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Post by kendratp on Sept 20, 2017 13:13:14 GMT
A common laboratory procedure for classical conditioning involves directing a puff of air into the eye of an immobilized rabbit. The automatic response to this stimulus is an eyeblink. In the conditioning procedure, a tone is sounded just prior to delivering the puff of air. Identify the CS, CR, UCS and UCR in this situation. Suppose you wanted to undo the conditioning; use the same terminology to describe how you might go about trying to do this.
The unconditioned stimulus is a puff of air as that is being directed at the rabbit, this results in the rabbit producing an unconditioned response which would be blinking each time the air is directed towards its eyes. The conditioned stimulus would be the tone that is sounded prior to the air being puffed into the rabbits eye. The blinking will become the conditioned response once it is that the tone elicits the blinking of the rabbit's eyes without being paired with the puff of air.
To undo the conditioning, one would have to use the tone as the unconditioned stimulus and follow it by the puff of air which would be the conditioned stimulus to elicit the response of blinking the now unconditioned response, then repeat the process several times after which the tone is then removed and the puff of air the conditioned stimulus would elicit the blinking the now conditioned response.
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Post by mikey117 on Sept 20, 2017 21:16:31 GMT
Okay so I agree with the UCS being the air directed at the rabbit and the UCR would be the rabbit blinking as it naturally blinks when air is directed to its eye. Also I agree that the CS is the tone as we want the rabbit to react to the tone the same way it did when air was directed at it's eyes. Eventually when the tone is used in conjunction with the air, the rabbit will blink with just the tone. Conditioning at this point is complete, as he have the rabbit reacting to the tone alone. However I believe your mistaken about undoing the conditioning, because as you said "To undo the conditioning, one would have to use the tone as the unconditioned stimulus and follow it by the puff of air", weren't we just using the puff of air TO condition the rabbit to blink? therefore to undo it, wouldn't we want it to NOT blink when it hears the tone?
Assuming yes at this point we would have to keep ringing the tone as that was the CS but NOT follow up with any puff of air, my reasoning is as follows...
Pavlov conditioned dogs to associate the ringing of a bell with the anticipation of food which would cause the dogs to drool, the UCR was drooling, the CS was the bell, the UCS was food, the eventual CR was to droll at the sound of a bell. BUT if the dogs were to hear the bell and there was no food followed by the bell, it becomes meaningless to the Dog and over time the conditioning would be undone.
So to apply the same reasoning to the rabbit, it only blinks to the tone because it THINKS air is about to be blown at its eye, so in anticipation for the air, it blinks. Therefore if we were to play the tone and the expectation of having air blown on its eye is subverted, the tone becomes meaningless as its anticipation becomes void. When the conditioning is undone, it will hear the tone and not blink as it naturally didn't blink at that particular sound before we conditioned it to do so.
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