(a) Explain how learning takes place through classical conditioning. Discuss the role of reflexive behaviour and contingency in the acquisition of conditioned behaviour. (20 marks)

(b) What do you understand by 'inattentional blindness'? How can sub

Question

(a) Explain how learning takes place through classical conditioning. Discuss the role of reflexive behaviour and contingency in the acquisition of conditioned behaviour. (20 marks)

(b) What do you understand by 'inattentional blindness'? How can subliminal stimulus affect our behaviour? (15 marks)

(c) Highlight the developmental milestones as per the Piaget's stages of cognitive development. (15 marks)

UPSC Answer Check · Accepted Answer

(a) Learning through classical conditioning: role of reflexes and contingency

Classical conditioning is associative learning in which a neutral stimulus acquires the power to elicit a response by being paired with a biologically significant stimulus. In Ivan Pavlov’s paradigm, a bell (conditioned stimulus, CS) is paired with food (unconditioned stimulus, UCS), which naturally elicits salivation (unconditioned response, UCR). After repeated pairings the bell alone elicits salivation (conditioned response, CR). The process shows acquisition, extinction (the CR weakens when the CS is presented without the UCS), spontaneous recovery after rest, generalisation to similar stimuli, discrimination between stimuli, and higher-order conditioning, in which a new stimulus is paired with an established CS. Short-delay forward pairing is optimal; backward conditioning is weakest.

Reflexive behaviour is the raw material of classical conditioning. It consists of respondent, elicited behaviours such as salivation, eye-blink or fear, which are automatic and involuntary, unlike emitted operant behaviour controlled by its consequences. Conditioning does not create new responses; it transfers control of an existing reflex to a new stimulus.

Contingency, the degree to which the CS predicts the UCS, drives acquisition more than mere contiguity (closeness in time). Rescorla (1966, 1968) showed that when the UCS was as likely without the CS as with it (the truly random control), little conditioning occurred despite many pairings. Kamin’s (1968) blocking effect, in which a CS added to an already-predictive CS acquires little conditioning, and the Rescorla-Wagner model (1972), in which learning is proportional to prediction error, confirm that the CS must carry new information about the UCS.

Watson and Rayner’s (1920) Little Albert study showed conditioned fear in a human infant, and Garcia and Koelling’s (1966) taste-aversion work showed biological preparedness (Seligman, 1970).

(b) Inattentional blindness and subliminal stimuli

Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice an unexpected, even salient, object in plain view because attention is engaged elsewhere; Mack and Rock (1998) named and systematically studied it. In Simons and Chabris’s (1999) “invisible gorilla” study, about half the participants counting basketball passes failed to see a person in a gorilla suit walk through the scene. It differs from change blindness (Simons and Levin, 1998), the failure to detect a change between two views of a scene. Its significance is that attention appears necessary for conscious perception, with consequences for driving, radiology and eyewitness testimony.

A subliminal stimulus is presented below the absolute threshold (limen) of conscious awareness. Its power is often overstated. Vicary’s 1957 claim that flashed messages to “eat popcorn” and “drink Coca-Cola” raised cinema sales was later admitted to be fabricated and has never been replicated, and Greenwald et al. (1991) found that subliminal self-help tapes did not improve self-esteem or memory beyond expectation effects.

Subliminal input can nevertheless bias behaviour subtly. Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc (1980) showed that subliminally exposed shapes were preferred even when they could not be recognised, a subliminal form of Zajonc’s (1968) mere-exposure effect. Masked semantic and affective priming speeds or biases responses to later targets. Thus subliminal stimuli cannot compel complex acts such as buying or voting, but can briefly shape preferences and reactions.

(c) Developmental milestones in Piaget’s stages

Jean Piaget held that children construct knowledge through four invariant, qualitatively distinct stages, driven by schemas (mental structures), assimilation (fitting new information into existing schemas), accommodation (modifying schemas) and equilibration (the drive toward balance).
1. Sensorimotor (0–2 years): the infant knows the world through sensing and acting. The key milestone is object permanence, the understanding that objects exist when out of sight; the A-not-B error (searching at an old hiding place A after seeing the object moved to B) marks its incomplete form. Deferred imitation and early symbols appear by the end of the stage.
2. Preoperational (2–7 years): symbolic function emerges in language and pretend play. Thinking is egocentric, shown by the three-mountain task, and centred, so the child fails conservation, believing that water poured into a taller glass has increased.
3. Concrete operational (7–11 years): logical operations on concrete objects appear: conservation, reversibility, decentration, class inclusion, seriation and transitivity. Horizontal décalage means forms of conservation are mastered in sequence, number before mass, weight and volume.
4. Formal operational (11 years onward): abstract, hypothetico-deductive reasoning emerges; in the pendulum problem the adolescent varies one factor at a time and finds that only string length determines the rate of swing.

Evaluation: Baillargeon’s studies suggest object permanence appears earlier; Hughes’s (1975) policeman-doll task and Donaldson’s (1978) “human sense” critique show less egocentrism in meaningful tasks; formal operations are not universal, and Vygotsky stressed social and cultural mediation.

(a) Explain how learning takes place through classical conditioning. Discuss the role of reflexive behaviour and contingency in…

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(a) Learning through classical conditioning: role of reflexes and contingency

(b) Inattentional blindness and subliminal stimuli

(c) Developmental milestones in Piaget’s stages

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