CLASSICAL CONDITIONING INTO THE CLASSROOM

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING INTO THE CLASSROOMTHEORIES OF EDUCATIONFEEDBACKMonday, May 12th, 2014

Learning Goal:To Apply the four steps of classical conditioning THE CONDITIONING PROCESSActivities and Demonstrations: Classical Conditioning How Do We Learn by Classical Conditioning?How Do We Learn by Classical Conditioning?DemonstrationTopic: Classical ConditioningTitle: Classical Conditioning in the MoviesInstructions: For this demonstration (developed by Smith, 1987), you will need a recording of the shark music from the movie Jaws, which is available online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvCI-gNK_y4 or http://goo.gl/pnsZR. Ask students to close their eyes while you lead them through a brief visualization of the ocean; for example: 6You are at the beach with your family. Its a warm day and you can feel the sun on your face, and you can smell the salty air. You decide to take a dip in the ocean. The water is cool, and you paddle out 50 yards. All of a sudden, you get a very funny feeling. At this point, turn on the recording of the Jaws music. Students will usually begin to laugh. When asked why they laughed, students typically report they are thinking of the shark from the movie Jaws. Ask students to talk about the classical conditioning involved: by consistently pairing the musical score with bloody shark attacks, the creators of the movie have successfully conditioned us to sense fear whenever we hear the music.

TIME TO WORK:READ WHAT IS DESCRIBED BELOW AND START WORKING ON THE GIVEN ACTIVITY. YOU CAN JOIN IN PAIRS AND PRESENT THIS COMPLETED ASSIGNMENT, THE NEXT CLASS.PreconditioningFind a loud noise (US) to use during the demonstration (e.g., by using an audio file in a PowerPoint presentation). This should cause the involuntary response of jumping or wincing (UR).Choose a neutral stimulus (e.g., a red box on a PowerPoint presentation).Again, the loud noise should cause students to jump or wince, and the neutral stimulus should orient attention.ConditioningPresent the neutral stimulus with the loud noise. This can be done by showing a series of different-colored boxes in a PowerPoint presentation and when a red one comes up, the loud noise is heard. Of course, in order to demonstrate conditioning, this series of boxes and pairing of the red box with the loud noise would have to happen many times.When the students see the red box and hear the noise during these trials, they should jump or wince (UR).After ConditioningAt some point during the series of colored boxes presented, the loud sound should no longer be presented with the red box. Students should still jump or wince.The box is then the CS and the jumping or wincing is the CR. THE STUDENTS WILL WORK ON THIS ACTIVITY UNTIL THEY GET THE EXPECTED RESULTS. THE STEPS OF CLASSICAL CONDITIONING WILL BE IDENTIFIED AND DEMONSTRATED THROUGH EXAMPLES.