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 à 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 à 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 à 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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