Higher Order Conditioning

Now that we have spent all our free time conditioning our pets tosalivate at the ring of a bell is all that time wasted?

Or are there other tricks we can play?

As a matter of fact there is more, we can try an advanced type ofconditioning, higher order conditioning. Higher order conditioning or secondorder conditioning is simply using the established conditioned stimulus(CS) as anunconditioned stimulus (US). Thus we can try replacing the bell we wereusing with something as simple as a whistle or turning on the stereo. Thisshould not be mistaken for stimulus generalization which is associatinga similar stimulus with the original conditioned stimulus. For example, if youhave trained your parrot, Pete, to call your name when the phone rings, he mayalso do it when the doorbell rings. Over time, Pete may learn to differentiatebetween the two sounds, this is called stimulus discrimination.