Classical and Operant Conditioning: Procedural Term Paper

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Narcotics and explosive detection work combine both classical and operant conditioning. The classical element of their conditioning is the conditioning implemented to substitute a reward in the form of a particular play toy used only for its specific purpose as a positive consequence of desired behavior. In that case, the operant component of the conditioning is that the desired behavior of searching for contraband, first, triggers the reward afterwards.

In training a canine officer to detect contraband, operant conditioning is also used in another way; namely, in addition to training the canine to seek and find explosives or narcotics, the trainer also rewards the subject for initiating a specific desired passive or active response. Generally, active responses such as barking and biting to hold are used for patrol work. Passive responses are more appropriate in contraband detection, where the passive responses like sitting are much safer than active responses such as retrieval. Real Life Learning Experience #2: World War I was the first mechanized war in which new military technologies made possible by the industrial revolution, the assembly line production system pioneered by Henry Ford, and advances in metallurgy combined to produce fierce weapons of previously unheard of destructive capability.

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By the end of the war, in addition to millions killed and wounded in action, physicians first encountered, in large numbers, the phenomenon of physically uninjured soldiers traumatized psychologically by their wartime experiences. Specifically, many WWI veterans developed an abnormal sensitivity to any loud sounds, especially any sound produce by explosive mechanics, such as fireworks or gasoline engines misfiring. Many would begin shaking uncontrollably at some of the ordinary sounds of modern industrial society. Initially, in the post WWI era, military surgeons and psychiatrists coined the term "shellshock" because soldiers afflicted with its symptoms had been classically conditioned to respond with all the physiological responses of intense fear and life threatening danger triggered by the sounds of artillery shelling. Eventually, shellshock came to be known as post traumatic stress disorder

PTSD) which was found to manifest itself in many different specific circumstances. All of them have one thing in common: they represent examples of classical conditioning, where the subject is conditioned to react with physiological responses normally triggered only by extreme danger after learning to associate loud sounds and battlefield dangers (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

REFERENCES Eden, R.S. (1993) K-9 Officer's Manual. Alberta: Detselig Enterprises. Gerrig, R,….....

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