Foundations and Basic Concepts of Classical Conditioning
Stéphane Gaskin · 2026
Chapter 5 describes the foundational events that led to Pavlov’s original classical conditioning experiment in Russia and his famous procedure. It then delves into Pavlov’s experimentation with varying the order and timing of the conditioned (CS) and unconditioned (US) stimulus, which led to the discovery of short delay, long delay, trace, simultaneous, backward, and temporal conditioning. The chapter then describes how a change in behavior following CS/US pairings might not reflect the effects of classical conditioning but of pseudoconditioning and that, to control for this possibility, researchers developed truly random and explicitly unpaired control group procedures. The chapter also explores different measures of classical conditioning, including the latency and magnitude of responses, resistance to extinction, and physiological measures. It also examines the phenomena of extinction, spontaneous recovery, and conditioned inhibition. The chapter concludes with the presentation of two theories of classical conditioning, which are the stimulus-stimulus (S-S) and the stimulus-response (SR) theories, as well as a method by which they were tested, known as the unconditioned stimulus (US) devaluation experiment.