Reflexes Chapter 6 Summary

Pavlov conducted a study using dogs. He placed the dogs in a harness and placed a piece of food on their tongue. A tube was placed to carry saliva from the dogs’ mouth to a lever measuring the saliva. Pavlov believed that salivation was an automatic, inherited reflex.

Pavlov would take a dog and give it food, before the dog would salivate. Then Pavlov would ring a bell, and then give the dog food. After a while the dog began to salivate at the sound of the bell as it knew food was coming and it associated the two things. If Pavlov rang the bell too often without giving the dog food the response would be extinguished and the dog would no longer salivate. If Pavlov stopped the experiment for 6 months and then returned to it the dog would rapidly salivate at the sound of the bell, this is spontaneous recovery. If Pavlov rang a bell that wasn’t similar to the original bell the dog wouldn’t salivate, this is called stimulus discrimination. A limitation of the experiment would be the unethicalness, is it right to treat a dog like this? Unfortunately, because it took place in lab the experiment will not equal the outside world. We are humans. We aren’t dogs, we have language. Therefore it can’t be said that humans would act in the same way as we aren’t the same. But in a laboratory you have high control, this would be the results he collected would have been correct. Despite how unethical his experiment was, I think it was justified as it was such a big breakthrough.

Pavlov started out his experiment from his firm belief that there are certain actions a dog does not need to learn to perform. He described the phenomenon in which dogs salivate as soon as they see food as a reflex that is “hard wired” into the dogs. He called this naturally occurring response the unconditioned response because there was a clear connection between a certain stimulus and a response in the behavior of the dogs that did not require learning. Similarly, Pavlov called the food the unconditioned stimulus because it naturally and automatically triggered a response, like salivating. In short, he succeeded in proving that any object or event which the dogs learn to associate with food would more likely to trigger the same response -- he discovered the general principle of the classical conditioning.

Pavlov’s discovery of classical conditioning was a complete accident (Hock, 2009, p. 66). Pavlov was doing physiology research with salvation’s role with digestion when he discovered classical conditioning. In his research, he had dogs with their salvation glands redirected to their cheek in order to test the amount of saliva produced when presented with different foods. Pavlov then noticed that the dogs would salivate before they even got the food. He then discovered that the dogs had associated the worker’s footsteps with the food. So, when the dogs hear the footsteps they know that food is on the way so they begin to salivate.

After the meat powder and bell were presented together several times, the bell was used alone. Pavlov’s dogs, as predicted, responded by salivating to the sound of the bell without the food. The bell began as a neutral stimulus (i.e. the bell itself did not produce the dogs. However, by pairing the bell with the stimulus that did produce the salivation response, the bell was able to acquire the ability to trigger the salivation response. Pavlov therefore demonstrated how stimulus-response are formed. He dedicated much of the rest of his career further exploring this finding. In technical terms, the meat powder is considered an unconditioned stimulus and the dog’s salivation is the unconditioned response. The bell is a neutral stimulus until the dog learns to associate the bell with food. Then the bell becomes a conditioned stimulus which produces the conditioned response of salivation after repeated pairings between the bell and food. John B. Watson further extended Pavlov’s work and applied it to human beings. Around 1921, Watson studied Albert, an 11-month-old infant child. The goal of the study was to condition Albert to become afraid of a white rat by pairing the white rat with a very loud noise. Behavior modification is a technique concerning the change in the undesired behavior and enhancing desired behavior. It is an approach that aims to modify the behavior of a

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning which occurs when two stimuli are paired together repetitively and therefore become associated with each other eventually producing the same response. Classical conditioning was developed from the findings of Ivan Pavlov to account for associations between neutral stimuli and reflexive behavior such as salivation. Pavlov (1927) accidently discovered that dogs began to salivate before they had tasted their food. To support his theory, he carried out experiments using dogs which involved measuring the amount of saliva they produced. In his experiments, food started off as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produced salivation, an unconditioned response (UCR). They are both unconditioned as they occur naturally without being learned. The dogs were presented with a bell (NS), this provided no salivation. The bell and food were presented together and after many trails an

Classical conditioning is a form of basic learning the body automatically responds to a stimulus. One stimulus takes on the properties of another. The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) is credited for discovering the basic principles of classical conditioning whilst he was studying digestion in dogs. He developed a technique for collecting dog’s salivary secretions. Pavlov (cited in Eysneck M.W 2009) noticed that the dogs would often start salivating before they were given any food or saw the feeding bucket or even when they heard the footstep of the laboratory assistant coming to feed them. Quite by accident Pavlov had discovered that the environmental control of behaviour can be changed as a result

If we review classical conditioning, we can see that an unconditioned stimulus is one that unconditionally and naturally results in a response. In contrast, a conditioned stimulus incorporates an unconditioned stimulus with a neutral stimulus to elicit a response. The classic case that highlights this concept is that of Pavlov's

The dogs would start to salivate just by hearing the bell ringing, which normally would not produce this response. The first part of the process involves an unconditioned response, like blinking or salivating. The next part needed for classical conditioning is an unconditioned stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus is one that automatically produces the unconditioned response, such as the smell of food triggering salivation. During conditioning, the neutral stimulus, like the bell in Pavlov’s case, is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus, or the meat powder. After a while, the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus. The conditioned stimulus then produces a conditioned response, since the subject of the experiment has associated the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned response. Many interesting experiments have been conducted using classical conditioning. Another scientist that preformed an experiment with classical conditioning is John B. Watson. Watson used classical conditioned to make a young boy fear white fluffy objects. He scared the child by making loud noises every time the child was presented a white rat.

