Behavior Therapy

Classical Conditioning

Around 1901, Ivan Pavlov described classical conditioning resulting from his famous observations of dogs that salivated in response to a sound that preceded the introduction of food powder into their mouths. Although not his original research focus, he noticed that previously neutral stimuli such as a tone could produce the same salivation as the food powder. Up to that point, no theory of behavior could explain or describe the process that would predict that response.

Briefly, Pavlovian (classical) conditioning stated that when a previously neutral stimulus, such as a tone, reliably precedes a stimulus that would naturally produce a specific response, the previously neutral stimulus could come to produce the same or similar response. The stimulus that required no prior learning history to produce a response was called an unconditioned stimulus (UCS). The response to the UCS was called an unconditioned response (UCR). Once the previously neutral stimulus elicited the response, that stimulus was termed a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the response that occurred without requiring a UCS, was called a conditioned response (CR).

Applying these principles of classical conditioning, in 1920 John Watson and Rosalie Rayner demonstrated in their Little Albert Experiment that one could produce an anxiety response to a white rat, a previously neutral stimulus, in a young child by following the presentation of the rat with an unexpected loud noise (which startled the child). The loud noise was a UCS; the startle (crying) [Page 227]response was a UCR. Once the child cried and was upset when just the rat was presented, the rat became a CS that then elicited the crying response (CR) in the absence of a loud noise. Subsequent research has shown that if the CS is repeatedly presented without the UCS, the CR will diminish or disappear.

In the late 1950s, Joseph Wolpe applied classical conditioning theory to the treatment of a variety of clinical issues involving anxiety. He used the term reciprocal inhibition for his procedures. The phobic person—for example, a person who avoids dirt—is gradually exposed to stimuli that produce no to mild anxiety until he or she relaxed enough to be exposed to stimuli more similar to one that nearly always produced anxiety. According to Pavlovian conditioning theory, repeatedly presenting the CS without the UCS will lead to extinction or habituation of the problem. This general type of therapy is called exposure therapy because it exposes the person with anxiety behaviors to stimuli in such a way that he or she no longer experiences anxiety.

...