Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is a behavioral learning procedure in which a neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with a biologically significant stimulus until the neutral stimulus alone comes to trigger a response originally produced only by the significant one. It was discovered by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who published his findings in 1897 while studying digestion in dogs, and found that dogs could learn to salivate at the sound of a metronome once it had been repeatedly paired with the presentation of food. The procedure is described using four terms: an unconditioned stimulus, a biologically significant stimulus such as food that produces a response without any prior learning; an unconditioned response, the innate, reflexive reaction to that stimulus, such as salivation; a conditioned stimulus, originally neutral but which, after repeated pairing with the unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a response on its own; and a conditioned response, the learned reaction to the conditioned stimulus. Classical conditioning is considered one of the foundational discoveries of behaviorist psychology and remains widely used in education and clinical settings to explain how emotional responses, habits and associations are formed and can be modified through learning.