Question

Darnell was the subject for his in-class demonstration on classical conditioning. His teacher read through a list of random words, but each time she said the word, "pizza," she squirted him in the face with a water bottle, which caused him to flinch. When talking about pizza later outside of class, he didn't flinch, but then two days later, his friend from class said, "Hey Darnell, pizza!" and he flinched with fear. This is an example of ________.

classical conditioning
neutral stimulus
spontaneous recovery
an experimental confederate

Answer 1

This is an example of **spontaneous recovery**.

In the scenario described, Darnell initially did not flinch at the word "pizza" after conditioning. However, when he heard "pizza" again after a brief period without the conditioning (his friend's mention), he flinched once more. This suggests that the conditioned response (flinching) reappeared after a pause, which is characteristic of spontaneous recovery in classical conditioning.