Practice question · Put in order
Trace the life cycle of one conditioned association, in order.
- A rest period passes with no tone presented at all
- Acquisition: a tone is repeatedly paired with food until it triggers salivation
- Spontaneous recovery: the tone briefly triggers weak salivation again
- Extinction: the tone keeps arriving with no food behind it, and salivation dies away
- The tone is now a conditioned stimulus reliably producing salivation
Hints
- Learning must be established before it can be extinguished.
- Spontaneous recovery can only follow a REST after extinction - it cannot come before extinction.
Show the answer
- Acquisition: a tone is repeatedly paired with food until it triggers salivation
- The tone is now a conditioned stimulus reliably producing salivation
- Extinction: the tone keeps arriving with no food behind it, and salivation dies away
- A rest period passes with no tone presented at all
- Spontaneous recovery: the tone briefly triggers weak salivation again
Why
Acquisition builds the CS-CR link, extinction weakens it when the CS appears alone, and after a rest spontaneous recovery briefly revives it. That revival, coming AFTER extinction and a delay, is what proves the association was suppressed rather than erased.
Practise Classical Conditioning
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Psychology I is free to start.
More questions on Classical Conditioning
- Sort each described response by whether it shows generalization or discrimination.
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