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TOPIC:LEARNING AND CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

Submitted To: MA’AM: SUMBUL

Submitted By:

Muhammad Talha 2012-EE-316

Salman Naveed 2012-EE-350

Ali Hussain 2012-EE-110

SECTION: F

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Learning Theories

Whenever we talk about learning, we think of something that is related to

the classroom, such as English, Mathematics or any other subject. Psychologists refer the learning to a permanent change in behavior on a person as a result of their experience.

Learning is not only related to us but although it is a fundamental process in all other creatures like animals etc. The most important thing is the ability to learn. Everyone has unique ability, all animals have to adapt their behaviour in order to fit and survive in that particular environment.

Much of our behavior consists of learned responses to simple stimuli. Here, the question arises; can all the behaviour should be analyzed in the same way? Some psychologists’ views about the behavior are that it is the sum of many simple stimulus-response connections. While other psychologists believed that stimulus-response is too simplistic and that even simple responses to stimuli require the processing of a vast amount of information.

The Behaviorists are a group of psychologists who focus on these stimulus-response connections, among which the famous one are Watson and Skinner. Behaviorism arose because there was dissatisfaction with approaches in psychology that involved 'unscientific, techniques like introspection and dealt with immeasurable aspects of behavior such as the role of the unconscious mind. Behaviorists try to explain the causes of behavior by studying only those behaviors that can be observed and measured. They leave focused their efforts on two types of learning processes known as classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

Classical Conditioning

This is mainly called learning by association. It is the process in which two stimuli are paired and occurred repeatedly. A Russian physiologist called Ivan Pavlov, who studied salivation in dogs as we talk about his research program. Normally, dogs will salivate, when food is presented, but Pavlov was interested why the dogs had started salivate even when they saw the people that are usually fed them (dogs also responded even to the sound of the dishes that is used for their meals). Pavlov performed an experiment to seek out that the dogs can be trained to salivate at other stimuli like the sound of a bell or a light. At feeding times, Pavlov rings a bell and the amount of saliva produced by the dog was measured. After his efforts and several 'trials'

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Pavlov rang the bell without presenting the food and he found the dogs salivated in the same manner as if the food was presented.

You will notice that the conditional response is the similar as the unconditioned response, the only difference being that the response is evoked by a different stimulus.

The Procedure of Classical Conditioning:

In scientific terms, the procedure is as follows.

1. Food is the unconditioned stimulus or UCS. By this, Pavlov meant that the stimulus that elicited the response occurred naturally.

2. The salivation to the food is an unconditioned response (UCR), that is a response which occurs naturally.

3. The bell is the conditioned stimulus (CS) because it will only produce salivation on condition that it is presented with the food.

4. Salivation to the bell alone is the conditioned response (CR), a response to the conditioned stimulus.

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