Higher order conditioning in psychology
Answers
Higher Order Conditioning (also known as Second Order Conditioning) is a classical conditioning term that refers to a situation in which a stimulus that was previously neutral (e.g., a light) is paired with a conditioned stimulus (e.g., a tone that has been conditioning with food to produce salivating) to produce the same conditioned response as the conditioned stimulus. Wow...if you understand how a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (conditioning), you understand higher order conditioning because this is really just extending the conditioning one more level...the conditioning is happening not by pairing the stimulus with something that naturally produces a response, but with something that has been conditioned to produce a response.
In classical conditioning, second-order conditioning or higher-order conditioning is a form of learning in which a stimulus is first made meaningful or consequential for an organism through an initial step of learning, and then that stimulus is used as a basis for learning about some new stimulus. For example, an animal might first learn to associate a bell with food (first-order conditioning), but then learn to associate a light with the bell (second-order conditioning). Honeybees show second-order conditioning during proboscis extension reflex conditioning.[1]