At its root, classical conditioning is about reflexes. Indeed, Pavlov called his approach reflexology. Reflexes are unlearned behaviors that are prewired to ensure your survival. These include your gag reflex (to prevent choking), eye blink (to protect and nourish the cornea), and rooting and sucking reflexes (to make sure newborns get food).

You have a reflex for kicking your leg when your knee is struck. It obviously is there so doctors can play with little hammers. Or perhaps it is there to maintain your posture and balance. It’s a stretch reflex that helps you adjust to changing terrains as you walk across a field.

You have digestive reflexes so you don’t have to think about processing the food you’ve eaten. It happens automatically.

And that’s the nature of reflexes. They are automatic. They occur without thinking. When your patella ligament is struck with a little hammer, the signal doesn’t travel to the brain for processing. You don’t have to ponder whether or not to kick your leg. No cognitive processing is required.

The simplest reflexes are monosynaptic. The signal travels to the spine on a sensory neuron and back again on a motor neuron. There is only one synaptic crossover. No thought is required.

Reflexes

A reflex is the combination of a stimulus and a response. Air puffed into your eye (stimulus) results in an eye blink (response). Neither is learned. No training is required. Both are unconditioned (unlearned).

An unconditioned stimulus elicits an unconditioned response. There are no response options. An eye puff will always elicit an eye blink. It doesn’t make you sneeze.  The connection is hard wired at the synaptic level, typically at the spine.

Process

Now let’s add some low-level processing. This is not processing in the cerebral cortex (what most people call the brain). This is processing which occurs under the cortex, in the region between the cortex and the spine. No conscious thought is involved; just low-level processing.

If the cerebral cortex is a computer, the low-level processing units underlying it are switchers, timers and interfaces. This is where low-level associations between stimuli occur. In classical conditioning, it is an association between a neutral stimulus and the stimulus portion of a reflex.

Once the connection between two stimuli is complete (it can take many trials or be formed in a single instance), the neutral stimulus (now called a conditioned stimulus) produces a response that is similar to the reflex. Some of Pavlov’s dogs took 50 or more trials to connect the bell to the food. Some the association was made, they would salivate to the bell, but not as much as they would to real food.

Notice that the conditioned stimulus doesn’t trigger the unconditioned response. It triggers a response that is similar but less intense.

Thanksgiving

If food is presented at Thanksgiving dinner, you begin to salivate. If your family tradition was to ring a bell or sing a song before the food arrived, the sound of that bell or song could make you start to salivate. But your brain, even the subcortical regions, are dumb enough to salivate as if the food has actually arrived. It can tell the difference between “about to come” and “here it is.” The conditioned response is a less intense version of the unconditioned response.

This subcortical region, called the limbic system, makes associations and tracks their context. If a bell is repeated rung without food arriving, the conditioned response will decrease in its size of response and eventually disappear. This extinction of behavior allows you to move on and create new associations in the same environment.

Once extinguished, there is no response to the conditioned stimulus (bell). It becomes neutral again, sort of. The limbic system is tracking the context. It will occasionally trigger a conditioned response in reaction to a bell. It is as if the body is asking “do you want to run this subroutine again?” or “I’m ready if you are.” If the bell is followed by food, the conditioned response rapidly returns.

Associations

The connection between the two stimuli (neutral and unconditioned) isn’t straightforward. The conditioned stimulus doesn’t trigger the unconditioned response. Consequently, it is unclear how the associations are formed. In the early days of behaviorism, the two stimuli where thought to be bonded together. Complex behaviors could then be explained by assembling a hierarchy of stimuli.

Pavlov believed that new stimuli were being attached to old behaviors. In other words, we don’t like change. We tend to response to new situations with old responses. The new stimuli are being substituted for the old ones.

The problem with this substitution theory is that conditioned responses, though similar, are not the same as unconditioned reflexive responses. They are not as large or as fast. And they occur in response to a wider variety of stimuli. Conditioned responses are triggered not only by the specific bell used in training but also by bells that sound similar. Similar bells, either higher or lower in frequency, can be used. The closer they resemble the original bell, the larger the response. The less similar they are, the less the response.

