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In Pavlovian conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (US) is something that naturally triggers a reflex without any learning. Food naturally causes a dog to salivate, so the US is food and the unconditioned response (UR) is salivation. The bell, by itself, is a neutral stimulus that doesn’t cause salivation until it’s paired with the food, after which it becomes a conditioned stimulus that elicits a conditioned response. Drooling is essentially the same reflex as salivation, but the standard term used in this context is salivation. This is why identifying food as the US and salivation as the UR is the correct pairing.