How does extinction occur in classical conditioning

The dog has learned that only this particular form of the stimulus means that food is going to be presented. With enough pairings you could teach the dog to discriminate these similar stimuli. This means that he would introduce a new neutral stimulus in addition to a previously conditioned stimulus. What does that mean? So in the case of second-order conditioning.

We already have some conditioned stimulus that causes some conditioned response; we ring a bell and the dog salivates. We have a new stimulus, then the usual conditioned stimulus, and the conditioned response. So for instance, Pavlov would do something like turn on a light and then ring a bell and then the dog would salivate. He found that if he did this enough times he could actually get the dog to salivate to the light turning on.

In other words this neutral stimulus would now become a second-order conditioned stimulus. The light would cause salivation. This is really interesting because the light has never been paired with food. Prior to conditioning, the dogs did not salivate when they just heard the tone because the tone had no association for the dogs.

Quite simply this pairing means:. When Pavlov paired the tone with the meat powder over and over again, the previously neutral stimulus the tone also began to elicit salivation from the dogs. Thus, the neutral stimulus became the conditioned stimulus CS , which is a stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus.

The behavior caused by the conditioned stimulus is called the conditioned response CR. Visit this website to play the game. View this video to learn more about Pavlov and his dogs. How does classical conditioning work in the real world? You keep her food in a separate cabinet, and you also have a special electric can opener that you use only to open cans of cat food.

What do you think Tiger does when she hears the electric can opener? She will likely get excited and run to where you are preparing her food. This is an example of classical conditioning. This means you are using the conditioned stimulus of the can opener to condition another stimulus: the squeaky cabinet Figure.

It is hard to achieve anything above second-order conditioning. Kate and her husband Scott recently vacationed in the Cayman Islands, and booked a boat tour to Stingray City, where they could feed and swim with the southern stingrays. The boat captain explained how the normally solitary stingrays have become accustomed to interacting with humans. About 40 years ago, fishermen began to clean fish and conch unconditioned stimulus at a particular sandbar near a barrier reef, and large numbers of stingrays would swim in to eat unconditioned response what the fishermen threw into the water; this continued for years.

By the late s, word of the large group of stingrays spread among scuba divers, who then started feeding them by hand. When they hear the sound of a boat engine neutral stimulus that becomes a conditioned stimulus , they know that they will get to eat conditioned response. As soon as Kate and Scott reached Stingray City, over two dozen stingrays surrounded their tour boat. The swarm of stingrays bumped and rubbed up against their legs like hungry cats Figure.

Kate and Scott were able to feed, pet, and even kiss for luck these amazing creatures. Then all the squid was gone, and so were the stingrays. Classical conditioning also applies to humans, even babies. For example, Sara buys formula in blue canisters for her six-month-old daughter, Angelina. Whenever Sara takes out a formula container, Angelina gets excited, tries to reach toward the food, and most likely salivates. Why does Angelina get excited when she sees the formula canister?

So far, all of the examples have involved food, but classical conditioning extends beyond the basic need to be fed. Consider our earlier example of a dog whose owners install an invisible electric dog fence.

A small electrical shock unconditioned stimulus elicits discomfort unconditioned response. When the unconditioned stimulus shock is paired with a neutral stimulus the edge of a yard , the dog associates the discomfort unconditioned response with the edge of the yard conditioned stimulus and stays within the set boundaries. In classical conditioning, the initial period of learning is known as acquisition , when an organism learns to connect a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus.

During acquisition, the neutral stimulus begins to elicit the conditioned response, and eventually the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus capable of eliciting the conditioned response by itself. Timing is important for conditioning to occur. Typically, there should only be a brief interval between presentation of the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus.

Depending on what is being conditioned, sometimes this interval is as little as five seconds Chance, However, with other types of conditioning, the interval can be up to several hours. Taste aversion is a type of conditioning in which an interval of several hours may pass between the conditioned stimulus something ingested and the unconditioned stimulus nausea or illness.

Between classes, you and a friend grab a quick lunch from a food cart on campus. You share a dish of chicken curry and head off to your next class.

A few hours later, you feel nauseous and become ill. How does this occur—conditioning based on a single instance and involving an extended time lapse between the event and the negative stimulus? Not only may this contribute to species survival via natural selection, but it may also help us develop strategies for challenges such as helping cancer patients through the nausea induced by certain treatments Holmes, ; Jacobsen et al.

Once we have established the connection between the unconditioned stimulus and the conditioned stimulus, how do we break that connection and get the dog, cat, or child to stop responding? Now, Tiger would hear the can opener, but she would not get food.

In classical conditioning terms, you would be giving the conditioned stimulus, but not the unconditioned stimulus. Pavlov explored this scenario in his experiments with dogs: sounding the tone without giving the dogs the meat powder.

