One Saturday, Clayton was sitting at home when the telephone rang. A local company was making promotional calls and told Clayton he had just won a $500 gift certificate. He felt a rush of excitement at the thought of what he could do with $500. Now Clayton finds that whenever he hears a telephone ring, he feels a little surge of excitement. In this example, the conditioned response is

a. the surge of excitement that Clayton feels whenever he hears a telephone ring.
b. the ringing of a telephone.
c. the news that he had just won a $500 gift certificate.
d. the rush of excitement he felt when he won the certificate.

In classical conditioning, a conditioned stimulus (the phone calls) is associated with an unconditioned stimulus (winning $500), which in turn results in a change of behaviour known as conditioned response (the feeling of excitement).

This was demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov in a famous experiment: he would ring a bell before feeding a dog. Soon, the dog started salivating at the sound of the bell.

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