Classical Conditioning Reflective Journal

Throughout all the psychology lessons I have attended so far, I

found that the lecture which demonstrated the theories regarding
classical conditioning and learning to be the most appropriate
concepts that I can apply to my past experience.
According to Bouton (1994), the term classical conditioning refers
to the process by which the previous neutral stimulus acquires the
capacity to cause response through a linkage with a stimulus that
already elicits an identical response. Basically, the following story I
am going to illustrate is about my twin brothers, Alan and Charlie,
who are only five years old now. In my own view, the situation
happened on them are deeply attached to the theories of classical
conditioning.
Before I came to Hong Kong for my college degree, I was used to
living in a community consisting of five villas. We got along with our
neighbors harmoniously, especially the family who lived at our very
right side because of their son, Harry, who was only one-year older
than my brothers. I can still remember the first year we just started
our new lives in this community, Alan always tried to hide from
Harry every time when Harry came to our house. The fact was that,
Harry and Charlie were generally bigger in their body sizes. Every
time when they stayed together, Alan would be self-abased to some
extent since Harry and Charlie sometimes took advantages of their
body sizes to overpower Alan. Hence, Alan always tried to hide in
my room instead of spending time with them.
Since every time when Harry came to our house, he would press
doorbell before he walked in. As time went on, I noticed that every
time when the doorbell rang, Alan would manage to seek for an
object to hide behind even if he had not seen whom the visitor was.
To apply the psychological analysis, I think Alans reaction can be
counted as the process of classical conditioning because the sound
of doorbell (neutral stimulus) is eventually paired up with the
Harrys appearance (unconditioned stimulus). Concerning about the
four key terms contributed to this theory, I think Harrys appearance
can be regarded as unconditioned stimulus, and the action of hiding
in my room would be the unconditioned response. Since the reason
for Alan trying to hide from Harry is mainly because he did not want
to see him. As for the sound of doorbell, it can thus be considered as
the conditioned stimulus because it evoked the conditioned
response after being combined with the unconditioned stimulus. And
with regard to the behavior of finding object to hide behind when
hearing the doorbell ringing, it can therefore be explained as the
conditioned response (Kim &Thompson. 1997).
However, three of them are the closest partners that cannot live
without each other now. Namely, Alan is no longer that afraid of

seeing Harry. We can analyze this change through many aspects.

Actually, Harry had moved to Vietnam for one year because of his
fathers business. During this period of time, I figured out that Alan
was gradually not afraid of the sounds of doorbell. Sometimes, he
even ran to the door to welcome our visitors. To explain this
condition with psychological prospects, I think it can be regarded as
the term of extinction. Extinction happens when conditioned
stimulus does not pair up with unconditioned stimulus repeatedly,
which causes the weakening or disappearance of the learned
response. (Baeyens, Eelen & Crombez, 1995) In this case, since
Harry had moved away, the sounds of doorbell (CS) were no longer
associated with the appearance of Harry (US). Hence, the fear for
Alan when he heard the ringing sounds gradually got weaker and
eventually disappeared. And for another reason, I think that it was
partially because of Alan and Charlies intimate relationship. While
Harry was not living next to us, Alan was Charlies best and also the
only partner. Therefore, they established an even closer and more
stable relationship with each other. So when Harry was back from
Vietnam, even if the Alans action of hiding away from Harry still
exist at the first few times. However, I could find that Alan was
trying to overcome his fear and started to get along with Harry
because of Charlie. It was because Alan had a positive emotion
when he was staying with Charlie, and Harry was also Charlies close
companion, Alan thus tended to try to get along with Harry because
he really enjoyed the time he spent with Charlie. This situation can
also be counted as a kind of classical conditioning in our real lives,
which plays a vital role in teaching us to Like.
This example proves that how we can associate and combine the
unconditioned stimulus to what we are feared of. Additionally, by
studying the concepts of classical conditioning, it allows me to make
more sense about how people response to certain situation and I
can also hold the ability to explore the reasoning of it.
WORD COUNT : 829 words

REFERENCE LIST
Baeyens, F., Eelen, P., & Crombez, G. (1995). Pavlovian associations are
forever: On classical conditioning and extinction. Journal of
Psychophysiology.
Bouton, M. E. (1994). Context, ambiguity, and classical conditioning. Current
directions in psychological science, 49-53.
Kim, J. J., & Thompson, R. E. (1997). Cerebellar circuits and synaptic
mechanisms involved in classical eyeblink conditioning. Trends in
neurosciences, 20(4), 177-181.