Julio has been dating Maria for the past 2 years, and has grown accustomed to the scent of her favorite perfume. After their relationship ended, Julio was walking through a store, minding his own business, when a woman passed who was wearing the same perfume. Instantly, Julio turned around and started looking for his lost love. In this example, what is the conditioned stimulus?

b) The scent of the perfume

Explanation:

This question is incomplete. The options for this question are:

a) The strange woman in the store

b) The scent of the perfume

c) Julio looking for his lost love

d) Maria

Classical conditioning is a form of learning by associating stimulus to responses and by pairing them in order to learn.

In classical conditioning, first we have a stimulus that triggers a natural response by itself. This stimulus is called the unconditioned stimulus (US) and the natural response triggered is the unconditioned response (UR).

Later, we start presenting a stimulus that doesn't trigger any response by itself and we pair this stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus. This new stimulus is called the conditioned stimulus (CS), soon, after some repetitions, the response will start to show up in presence of the CS, and now the response is called conditioned response (CR).

In this example, Julio was dating Maria. Maria would make Julio feel love, therefore, Maria would be the unconditioned stimulus who would trigger the natural response of love. However, Julio grew accustomed to the scent of Maria's perfume. We can say that somehow he paired the scent of the perfume with the presence of Maria (therefore the perfume would be the conditioned stimulus). This pairing is confirmed when a woman passes and is wearing the same perfume and Julio turns around looking for Maria, he has paired the perfume with the presence of Maria and the response of looking for her appears in the presence of the perfume. Therefore, the scent of the perfume would be the conditioned stimulus.