Soon the dogs stopped responding to the tone. Extinction is the decrease in the conditioned response when the unconditioned stimulus is no longer presented with the conditioned stimulus. When presented with the conditioned stimulus alone, the dog, cat, or other organism would show a weaker and weaker response, and finally no response.

In classical conditioning terms, there is a gradual weakening and disappearance of the conditioned response. What happens when learning is not used for a while—when what was learned lies dormant?

As we just discussed, Pavlov found that when he repeatedly presented the bell conditioned stimulus without the meat powder unconditioned stimulus , extinction occurred; the dogs stopped salivating to the bell.

However, after a couple of hours of resting from this extinction training, the dogs again began to salivate when Pavlov rang the bell. Of course, these processes also apply in humans. You take a bite unconditioned stimulus and then your mouth waters unconditioned response.

This initial period of learning is known as acquisition, when you begin to connect the neutral stimulus the sound of the truck and the unconditioned stimulus the taste of the chocolate ice cream in your mouth. During acquisition, the conditioned response gets stronger and stronger through repeated pairings of the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus. Then one day you head down the street. However, when you get to the truck, you discover that they are all out of ice cream.

You leave disappointed. You begin to salivate less and less when you hear the music, until by the end of the week, your mouth no longer waters when you hear the tune. This illustrates extinction. The conditioned response weakens when only the conditioned stimulus the sound of the truck is presented, without being followed by the unconditioned stimulus chocolate ice cream in the mouth.

Then the weekend comes. Monday morning arrives and you take your usual route to campus. You round the corner and hear the truck again. What do you think happens? Your mouth begins to water again. After a break from conditioning, the conditioned response reappears, which indicates spontaneous recovery.

Acquisition and extinction involve the strengthening and weakening, respectively, of a learned association. Two other learning processes—stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalization—are involved in distinguishing which stimuli will trigger the learned association.

Animals including humans need to distinguish between stimuli—for example, between sounds that predict a threatening event and sounds that do not—so that they can respond appropriately such as running away if the sound is threatening.

When an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar, it is called stimulus discrimination. In classical conditioning terms, the organism demonstrates the conditioned response only to the conditioned stimulus. Similarly, Tiger, the cat, discriminated between the sound of the can opener and the sound of the electric mixer. When the electric mixer is going, Tiger is not about to be fed, so she does not come running to the kitchen looking for food.

On the other hand, when an organism demonstrates the conditioned response to stimuli that are similar to the condition stimulus, it is called stimulus generalization , the opposite of stimulus discrimination.

The more similar a stimulus is to the condition stimulus, the more likely the organism is to give the conditioned response.

For instance, if the electric mixer sounds very similar to the electric can opener, Tiger may come running after hearing its sound. But if you do not feed her following the electric mixer sound, and you continue to feed her consistently after the electric can opener sound, she will quickly learn to discriminate between the two sounds provided they are sufficiently dissimilar that she can tell them apart. Sometimes, classical conditioning can lead to habituation.

Habituation occurs when we learn not to respond to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly without change. As the stimulus occurs over and over, we learn not to focus our attention on it. For example, imagine that your neighbor or roommate constantly has the television blaring. However, over time, you become accustomed to the stimulus of the television noise, and eventually you hardly notice it any longer. John B. Watson , shown in Figure , is considered the founder of behaviorism.

In stark contrast with Freud, who considered the reasons for behavior to be hidden in the unconscious, Watson championed the idea that all behavior can be studied as a simple stimulus-response reaction, without regard for internal processes.

Watson argued that in order for psychology to become a legitimate science, it must shift its concern away from internal mental processes because mental processes cannot be seen or measured. Instead, he asserted that psychology must focus on outward observable behavior that can be measured.

According to Watson, human behavior, just like animal behavior, is primarily the result of conditioned responses. Through their experiments with Little Albert, Watson and Rayner demonstrated how fears can be conditioned.

In , Watson was the chair of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University. Watson offered her a dollar to allow her son to be the subject of his experiments in classical conditioning. Through these experiments, Little Albert was exposed to and conditioned to fear certain things. Initially he was presented with various neutral stimuli, including a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks, cotton wool, and a white rat. He was not afraid of any of these things.

Then Watson, with the help of Rayner, conditioned Little Albert to associate these stimuli with an emotion—fear. Little Albert was frightened by the sound—demonstrating a reflexive fear of sudden loud noises—and began to cry. Watson repeatedly paired the loud sound with the white rat.

