• Medical Applications of Classical Conditioning

  • people with allergies might have a positive reaction just by looking at their allergy

  • various aspects of the immune system can be classically conditioned

    • hospital environment being associated with the immunosuppressive effect of chemotherapy

  • classical conditioning can be used to strengthen immune system functioning

    • sherbert increased natural killer cell activity after being paired with adrenaline

  • placebo effect: effect of pairing the appearance of the drug with the active ingredients of the drug

    • effects are much more likely to occur following a period of treatment with the active drug

    • repeated administration of a placebo by itself tends to reduce its effectiveness (process of extinction)

    • placebos can be used to reduce the frequency with which a patient has to take the real drug

    • placebo effect can be combined with the effect of the real drug to produce an enhanced form of treatment

  • sign of dog (ns) ➝ contact with dog (us) ➝ asthma symptoms (ur)

sign of dog (cs) ➝ asthma symptoms (cr)

• hospital (ns) ➝ chemo (us) ➝ immunosuppression (ur)

hospital (cs) ➝ immunosuppression (cr)

• following, reduce, extinction

• elicited behavior is controlled by the stimuli that precede it

• operant behaviors: behaviors that are influenced by their consequences

• operant conditioning: effects of consequences on behavior. response operates on the environment to produce a consequence

• also called instrumental learning because the response is instrumental in producing the consequence

• consequences, precedes, follows, instrumentall