A lecture slide says:
classical conditioning causes a stimulus to signal a positive or negative consequence; the resulting behavior doesn't produce the consequence.
What does it mean by the bolded sentence?
Psychology & Neuroscience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for practitioners, researchers, and students in cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, and psychiatry. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityA lecture slide says:
classical conditioning causes a stimulus to signal a positive or negative consequence; the resulting behavior doesn't produce the consequence.
What does it mean by the bolded sentence?
The slide is contrasting classical conditioning with operant conditioning.
In operant conditioning, you train that a behavior is paired with a reward or punishment. For example, a lever press dispensing a food pellet.
In classical conditioning, there is no relevant behavior. Some stimulus (rather than behavior) is paired with an outcome. For example, if there is a tone played before a shock, the tone will cause rodents to freeze in anticipation of the shock, but nothing about their freezing behavior is causing the shock.