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When ever the bell rings in any school in any nationyou are guaranteed to see students and teachers file into the hallway. This automatic response comes from somethingthat has been around for a long time called classical conditioning. Classicalconditioning was discovered and researched by Ivan Pavlov, a Russianphysiologist. His famous experimentwith his dog is known to nearly everyone who has had a middle school or highereducation. He fed his dog in a pattern,every time he fed his dog he rang a bell. Eventually the dog associated the bell with food and would begin tosalivate just on hearing the bell. Thatis the original experiment proving classical conditioning. What is aconditioned stimulus? "A neutralstimulus that, after repeated pairings with an unconditioned stimulus, becomesassociated with it and elicits a conditioned response." (World of Psychologypg167) In English it is something thatis used to train someone or something through repetition. Pavlov made use of this in his experiment toshow classical conditioning.

English: One of the many dogs Pavlov used in his e...

English: An example of classical conditioning wher...

English: drug response in classical conditioning

Where asan unconditioned stimulus is something that is unlearned but is just respondedto out of instinct. Pavlov's dog, for examplehad one unconditioned stimulus and one conditioned stimulus. Both the conditioned and unconditionedstimuli were to an unconditioned response, the dog salivating. The unconditioned stimulus was the dog foodthat started the dog salivating. The conditionedstimulus or new stimulus was the bell being rung every time the dog was fed.After awhile the unconditioned stimulus wasn't even needed, because the dog wasnow conditioned to respond to the bell and salivate whenever he heard thebell. Things like this happened all thetime, for example; when I put on running shoes and running clothes my dog willbecome extremely hyper because she knows we are going outside and she will getto run around.

Probably thestrongest application of classical conditioning is emotions. Human emotions are condition extremelyeasily to things that...