What Is Conditioned Taste Aversion?
A conditioned taste aversion can occur when eating a substance is followed by illness.
Inclassical conditioning, conditioned food aversions are examples of single-trial learning.
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Just one pairing of the previously neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus can establish an automatic response.
Conditioned taste aversions are quite common and can last between several days to several years.
Examples
Imagine that you are on vacation and eat a chicken enchilada at a restaurant.
Consider your own aversions to certain foods.
Can you link your distaste for particular items to a period of illness, queasiness, or nausea?
Conditioned taste aversions are a great example of some of the fundamental mechanics of classical conditioning.
Is that all there is to these conditioned taste aversions?
The scenario described above does not exactly fit with the standard expectations for classical conditioning.
Second, the time span between the neutral stimulus and UCS is usually just a matter of seconds.
In the case of a conditioned taste aversion, the time-lapse often amounts to several hours.
Wouldn’t the illness be associated with something that had happened right before the symptoms occurred?
“These aversions selectively seek flavors to the exclusion of other stimuli.
Interstimulus intervals are a thousand-fold too long.”
So why does the key in of stimulus matter so much in this particular case?
One part of the explanation lies in the concept ofbiological preparedness.
Essentially, virtually every organism is biologically predisposed to create certain associations between certain stimuli.
These associations are frequently essential for survival, so it is no wonder they form easily.
Summary
Classical conditioning can have a powerful influence on behavior.
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