Psych 101 - Clinical Applications of Classical Conditioning
Understand how fundmental psychological research impacts current clinical practice
Ivan Pavlov trained as a physiologist, with special interest in the Canine digestive system. Initially through a keen observation of his lab animal’s behaviour, he described, defined and tested the concept of Classical Conditioning as a theory of learning. Classical conditioning continues to sustain several clinical psychological interventions to this day.
The keen observation Pavlov made was that dogs in his laboratory would begin to salivate before their food was presented to them. He knew that salivation is a reflex – an uncontrollable, automatic reaction to a specific type of stimulation. He also knew that dogs don’t salivate at the same rate constantly, and that here is little-to-no benefit to salivate when food is not present (no more than it would be useful to flich when there is no object flying towards your face). Pavlov would later term this type of reflex as an Unconditioned Response, and the specific type of stimulation required to elicit it as the Unconditioned Stimulus. ‘Unconditioned’ here means that the relationship between this stimulus and this particular response does not need to be trained – its already hardwired that dogs salivate when presented with food.
But Pavlov’s dogs were already salivating well before he presented them with food. They had somehow learned to associate something (later understood to be the sound of Pavlov’s footsteps nearing the door) with ‘food is coming’. They had become ‘conditioned’ to know that footsteps mean food is near. Hence, the sound of footsteps becomes a ‘Conditioned Stimulus’ and the subsequent salivation in the absence of real food is the ‘Conditioned Response’.
To test this, Pavlov constructed a laboratory concept that essentially involved repeatedly presenting dogs with a neutral, non-food stimulus (famously the sound of a bell ringing), followed by real food and then measuring the rate of salivation. Over several repetitions, a presentation of the ringing bell alone would become sufficient to elicit (nearly) the same salivation response. This is learning through Classical Conditioning. By repeated association of a Conditioned Stimulus with an Unconditioned Stimulus, the Conditioned Stimulus eventually gains the same power.
Pavlov’s work would go on to define several principals and parameters of learning: Acquisition, the rate at which the pairing of the bell and food create an association such that the bell alone elicits salivation; Extinction, the ‘unpairing’ of that association by presenting the bell alone with no food repeatedly until the bell alone no longer elicits any salivation; Spontaneous Recovery, where after having learned and extinguished the association a single presentation of bell and food is sufficient to fully recover the learned association; Generalization where the same association can be transferred to different sounds similar to the bell; and Discrimination, where salivation can be triggered by only certain bells and not at all to others.
Methodological and animal welfare issues aside, understanding how learning through classical conditioning works can help unpack the acquisition and treatment of many mental health issues including phobias, addiction and explosive anger. However, the acquisition and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) provides an excellent example of how Classical Conditioning principles are applied to Clinical Psychology. OCD is formed by an association of an otherwise neutral stimulus (e.g., a thought and/or feeling of not turning the light switch off ‘correctly’) with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g. the thought that an electrical fire would set my house on fire) which elicits an unconditioned response (e.g. fear). Through a series of repetitions, the association is consolidated and the mere thought of turning the light switch off incorrectly is sufficient to elicit a fear response (the conditioned response), which forms the obsession component of OCD.
But there’s much more to OCD. The compulsion, the behaviour intended to neutralize the negative feelings produced by the obsession, forms a secondary classically conditioned association of a behaviour (e.g checking the light switch repeatedly) with another unconditioned response (e.g. feeling relief).
Effective psychological therapy for OCD, called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) uses the principles of classical conditioning, specifically extinction, to break the conditioned associations. Through ERP, one is asked to intentionally present the conditioned stimulus (turning the lights off) in the absence of the second unconditioned stimulus (checking behaviour) until the conditioned response (fear) is extinguished. Similar exposure therapies for phobias or trauma also make use of the same extinction, generalization and discrimination principles outlined by Pavlov’s work.
Understanding the fundamentals of psychological science helps clients better adhere to the work of psychotherapy in-session and between-session. Psychological literacy is an excellent resource and significant predictor of positive outcomes.
For more information about the clinical application of psychological science, visit www.cogentclinic.ca