How did experiments on the digestive response in dogs lead to one of the most important discoveries in psychology? Ivan Pavlov was a noted Russian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his work studying digestive processes. While studying digestion in dogs, Pavlov noted an interesting occurrence: His canine subjects would begin to salivate whenever an assistant entered the room. The concept of classical conditioning is studied by every entry-level psychology student, so it may be surprising to learn that the man who first noted this phenomenon was not a psychologist at all.
In his digestive research, Pavlov and his assistants would introduce a variety of edible and non-edible items and measure the saliva production that the items produced. Salivation, he noted, is a reflexive process. It occurs automatically in response to a specific stimulus and is not under conscious control. However, Pavlov noted that the dogs would often begin salivating in the absence of food and smell.
He quickly realized that this salivary response was not due to an automatic, physiological process. Based on his observations, Pavlov suggested that the salivation was a learned response. Pavlov's dog subjects were responding to the sight of the research assistants' white lab coats, which the animals had come to associate with the presentation of food.
Unlike the salivary response to the presentation of food, which is an unconditioned reflex, salivating to the expectation of food is a conditioned reflex. Pavlov then focused on investigating exactly how these conditioned responses are learned or acquired.
In a series of experiments, he set out to provoke a conditioned response to a previously neutral stimulus. He opted to use food as the unconditioned stimulus , or the stimulus that evokes a response naturally and automatically.
The sound of a metronome was chosen to be the neutral stimulus. The dogs would first be exposed to the sound of the ticking metronome, and then the food was immediately presented. After several conditioning trials, Pavlov noted that the dogs began to salivate after hearing the metronome. Pavlov's discovery of classical conditioning remains one of the most important in psychology's history. In addition to forming the basis of what would become behavioral psychology , the classical conditioning process remains important today for numerous applications, including behavioral modification and mental health treatment, including treating phobias, anxiety, and panic disorders.
The principles have been used to prevent coyotes from preying on domestic livestock and to use neutral stimulus eating some type of food paired with an unconditioned response negative results after eating the food to create an aversion to a particular food. Unlike other forms of classical conditioning, this type of conditioning does not require multiple pairings in order for an association to form.
In fact, taste aversions generally occur after just a single pairing. Ranchers have found ways to put this form of classical conditioning to good use to protect their herds. In one example, mutton was injected with a drug that produces severe nausea. After eating the poisoned meat, coyotes then avoided sheep herds rather than attack them. While Pavlov's discovery of classical conditioning formed an essential part of psychology's history, his work continues to inspire further research today.
His contributions to psychology have helped make the discipline what it is today and will likely continue to shape our understanding of human behavior for years to come. This means he wanted to elicit a response each time a new stimuli occurred. He used a metronome and clicked it right before giving the dogs food. Over time, the sounds of the clicking metronome caused an increase in salivation. This means that the dog learned to associate the metronome and the food with a learned behavior.
This response was learned conditioned , which was referred to as a conditioned response or a Pavlovian response. It was founded that in order for associations between two stimuli to be made such as the metronome and the food , they had to be presented close together in time.
He said that if the time between the two items were too long, the learning would not occur. His work became famous, largely because it was the first systematic study of the basic laws of learning and conditioning. To summarize: classical conditioning - learning to associate an unconditioned stimulus food that already brings about a particular response salivating with a new conditioned stimulus metronome , so that the new stimulus brings about the same response.
By Dr. Saul McLeod , updated Like many great scientific advances, Pavlovian conditioning aka classical conditioning was discovered accidentally.
Ivan Pavlov — was a physiologist, not a psychologist. During the s, Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov was researching salivation in dogs in response to being fed. He inserted a small test tube into the cheek of each dog to measure saliva when the dogs were fed with a powder made from meat. Pavlov predicted the dogs would salivate in response to the food placed in front of them, but he noticed that his dogs would begin to salivate whenever they heard the footsteps of his assistant who was bringing them the food.
When Pavlov discovered that any object or event which the dogs learned to associate with food such as the lab assistant would trigger the same response, he realized that he had made an important scientific discovery. Accordingly, he devoted the rest of his career to studying this type of learning.
Pavlov started from the idea that there are some things that a dog does not need to learn. In behaviorist terms , food is an unconditioned stimulus and salivation is an unconditioned response.
In his experiment, Pavlov used a metronome as his neutral stimulus. By itself the metronome did not elecit a response from the dogs. Next, Pavlov began the conditioning procedure, whereby the clicking metronome was introduced just before he gave food to his dogs. After a number of repeats trials of this procedure he presented the metronome on its own.
As you might expect, the sound of the clicking metronome on its own now caused an increase in salivation. So the dog had learned an association between the metronome and the food and a new behavior had been learned.
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