Different Stages Of Phhobias In Classical Conditioning And Classical Conditioning
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A phobia is defined as an anxiety disorder in which the sufferer of the condition experiences a continuous fear of a certain object, person or situation. This disorder is usually linked to an unfortunate experience a person endured in their past. That experience had such a dramatic impact on the individual that it resulted in a persistent fear whenever they come into contact with the specific object, person or situation. Examples of phobias include a fear of clowns, spiders and needles.
Phobias develop through a process called classic conditioning which was studied by Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov. This method of learning incorporates two stimuli being combined over a period of time in order to obtain a specific response. Both stimuli will eventually elicit a similar response, hence a new phobia is obtained.
There are many stages in classical conditioning. These are acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination.
Acquisition is the first stage of the classical conditioning process. This is where exposure to an unconditioned and a conditioned stimulus forms a conditioned response (Lilienfeld et al., 2010). An unconditioned stimulus is one which naturally evokes a response without involving conditioning. The definition for a conditioned stimulus is one which elicits a response which when paired with an unconditioned stimulus. Therefore a conditioned response which is the phobia, is a reply which is acquired when an