#PAVLOV CONDITIONING SERIES#

This therapy is a bit more subtle than aversion therapy. It is also possible that cognitions are involved in human sexual attraction – feelings like ‘love’ for example – so it is not just a matter of conditioning people not to behave in a particular way you need to take into account how they feel. Some psychologists suggest that characteristics like homosexuality are ‘essential’ behaviours that cannot be greatly modified by conditioning. This sad story indicates that Classical Conditioning does not have the same effect on humans as on dogs. However, many patients reported feeling traumatised and violated by the treatment, especially when other researchers used electric shocks instead of disgusting imagery as their UCS. Most of the men who stopped their homosexual activities after the treatment were bisexuals among men with exclusive homosexual orientation, the results showed very little success. Martin Seligman (1993)reports how these studies generated great excitement in America and prompted many doctors and judges to recommend using conditioning to change the behaviour of homosexuals and paedophiles (homosexuality was illegal at the time many people confused it with paedophilia). Up to 50% of the young men treated in this way seemed to change their sexual orientation. Stimulus generalisation meant this CR was generalised to any same-sex partner. This associating of UCS and NS produced a CS instead a sense of nausea and disgust (CR) was felt whenever the men were presented with a same-sex partner (CS). Then images of attractive same-sex partners were paired with the disgusting imagery. The process involved using stomach-churning descriptions and images to produce an urge to vomit – this is the UCS producing a UCR.

#PAVLOV CONDITIONING SERIES#

Barlow (1966)carried out a series of procedures in the USA to ‘cure’ homosexuals of their same-sex attraction. However, other research into Classical Conditioning has been less successful. This shows that Classical Conditioning explains how humans learn too. The Classic Study in the Learning Approach is Watson & Rayner’s (1920) “Baby Albert” study, which uses Classical Conditioning to produce a phobia in a baby boy. This is called stimulus generalisation and it means that stimuli that are similar to the CS will produce the CR.

Quite often, people who have learned by association will carry on making associations. Once a CR is formed, there is a tendency for it to appear in response to things other than the original CS.Even after extinction, a CR can reappear. Once an association is formed, it is never truly forgotten.This process is called extinctionand it can take a long time. Conditioned stimuli gradually lose their association with the original unconditioned stimulus and they revert back to being a neutral stimulus again.

Only if you know the history of how they were learned, can you tell they are conditioned and not unconditioned (natural) responses. Conditioned responses don’t feel artificial to the person doing them.There is something artificial about this learned response to a CS, which is why it is known as a conditioned response ( CR). It is important for you to understand how Pavlov’s 1927 study into dogs learning through association established this theoryĪfter conditioning, the NS becomes a conditioned stimulus ( CS) because it produces the same reaction from us that the UCS used to produce.It ties in to your Key Question in Learning Theory, since it helps explain anorexia.It illustrates features of Learning Theory, since it studies behaviour as a response to external stimuli without taking into account cognitions.This in turn led to the Behaviourist school in Psychology. Pavlov’s discoveries about animal behaviour were generalised to humans based on evolutionary theory (that humans and other animals learn through similar mechanisms). It shows how scientific research proceeds.This theory is significant for students in other ways: Pavlov carried out his original research on dogs but the conclusions were applied to humans by American behaviourist psychologists, notably John B.

It is sometimes called “Pavlovian” Conditioning after him. This theory was developed by Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scientist who was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize (for Medicine).

Pavlov conditioning