During the last several sections, we have examined a variety of concepts that are associated with classical conditioning. We have talked about variables that influence a conditioned response. We have talked about schedules and we have even talked about some theories that relate to classical conditioning. In this section, we are going to begin to examine some applications of classical conditioning. And the first real application of
classical conditioning begins with the study of phobias that was conducted by John Watson. Let us begin by a discussion with slide 2. Watson worked in a hospital, although it was also in an academic setting. And in this hospital�this was a kind of a progressive hospital for its time�it had a day care because there were lots of nurses and the nurses wanted to have their kids close to them. One of these little kids in the day care was little Albert. Albert was a bright
little boy like all other little boys and he had a lot of curiosity and he liked furry things. And one of the things that was also in the room was a rabbit. Watson decided to test the hypothesis that phobias were not in fact caused by some underlying psychological process that was unconscious � la from the writings of Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists, but instead were learned behaviors. And the way that Watson believed that these phobias were learned was through classical
conditioning. One of the ways that he decided to test that was through a very specific stimulus. That stimulus was a gong. When you ring a gong around young children, they invoke a very large fear response. What Watson would do is that when little Albert reached over to touch the rabbit, Watson would ring the gong. So you have an unconditioned stimulus of a gong causing fear in a child, you pair the rabbit with the gong getting a fear response, and after two or three
pairings, the rabbit alone elicited a full blown fear response. Not only what little Albert afraid of the rabbit, the rabbit was also afraid of little Albert.
So Watson�s hypothesis that phobias were in fact learned behaviors was true. However, Watson also found some other things that related to generalization. Not only did little Albert fear the rabbit, but little Albert also began to fear things that were associated with the rabbit. Little Albert became afraid white furry things. And of things with whiskers. And white things. And what the nurses wear in hospitals. They wore, at that time, white uniforms and that would cause an anxiety response in little Albert.
Now ultimately before Watson had the opportunity to desensitize little Albert, little Albert�s mother took him away from the hospital and moved to a different area of the state. And so what we can believe that happened is that initially, although little Albert would be afraid of the rabbit and other types of things, over time as little Albert was continually exposed to the rabbit or white things or whatever, without the gong, he would begin to demonstrate an extinction response and so over time little Albert was probably OK, even though we do not know that for sure today.
From that particular model, a different set of theories and techniques have been developed. The first technique that I really want to talk about it shown in slide 3. And that is called systematic desensitization and this is in essence used to help reduce fears and phobias. This was developed by Wolpe. The first thing that you do within systematic desensitization is to develop a hierarchy of fears. So let�s say that you are afraid of spiders. And so what you do is you find the thing that is the most anxiety provoking thing about spiders. And that may be having spiders crawl all over you. And then you have things on the other end. What doesn�t cause you to have an anxiety response about spiders? And it might be when the spider is squished. And then you have everything in between. So in essence what you have is a hierarchy going from low response to the most fearful thing that is out there.
Once you have that hierarchy developed, you train the person to relax and there is a variety of different techniques that one can do with that. But in essence you train the person to relax. Once the person is in a relaxed state, you then present the first thing in the hierarchy. And so you might present a squished spider. When the person can no longer demonstrate or show a fear response or an anxiety response, you then move up to the next level until you basically go all the way through the list. The idea behind systematic desensitization and with the next technique called counter conditioning is that you cannot be relaxed and afraid at the same time. They work on different aspects of the nervous system. So as a result of that, you are able to basically recondition the person to not be afraid within this environment. How affective is systematic desensitization? It is exceptionally effective. In fact, it is one of the few things in psychology from the clinical side that we know works and works exceptionally well.
A similar technique was developed by Mary Cover Jones who was a student of John Watson at the time. Jones developed a different type of approach to alleviating fears and phobias. She called this counter conditioning. What you do is present a calming unconditioned stimulus in the presence of the fear. The classic example is using food to help with, for example, rat phobia. You first give the food which causes a relaxing response. You then present the rat very far away and continue to give food. And over a period of time, you gradually move the rat closer and closer to the person, until finally you have the food and the rat together with the person and they are no longer afraid of the rat even though it is sitting right next to them. Or snakes crawling on them, or whatever. This technique also works exceptionally well �it just takes a little longer, but it has good effectiveness rates.
Now we have talked about a variety of aspects of things that go along with phobias. In this next section, I want to talk a little bit about applications in other areas. And the classic place is in the immune system. And if we look at slide 5, there is a classic immune system suppression experiment. And this was done by Ader and Cohen. What Ader and Cohen had observed is that environmental events seem to suppress immune system functioning. So they decided to test that particular model. What they did was they paired Saccharine � la CS with Cyclophosphamide [UCS]. Cyclophosphamide basically causes severe nausea and vomiting. So they paired the CS and the UCS together and then they are only presenting the CS. Ultimately as we know, it goes on extinction. When they extinguished the Sacchrine � la CS, some of the animals died.
The question was, why? As we see in slide 6, what they found is that the animals, after they extinguished from the Saccarine, produced fewer antibodies for immune suppression. So in essence what we can do is use Cyclophosphamide to suppress the immune system for things like Lupus where the immune system in essence attacks the body. Now, we don�t usually use Cyclophosphamide to
suppress it, we use other drugs, but the key is the same kind of model. You are having some drug basically paired with something else and as a result of that can help the body.
Finally, as we reviewed in this section, you can use classical conditioning in a variety of contexts. I have only listed a couple here, but it can be used in a wide variety of things including treatment for additions and other kinds of things.
In the next section, we will begin talking
about other things related to instrumental conditioning. So until that time, we hope you have a great day and we will see you soon.
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