Classical Conditioning Paper
Lakeshia Jackson
Psy 390
August 1, 2011
Gary Burk

Classical Conditioning Paper
Although classical conditioning is something that most people experience in a daily basis, it may also be the first thing someone remembers in a day. According to Olson and Hergenhahn (2009) classical conditioning is defined as a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about that response. In this paper the subject is to describe the theory of classical conditioning as well as describing a scenario in which one could apply classical conditioning theory to, and bring forth the scenario by showing illustrations of how this could be used …show more content…

Selected Scenario Although Pavlov did most of his work on animals, it has been discovered that classical conditioning plays a role in everyday human behavior. My children always wanted a dog for a while but I did not think they were ready. A dog brings many new responsibilities, such as how to make the dog listen and follow the rules, and of course potty train. We are soon moving and are going to live in a new house. We decided that it might be the right time to expand our family by adding a dog. My biggest concern that comes with a new puppy is housebreaking it. Therefore, it would be good to know before we get the dog how we can condition this puppy’s behavior and have him listen to many important commands, such as sit, stay, come, fetch and others, including being house broken as soon as possible.

Description of the selected Scenario When we get the puppy, the first thing I want to teach him is to sit. I decide to use the snapping of my fingers to train the dog this particular act. Every time I tell him to sit, I would also snap my fingers and when he sits, I would immediately reward him with a treat. I would repeat this sequence until the puppy mastered this. After a while, I would only snap my fingers and the puppy would sit down, assuming a treat is coming. In this case, the snapping of my fingers is the neutral stimulus to which the puppy would do nothing. However, the neutral stimulus became