Teacher Information

Human Conditioned Responses

Katherine Giunta

Overview

This teacher demonstration is designed to illustrate how easily and quickly a person can be conditioned to respond to external stimuli. Students will be encouraged to look at numerous ways in which conditioned behavior affects their day to day activities.

Biological Concepts

• Student Behavior in Response to Conditioning

• Classical conditioning

Class Time

This activity will take about twenty minutes. The questions following the exercise will take more time and can be done at home as an activity.

Background Information

Classical conditioning is a form of associative learning. The organism associates a novel, new stimulus with an innately recognized stimulus. Early psychologists thought that all behavior was a the result of conditioning. Today, we know that classical conditioning is only one way for an organism to learn. The Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, studied the process of digestion and the amount of saliva produced in dogs. During his work, he found that if he substituted an alternate substitute for food, the substitute stimulus of the bell would stimulate the production of saliva. Pavlov found that if a bell was rung just before the dog saw the food, the dogs came to identify the stimulus (the bell) with the food. The bell alone could stimulate the onset of salivation. Classical conditioning begins with an innate response that follows an unconditioned stimulus. A new stimulus is paired with it, and the process is repeated many times. In time, the novel or new stimulus will be sufficient to elicit the innate response.

Materials

Bell or buzzer that makes a single sound and does not clatter or drown out the reading. Even to simply tap on the side of a beaker will work.

Teacher Preparation

In this demonstration, you are going to condition your students to tap a pencil every time you read the word "the " in a paragraph. As you read the words that are shaded, you will ring a bell or tap an object on the side of a beaker. The bold words in the following paragraphs should be read at a normal reading pace. Try not to emphasize the bold words . Try not to read too fast or to hesitate before the marked words. The bell or tap needs to be delivered as the teacher begins to read the bold word. Conditioning will only occur if the stimulus just barely precedes or occurs simultaneously with the normal stimulus.

Presentation is important and can be enhanced by standing at the back of the room to eliminate all stimuli except sound. Be sure to practice reading the paragraph so that the stimuli are delivered at the correct time. An alternative would be to prepare a recording on tape. The teacher would then not be disturbed by the class and could actually do the taping in advance of the class.

Extensions/Variation

It would be interesting to let the students work in groups and write their own paragraphs, determine the novel stimulus, and condition the class.

Part II of the student activity sheet introduces other forms of conditioned behavior if you choose to use that section.

Teacher Information

Resources

Keeton, Gould, Biological Science, W.W. Norton & Co (New York: 1993)

"Investigating some human responses to stimuli," BSCS, Teacher Manual of Blue Version , (second edition)

About the Author

Katherine Giant teaches integrated science and advanced placement biology at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, Illinois. Katherine can be contacted at St. Ignites College Prep, 1076 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago, Il. 60608 on by e-mail at KathyLG@AOL.com.

STUDENT DIRECTIONS FOR PART I

Students should be instructed to mark a pencil dot on a sheet of paper every time they hear the word "the" in the passage.

Part I ----Activity One The little girl was disappointed that the cat did not want to come in the house. One day the little girl watched the cat catch a bird in the yard and realized that the cat was at home in the yard. Eventually the little girl learned that the cat was at home in the natural environment.

After you finished reading the passage, ask the students to count the number of pencil dots on their paper.

The word ""the" is accompanied by the bell 41 times in the above paragraph. Other words are

accompanied by the bell 7 times. You will expect that the students would tap their pencils 41 times (every time they hear the word "the"). If the students have a total of pencils dots greater than 41, they tapped the pencil on the paper to the sound of the bell and not the word "the. They have been conditioned. Discuss the concept of conditioning with your students.

Teacher Information

PART I --ACTIVITY TWO

Begin by repeating the directions to part one.

You are the alien from the distant planet. The home world has received a distant radio transmission from a particular solar system and you have been sent as the head biologist on the a mission to find the a source of these transmissions and to see if life exists on the solar system. Your exhibition team has traveled through other outer parts of the solar system and discovered no signs of life. But now you are approaching the unique and awesome Blue Planet. And you wonder what might be beyond the view of your sight.

After you finished reading the passage, ask the students to count the number of pencil dots on their paper.

The word "the" is accompanied by the bell only 6 times early in the passage and other words are accompanied by the bell 16 times . When the natural stimulus ceases to accompany the conditioned response, the response is unlearned.

The word "the" appears in the paragraph 10 times. Thus, a score of 10 would indicate that the conditioning has been unlearned.

A score greater than 10 would indicate that conditioning has carried over from the first part of the passage.

Students may get a score less than 10 because the word "the" is accompanied by the bell only 6 times.

Student Activity

Name _______________________ Period:______

Human Conditioned Responses

I. Results of classroom activity

ACTIVITY ONE

1. Number of pencil marks on paper: _______

2. Number of times the word "the" appears in the paragraph:______

3. Number of times a stimulus word other than "the" appears in the paragraph:________

4. Explain your results.

ACTIVITY TWO

1. Number of pencil marks on paper:_____

2. Number of times the word "the" appears in the paragraph:______

3. Number of times a stimulus word other than "the" appears in the paragraph:_______

4. Explain your results.

Part II: Other Conditioned Behaviors

1. During the last several weeks, your teacher has been rewarding you with tootsie rolls every time

you did something well in this classroom. During this week, she or he abruptly stopped

rewarding you. As a matter of fact, he or she has not given you any negative or positive

feedback this week.

A.. Does this behavior have any relationship to Part I? Describe similarities and differences.

B Think about your study habits this week. Were they affected by the reward or lack of reward that you received?

2. Think carefully about this topic of conditioned response to external stimuli and list at least five other examples that have happened to you in the last week..

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