Schoolsucks: Download Your Workload

Pavlov's Classical Conditioning Experiment With Dogs

Pavlov's classical conditioning experiment with dogs

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) came up with and demonstrated a form of learning known as classical conditioning. "Classical Conditioning" is defined as "a process of learning by temporal association in which two events that repeatedly occur close together in time become fused in a person's mind and produce the same response" (Comer, 2004)

In a classic laboratory setting Pavlov took a hungry dog and presented it with food. The automatic response to this unconditional stimulus is that the dog would begin to salivate. He then paired the food with the sound of a bell. The sound of the bell was a neutral stimulus that did not cause the dog to salivate. The dog salivated to the paired food and the sound of the bell. After many presentations of the food and the bell, Pavlov was able to present just the sound of the bell, and the dog salivated. The sound of the bell had noun become a conditioned stimulus that caused a conditioned response. (Englar, 2006)

Pavlov showed that pairing an unconditional stimulus with a neutral stimulus, he could get a response that he would have only originally happened from the unconditional stimulus. This type of classical conditioning was the base of what would later become John Watson’s theory of behaviorism. (Englar, 2006)

In reality, people do not respond exactly like Pavlov's dogs. There are, however, numerous real-world applications for classical conditioning. Many dog trainers use classical conditioning techniques to help people train their pets. (Wagner, 2005)

Classical conditioning is a major factor in real life. It's a fundamental part of all forms of animal training). Its primary use in human behavior is in dealing with habit formation, either trying   to form good habits (enjoying exercising, liking the good-grade or self-esteem rewards of good school performance, etc.) or to break bad ones (smoking, overeating, etc.), including phobias or anxiety-producing conditioning....