.