Classical Conditioning

What is Classical Conditioning?

Classical conditioning is learning a relationship between stimuli. A previously neutral signal comes to elicit a response because of its relationship with another event.

The familiar example comes from the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov's work with dogs. After learning that a sound signaled food, a dog could salivate at the sound even when no food was present. The sound had become a conditioned stimulus. Pavlov's second lecture describes the experimental approach.

More Than Pairing Two Events

As Rescorla's 1988 review explains, the relationship between events matters; simply pairing them does not fully describe what is learned. A conditioned response also need not be identical to the response originally elicited by the unconditioned stimulus.

Classical conditioning is studied in connection with emotional responses, phobias, and addiction, as well as salivation and other laboratory responses. The shared question is how experience changes what a signal predicts and how an organism responds to it.