Article Summary Of Classical Conditioning

Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Name Date Article Summary. Classical conditioning is one of the psychological theories that has been discussed by various researchers of psychology. It helps in the explanation of various behaviors such as addictions, the act of developing a fear among others. Classical condition is one of the psychological theories which tries to explain the occurrence of certain behaviors especially when there is repetition of certain stimuli to an organism. Such behavior may be addiction behavior. It is believed to lead to the way a human being or an animal behaves. The paper gives a summary of an article titled “breaking bad habits: classical conditioning and smoking” by Amy Reichelt. In the article, the authors try to explain how addictions can be broken through the application of the knowledge of classical conditioning psychology. Addictions are considered to be hard to break, especially if one constantly associates with the people or objects that stimulated the behavior which led to their addiction. In the experiments done by Ivan Pavlov in his explanation of classical conditioning, he describes how a particular significant stimulus like food when paired with a certain signal like ringing a bell can lead to a conditioned response like salivating in a dog which could have been initially initiated by food. A stimulus that was previously neural can lead to a certain behavior via the association with a significant outcome that is emotional. His theory has formed an important rationale used in the maintenance, development, and relapsing of drug taking behaviors. According to the article, drugs act by increasing the levels of dopamine neurotransmitter in the brain which is used to maintain certain essential behaviors like sex and taking food. Drugs acting on the brain and body system association lead to the reward of being high, hence the motivation of more drug taking. The systems are therefore taken over by the drug leading to a maladaptation that causes addiction. Nicotine, found in tobacco is the most addictive drug in the world, making the process of quitting tobacco difficult due to the withdrawal symptoms associated with insomnia, irritability or anxiety. The physiological changes associated with nicotine are believed to occur very fast which is stimulated by its binding to nicotinic receptors found in the neurons. Upon stimulation, the nicotinic receptors are believed to affe...