Ease Into Prep with an MCAT^® Question of the Day

In this scenario, the treat, an unconditioned stimulus, is paired up with a whistle, a neutral stimulus that becomes a conditioned stimulus as it now produces the response of salivation. The correct answer is (A).

Expert Approach:
Right away, I can tell this is a textbook classical conditioning question - if I didn't catch that from the stem, the answers make it obvious. And my job is to identify which component the whistle is in a scenario practically identical to Pavlov's, in which dogs salivated in response to a bell. I know the bell (whistle in this case) is originally neutral, but becomes a conditioned stimulus (A) after being paired with a treat, and now makes the dog salivate on its own.Even if I hadn't known in advance that the whistle is a conditioned stimulus, it just makes sense. A whistle isn't a "response" as in (C) and (D); it's a stimulus. And the word "conditioned" typically means something trained or learned, like a "conditioned" athlete, and since a whistle wouldn't naturally cause a dog to salivate, it would have to be "conditioned" first. Certainly, if I had to choose between unconditioned stimulus (B) and conditioned stimulus (A) to describe the whistle after the dog has been through the training regimen, I'd choose conditioned.

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