What is an example of classical (not operant) conditioning?
Pavlov’s Dogs are the most cited example of classical conditioning. For example, a stimulus produces a response. The presence of food is the stimulus for a dog to salivate, because they smell the food and want to eat it. Salivating is the reaction, food is the stimulus, and this an UNCONDITIONED RESPONSE. You can add a neutral stimulus, and associate that with the unconditioned response, creating a conditioned stimulus and conditioned response. Normally, ringing a bell would NOT produce salivation, therefore it’s a neutral stimulus. If you ring a bell every time the dogs are fed meat, soon when you ring the bell by itself, the dogs will salivate when they hear the bell even if food is nowhere around. That means the bell has turned into a CONDITIONED STIMULUS and the dog’s salivating when they hear it is a CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