This is known as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). Meat is the unconditioned stimulus because at the sight of the meat the dogs begin to salivate (Feldman, 2010).   The dog’s response to the meat educes salivation and is known as the unconditioned response (UCR). An unconditioned response is defined as a reflexive and natural response that is not connected to prior learning. Unconditioned responses always occur in the presence of the unconditioned stimulus (Feldman, 2010).   While conditioning the dogs, Pavlov would ring a bell right before the presentation of meat. Eventually, the dogs would associate the ringing of the bell with the meat. Therefore, the dogs would begin to salivate at the sound of the bell. At this point, Pavlov could state that he had classically conditioned his dogs. The bell which was a prior neutral stimulus had now become the conditioned stimulus (CS) that brought forth the conditioned response (CR) of salivation (Feldman, 2010). Moreover, we have to ask what would happen if these poor dogs were never again received food upon the ringing of the bell. This would lead to extinction. Extinction occurs when a prior conditioned response decreases in frequency and eventually disappears (Feldman, 2010).   In order for Pavlov to unconditioned his dogs he would have to break their association with the sound of the ringing bell and the presentation of food. To do so he

During his time, he worked with dogs to explore their digestive system so he would but the dogs in harness and attach monitor which was connected to their mouths and stomachs so that he could measure the level of salivation. One day, Pavlov noticed that a dog started to salivate when the laboratory associate came into the room with bowl of food however, it was salivating before it got the food. Since this was a reflex responses with salivation, I was seen would be unusual which made Palov speculate that the dog had label the laboratory associate with food and this is how he was able to develop this theory. The food instantly led to the reaction of salivation but is an automatic response (which isn't learnt) so Pavlov called this an unconditioned response. The reason why this is called an unconditioned response is because it wasn't learned and when looking at the food that the dog started to salivate to, it was called an unconditioned stimulus

At first he thought it was a sort of annoyance. The salivating is an unconditioned response (UCR) which is an unlearned, naturally occurring, automatic response to the unconditioned stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus (UCS), which is an effective stimulus that automatically and naturally triggers a response, would be the food. He proved that the action of the UCR existed by giving the dog a bowl of food and measuring the amount of saliva. When food was presented the dogs salivated quickly, but over repeated testing, the dog salivated before contact with the food. Just the sight of the food was enough to stimulate their drooling. Then, just seeing the food dish, or even hearing the footsteps of Pavlov or his assistant was enough to trigger this built in reflex. What was going on to prompt this response? Pavlov was very intrigued by this action and decided to find out the answer to this question, by systematically varying the stimuli and measuring the dog’s reaction. Metronomes, lights, and bells were all used by Pavlov as stimuli, and they all worked as covers for the

He was born in 1849 in Ryazan, Russian Empire. He graduated and received a degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences from the University of St. Petersburg. Pavlov was interested in how digestion worked in animals. Thus, began to observe and record information on what triggered his dogs to salivate. His research led to the understanding that animals salivate because they use saliva to help them break down the food. Therefore, when food was presented the dogs would drool. However, he made an even deeper discovery, Pavlov noticed that his assistants wore long coats. Every time an assistant would be in the lab even if they did not have food the dogs would salivate. (Pavlov, 1927) Pavlov could not understand why dogs would drool at ordinary lab coats. He decided to run an experiment in which he would ring a bell each time he fed the dogs. After a period of time he would just ring the bell and his dogs would immediately salivate. This experiment is what helped develop his theory of classical conditioning a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired, a response that is at first caused by the second stimulus is eventually produced by the first stimulus alone. Pavlov explained classical conditioning; there is a neutral stimulus (bell) by itself, it will not produce a response, like salivation. There is another stimulus (food), which produces an unconditioned response

As the son of a priest, his plan was to attend theological seminary; however, he was inspired by the ideas of Charles Darwin, and abandoned his theological studies to study science. He was a man totally committed to research, often times forgetting to pick up his paycheck. While studying canines digestive systems, a “happy accident” occurred, leading Pavlov to adjust his research focus onto the study of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. Pavlov’s findings were crucial to behavioral psychology and other scientists such as Watson and Skinner.

Pavlov’s experiments showed that if a previously neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus for many times, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) and be able to produce a response similar to that produced by the unconditioned stimulus.