Question

Psychologist John Garcia conditioned rats to have a taste aversion to sweet-tasting water by injecting them with a drug that made them ill. Using classical conditioning terminology, what was the conditioned response (CR) in this experimental situation?

Answer 1

Answer:

Taste aversion to sweet-tasting water.

Explanation:

Conditioning learning is an style of learning where a conditioned stimulus is associated with an unconditioned stimulus and they produce a conditioned behavioral response.

In this learning, at first, the unconditioned stimulus produces the unconditional response (and this means that a stimulus produces a response in a natural way), then the unconditioned stimulus is paired with the conditioned stimulus that does not produce the response on its own but once it's paired with the unconditioned stimulus and after some repetitions, the response is produce in presence of the unconditioned stimulus and it is called now conditioned response.

In this case, the drug would be the unconditioned stimulus that produces the response of getting ill (by itself), this response it's the unconditioned response. However, John Garcia paired this stimulus with the sweet-tasting-water (conditioned stimulus) and now the rats have an aversion to this type of water.

This aversion would be the Conditioned response since it was not originally present in presence of the water but it was paired with it after some repetitions and by the fact that it made the rats ill.