conditioned response

See synonyms for conditioned response on Thesaurus.com
nounPsychology.
  1. a response that becomes associated with a previously unrelated stimulus as a result of pairing the stimulus with another stimulus normally yielding the response.

Origin of conditioned response

1
First recorded in 1930–35
  • Also called conditioned reflex.

Words Nearby conditioned response

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How to use conditioned response in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for conditioned response

conditioned response

noun
  1. psychol a response that is transferred from the second to the first of a pair of stimuli. A well-known Pavlovian example is salivation by a dog when it hears a bell ring, because food has always been presented when the bell has been rung previously: Also called (esp formerly): conditioned reflex See also classical conditioning, unconditioned response

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Cultural definitions for conditioned response

conditioned response

In psychology, the response made by a person or animal after learning to associate an experience with a neutral or arbitrary stimulus. Conditioned response experiments by Ivan Pavlov (see Pavlov's dogs) paired a neutral stimulus (sounding a bell) with a natural response (salivating) by associating the bell with the presentation of food. Conditioned response experiments by B. F. Skinner and other behaviorists (see behaviorism) associated an arbitrary action (an animal's pressing a lever) with a positive reward (presentation of food) or a negative reward (an electric shock).

Notes for conditioned response

Response conditioning is used in behavior modification. Stop-smoking clinics, for example, may use an electric shock whenever a patient lights up. The patient will then associate smoking with the unpleasant experience of the shock.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.