Question

You are conducting an experiment in which you are trying to manipulate the immune response of rats by using the principles of classical conditioning. First for several days of an experiment, you give the rats artificially sweetened water with an immune system–enhancing drug in it. You later remove the drug and notice that the immune systems of the rats are boosted when they consume only the sweetened water. In your experiment, what is the conditioned stimulus (CS)?

Answer 1

Answer:

a. the sweetened water.

Explanation:

According to the principles of classical conditioning, conditioned stimulus occur when the intended stimulus create similar response in an experiment to that of the unconditioned stimulus. In other words, they are responses triggered when associated with unconditioned stimulus.

Here, the sweetened water is an intented stimulus. It was given to the rats with an immune-enhancing drug to boost their immune systems. However, when the drug was removed, the rats still showed signs of enhanced immune system just with the sweetened water. It shows that the sweetened water has associated with the unconditioned stimulus, which is enhanced immune system functioning, and now triggers the same response even without the drug.