This means classically conditioned behaviors cannot explain all of human behavior. Thinking, once described as subvocalized speech, is more than a chain of S-R responses. Claims of understanding or controlling all human behavior were wildly overstated.

What We Know

We know that timing is important.

The optimal time between conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus is one half-second. The bell should be followed by food in a half-second. Less than that or longer than that can work but one half-second gives maximal impact.

We know that the order of presentation is important.

Forward conditioning, where the bell precedes the food, produces the greatest affect. The bell is still ringing when the food is presented.

Trace conditioning, a variation of this method, presents the bell and then, after the bell stops ringing, the food is presented. It explains the excitement of a game’s beginning just after you hear “play ball.”

In practice, this is what happens with you classically condition a clicker as a reward giver. Horse, dog and human trainers often use toy noise makers as reward markers. Pressing your finger on the bent metal bar and releasing it produces a distinctive clicking sound. The sound indicates “good job” and is followed as soon as physically possible with a food reward or praise.

Before you can reward with a clicker, you must establish an association between its sound and the reward. With humans you can say “the click means good job” but for other animals, the sound is classically conditioned with a bit of food. Over and over again, the click-food link is established.

In simultaneous conditioning, the sound and food are presented together. Less effective than forward chaining and about the same as trace conditioning, simultaneous conditioning is common in everyday life. Songs that were playing when you fell in love produce emotions elicited by simultaneous conditioning. The lighting and ambiance of a great dinner is simultaneous conditioning. The environmental cues associated with drug abuse are also examples of simultaneous conditioning.

Backward conditioning (food before bell) is less successful but still useful. This is what trainers do with race horses. It is important to collect a urine sample after a race. Not wanting to wait a long time for this to occur, horse trainings will walk past a stall, observe a horse urinating and give a small whistle or mouth click. Over a period of time, the horse will make the association, and, after the race, will urinate on cue.

We know that unfamiliarity is better.

The technical term for this principle is latent inhibition. In general, it takes long to form an association when using a familiar neutral stimulus. Belling ringing worked well for Pavlov’s dogs because it is a stimulus that is uncommon in their experience. If the dogs had lived surrounded by ringing bells, a bell would not have worked well as a conditioned stimulus.

In taste aversion, if you get sick on a food you rarely eat, you might not want to ever eat it again. But if you get food poisoning from a pizza, it’s just one of a hundred pizzas you’ve eaten. You might even attribute your sickness to something other than your favorite pizza. You may think it was just the flu.

We know the connections are strong.

One reason it is difficult to kick a drug habit is all of the environmental cues associated with the addiction. Revisiting places you got high, or just thinking about them, can trigger strong cravings for drugs.

Taste-aversion conditioning can turn one experience of food poisoning into a lifetime of avoiding the associated food. I had a horrible reaction to a burger at a chain restaurant and still can’t return to their stores. I am also very picky about the taste of my burgers, even if I make them myself.

PTSD is a complicated condition that includes reactions that are classically conditioned. Seeing a hurt child or dog can make you react strongly to the portion of freeway or environment where the incident occurred. The sounds of professional firework can trigger immediate emotional reactions from people familiar with the sound of mortar shells.

Fear, in all of its forms, is often a classically conditioned reaction to a variety of environmental stimuli. One bad exposure to a clown can last a long time.

You will hear that habits are loops. The idea is that a cue triggers a response which results in a reward. The circle is complete when the reward links back to the cue. This easy to understand concept is quite popular. There is no evidence that it is true. Or at least, it is not that simple.

We tend to automatically jump to Skinner’s reinforcement theory. We assume rewards or dopamine stimulation account for all of our behaviors. But let’s not rush to that conclusion. There may be another explanation.

Aristotle

Since habits are thought to be learned, explanations of what causes behavior go back a long way. Aristotle, about 300 years before our calendar begins, proposed three principles of learning. These laws of association are similarity, opposites and contiguity.

