Question

Explain how a child might develop a conditioned taste aversion to pizza. Be sure to identify the CS, US, CR, and UR.

Answer 1

• A conditioned taste aversion can occur when eating a substance is followed by illness. For example, if the child ate the pizza for lunch and then became ill, he or his parents might avoid making him eat pizza in the future even if the food he ate had no relationship to his illness.
• In classical conditioning, conditioned food aversions are examples of single-trial learning. It requires only one pairing of the previously neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus to establish an automatic response.
• The previously neutral stimulus (pizza) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (an illness), which leads to an unconditioned response (feeling sick).
• After this one-time pairing, the previously neutral stimulus (the pizza) is now a conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned response (avoiding the pizza).
• The conditioning occurred after just a single pairing of the neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus (UCS).