Conditioned Response (CR)

Definition

A conditioned response is an automatic reaction that develops in response to a previously neutral stimulus through conditioning.

Analogy

Imagine you're training your dog with treats. Every time you say "sit," you give your dog a treat if it sits down. Eventually your dog will sit down just at the sound of "sit" even without seeing the treat. The act of sitting in this case is the conditioned response - it has been learned through association with the command "sit."

Related terms

Unconditioned Response (UR): This is an unlearned reaction/response which occurs naturally in reaction to an unconditioned stimulus.

Classical Conditioning: This is a learning process where two stimuli are repeatedly paired; a response that was initially elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.

Pavlovian Conditioning: Named after Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with dogs, this type of learning involves creating an association between two stimuli resulting in a learned response.