The document outlines principles of classical conditioning within the context of educational psychology, highlighting concepts, key figures like Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson, and their experiments. It explores how behaviors can be learned through conditioning, emphasizing the importance of environmental factors over innate traits. Applications of these principles in education and therapy for issues like anxiety, phobias, and addiction are also discussed.

1. Classical Conditioning
Course: Educational Psychology
B.ed 1.5 General
Teacher: Sir Ghazanfar Ali
Presented by: Umaira Nasim
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SARGODHA

2. Learning
Learning is a relatively permanent change
in an organism’s behavior due to
experience.

3. Characteristics of learning
• Learning involves change in
behavior
• Change in due to experience and
practice
• The change must lasts for fairly
long time

4. Paradigms of Learning
• Conditioning:
a) Classical Conditioning
b) Instrumental/Operant Conditioning
• Observational Learning
• Cognitive Learning
• Verbal Learning
• Concept Learning
• Skill Learning

5. Behaviorism
•Behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning
which states all behaviors are learned through
interaction with the environment through a
process called conditioning.
•Behaviorism is only concerned with observable
stimulus-response behaviors, as they can be
studied in a systematic and observable manner.

6. Behaviorism
•Behaviorism emphasizes the role of
environmental factors in influencing
behavior, to the near exclusion of innate or
inherited factors. This amounts essentially
to a focus on learning.
•We learn new behavior through classical
or operant conditioning (collectively known
as learning theory).

7. Behaviorism and Education
•For example a teacher wants to encourage
positive behavior in his students; he can do so
by
• Giving rewards for positive behavior
• Giving punishments for negative behavior
• Showing the way/steps to get rewards
• Showing the way/steps to avoid punishments

8. Conditioning
“a process by which people or
animals are
trained to behave e in a particular
way
when particular things happen.”

9. Classical Conditioning
● Classical Conditioning: based on association of
pairing of an originally neutral stimulus with a
response producing stimulus.
● A neutral stimulus paired one or more times with a
biologically significant stimulus, acquires the power
to provoke a behavioral response in the absence of
the biologically significant stimulus.
● The association between the two stimuli is one
form of associative learning - a learning in which
ideas and experiences are mentally linked and
thereby reinforce each other.

10. Associative Learning:
Classical Conditioning
Learning to associate one stimulus
with another.

11. Associative Learning
Learning to associate a
response
with a consequence.

12. Ideas of classical conditioning originate from old
philosophical theories. However, it was the Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov who exposed classical
conditioning.
His work provided a basis for later behaviorists like
John Watson.
Classical Conditioning
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Sovfoto

13. Pavlov’s Experiments
Food was presented to dog and measures the
amount of saliva from a Pavlov’s device.
Before conditioning, food called (Unconditioned
Stimulus, US) produces salivation called
(Unconditioned Response, UR).

14. Pavlov’s Experiments
During conditioning, the neutral stimulus (tone) and
the US (food) are both presented a number of times
and paired, resulting in salivation (UR). After
repeated pairing the tone alone can be elicit
salivation. Learning take placed after conditioning,
the neutral stimulus (in Conditioned Stimulus, CS)
elicits salivation (in Conditioned Response, CR)

15. Acquisition
Acquisition is the initial learning stage in classical
conditioning in which an association between a
neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus
takes place.
Two important aspects of acquisition are timing
and contingency/predictability.
1. In most cases, for conditioning to occur, the
neutral stimulus needs to come before the
unconditioned stimulus.
2. The time in between two stimuli should be
about half a second.

16. Acquisition
The CS needs to come half a second before the US for
acquisition to occur.
Time: Conditioned response develop when the CS and
UCS are contiguous occurring close together. Often
optimal spacing is a fraction of a second.

17. Extinction
When the UCS (food) does not follow the CS
(tone), CR (salivation) begins to decrease and
eventually causes extinction(weakening of the
CR absence of UCS)

18. Spontaneous Recovery
After a rest period, an extinguished CR (salivation)
spontaneously recovers after a time delay without further
conditioning. But if the CS (tone) persists alone, the CR
becomes extinct again.

19. Stimulus Generalization
Tendency to respond to new
stimuli similar to the original CS
is called generalization. Pavlov
conditioned the dog’s salivation
(CR) by using miniature
vibrators (CS) on the thigh.
When he subsequently
stimulated other parts of the
dog’s body, salivation dropped.
Generalization has value in
preventing learning from being
tied to specific stimuli.

20. Stimulus Discrimination
Discrimination is the learned
ability to distinguish between a
conditioned stimulus and other
stimuli that do not signal an
unconditioned stimulus.
To produce discrimination
Pavlov gave food to the dog
only after ringing tone and not
after any other sound.
In this way dog learned to
distinguish b/w tone and other
sounds.

