I would think that the time has come to update our understanding of
classical conditioning. As I look back to textbooks written, ten, twenty,
or even thirty years ago, I find that the terms and processes are
essentially described in the same way. But this is not the case with other
processes, particularly the social processes.
Perhaps it may be that behaviorists write few textbooks and when textbooks
are written they are written by those whose focus include memory (Loftus),
social psychology (Myers), etc. This might be why those areas are more
up-to-date.
It would seem that classical conditioning occurs when an organism responds
to a stimulus that had been associated with an earlier stimulus which
reliably elicited a response. This crude definition would then eliminate
the need for the UCS-UCR relationship to be reflexive in nature. Higher
order conditioning allows for a previously learned S-R relationship to
become the basis for further conditioning.
Several examples of classical conditiong cited in textbooks could be
analyzed in much the same way as the bird example. Goldfish swimming to
the top of an aquarium at the sight of a hand is one that readily comes to
mind. One might argue that the hand is a discriminative stimulus and that
in the past goldfish were rewarded for swimming to the top of the tank in
the prsence of that stimulus, the reward being food.
