Question

Provide an example of classical conditioning (not from the textbook or Internet) that uses each of the following terms: Unconditioned Stimulus, Unconditioned Response, Neutral Stimulus, Conditioned Stimulus, Conditioned Response, Acquisition, Extinction, Spontaneous Recovery, Generalization, and Discrimination

Answer 1

The example is in the text and the definitions are in the pictures

A person fears spiders. One day he saw a spider in a closet while taking out clothes he started screaming. Next day onwards whenever he opened the closet he was scared. Here the spider is the unconditioned stimulus and fear is the unconditioned response. The closet is the conditioned stimulus and fear of going near it is conditioned response. Here closet before the incident is the neutral stimulus but after the incident the closet got acquired with the spider living there so the process of acquisition takes places between the closet and the spider. After this the whenever she opened the closet the spider was not seen anywhere near it. This happened for around 10-15 days and because of this the fear of opening the closet became extinct. Then on the 15th day again another spider was seen in the closet and the fear associated with it returned immediately. This is spontaneous recovery. Also along with the closet the furnitures which are closed like drawers, almirahs, etc all were responded to in the same manner. This is stimulus generalisation and the other furnitures like sofa , bed, table etc were responded to in a normal way and hence this is stimulus discrimination.