21. John B.Waston
•American Psychologist
• Behaviorism, according to Watson, was the science of observable behavior.
Only behavior that could be observed, recorded and measured was of any
real value for the study of humans or animals. Watson's thinking was
significantly influenced by the earlier classical conditioning experiments of
Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov and his now infamous dogs.
• Watson is best known for taking his theory of behaviorism and applying it to
child development. He believed strongly that a child's environment is the
factor that shapes behaviors over their genetic makeup or natural
temperament.
• Watson's behaviorism rejected the concept of the unconscious and the
internal mental state of a person because it was not observable and was
subject to the psychologist's subjective interpretation. For example, Freud
would ask his patients to tell him their dreams. He would then interpret the
dreams and analyze what these dreams were indicating in the person's life.
Watson found this emphasis on introspection and subjective interpretation to
be very unscientific and unhelpful in understanding behavior.

22. Little Albert Experiment
•Watson and Raynor presented Little Albert with a white rat
and he showed no fear.
•Watson then presented the rat with a loud bang that startled
Little Albert and made him cry.
•After the continuous association of the white rat and loud
noise, Little Albert was classically conditioned to experience
fear at the sight of the rat.
•Albert's fear generalized to other stimuli that were similar to
the rat, including a fur coat, some cotton wool, and a Father
Christmas mask.

24. Criticism on Waston’s theory
•Waston stressed on obvious behavior,
didn’t realize the importance of mental
process
•Behavior seems just a mechanical
response without mental process.
•Discarded concept of conscious,
subconscious and unconscious.

25. Through classical conditioning, a drug (plus its taste) that affects the immune
response may cause the taste of the drug to invoke the immune response.
• Most fears are produced by CC. Therefore, CC techniques are used to
eliminate phobia. Most of the treatments for phobia are based on CC
principles.
• Addictions are also developed by CC itself. Like phobia, CC principles are
used to treat addiction as well.
• CC plays an important role in hypertension as well. Research says that
high B.P. is easily conditioned to stressful events. Thus, a person who has
experienced many stressful events at home/workplace, shows high B.P. by
simply walking into that environment.
• Systematic desensitization is a form of therapy which was used to treat
anxiety disorders.
Applications of Classical
Conditioning in Psycho treatments

26. Systematic Desensitization
Sometimes the anxiety and stress associated with
negative events can be eliminated by classical conditioning.
Systematic desensitization is a method based on classical
conditioning that reduces anxiety by getting the individual to
associate deep relaxation with successive visualizations of
increasingly anxiety-producing situations.
“A method based on classical conditioning that reduces anxiety
by getting the individual to associate deep relaxation with
successive visualizations of increasingly anxiety provoking
situations.”

27. Watson used classical
conditioning procedures to
develop advertising
campaigns for a number of
organizations, including
Maxwell House, making the
“coffee break” an American
custom.
Watson & Little Albert
Applications of Classical Conditioning
John B. Watson
Brown
Brothers

28. Examples of Classical Conditioning
1:The smell of food makes you hungry. Soon every time
you go into the kitchen, you feel
hungry.
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) Unconditioned Response (UCR)
Conditioned Stimulus (CS) Conditioned Response (CR)
2: A student survives a plane crash that occurred
because of a thunderstorm. Now, whenever
the student hears thunder, he gets anxious.
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) Unconditioned Response (UCR)
Conditioned Stimulus (CS) Conditioned Response (CR)

29. Classical Conditioning and class
room
• Classical conditioning can be involved in both positive and negative
experiences of children in the classroom. Among the things in the child’s
schooling that produce pleasure because they have become classically
conditioned are a favorite song and feelings that the classroom is a safe
and fun place to be. For example, a song could be neutral for the child
until he joins in with other classmates to sing it with accompanying
positive feelings.
• Children can develop fear of the classroom if they associate the
classroom with criticism, so the criticism becomes a CS for fear.
• Classical conditioning also can be involved in test anxiety. For example, a
child fails and is criticized, which produces anxiety; there after, she
associates tests with anxiety, so they then can become a CS for anxiety.

30. Application of Classical conditioning
in Education
•Classical conditioning describes only how existing
behaviors might be paired with new stimuli; it does not
explain how new operant behaviors are acquired.
•In class rooms teachers who use such a technique
usually do so in the following three steps:
•1. Identify and specify the behavior of students that they
need to change.
•2. Plan a specific behavior change strategy, based upon
rewarding desirable behavior.
•3. See if the change plan has brought about the
desirable results.

31. Evaluating Classical Conditioning
•Classical conditioning helps us understand some
aspects of learning better than others. It excels in
explaining how neutral stimuli become associated with
unlearned, involuntary responses. It is especially helpful
in understanding students’ anxieties and fears.
•However, it is not as effective in explaining voluntary
behaviors, such as why a student studies hard for a test
or likes history better than geography. For these areas,
operant conditioning is more relevant.

32. References
•https://www.slideshare.net/srgeorgi/classical-conditioning-
66139419
•https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470326/
•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSqWiTG-o2Y
•Carvan Books: General psychology and Applied
psychology by Rakhshanda Shahnaz
•https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470326/
•https://www.simplypsychology.org/little-albert.html
•Educational
•Psychology fifth edition John W. Santrock

33. Thank You