Classical conditioning: principles and applications

Classical Conditioning

Pavlov's Roommate

Classical conditioning involves the association of two stimuli. The most well-known example of classical conditioning involves Pavlov's salivation experiments with dogs. Not to compare my roommate too strongly with animals, but he is also very fond of food. He is also a little bit of a mooch. Therefore, I chose to imitate Pavlov and use food for my conditioning.

In this experiment the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is the smell of baking brownies. The conditioned stimulus (CS) / previously neutral stimulus (NS) is the specific cell phone ring tone. The unconditioned response (UCR) is my roommate running down the stairs when he smelled the brownies baking. The conditioned response (CR) is my roommate running down the stairs when he heard the specific cell phone ring tone.

The unconditioned stimulus I chose was the smell of baking brownies. The unconditioned response I used was based on my roommate's moochiness- every time that my roommate smelled baking brownies, he would run down the stairs to grab cookies from the kitchen. Therefore, the unconditioned response was running down the stairs. The previously neutral sign that I used to grab his attention was that I took his cell phone and set a specific ring tone for when I called him with my cell phone. His cell phone is always on and is always very loud, so it would startle him and get his attention. Furthermore, during conditioning, I never used my cell phone to call him for any other purpose. When the brownies would start to smell, I would call him using my cell phone. Eventually, he came to associate that ring tone with brownies the conditioned reflex was developed through my use of classical conditioning and my roommate would come running downstairs as soon as he heard the specific in on his cell phone. Once he was downstairs, I had his attention and could talk to him.