Skip to main content

Conditioned Response

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
  • 780 Accesses

Synonyms

Conditioned reflex; Conditioned reflexive response classically conditioned response

Definition

A conditioned response constitutes the product of learning through the acquisition of a new association between a previously neutral stimulus and a biologically relevant stimulus.

Introduction

Reflexive responses appear when an organism comes across stimuli which automatically trigger a reflexive response. For instance, a puff of air to the eye area automatically induces a reflexive response of an eyeblink (Spence 1978). In a scenario in which an originally neutral stimulus is associated with the puff of air, that formerly neutral stimulus turns into a conditioned stimulus and acquires functions that enable it to induce qualitatively similar responses (i.e., conditioned responses) with the reflexive ones (McSweeney and Murphy 2014). That is, in the field of Pavlovian/respondent conditioning, neutral stimuli refer to any stimulus that originally did not induce any particular...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Baum, W. M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. Hoboken: Wiley.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • McSweeney, F. K., & Murphy, E. S. (2014). The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning. Malden: Wiley.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ramnero, J., & Torneke, N. (2011). The ABCs of human behavior: Behavioral principles for the practicing clinician. Reno: Context Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schachtman, T. R. (2011). Associative learning and conditioning theory: Human and non-human applications. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shanks, D. R. (1995). The psychology of associative learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Spence, K. W. (1978). Behavior theory and conditioning. Westport: Greenwood Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Staddon, J. E. (2014). The new behaviorism: Mind, mechanism, and society. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thines, G. (1987). From Darwin to behaviourism. Behavioural Processes, 15(2–3), 345. https://doi.org/10.1016/0376-6357(87)90018-0.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wills, A. J. (2012). New directions in human associative learning. New York: Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Christoforou, C. (2018). Conditioned Response. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1042-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1042-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics