need help with classical/ operant conditioning

[Spreadbury]

in the area of operant conditioning I have a heading "Timing of the stimulus and response" and one of the sections states "in classical conditioning the response depends on the presentation of the UCS occuring first". this sounds wrong to me, and it may have been a typo when I was summarising the text book but I don't really want to wait to check.

EDIT:
I've checked my book now, and it turns out that it wasn't a typo and that is indeed what the book says, but this confuses me. the book says exactly: "in classical conditioning, the response (for example, salivation) depends on the presentation of the UCS (meat powder) occurring first." but in Pavlov's later experiment he tried to get the dog to salivate when it heard a bell (the CS) before it was presented with the meat powder (UCS) and of course, in his first experiment the conditioned response was unintentional and... I hate conditioning. sigh

can anyone explain it?

[Glockmeister]

http://missbakersbiologyclasswiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/pavlovdog.jpg/47218219/pavlovdog.jpg

I like this picture, because it's useful to think about this in terms of stages - Before, During and After. So suppose you want to condition a dog to salivate to the tuning fork. So:

NS - Turning Fork
UCS - Food
UCR - Salivation
CS - Tuning Fork
CR - Salivation

(NS - Neutral Stimulus, UCS - Unconditioned Stimulus, UCR- Unconditioned Response, CS - Conditioned Stimulus, CR - Conditioned Response)

So normally, if you whack a tuning fork, the dog won't salivate (it might bark though, depending on pitch). If you give the dog food when it's hungry, it will salivate (this is a reflex reaction - a very important point).

So now to make the dog salivate, what you do if when the dog's hungry, you give the dog food, but at the same time, you whack a tuning fork and put it near the dog's ears.

If you do this long enough, you start finding that the dog begins to salivate once the tuning fork is heard, even without food.

Hope that helps.

[Spreadbury]

you've explained the process of classical conditioning well, but i'm still wondering about what I wrote in the first post.

basically what i'm asking is; is this correct?
"in classical conditioning, the response depends on the presentation of the UCS occurring first."

if we're talking about trying to condition a behaviour, wouldn't the CS have to occur before the UCS?

[Glockmeister]

Yes that's correct - had to check my textbook again, but yes you are correct.

Having the UCS occurring first makes the learning process slower.