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...
References
Baum, W. M. (2017). Understanding behaviorism: Behavior, culture, and evolution. Hoboken: Wiley.
McSweeney, F. K., & Murphy, E. S. (2014). The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning. Malden: Wiley.
Ramnero, J., & Torneke, N. (2011). The ABCs of human behavior: Behavioral principles for the practicing clinician. Reno: Context Press.
Schachtman, T. R. (2011). Associative learning and conditioning theory: Human and non-human applications. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shanks, D. R. (1995). The psychology of associative learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spence, K. W. (1978). Behavior theory and conditioning. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Staddon, J. E. (2014). The new behaviorism: Mind, mechanism, and society. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Thines, G. (1987). From Darwin to behaviourism. Behavioural Processes, 15(2–3), 345. https://doi.org/10.1016/0376-6357(87)90018-0.
Wills, A. J. (2012). New directions in human associative learning. New York: Psychology Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
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