Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Classical Conditioning

What did you learn today?
Today I learned about biological predispositions. I learned that for a natural stimuli to become conditioned, it must make adaptive sense. An internal stimuli associates better with taste--for example, how meatball sandwiches trigger thoughts of the nuro virus. Like wise, an external stimulus associates better with pain--for example, a football player walking toward you triggers your response to flinch.

Diagram of Classical Conditioning Situation
In a previous situation, a college student wanted to classically condition his roommate. Everyday, he would play a voice recording saying, "That was easy" then shoot his roommate with a Nerf gun. He would continue doing this until one day he would play the voice recording, "That was easy" and his roommate flinched before the shot was fired.  

Unconditioned Stimulus (Nerf gun) --> Unconditioned Response (flinch)
Neutral Stimulus ("That was easy") + Unconditioned Stimulus (Nerf gun) -->UR (flinch)
Conditioned Stimulus ("That was easy") --> Conditioned Response (flinch)



Who cares?
Classical conditioning allows for us to determine how people develop phobias or certain fears of objects. Knowing this, we can then unlearn certain phobias. 

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