Question

5)

a)An individual’s learning history – explain how that matters in classical conditioning b)

b)Biological preparedness (BP) to learn certain associations, i.e., those that are threatening. Define/ explain what BP is.

Answer 1

a) LEARNING:

Learning is a process that results in a relatively permanent change in behaviour. According to John B Watson's Behaviourism, all behaviours are a result of the learning process.

The basic principle behind Classical conditioning is that behaviours could be learned by association.

In Ivan Pavlov's experiment, the dogs were conditioned by pairing a neutral stimuli with a unconditioned stimuli to produce a conditioned response.

This could be demonstrated with a example:

A person was going in a car, and suddenly he met up with an accident. He does not get much injured, but had a very traumatic experience with it. Since then he developed a fear of travelling in a car and was using public transportations since then.

So from this example it could be observed that the person had learned a behaviour of avoiding travelling in a car due to his association with the car accident. The neutral stimuli (travelling in a car) is associated with the unconditioned stimuli (accident) that had made the neutral stimuli in to a conditioned stimuli (travelling in a car), that leads to a conditioned response (fear and avoidance)

When the association between the stimuli is strong, the behaviour is learnt quickly and is relatively permanent.

b) BIOLOGICAL PREPAREDNESS:

It states that people are inherently predisposed to make associations between stimuli and responses, due to which we have a general fear or avoidance towards objects or situations that could threaten our existence. This concept is used in understanding classical conditioning.

For example:

People have the general tendency to fear and avoid animals or poisonous reptiles, and also situations like, a earthquake or volcanic eruptions because they have associated these with danger and threats which may cause them harm.