Download Order27639103_01Aug2015_20-02-37

Running head: OBSERVATION PAPER
Observation Paper
YourFirstName YourLastName
University title
1
OBSERVATION PAPER
2
Classical conditioning refers to the psychological process in which one modifies his behavior
in response to a stimuli based on previous neural stimuli. This phenomenon has been a very
intriguing phenomenon because I have seen it with two important people in my life. One is
my younger sister, and the other is my Michelet my cat.
My sister is only one year old and I can believe that his cognitive development is quite poor.
Over the last two weeks I have been seeing my sister sit on the floor before I offered her
anything to drink. However, she surprised me four days ago when she saw me holding a
glass of water as she sat down and waited patiently for me to offer her a drink without
indicating that she wanted water. This has been a common occurrence especially when she is
with me because she never does this when she is with any other person. I think she has
completely conditioned herself to sit down believing every container I carry on my hands is
meant for her (Straub, Myers & Rea, 2013, pp. 276-296).
Secondly, my cat Michelet is also like my baby sister, for example, each time anybody goes
to the living room and sit on the sofa set, she would be seen struggling to bring the remote
controller to the person to press play. This she learnt because I used to show her the remote
whenever I was ready to give her food. However, she sometime becomes violent and a
nuisance because she expects anybody seated in the waiting room.
My sisters conditioning mainly occurred when the stimuli is paired with the unconditional
stimuli. For example, the conditioned stimuli (CS) in this case are the image of a cup or glass
or any containers. On the other hand, the unconditioned stimuli (US) are the taste of tea, or
milk or any other liquid. However, the unconditioned response (UR) to the unconditioned
stimuli refers to some of the unlearned reflex responses (sitting down). After repeatedly
pairing the cup with the drinks, she started to shows some form of conditioned responses
(CR) to the cup when a cup is presented without any drink (Straub, Myers & Rea, 2013, pp.
276-296)
OBSERVATION PAPER
3
Never the less, I can say that this is not an operant conditioning because her responses to the
stimuli did not change or was not strengthened in any way. Giving her tea, milk, porridge or
whole grain wheat breakfast cereal in the same cup did not change her response. However, I
know for sure that what happened was stimulus generalization as cups of any color came to
elicit conditioned response
Conclusion
In conclusion, my baby sister has developed a strong liking for cups and has conditioned
herself that each cup means eating time so she shows her readiness to start eating by sitting
down. Conditioned response is also a form of innate response to stimuli as she was not taught
that cups represent food. Her response was as a result of repeated feeding using cups and that
is why she has to be told to sit down when carrying plates but not cups, want makes her
discriminate against plates is still a mystery but the stimulus discrimination is clear.
References
Straub, R., Myers, D., & Rea, C. (2013). Study guide to accompany David G. Myers
Psychology tenth edition in modules. New York: Worth Publishers.