One example of classical conditioning is when a person associates a specific smell with a feeling of nausea. Let's say that someone eats a particular type of food that makes them sick and causes them to vomit. The smell of that food then becomes a conditioned stimulus. Even just smelling a similar scent to that food, such as a certain spice or ingredient, can trigger feelings of nausea.
In this example, the unconditioned stimulus is the food that initially caused the person to feel sick, and the unconditioned response is the feeling of nausea and vomiting. Through repeated pairings of the food with the smell, the person comes to associate the smell as a conditioned stimulus that triggers the conditioned response of feeling nauseous.
Over time, the person may start to feel nauseous even when they encounter the smell without actually eating the food. This is because the conditioned stimulus (the smell) has become associated with the unconditioned stimulus (the food) and elicits the same response.
In this case, the classical conditioning process has occurred by forming an association between the environmental stimulus (the smell) and a naturally occurring stimulus (feeling sick) to create a learned response (nausea).
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING PROCESS – THE THEORY OF LEARNING
The "Little Albert" experiment was a famous psychology experiment conducted by behaviorist
John B. Watson and graduate student Rosalie Raynor. Previously, Russian physiologist Ivan
Pavlov had conducted experiments demonstrating the conditioning process in dogs. Watson was
interested in taking Pavlov's research further to show that emotional reactions could be
classically conditioned in people. The participant in the experiment was a child that Watson and
Rayner called "Albert B.", but is known popularly today as Little Albert.
Around the age of nine months, Watson and Rayner exposed the child to a series of stimuli
including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, and masks and burning newspapers and observed the
boy's reactions. The boy initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown. The next
time Albert was exposed the rat; Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a
hammer. Naturally, the child began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing
the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to cry simply after seeing the rat.
The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the
left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly
that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table." In addition to
demonstrating that emotional responses could be conditioned in humans, Watson and Rayner
also observed that stimulus generalisation had occurred. After conditioning, Albert feared not
just the white rat, but a wide variety of similar white objects as well. His fear included other
furry objects including Raynor's fur coat and Watson wearing a Santa Claus beard.
a. Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs through associations between an
environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus, demonstrate with own
example the learning process of classical conditioning.
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