What is classical conditioning? Explain with examples.
Psychology
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Classical conditioning is a learning process discovered by Ivan Pavlov where an organism learns to associate a neutral stimulus with a meaningful one.
Pavlov's experiment:
- Dogs naturally salivate (unconditioned response) when seeing food (unconditioned stimulus)
- Pavlov rang a bell (neutral stimulus) before presenting food
- After repeated pairings, dogs salivated at just the bell (now a conditioned stimulus)
- Salivating to the bell alone = conditioned response
Real-life examples:
- Hearing a song → feeling happy (because it played during a good memory)
- Seeing a dentist's office → feeling anxious
- Phone notification sound → checking your phone immediately
Key concepts: extinction (response fades without reinforcement), generalization (responding to similar stimuli), discrimination (only responding to the specific stimulus).
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