A 6 year old female patient complains of pain due to a decayed lower right 2nd molar. She has a history of unpleasant dental extraction with the lower left second molar. On seeing the dentist, the child immediately cries and withdraws. Which theory of child psychology best explains the reaction of the patient?
Classical conditioning (1927) occurs readily with young children and can have a considerable impact on a young child's behavior on the first visit to a dental office. By the time a child is brought for the first visit to a dentist, even if that visit is at an early age, it is highly likely that he or she will have had many experiences with pediatricians and medical personnel. When a child experiences pain, the reflex reaction is crying and withdrawal. In Pavlovian terms, the infliction of pain is an unconditioned stimulus, but a number of aspects of the setting in which the pain occurs can come to be associated with this unconditioned stimulus. For instance, it is unusual for a child to encounter people who are dressed entirely in white uniforms or long white coats. If the unconditioned stimulus of painful treatment comes to be associated with the conditioned stimulus of white coats, a child may cry and withdraw immediately at the first sight of a white-coated dentist or dental assistant. In this case, the child has learned to associate the conditioned stimulus of pain and the unconditioned stimulus of a white-coated adult, and the mere sight of the white coat is enough to produce the reflex behavior initially associated with pain
Note: A) Acquisition – learning a new experience (fear of dentist/whitecoat/needles)
           B) Generalization – generalizing all similar stimuli (all those wearing white coat cause pain)
           C) Discrimination – differentiating individual stimuli ( not everyone who wears white coat causes pain)
           D) Extinction - disappearance of the acquired experience ( loss of fear of dental procedures)
           E) Spontaneous recovery – reappearance of extinct response ( fear of dental procedure reappears due to poor management behaviour strategies).
Operant conditioning by Skinner (1938)
Classical conditioning by Pavlov (1972)
Classical conditioning by Pavlov (1927)
Operant conditioning by Skinner (1952)