Aristotle noted that we are good at making connections between similar things. We are also able to easily identify contrasts. Remember Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the others”? Essentially, we quickly identity positive and negative correlations. We track things that move together or things that go in opposite directions. We are gifted at pattern recognition.

Aristotle’s third law of association, contiguity, says that we notice thing that are close to each other physically or in time. We notice when objects are physically placed close to each other. We associate pies with the window ledge they are set on to cool. Planets close to Earth are thought as a single unit (solar system) because they care close together. We think of countries bordered by their neighbors as being similar.

Contiguity of time helps us associate events we believe go together. find a coin and meet an old friend on the same day. We say “now” and the traffic light changes. We run the can opener and the cat appears. Two events that occur about the same time are associated together.

Guthrie

Six hundred years after Aristotle, Edwin Guthrie (1886-1959) made contiguity the center of his theory of learning. Guthrie maintained that when a stimulus and response occur close together in time or space, bonds are formed. These bonds (associations) is all that is needed to explain learning. No other conditions are required. Once the association between a stimulus and a response has been established, the same sequence of movements is repeated.

Guthrie modified and extended Thorndike’s work with cats. Guthrie used the latest technology of the day to study cats in puzzle boxes. In addition to observing the cats, Guthrie film the entire process. He photographed the exact movements of the cats, using a glass paneled box.

What Guthrie discovered is that while the cats learned to release themselves faster, they repeated the same sequence of movements on every trial. They repeated the entire chain of responses, including all of the unsuccessful attempts. Some components were executed faster than others but all of them were still present. Guthrie called this process stereotyping.

Stereotyping

Stereotyping, says Guthrie, proves that a chain of movement was learned, not simply a single response. Cats repeated all of the behaviors. They didn’t eliminate any. Skinner called them superstitious behaviors and said they were caused by reinforcement. Guthrie called them stereotyping and said they were caused by association alone. There was no need for reinforcement.

For Guthrie, learning occurs without reinforcement. It occurs at full strength or not at all. This all or nothing formation of bonds initially sounds contrary to our experience of getting better incrementally. If it is one-shot learning (all or none), how is it that we get better and faster at performing behaviors?

Guthrie’s solution has to do with the size of bonds. We tend to think of learning bonds as being large. Guthrie thinks they are extremely small. Do you remember Gulliver’s Travels? He was tied down by the Lilliputians with many tiny strings. Each was small and easily broken, but together they formed a strong chain.

For Guthrie, we learn by forming millions of bonds, each very small. We repeatedly break some and make others. Improvements in our behavior come from breaking some of the irrelevant bonds and strengthening more of the relevant bonds. These tiny bonds stay in place until they are replaced. Forgetting is due to interference. Some of the bonds are broken.

HAM

Guthrie proposed that there are three components of learning. We can use the acrostic HAM to remember them: habits, acts and movements. Backward chaining them, movements (M) was the smallest bonds. They are the tiny strings. Each muscle and tendon movement produces proprioceptive stimuli, which, in turn, help produce the next movement. Movements are small S-R combinations that form a chain of associations. Learning occurs in movements.

The A in HAM is for acts. Acts are collections of movements. They are the observable behavior that we see. Any act can be composed of thousands or millions of movements.

The H of HAM is for habits. Habits are well-established acts. The strength of the habit (habit strength) is determined by the number of stimuli which can produce a response. The more stimuli involved, the stronger the habit.

Clearly, the way to change a habit is to change the movements. More precisely, the way to change a behavior is to change the stimuli of that cause the movements chains. These stimuli are called movement produced stimuli (MPS). They are the key to change. You replace old behaviors with new behaviors by doing them. By responding differently to the same stimuli, you form new associations in the chain.

Guthrie was an advocate of learning by doing. His theory is pre-cognitive. You don’t need to change your thinking. You need to change your behavior. You need to practice your behavior where the triggering stimuli are present. Consequently, a theater director should add more dress rehearsals. A coach should add more games and exhibitions.