Soon Little Albert became frightened by the white rat alone. Days later, Little Albert demonstrated stimulus generalization—he became afraid of other furry things: a rabbit, a furry coat, and even a Santa Claus mask Figure. Watson had succeeded in conditioning a fear response in Little Albert, thus demonstrating that emotions could become conditioned responses. However, there is no evidence that Little Albert experienced phobias in later years. Based on what you see, would you come to the same conclusions as the researchers?

Advertising executives are pros at applying the principles of associative learning. Think about the car commercials you have seen on television.

Many of them feature an attractive model. By associating the model with the car being advertised, you come to see the car as being desirable Cialdini, You may be asking yourself, does this advertising technique actually work? According to Cialdini , men who viewed a car commercial that included an attractive model later rated the car as being faster, more appealing, and better designed than did men who viewed an advertisement for the same car minus the model.

Have you ever noticed how quickly advertisers cancel contracts with a famous athlete following a scandal? As far as the advertiser is concerned, that athlete is no longer associated with positive feelings; therefore, the athlete cannot be used as an unconditioned stimulus to condition the public to associate positive feelings the unconditioned response with their product the conditioned stimulus.

Now that you are aware of how associative learning works, see if you can find examples of these types of advertisements on television, in magazines, or on the Internet.

His experiments explored the type of associative learning we now call classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, organisms learn to associate events that repeatedly happen together, and researchers study how a reflexive response to a stimulus can be mapped to a different stimulus—by training an association between the two stimuli.

He tested humans by conditioning fear in an infant known as Little Albert. His findings suggest that classical conditioning can explain how some fears develop. Explain how the processes of stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination are considered opposites. Can you think of an example in your life of how classical conditioning has produced a positive emotional response, such as happiness or excitement? How about a negative emotional response, such as fear, anxiety, or anger?

The previous section of this chapter focused on the type of associative learning known as classical conditioning.

Remember that in classical conditioning, something in the environment triggers a reflex automatically, and researchers train the organism to react to a different stimulus. Now we turn to the second type of associative learning, operant conditioning. In operant conditioning, organisms learn to associate a behavior and its consequence Table.

A pleasant consequence makes that behavior more likely to be repeated in the future. For example, Spirit, a dolphin at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, does a flip in the air when her trainer blows a whistle. The consequence is that she gets a fish. Psychologist B. He proposed a theory about how such behaviors come about. Skinner believed that behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior: the reinforcements and punishments.

His idea that learning is the result of consequences is based on the law of effect, which was first proposed by psychologist Edward Thorndike. According to the law of effect , behaviors that are followed by consequences that are satisfying to the organism are more likely to be repeated, and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated Thorndike, They've learned through operant conditioning that misbehaving this way brings them the reward of a toy.

If you want this pattern to end, you need to stop buying the toy, no matter how badly the child behaves. Eventually, if the child never gets the toy when they throw a fit, they will stop doing it.

At that point, the learned behavioral response will be extinct. Experts have varying opinions on exactly what extinction is. Some believe it is a type of unlearning. If this view is correct, you simply stop reacting to the trigger when it no longer brings the same result. It isn't that you've lost the memory of when you did that. It's just that it no longer affects you the same way. You unlearn that stimulus-response association. Other psychologists believe that extinction involves learning something new.

So, in the case of the child crying to get a toy, it isn't that the child has unlearned that crying can bring a toy. Instead, they've learned a new fact. That is, they've learned a new association —that inhibiting their excitement brings better results. There may be many associations in your life or in your children's lives that you would prefer to eliminate. Here are some examples:. If there's an association you want to extinguish, you can use psychology to change the response to the trigger.

You may be able to do this on your own, or you may need help from a mental health professional. Either way, there are a few things to keep in mind. Have you ever noticed that when people go to a casino, they often increase their betting when they're losing more than they're winning? The reward is still there, but it's inconsistent. Through decades of studying this inconsistent type of reward, scientists have found that inconsistent rewards lead to increased attempts to get the rewards.

So, reducing the stimulus may just make things worse. To extinguish the behavior or response, you need to eliminate the reward. Extinction doesn't typically happen quickly. Often, there's what psychologists call an extinction burst first. What happens is that when you no longer get the reward, you're probably going to try even harder to get it.

When the child doesn't get the toy, they may cry harder and beg louder. The unwanted behavior increases before it becomes extinct. However, if you're aware that this will happen, you can patiently avoid giving the reward until extinction is complete. Another challengeyou may encounter when trying to extinguish a behavior is that you or your child might try to get the reward in different ways that are equally troublesome.

For example, if crying doesn't bring the child the reward of the toy, they might engage in other bad behaviors. They might throw themselves on the floor, kick people walking by, or start pulling items off the store shelves. This is called extinction-induced variability. The good news is that in the process of trying different ways of getting the toy, they may stumble onto good behaviors that get them what they want.