Classical Conditioning Case Study

We cannot hope to survive life’s tribulations without learning. “The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.”(Jiddu Krishnamurti.) In other words learning is inevitable from the first breaths of air to the last breaths we take. I have a friend who until recently was a type two diabetic. On what seemed to be a normal day his diabetes started to spiral out of control causing him to feel nauseous and eventually making him vomit profusely. He was frantically gasping for air, scared of not knowing what was going on and thinking of only one question, “Am I going to die?” After some tests the doctor said it would seem that he contracted a rare condition called DKA also known as diabetes ketoacidosis. …show more content…
Classical conditioning deals with reflexive and involuntary behaviors that eventually lead to a controlled response. I will begin by identifying the unconditional stimulus, in this case a normal day with no complications to his health. This would be considered an unconditional stimulus because a normal day would not cause him to react in any way. Contracting the condition of diabetes ketoacidosis would naturally cause him to take more intensive care of his health and fear the fatal consequences which would then in turn make diabetes ketoacidosis an unconditioned reaction. At the start of a normal day (the natural stimulus) he has to take measures to prevent death from diabetes ketoacidosis (the unconditioned reaction.) A normal day would no longer be considered neutral, it would now be considered a conditioned stimulus because even if some way he was able to get rid of diabetes ketoacidosis, he would still continue to monitor and take care of his health to prevent the condition from returning. As a result he takes care of his health even though he no longer has that fatal condition, taking care of his health is now a conditioned …show more content…
This processes is much like a child growing up based on his or her parent’s influential actions. There are around nine common factors that increase imitation but I will use certain relative factors when applying it to my friend’s experience. I will be the observer and my friend will be the one performing the actions based on the aftermath of diabetes ketoacidosis. Let’s suppose that my friend makes a video blog of his normal routine after his experience with diabetes ketoacidosis. He starts his day by checking his blood glucose and records the results about four times a day, then will take a short fifteen to twenty minute walk, and make sure he is eating well balanced meals. Since I am the observer, I would have to take into consideration what to imitate and why. I would imitate most of all the actions that he takes every day because as it turns out, I have type two diabetes. The fact that this condition is rare does not mean that I am immune to contracting it all of a sudden like my friend. This increases the level of influence he has because I too could be affected by diabetes ketoacidosis. He is also kind and nurturing, he helped me through some rough events that were overwhelming me which gives him a considerable amount of influence points. Performing the actions he took are not difficult at all the only thing is that they are time consuming. He is two years older than me so I would be