The emphasis is on doing the desired behaviors. If you want to teach children, spouses or yourself a behavior, do it over. If you enter your house and dump your stuff on the floor, Guthrie recommends you practice the whole sequence. Go back outside, come in again, and hang up your things.

This is not punishment, says Guthrie, though it might feel like it. It is practice. The only way to learn is to form the tiny bonds between muscle movements. Unlearning bad habits is learning to do something else in the same situation (stimulus conditions). Practice new behavior when old cues present.

In general, there are six ways to classify skills: environments, muscles, skill targets, movements, simplicity and pacing. Each is a dimension, not a categorical dichotomy. It is not either-or but how much of this factor is involved.

Environments can be open or closed. Closed environments are predictable. Movements can be planned in advance. Examples include chess, gymnastics, and figure skating. A pianist playing classical music is a closed environment.

In contrast, a pianist playing jazz is an open environment. Open environments require dynamic adjustments to changing conditions. They are unpredictable. Examples include debating, boxing and horse trading.

Obviously, many tasks combine both open and closed environmental factors. Standup comics plan their joke sequence ahead of time but have to handle current events, theater conditions and hecklers. Creating a well-planned set is a closed skill but improvisations is an open skill.

Muscles. Skills can also be classified on basis of which muscles are employed. Gross motor skills use large muscles. These are the muscles you use to sit, kick a ball or maintain balance. In contrast, fine motor skills are required for writing with a pencil or picking lint off the carpet.

Gross motor skills are the first to develop in children, with fine motor skills coming somewhat later. Boys tend to develop fine motor skills later than girls but the sexes are equal by about age 5 or 6.

Targets. Skills can be classified by targets. Target skills are the actual tasks needed to accomplish a goal, such as keeping a tennis ball in play. Target behaviors are the component actions needed to perform target skills, such as watching the ball, and keeping the wrist firm. Target contexts are the environments in which you perform a skill. A friendly game of golf is quite different from a competitive tournament.

Movements. Skills can also be classified by type of movement: continuous, discrete, serial or mixed. Continuous movements are cyclical. There is no clear beginning or end. They include swimming, cycling and steering a car. Discrete skills have well-defined actions. There is a clear beginning and a clear ending. Discrete movements are independent actions, such as typing, hitting baseballs and pounding nails.

Serial skills are sequences of discrete movements. Serving in tennis requires tossing the ball up, swinging the racket and follow-through. It is not a continuous swing like a figure-8 would be. Although practiced together, the sequence has discrete component parts.

Mixed skills are a combination of discrete and continuous movements. It is clicking the shutter while taking a photo of a moving object you have to track. Shooting space aliens in a video game requires both flying the ship (continuous) and triggering the blasters (discrete). CPR requires giving chest compressions (discrete) and mouth to mouth artificial ventilation (continuous).

Simplicity. Simple skills can be discrete or continuous. They are tasks which require little thought or physical energy. Examples include flipping a light switch, a flick serve in badminton, and pushing the doorbell button. In contrast, complex skills require timing. Changing gears in a stick-shift care involves pushing in the clutch (discrete) and shifting gears (discrete) but the timing is critical. A lay-up in basketball is more complex than a free-throw. Twirling a Hula-Hoop on each arm is a complex skill composed of two simple continuous movements.

Pacing. Skills can be either self-paced or externally-paced. Self-pacing skills are performed when you want. You can let the chess clock wind all of the way down before you move or make the move quickly. You decide when you are ready to start your speech. You can do all of your planning ahead of time and then initiate your long jump or ring routine. In contrast, when environmental factors trigger a response, you are engaged in an externally-paced activity. Examples include driving when the light turns green, countering an attack or being forced to pass the ball before a linebacker sacks you. Externally-paced skills are time sensitive. They require immediate attention.

Summary

All six dimensions help us to understand the characteristics of a given skill. Most skills are a mixture of factors. And that mixture changes. Tasks which are complex and externally-paced might be less so the next day. You might have an easy comeback to an insult one day and find it terribly difficult to respond the next day. Thinking about the nature of the skills we use can help us focus our practice and improve our game.