PSY 390 Week 1 Classical and Operant Conditioning Example

The Dentist's Chair and the Sticker Chart: Classical and Operant Conditioning in One Child's Day

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/390: Learning and Cognition

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The child and family described are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Much of what people do and feel is learned through association. Classical conditioning links stimuli and shapes automatic responses such as fear. Operant conditioning links behavior with consequences and shapes voluntary actions. This paper applies both to a seven-year-old who learned a fear and whose parents are trying to build a habit.

The Child

Leo is seven and lives in Glendale, Arizona. At six, he had a cavity filled; the numbing shot did not fully work, and he felt sharp pain from the drill. Since then, he cries and clings to his mother when they drive past the dental office, gags at the smell of mint mouthwash and recently panicked in his pediatrician's waiting room. Separately, he resists brushing his teeth at night, stalling for up to half an hour. His parents have started a sticker chart, giving a sticker for each night he brushes without arguing and a trip for frozen yogurt after ten stickers.

Classical Conditioning of Leo's Fear

Classical conditioning describes how a cue that once meant nothing gains the power to set off a reaction because it kept showing up alongside something that sets off that reaction on its own. The drill's pain is the unconditioned stimulus, producing fear and distress as an unconditioned response. The dental office, the smell of mint and the dentist's white coat, once neutral, were present during the pain. They are now conditioned stimuli, and the fear they produce is the conditioned response.

Leo's panic in the pediatrician's waiting room shows generalization, the spread of a conditioned response to stimuli similar to the original: another medical office, with similar smells and coats. He does not react to his school nurse's office, which looks quite different, showing some discrimination.

A Classic Study and Its Lessons

Watson and Rayner (1920) presented an infant known as Little Albert with a white rat, which he initially reached for without fear, then repeatedly paired the rat with a loud noise produced by striking a steel bar. After several pairings, Albert cried and crawled away at the sight of the rat alone, and his fear spread to similar objects such as a rabbit and a fur coat. The study is often cited as a demonstration that fears can be learned, though it involved a single child and would be considered unethical today because it deliberately caused distress and the fear was never removed.

Leo's fear followed a similar path, but in one painful experience rather than several pairings. Strong, painful events can produce conditioning in a single trial.

What Pavlovian Learning Really Involves

Rescorla (1988) argued that classical conditioning is not simply the pairing of stimuli close in time. Organisms learn about relationships: whether one stimulus predicts another and how reliably. A stimulus that occurs with pain but also often occurs without it produces less conditioning than one that reliably predicts pain. Learning also depends on surprise; when an outcome is already predicted by another cue, a new cue adds little.

This view explains why Leo fears the dental office but not his own bathroom, where he also experiences mint toothpaste. The office reliably predicted pain; the bathroom did not.

Leo does not fear mint; he fears what mint once told him was about to happen.

Reducing the Fear

Extinction weakens a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus appears repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus. Leo's dentist recommends graduated exposure: visits to the office with no treatment, sitting in the chair, counting teeth with a mirror and earning praise, before any procedure. Pairing the office with pleasant experiences, a form of counterconditioning, can speed the process. Extinction does not erase the original learning, so fear may return after a long gap or in a new context, which is why regular, gentle visits matter.

Operant Conditioning of Brushing

Operant conditioning concerns voluntary behavior shaped by consequences. Reinforcement increases behavior; punishment decreases it. Positive forms add something, and negative forms remove something.

The sticker chart uses positive reinforcement: brushing without arguing earns a sticker. The stickers are secondary reinforcers, valuable because they lead to frozen yogurt. Leo's stalling has probably been negatively reinforced: each delay postponed the unpleasant task, and arguing sometimes ended with his parents giving up. Removing that escape is as important as adding the reward.

Shaping, reinforcing closer and closer steps toward a target, can help. His parents first rewarded going to the sink without arguing, then brushing for one minute and finally brushing for two minutes.

Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation

Some critics argue that rewards undermine intrinsic motivation. Cameron et al. (2001) pooled the experimental literature and concluded that outcomes hinge on what kind of reward is given and how. Verbal praise tended to increase interest, while expected tangible rewards given simply for doing an interesting task could reduce later interest. Rewards tied to meeting a standard of performance often had no harmful effect.

Brushing teeth is not intrinsically interesting for most seven-year-olds, so the concern is small. Still, the parents can pair stickers with specific praise, reward meeting a standard such as two full minutes and fade the stickers over time to an intermittent schedule, which makes the habit more resistant to extinction.

Schedules of Reinforcement

How often a reward follows a behavior changes how the behavior is learned and how long it lasts. A continuous schedule, a sticker every night, builds a new habit quickly but fades quickly once rewards stop. A variable schedule, in which rewards come after an unpredictable number of nights, builds behavior more slowly but makes it far more resistant to extinction. Leo's parents plan to move from continuous to variable rewards once brushing is routine.

What Conditioning Does Not Explain

Conditioning explains much of Leo's behavior, but not all. His fear is also shaped by what he imagines might happen and by stories from an older cousin. Expectations, observation and thought, the topics of later weeks, also influence learning.

Conclusion

Leo's dental fear is a classically conditioned response, learned in one painful visit and generalized to similar settings, and it can be weakened through graduated exposure. His bedtime stalling is maintained by escape, and positive reinforcement with shaping can build the brushing habit. Research on classical conditioning and rewards supports both plans.

References

Cameron, J., Banko, K. M., & Pierce, W. D. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst, 24(1), 1-44. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03392017

Rescorla, R. A. (1988). Pavlovian conditioning: It's not what you think it is. American Psychologist, 43(3), 151-160. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.43.3.151

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0069608